"fS4^^ ^ % //Y /Jj^ THE PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND. VOL. I. orrnt '^ WNIVERSI Of ^fiUFO RNAi- EH ©IAMB cLiLring tlLe ./Xsrs^. SAXON HEPTARCHY. W&S .Ouimhers ,I.ondtni Ji-EtHnhnrtfh . THE C8 PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE AS WELL AS A HISTORY OF THE KINGDOM ILLUSTRATED WITH MANY HUNDRED WO OD-EN GRATINGS VOL I LONDON W. AND R. CHAMBERS 47 PATERNOSTER ROW AND HIGH STREET EDINBURGH MDCCCLV ^i ,N HE Pictorial History of England — one of the many admirable books planned by Mr Charles Knight — bas long established itself > in public esteem^ as a history, not merely of Political Events (to which character most histories are limited), but of the People, in their common life and social progress. The Edinburgh Review bore testimony to its merits in the following passage : — ' The Pictorial History of England, now before us, seems to be the very thing required by the popular taste of the present day ; adding to the advantage of a clear historical narrative, all the varied illustrations of which the subject is capable. After the fashion first introduced by Dr Henry, the authors have divided their subjects into periods ; the narrative of civil and military events in each being followed by chapters on the history of religion, the constitution and laws, the condition of the people, national industry, manners, and customs ; and almost every page in the earlier volumes is enriched with appropriate wood-cuts, generally of able execution — dresses, arms, industrial employments, sports, copied from illuminated manuscripts of the period to which they belong — views of scenes rendered famous by historical events, taken from drawings or prints as near the period as could be obtained — ample illustrations of architecture and sculpture ; portraits and fac-similes — and here and there cuts from historical pictures.' The Work, as completed under the auspices of Mr Knight, extended to eight volumes, forming an uninterrupted narrative from the Earliest Times till the conclusion of the Great War in 1815. Subsequently, Mr Knight published. a History of the Peace, extending over the period between 1815 and 1847. The copyright and stereotype plates of the first work, together with the copyright of the second, having passed into the hands of the present Publishers, it has seemed to them proper that the whole should be issued in a new and carefully revised Edition, uniform in all external respects, and with such an extension and adjustment of the several narratives as might render them One Complete and Harmonious History of England from the Earliest to the Present Times. They have, accordingly, entered on the present Re-issue of the Work, with a full resolution to carry out their plan in a style which may not merely sustain, but, if possible, advance the character which it has attained. They believe that some essential improvements in the narrative will be efiected, while the Typography wUl be such as to bring out the merits of the Engravings in a superior style. W. AND R. C. Edinburgh, April 1855. INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE ORIGINAL POPU- LATION AND PRIMITIVE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS, .... BOOK I. THE BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD; from 55 B.C. TO 449 A.i)., . . . . .25 CHA.P. I. NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TBANS- ACTIO.NS, . . . . .25 CHAP. II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION — SECTION I. DRUIDISM, ... 59 SECTION 11^ INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY, . 73 CHAP. III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERN- MENT, AND LAWS SECTION I. POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF THE BRITISH NATION, . . . . .76 SECTION II. THE GOVERNMENT AND LAWS OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS BEFORE THE INVASION OF THE ROMANS, . . . .82 SECTION III. THE GOVERNMENT AND LAWS OF ROMAN BRITAIN, . . . , 8't CHAP. IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY, 91 CHAP. V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS, , . . .118 CHAP. VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, 125 CHAP. VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE, ..... 135 BOOK II. THE PERIOD FROM THE ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE NORMANS, 449-10C6a.i)., 138 CHAP I. HISTORIC OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANS- ACTIONS, .... 138 CHAP. II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION — SECTION I. SAXON PAGANISM, SECTION II. CHRISTIANITY, . 224 228 CHAP. III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERN- MENT, AND LAWS, . . 24G PAGE CHAP. IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY, 262 CHAP. V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS, .... 289 CHAP. VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, 323 CHAP. VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE, ..... 346 BOOK III. THE PERIOD FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF KING JOHN, 1066-1216 a.d., CHAP. I. NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANS- ACTIONS, . . . . . CHAP. II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION, CHAP. III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERN- MENT, AND LAWS, .... CHAP. IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY, CHAP. V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS, .... CHAP. VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, CHAP. VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE, . . 357 358 647 662 584 603 634 658 BOOK IV. THE PERIOD FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD II., 1216-1399 A.D., . , . . . CHAP. I. NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANS- ACTIONS, ..... CHAP. II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION, CHAP. III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERN- MENT, AND LAWS, .... CHAP. IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY, CHAP. V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS, .... CHAP. VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, CHAP. VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE, . ... 670 671 801 ' 809 824 842 864 882 l/o^. / LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Initial Letter — Druidical Sacrifice, .... 3 Round Tower of Donoughmore, .... 13 Ornamental Border.— From a MS. in the BritiBh Museum, . 25 Ipitial Letter, ...... 25 Head of Julius Cresar, ... . . 28 Dover Cliffs 27 Landing of Julius Cspsar.— After a Picture by Blakey, . 28 Roman Galley. — From a Coin, .... 30 — — . — From Copper Coins of the time of Hadrian, 30 Plan, Elevations, and Section of a Roman Galley.— From a Model presented to Greenwich Hospital by Lord Anson, . 31 The Thames at Coway Stakes, .... 32 Huts in a Cingalese Village, ..... 34 British AVar-chariot, Shield, and Spears. — De Loutherbourg, 35 Roman General, accompanied by Standard-bearers and common Legionaries, landing from a Bridge of Boats.— From a bass- relief on the Column of Trajan, . . . .38 Charge of Roman Infantry. — From the Column of Trajan, 39 Head of Claudius, 40 Coin of Claudius, representing his British Triumph, . 40 British Camp at Caer-Caradoc— From Roy's Military Antiqui- ties, ........ 41 Caractacus at Rome. — Fuseli, .... 42 Boadicea haranguing the British Tribes. — Stothard, . . 44 ' Head of Hadrian, ...... 47 Copper Coin of Hadrian, ..... 47 Head of Antoninus Pius, ..... 48 Copper Coin of Antoninus Pius, commemorative of his Victories in Britain, ....... 48 Tie earliest figure of Britannia, on a Roman Coin.— From a Copper Coin of Antoninus Pius, . . . .48 Duntocher Bridge, on the line of Graham's Dyke, . 48 Profile of Roman Vallum, Aggez, and Fosse, . . 50 Section of Wall of Severus, . . . . . 50 Wall and Ditch of Severus, ..... 50 of Severus, near Housestead, Northumberland, . 50 Roman Soldier, ....... Image of Victory, ..... Citizen, ....... Tombstone of a young Roman Physician.— From Sculptures I found in the line of the AVall of Sf verus, . . J Wall of Severus, at Denton Dean, near Newcastle-on-Tyne, . 52 British Gold Coin of Carausius, .... 53 Head of Constantine the Great, . . . .53 British Coracles, ...... 5G Knsign of Kent, ... . . 58 Initial Letter— Druidical Circle and Oak, ... 59 Grove of Oaks.— From a Picture by Ruysdael, . . 62 Kits Coty House, a Cromlech, near Aylesford, Kent, . 63 Group of Arch-Druid and Druids, . . . .64 Silbury Hill, Wiltshire, 67 Stonehenge, ....... 68 Ground-plan of Druidical Temple at Avebury, . . 69 Plan or Jlap of the whole Temple and Avenues at Avebury, . 69 Gaulish Deities. — From Roman bass-reliefs under the Choir of Notre Dame, Paris, . . . . 69 Bronze Bowl or Patera, found in Wiltshire, . . 72 Initial Letter, ...... 76 Arch-Druid in his full Judicial Costume, . . .83 Initial Letter— Roman and Ring Money, ... fll Hare Stone, Cornwall, ...... 97 Ground-plan and Section of the Subterranean Chamber at Carrighhill, in the County of Cork, . . . .97 Plan of Subterranean Chambers on a Farm near Ballyhendon, 98 at Ballyhendon, . . 98 Section of a Subterranean Chamber at Kildrumpher, . 98 Gaulish Huts. — From the Antonine Column, . . .98 Welsh Pigsty, supposed to represent the form of the Ancient British Houses, ...... 99 Plan and Section of Chun Castle, .... 99 PAGl! The Herefordshire Beacon, . - . . .100 Constantine Tolman, Cornwall, . . . 101 Ancient British Canoe, found at North Stoke, Sussex, . 102 Moulds for Spear-heads, ..... 103 Axe-heads, commonly called Celts, .... 104 Woad 104 Roman Pigs of Lead in the British Museum, . . . 106 British Pearl Shells, 108 London Stone, ....... 110 Group of Ring Coins, ..... Ill Ancient British Coins, ...... 112 Roman Coin Mould, ...... 113 Remains of a Roman Hypocaust, or Subterranean Furnace, for , heating Baths, at Lincoln, ..... 115 Part of a Roman Wall, near St. Alban's, . . . 115 Roman Arches, forming Newport Gate, Lincoln, as it appeared in 1792 116 Restoration of the Roman Arch, forming Newport Gateway, Lincoln, ....... 116 Initial Letter— Roman Lorica, . . . . 118 Celtic Astronomical Instrument, . . . .122 Initial Letter — Ancient Beacon, .... 125 Figures of Ancient Gauls in the Braccse, Tunic, and Sagum. — From the Roman Statues in the Louvre, . . .127 Remains of a British Breastplate found at Mold, . . 128 Group of the principal Forms of Barrows, . . . 130 Contents of Ancient British Barrows, . . . 131 Group of Vessels.— From Specimens found in Roman Burial- places in Britain, ...... 132 Contents of Roman British Barrows, . . . 133 Metal Coating of Ancient British Shield.— Found at Rhydygorse, in Cardiganshire (not in the Witham, as stated by mistake in page 134), 134 Initial Letter, ...... 135 Initial Letter, ....... 138 Arms and Costume of the Tribes of the Western Shores of the Baltic .139 Vortigern and Rowena. — Angelica Kauffman, . . 141 Arms and Costume of a Saxon Military Chief, . . 144 Remains of the Abbey of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, . 146 Rock of Bamborough, with the Castle in its present state, . 147 Silver Coin of Offa, ...... 150 Egbert, 151 Arms and Costume of Danish Warriors, . . . 151 Silver Coin of Ethelwulf, . . . . .152 Arms and Costume of an Anglo-Saxon King and Armour-bearer, 156 Alfred and the Pilgrim.-B. West, .... 159 's Jewel. — Found at Athelney, .... 161 Silver Coins of Alfred, ..... 167 Specimen of a Copy of the Latin Gospels, given by King Athelstan to Canterbury Cathedral, .... Costume of King FMgar, a Saxon Lady, and a Page, St. Mary's Chapel, Kingston, as it appeared about fifty years since, ...... Silver Coin of Canute, ..... Canute reproving his Flatterers. — Smirke, Silver Coins of Edward the Confessor, Harold taking leave of Edward on his departure for Normandy. — From tlie Bayeux Tapestry, .... Harold on his Journey to Bosham.— From the Bayeux Tapestry, 197 entering Bosham Church.— do. do. 197 • coming to Anchor on the Coast of Normandy.— From the Baveux Tapestry, ..... 198 Harold'sAppearance at the Court of Duke William.— From the Baveux Tapestry, ■, .... Harold's Oath to William. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . Interview with King Edward on his Return from Normandy. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . The Sickness and Death of Edward the Confessor. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, ...... 169 174 175 180 183 186 196 198 199 200 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Funeral of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey. — From the Baj'eux Tapestry, ..... 202 Kemains of the Shrine of Edward the Confessor, Westminster Abbey, 202 The Great Seal of Edward the Confessor.— From Casts taken - from the original, ...... 203 The Crown oflercd to Harold by the People.— From the Bayeux Tapestry, 204 Coronation of Harold.— From the Bayeux Tapestry, . 204 William giving Orders for the Invasion. — From the Bayeux Tapestry 207 Normans preparing Arms and Military Implements for the Invasion.— From the Bayeux Tapestry, . . . 208 A Ship of the Fleet of Duke William transporting Troops for the Invasion of England. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . 209 Orders given for the Erection of a Fortified Camp at Hastings. —From the Bayeux Tapestry, . . . .210 Cooking and Feasting of the Normans at Hastings. — From the Bajeux Tapestry, . . . . . .211 Hastings, from the Fairlight Downs, . . . 212 Duke William addressing his Soldiers on the Field of Hastings. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, .... 213 Battle of Hastings. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . . 214 ■ .— do. do. . . 214 Death of Harold.— do. do. . . 213 Sculptured Stone dug up in the Chapel of St. Regulus, at St. Andrew's, . . . . . . . 218 Coronation Chair, with the Scottish "Stone of Destiny," kept in Westminster Abbey, ..... 219 Sueno's Pillar at Forres, ..... 221 Initial Letter, ....... 224 Ruins of the Monastery of lona, or Icolumbkill, . . 228 Gregory and the Angles. — Singleton, .... 230 Augustine preaching before Ethelbert. — Tresham, . 231 Consecration of a Saxon Church.— MS. in the British Museum, 236 Christian Missionary preaching to the British Pagans. — Mortimer, ....... 237 Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, ..... 242 Portrait of St. Dunstan in full Archiepiscopal Costume. — From an Illuminated MS. in the British Museum, . . 243 Portrait of King Alfred, . . . . . ' 246 Initial Letter, ....... 246 The Witenagemote — The King presiding.— MS. in the British Museum, . . . . . . . 252 Saxon Flagellation.— MS. in the British Museum, . 261 Whipping and Branding. — MS. in the British Museum, 261 Initial Letter, ....... 2S2 Saxon Ships, ....... 206 Entrance of the Mine of Odin, Derbyshire, . . 209 Beating Acorns for Swine. — MS. in the British Museum, . 277 Ploughing, Sowing, and Carrying Corn. — MS. in the British Museum, ....... 278 Wheel-plough. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . . . 278 Costume of Shepherds. — MS. in the British Museum, . 279 Two-handed Wheel-plough, drawn by Four Oxen.— MS. in the British Museum, ...... 279 Harrowing and Sowing. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . 280 Sowing. — MS. in the British Museum, . . . 280 Digging, breaking Earth with a Pick, and Sowing. — MS. in the British Museum, ...... 280 Wheel-plough and Spades.— MS. in the British Museum, . 281 Reaping and Carting Corn. — do. do. 281 Felling and Carting Wood.— do. do. . 282 Mowing. — do. do. . 282 Threshing and Winnowing Corn. — From MS. in the British Museum, ....... 282 Ploughing, Sowing, Mowing, Gleaning, Measuring Corn, and Harvest Supper. — MS. in the British Museum, . . 283 Pruning Trees. — do, do. . . 283 Raising Water from a Well with a Loaded Lever. — MS. in the British Museum, ...... 284 Drinking from Cows' Horus. — MS. in the British Museum, 285 Wine Press. — ' do. do. . 285 Saxon Lantern. — From Strutt's Chronicle of England, 2-Si5 Candelabra.— MS. in the British Museum, . . . 280 Digging and Spinning.— MS. in the British Museum, . 286 Smithy.— do. do. . . 287 and a Harper. — do. do. . 287 Saxon Sliip.— do. do. . . 288 Initial Letter, . . . . . . 289 Jarrow, at the Mouth of the River Tyne, . . .291 Golden Gate of the Palace of Diocletian at Spalatro, . 308 Console from the Palace at Spalatro, .... 309 Basilica of St. Paul, Rome, after the Fire of 1823, . 311 Ground-plan of the Church of Grisogono, Rome, . . 312 Portico at Lorsch, . . . . . . 312 Capital from the Doorway of Mentz Cathedral, . . 313 Portico at Lorsch, .... 313 Windows from the Palace at Westminster, . . . 314 Doorway do. do. do. . . . 314 Tower of Earl's Barton Church, . . . 315 Heads of Windows, Darent Church, Kent, . - . 316 Edward the Confessor's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, . 316 Residence of a Saxon Nobleman.— MS. in the British Museum, 317 Horn of Ulphus, preserved in York Cathedral, . . 318 Anglo-Saxon Illuminated Letter. — From MS. of the Eighth Century, ....... 319 Anglo-Saxon Ornament. — From MS. of the Tenth Century, 319 ■ Illuminated Letter.— From MS. of the Tenth Century, ....... 320 PAGE Saxon Trombones or Flutes. — MS. in the British Museum, 321 David playing on the Harp.— do. do. . 321 The Harp, accompanied by other Instruments. — MS. in the British Museum, ...... 322 Initial Letter, ...... 323 Chairs. — MS. in the British Museum, .... 323 — .— do. do. ... 324 An elevated and richly-ornamented Seat.— MS. in the British Museum, . ...... 324 Saxon Tables.— MS. in the British Museum, . . .324 The Pusey Horn, ...... 325 Fac-simile of the Inscription on the Pusey Horn, . . 325 Saxon Bed.— MS. in the British Museum, . . . 326 ^Beds. — do. do. ... 326 Wheel Bed.— do. do. . . . 326 Royal Costume. — From a Picture of Herod and the Magi. — MS. in the British Museum, .... 327 Royal Costume, and the Harness and Equipment of Hor.ics. — From a Picture of the Magi leaving the Court of Herod.— MS. in the British Museum, .... 327 Ornamented Tunic. — MS. in the British Museum, . . 328 Saxon Cloaks, Plain and Embroidered Tunics, and Shoes. — MS. in the British Museum, .... 328 Ringed Mail.— MS. in the British Museum, . . .329 Costume of Saxon Female. — MS. in the British Museum, 329 Canute and his Queen.— From Strutt's Horda Angel Cynnan, 330 King Edgar.— MS. in the British Museum, . . " . 330 St. Augustine. — do. do. . . 330 Egbert, King of Northumberland, and an Ecclesiastical Synod, offering the Bishopric of Hexham to St. Cuthbert. — From MS. Life of Bede, . . . . . . 3 U Bishop and Priest.— MS. in the British Museum, . . 331 Statue of St. Cuthbert. — From one of the exiernal Canopies of the Middle Tower of Durham Cathedral, . . .331 Golden Cross, worn by St. Cuthbert, found in his Tomb in 1827, 332 Costume of a Soldier. —Saxon MS. in the British Museum, Battle Scene. — / do. do. do. Anglo-Saxon Weapons, ..... Feast at a Round Table.— From the Bayeux Tapestry, Dinner — the Company pledging each other.— MS. in the British Museum, ...... Dinner Party — Servants on their Knees oifering Food on Spits. — MS. in the British Museum, .... Convivial Party.— MS. in the British Museum, 332 333 333 334 336 Boar Hunting. — Hawking Party. do. do. do. do. do. do. Killing Birds with a Sling. — MS. in the British Museum, Dancing. — do. do. Coffin and Grave Clothes. — From a picture of Raising of Lazarus, in a MS. in the British Museum, . Initial Letter, ..... Great Seal of William the Conqueror, . Initial Letter, ..... Battle Abbey, as it appeared about 150 years since, . View of Winchester, .... Rougemont Castle, Exeter, .... York, from the Ancient Ramparts, Durham, ....... Richmond, Yorkshire, .... Croyland Bridge, with the Saxon statue of St. Etheh'cd, Norwicli Castle, ..... Norman Dice Playing. — From Strutt's Sports, Church of St. Stephen at Caen, Statue of William the Conqueror, placed against one of the external Pillars of St. Stephen's, Caen, . Great Seal of William Rufus, .... Ruins of Pevensey Castle, .... Rochester Castle ; the Keep, witli its Entrance Tower, Mount of St. Michael, Normandy, . Carlisle, ....... Death of Rufus. — Burney, .... Tomb of Rufus, in Winchester Cathedral, Stone in the New Forest, marking the site of the oak tree against which the arrow of Walter Tyrrel is^ said to have glanced, . ^ . . - . Great Seal of Henry I., . Cardiff Castle, as it appeared in 1775, Death of Prince William and his Sister.— Rigaud, Ruins of Reading Abbey, as they appeared in 1721, Great Seal of Stephen, ...... 420 Portrait of Stephen. — From a Silver Coin in the possession of Sir H. Ellis, 421 Standard of the English at the Battle of Northallerton, . - 424 Remains of Old Sarum, ...... 427 Arundel Castle, ...... 429 Lincoln, ........ 430 Tower of Oxford Castle, ..... 432 The Thames at Wallingford, . ... 436 Great Seal of Henry II., ..... 438 Portrait of Henry II. — From Tomb at Fontevraud, . . 440 Murder of Becket, ...... 450 Penance of Henry II. before the Shrine of Bcckct.— From Carter's Ancient Sculptures, ..... 457 Ruins of the Ancient Royal Manor House of Woodstock, 481 Great Seal of Richard I., . . . . . 482 Portrait of Richard I.— From the Tomb at Fontevraud, . 483 496 . 499 336 337 341 341 342 342 343 344 346 358 358 359 363 367 368 373 S74 377 380 383 390 391 392 393 395 397 398 402 403 404 405 411 415 419 Ramparts of Acre, Part of the Walls and Fortifications of Jerusalem, LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE • Castle and Town of Tiernsteign, .... 503 Lynn, Norfolk, ....... 504 Great Seal of Kin^ John, ..... 514 Portrait of King John.— From his Tomb at "Worcester, . 513 Castle of Falaise, ...... 518 Hubert and Prince Arthur. — Northcote, . . . 519 St. Edmundshury, ...... 527 Kunnymead, ....... 629 Tomb of King John at Winchester, . . . 532 Castle of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, .... 536 Ruins of Norham Castle, ..... 540 Seal of William the Lion, of Scotland, . . . 541 Initial Letter, ... ... 547 Baptism of the Mother of Becket. — MS. in the British Museum, 552 Group of Anglo-Norman Fonts, .... 553 Marriage of the Father and Mother of Becket. — MS. in the British Museum, ...... 553 Consecration of Becket as Archbishop. — MS. in the British Museum, ....... 554 Bccket's Crown, a Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, . 556 Ruins of the Augustine Monastery at Canterbury, . . 558 A Benedictine, ...... 560 A Carthusian, ....... 560 A Cistercian, ....... 560 A Templar in his Mantle, ..... 561 Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, pronouncing a Pastoral Blessing. — MS. in the British Museum, ..... 561 Initial Letter, . . . . . . ~ 562 William I. granting Lands to his Nephew, the Earl of Brit- tany. — MS. in the British Museum, . . . 566 Specimen of Magna Charta.— From the original in the British Museum, . . . . . , , . 577 Specimen of Domesday Book, _ . . . . 578 Initial Letter, ....... 584 Ship-building. — MS. in the British Museum, . . 585 Coiner at Work. — From the Capital of a Pillar at St. Georges de BocherTille, Normandy, ..... 594 Silver Penny of William I., . . . . . 594 William II., . . . . .594 Henry L, ..... 594 Stephen, ..... 595 Henry IL, ..... 695 Irish Silver Penny of John, ..... 5i)5 Reaping and Gleaning.— MS. in the British Museum, . 596 Threshing. — do. do. . . 597 Corn-sacks and Store-basket.— MS. in the British Museum, 597 Fishing with a Seine Net.— do, do. . 600 Ancient Corn Hand-mill. — do. do. . . 600 English House-building.— do. do. . 601 Initial Letter, ....... 603 AVindow of Southwell Minster, .... 616 St. Cross, Hants, . . . . .616 Caxton Church, Northamptonshire, . . 616 Castle Hedingham Church, . . . 616 Tower of Then Church, Normandy, ... 616 Norman Capitals, twelve specimens, .... 617 Architectural Decorations, thirty specimens, . 618 Doorway, Eomsey Abbey, Hants, .... 619 of Barfreston Cliurch, Kent, . . . 619 Norman Arches of Lincoln Minster, .... 619 Castle Acre Priory, . . . 619 St. Augustine, Canterbury, . . 619 West Front of Rochester Cathedral, . - . . 620 Nave of Durham Cathedral, . . . . .621 Norman Castle, ...... 622 Plan and Elevation of Monk Bar, York, . . 623 Ground Plans of Conisborough Castle, . . . 624 Conisborough Castle, ...... 624 Keep of Richmond Castle, ..... 625 Jew's House at Lincoln, . . - . , . 626 Staircase in the Conventual Buildings, Canterbury, . .627 Plan of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, . . . .627 Abbey Gateway, Bury St. Edmund's, . . . 628 Fire-place, Boothby Pagnel Manor House, . . . 628 , Conisborough Castle, .... 628 Elevation of a Norman House.— From the Bayeux Tapestry, 629 Doorway of St. Leonard's Chapel, Stamford, . . . 629 Stone Coffin, Ixworth Abbey, Suffolk, . . . 630 One of the early Abbots of Westminster. — From the Cloisters, Westminster, ....... C30 Roger, Bishop of Sarum.— From Salisbury Cathedral, . Oao Andrew, Abbot of Peterborough. — From Peterborough Cathedral, ....... 630 Sarcophagus assigned to Archbishop Theobald, at Canterbury, 031 Specimen of Ornamental Letter of the Period.— MS. in the British Museum, ...... 632 Initial Letter, ...... 634 Chairs, Ancient Chessmen.— From specimens in the British Museum, ....... 634 Cradle. — MS. in the British Museum, . , . 634 Ancient Candlestick, ...... 635 Cup, found in the Ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, . . 635 Groups of Soldiers. — From Bayeux Tapestry, . . 636 Matilda, Queen of Henry I.— From a Statue in the West Door of Rochester Cathedral, ..... 636 Costume of Anglo-Norman Ladies of the Twelfth Century, 636 Female Costume of the time of William Rufus and Henry I. — From a Psalter of the Twelfth Century, . . . 637 Laced Bodice and Knotted Sleeves of the Twelfth Century.— MS. in the British Museum, ..... 637 PAGE Efflgy of Henry II.— From the Tomb at Fontevraud, . 633 Eleanor, Queen cf Henry II. — From the Tomb at Fontevraud, 638 Berengaria, Queen of Richard I.— do. do. 638 Mascled Armour— Seal of Milo Fitz-W alter, . . 639 Examples of Mascled Armour. — MS. in the British Museum, 639 Knight of Modena.— do. do. . 639 Tegulated Armour— Seal of Richard Constable of Chester, 640 Avantailes, ....... 640 Geoffrey Plantagenet.— MS. in the British Museum, . 640 William I. and Tonstain bearing the Consecrated Banner at the Battle of Hastings. — From the Bayeux Tapestry, . , 641 Ancient Stag-hunting. — MS. in the British Museum, . 647 Royal Rabbit-hunting. — MS. in the British Museum, 647 Ladies hunting Deer. — do. do. Wrestling. — Bowling.— Kayle Pins. — Bob-apple. — 647 649 651 652 652 653 653 653 654 654 654 655 655 655 655 655 656 656 65G 657 657 657 Ancient Quintain, now standing on the Green of Offham, Kent, ....... Water Tournament.— MS. in the British Museum, Ancient Chessmen, preserved in the British Museum, Conntry.Revel.— MS. in the British Museum, Balancing. — From Strutt, .... The Daughter of Herodias Tumbling. — From Strutt, Playing Monkeys and Bears.— MS. in the British Museum, Bears. — do. do. Equestrian Exercises.-^From Strutt, Horse-baiting.— MS. in the British Museum, Sword-fight. — do. do. . — do. do. Fencing. — do. do. Buckler Play.— From Strutt, .... Sword-dance.— MS. in the British Museum, do. do, do. do. do. do. do, do. Bird-catching with Clap-net.— MS. in the British Museum, Cross-bow Shooting at Small Birds. — do. do. Initial Letter, ..... Vision of Henry I. — From private plates of Mr. Petrie, copied from a MS. in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, ....... Henry II. banishing Becket's Family.— MS. in the British Museum, .....,, Great Seal of Henry III., ..... Initial Letter, ....... Henry III. — From his Tomb in Westminster Abbey, Oxford Castle, in the Fifteenth Century, , Lewes Priory, ...... Evesham, ........ Great Seal of Edward I., .... . Edward I. — From a Statue in the Choir of York Minster, Queen Eleanor. — From her Tomb in Westminster Abbey, Earl Warenne justifying his Title to his Estates. — Tresham, Summit of Snowdon, ..... Caernarvon Castle, ...... Baliol surrendering the Crown to Edward I.— Opie, Ruins of the Castle of Dunbar, . . , . , Stirling Castle, ..... Ruins of Kildrummie Castle, . . . . Edward II.— From the Tomb at Gloucester, . . Great Seal of Edward II., ..... Warwick Castle — Guy's Tower, .... Leeds Castle, ....... Berkeley Castle, ...... P:dward 111.- From the Tomb in Westminster Abbey, Great Seal of Edward III., Queen Philippa.— From the Tomb in Westminster Abbey, . Dunfermline Abbey, Fife, ..... Ancient Caves near Nottingham Castle, Mortimer's Hole, Nottingham Castle, Genoese Archer, winding up or bending his Cross-how, Cross-bow and Quarrel, ..... Queen Philippa interceding for the Burgesses of Calais.— Bird, 770 Efflgy of Edward the Black Prince.- From the Tomb in Canterbury Cathedral, .... Richard II.— From a Painting in the Old Jerusalem Chamber in the Palace at Westminster, . . . • Great Seal of Richard IL, ..... Ruins of the Savoy Palace, Strand, .... Death of Wat Tyler .—Northcote, .... Field of the Battle of Chevy Chase.— Bird, Meeting of Richard and Bolingbroke at Flint Castle.— MS. in the British Museum, ..... Bolingbroke conducting Richard II. into London.— MS. in the British Museum, ..... Parliament assembled for the deposition of Richard II.— MS. in the British Museum, .... Initial Letter, ..... Dominican or Black Friar, .... Franciscan or Grey Friar, .... Archbishop reading a Papal Bull, . , Specimen from a copy of Wyclitfe's Bible, Initial Letter, ...... 665 667 671 671 672 682 684 686 688 688 692 694 698 699 709 714 717 727 731 731 734 740 744 748 748 751 752 753 754 766 760 780 781 781 787 788 793 799 799 801 804 804 Ships of the time of Richard 11.— MS. in the British Museum, Penny of Henry III., ...... Edward I., (supposed) of Edward II., of Edward III., Half Groat of Edward III., Groat of Edward III., 809 824 831 837 837 837 837 837 837 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Penny of Richard II., ... .838 Half Groat of Hichard II., ..... 838 Groat of Richard II 838 Initial Letter, ...... 842 Roger Bacon's Study, at Oxford, .... 844 The School of Pythagoras, Cambridge, . . . 846 Matthew Paris, . . . . . . .847 John Gower, . . . . . . 851 Gower's Monument in St. Saviour's Church, Southwark, . 852 Niches, from Salisbury and York Cathedrals, . . 853 Early English Capitals, from York Cathedral, . . 854 Decorated English Capitals, from York Cathedral, . 854 Progressive Examples of Windows in the Thirteenth and Four- teenth Centuries, ...... 855 Examples of Pinnacles, ..... 856 Early English Cornices and Caps of Buttresses, . . 856 Parapets and Battlements, ..... 856 Guy's Tower, Warwick Castle, .... 858 House of the Fourteenth Century, at Lincoln, . . 859 Tomb of Archbishop Grey, in York Cathedral, . . 859 Aymer de Valence, in Westminster Abbey, . 860 Monument of Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Gloucester, and his Countess, in Tewkesbury Cathedral, . . . 860 Hand-organ or Dulcimer, and Violin. — MS. in the British Museum, ....... 862 Hand-bells.— MS. in the British Museum, . . 863 Initial Letter, ....... 864 Ancient Chair. — MS. in the British Museum, . . 864 Library Chair, Reading Table, and Reading Desk. — MS. in the British Museum, . . . . 864 Ancient Bed. — MS. in the British Museum, . . 865 .— do. do. ... 865 PAGE Ancient Female Head-dresses. — MS. in the British Museum, 867 Ladies' Costume, temp. Edward I. — do. do. . 867 Male Costume, temp. Edward II. — do. do. . 868 Efflgy of Edward II. in Gloucester Cathedral, . . 868 Head-dresses, temp. Edward II.— MS. in the British Museum, 868 Female Dress, temp. Edward II. — do. do. . 868 Cardinal's Hat. — do. do. . 869 Male Costume, temp. Edward III.^ do. do. . 869 Female Costume, temp. Edward HI.— do. do. . 870 Tomb of William of Windsor and Blanch de la Tour, in West- minster Abbey, ...... 870 Mourning Habits. — From the Tomb of Sir Roger Kerdeston, 870 Male Costume, temp. Richard II. — MS. in the British Museum, 871 Female Costume, temp. Richard II. — do. do. 871 Armour of the Fourteenth Century, exhibited in the Efflgy of John of Eltham, from his tomb in Westminster, . 872 St. George, at Dijon, .... . 873 Shield of John of Gaunt, ..... 874 Specimens of Ancient Cannon, ..... 874 Mounting of a Cannon, from Froissart. — MS. in the British Museum, ....... 874 Knights preparing to Combat. — MS. in the British Museum, Ordeal Combat or Duel. — Playing at Draughts. — Circular Chess-board. — Mummers.- Bodleian MS., Tomb of the Boy Bishop, Salisbury, Initial Letter, do. do. do. do. do. do. do. do. do. do. do. do. 876 876 876 877 879 879 880 881 Map of England during the Saxon Heptarchy. (Frontispiece.) Figure of St. George and the Dragon, with the legend, ' St. ffieorge for iJBenfe ffinglanJ." (Back of Preface.) *«* It is to be understood that the Wood-cuts have in general been copied from drawings, sculptures, coins, or other works of the period which they are employed to illustrate ; but among so great a number of subjects, it has not been possible to adhere to this rule in every instance with perfect strictness. It sometimes happened that no suitable illustration of the custom or other matter described was to be found among the remains of the period under consideration : in a few such eases, a drawing of a subsequent period has been made use of, where there was reason to believe that it nevertheless conveyed a sufficiently accurate representation of the thing spoken of. An instance occurs at page 566, where, in the chapter on the Government and Laws of the Early Norman Period, the mode of granting lands introduced or practised by the Conqueror is illustrated by a drawing executed in the thirteenth century. In a few instances, the age of the MS. is somewhat doubtful, and has been matter of dispute ; but it is believed that no misconception as to any material point can be occasioned by the use that has been made of any authorities as to which such difference of opinion exists. The copies of modern historical pictures, it will of course be understood, have been given for other reasons altogether than their fidelity in regard to costume and other characteristics. An opportunity has been taken in the above list of correcting a few misprints in the titles or descriptions of the Cuts. INTRODUCTORY VIEW ORIGINAL POPULATION AND PRIMITIVE HISTORY OP THE BRITISH ISLANDS. question in history is more intricate and difficult than that of the original popula- tion of the British is- lands. The subject, indeed, in its various relations, is entan- gled with nearly all the darkest questions that perplex the pri- meval antiquities of our race. Every part of it has been a field of long and keenly waged controversy, where all the resources of learning and ingenuity, and, it may be added, all the license of imagination and passion, have been called forth in support of the most ir- reconcilable opinions and systems ; and still there is scarcely a leading point in the inquiry that can be said to be perfectly established, or cleared from all obscurity and confusion. Yet, almost in direct proportion to its difficulty, and the degree in which it has exercised and baffled speculation, the suljject is interesting and tempting to a liberal curiosity. The connexion which it developes between the present and the remotest past — the extent of the space over which the survey of it carries us — the light, however faint and interrupted, shed by it upon that wide waste of the time gone by, which the torch of history has left in utter darkness — all combine to excite and lure on the imagination, and at the same time to give to the investigation much of a real utility and importance. It will not be expected that we should here enter upon the more remote inquiries to which the subject, if pursued to its utmost extent, might conduct us ; but it will be of importance to the understanding of much, especially of the earliest portion, of the history which is to follow, that the reader should, in the first place, be put in posses- sion of the clearest views that can be obtained with regard at least to the immediate parentage of each of the various races which appear to have occupied, or made a conspicuous figure in these islands, before the comparatively recent date at which it commences. Even confined within the limit thus marked out, the investigation is beset with diffi- culties; and in pursuing it, we are frequently obliged to be satisfied with such probable con- jectures as we are enal^led to make when de- serted by everything like clear evidence, and left to grope our way among a crowd of doubts and perplexities in the dimmest twilight. It may be of advantage that we should preface the exposi- tion of the conclusions to which we have come, by a statement of the several sources from which evi- dence or conjectural intimations upon subjects of this kind, may be drawn ; and of the general prin- ciples according to which our judgments ought to be formed. 1. The most obvious species of evidence, in re- gard to the events that have happened in any par- ticular country, or the actions and fortunes of nations and races of men, is the history of them, recorded either in writing or by monuments, at the time, or while the remembrance of them was still fresh. If we had such records in all cases, bearing sufficient marks of their authenticity and faithful- ness, we should not need to have recourse to any other kind of evidence, the inferences from which must always be comparatively conjectural, uncer- tain, and vague. A contemporary history of any past event is the nearest thing that can be obtained to the actual observation of it ; and even for those living in the age in which the event takes place, with the exception only of the few persons who may have been present on the occasion, such a history or narrative constitutes the very best in- formation which it is possible for them to command. INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE In the state of the world at which we are now arrived, with the mighty printing-press in perpe- tual operation everywhere like another power of nature, it is not to be apprehended that any im- portant movement in human affairs can happen, at least in the civilized parts of the earth, without an account of it being immediately drawn up, and so multiplied and dispersed that it cannot fail to go down to posterity. Without any regular, machinery established and kept at work for that pvirpose, the transmission of a knowledge of everything worth noting that takes place to all future genera- tions, is now secured much more effectually than it ever was in those times when public functionaries used to be employed, in many countries, to chronicle occurrences as they arose, expressly for the information of after-ages. Such were the pontifical annalists of ancient Rome, and the keepers of the monastic registers in the middle ages among ourselves, and in the other coun- tries of Christendom. How meagre and value- less are the best of the records that have come down to us thus compiled by authority, compared with our newspapers, which do not even contem- plate as at all coming within their design the pre- servation and handing down to other times of the intelligence collected in them, but limit themselves to the single object of its mere promulgation and immediate diffusion ! So much more effectually do we sometimes attain a particular end by leaving it to be provided for by what we may call the natural action of the social economy, than by any artificial apparatus specially contrived to secure it in what may appear to us a more direct and shorter way. In the present case, the preservation of the memory of events, which in itself is an end that never could be expected strongly to engage the zeal of men in its accomplishment, and therefore could not, gene- rally speaking, be well attained by being directly aimed at, is secured, in the most complete and per- fect form, through the intervention, and, as the in- cidental consequence, of another endeavour, which is found to command, in abundant measure, the most active and eager exertions. The best history for posterity is obtained out of materials which were originally provided without any view to that object at all. Nor is this true only of the written materials of history. The same is the case with nearly all the monuments and memorials of every kind of which history makes use. All have been produced, in the first instance, chiefly or exclu- sively for some other purpose than that of convey- ing a knowledge of events to posterity. Coins, at once the most distinct and the most enduring wit- nesses of public transactions, may be said to be wholly intended for the mere present accommoda- tion of the community. So in general are works of architecture, which nevertheless often also even- tually come to take their place among the most valuable of our historic evidences. Even a medal struck, or a statue or other monument raised, pro- fessedly in honour of some particular event, while it may be admitted to have also in view the perpe- tuation of the memory of the event, and the trans- mission of a knowledge of it to future ages, has usually for its main end the present ornament and illustration of the city or country in which it makes its appearance, and the gratification of those who are to be its first beholders. Indeed, were motives of this selfish description wanting, we should probably make very little provision for pos- terity in anything ; and yet, instigated as we actu- ally are, how constantly and untiringly are we making such provision in all things ! Every year that an advancing country continues to be inha- bited, it is becoming a richer inheritance, in every respect, for all its future occupants. The ages, however, which witnessed the dispersion and ear- liest migrations of the different races of the great human family, have left us, for the most part, nei- ther history nor monuments. The only contem- porary accounts that we have of the affairs of ancient Europe are those that have been preserved by the Greek and Roman writers ; and the portion of history which has thus been illustrated with any degree of fulness is extremely limited. Of those countries which the writers in question were accus- tomed to call barbarous, being all the countries of the earth, with the exception of the two incon- siderable peninsulas of Italy and Greece, they have, for the most part, given us nothing beyond the most scanty and unsatisfactory notices. They scarcely, indeed, advert at all to any of the other European nations but themselves, till the late period of the absorption of those races in the universal empire of Rome ; and then we have merely, less or more fully detailed, the history of the generally very short process by which their subjugation was accom- plished. Of the remoter antiquities of these races, the classic authorities tell us scarcely anytliing that is much to be depended upon ; and, indeed, even of their own origin the Greeks and Romans have recorded little else than fables. Still, such scat- tered notices as their writings contain, respecting the various nations with which they came in con- tact, are not to be neglected in considering the subject with which we are now engaged. The in- formation with which they furnish us is no doubt frequently erroneous, and is always to be received with suspicion till found to be corroborated by other evidence, and by the probabilities of the case ; but it may sometimes afford a clue to guide us in the investigation when other resources fail. Although a great deal of industry, learning, and ingenuity, has been expended in examining the testimonies of the Greek and Roman writers, re- specting the ancient population of the British islands, perhaps all the passages that might be quoted in reference to the matter, from the entire series of these writers, have scarcely yet been brought so completely as they might be into one view, and considered both in their connexion among themselves, and as illustrating, or illustrated by, the evidence derived from other sources. 2. Next in directness among the evidences upon this subject to contemporary history (which is the HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. only history that is not inferential and conjectural), is to be placed the testimony of tradition. Tradi- tion is merely unrecorded history ; but the circum- stance of its being unrecorded — that is to say, of its being transmitted from one generation to another by no more secure vehicle than that of oral com- munication — very materially detracts, of course, from its trustworthiness and value. In the case even of a document or written history, it is not always easy to ascertain that it really is what it professes to be, that it is of the age assigned to it, and that it has not been corrupted or falsified ; in the case of a tradition, this matter is always of much more difficult determination. Indeed, it may be affirmed that a tradition is almost univer- sally nothing more than an emblematic or enigma- tical representation of the facts on which it is founded ; and frequently the riddle is so absurd or so obscure, that no ingenuity is capable of giving a satisfactory interpretation of it. A tradition is ob- viously much more exposed, in its descent through a long course of time, to all the chances of altera- tion and perversion, than a written history ; and the metamorphosis which it undergoes is some- times so complete, as to leave little or no intel- ligible trace of its original form or import. On these accounts, the dependence that can be placed on this source of information respecting events of remote antiquity, must necessarily be, in most cases, very slight and dubious. Still the evidence of tradition is not altogether without its value in such inquiries as the present. When the tradition is tolerably distinct in its affirmations — when it ap- pears to have prevailed for a long period, and to have been uniform in its tenor for all the time through which its existence can be traced — when it is found as the national belief, not of one merely, but of several countries or races — and when it har- monizes with other traditions relating to the same subject preserved in other parts of the earth, it is evidently entitled to examination at least, if not to implicit acquiescence. Of the traditions, however, which all nations have of their origin or remote ancestors, very few present all these characteristics. Most of them probably contain some truth, but it is usually overlaid and confused by a large mixture of fable, so that it becomes a process of the greatest nicety and difficulty to extract the metal from the ore. 3. The religion, the laws, the manners, and the customs of a people, with the memorials of what these have been in past ages, constitute a species of evidence as to their origin, which, although it may be described as only indirect and circumstantial, is really much more valuable than the positive testi- mony of mere tradition. A tradition may be a pure invention or fiction ; it may be nothing more than the creation of national vanity ; even where it has been honest from the first, it may be but an honest mistake ; and it is always liable in its trans- mission through a succession of ages, to undergo change and vitiation from many causes. But a current of evidence furnished by all the most cha- racteristic peculiarities of the national habits and feelings, cannot lie. It may be misunderstood; too much or too little may be inferred from it ; we may be deceived while considering it by our own credulity, prejudices, or fancies; but we are at any rate sure that the facts before us are really what they seem to be. They are the undoubted charac- teristics which distinguish the people ; and the only question is, how did they originate, or whence were they derived ? It is true that this is commonly far from being an easy question to solve, and that we are very apt to be misled in our interpretation of such indications of the connexion between one people and another, as facts of the kind we are now adverting to may seem to supply. So many things in the notions, practices, and institutions, and in the general moral and social condition of a people, may arise from principles of universal operation — may be the growth of what we may call the com- mon soil of human nature — that a relationship between nations must not be too hastily presumed from resemblances which they may present in these respects. Besides, institutions and customs may be borrowed by one nation from another with which it has no connexion of lineage, or may be com- municated by the one to the other in a variety of ways. If France or Spain, for instance, were to adopt the present political constitution of Great Britain, the establishment of that constitution in either of these countries would form no proof, some centuries hence, that the country in question had been peopled from England. The progress both of civilization and of religion has been, for the most part, quite independent of the genealogical connexion of nations ; they have been carried from one country to another, not in general along the same line by which population has advanced, but rather by intercourse, either casually arising be- tween two coimtries, or opened expressly for the purpose of making such a communication. They have been propagated at one time by friendly mis- sionaries, at another by conquering armies. But still, when, in the absence of any other known or probable cause sufficient to produce the pheno- menon, we find a pervading similarity between two nations in all their grand social characteristics, we have strong reasons for inferring that they be- long to the same stock. When such is the case, however, it will rarely happen that there are not also present other evidences of the relationship, of a different kind ; the memory of it will probably be preserved, at least, in the popular traditions of the two countries ; and the identity or resemblance of laws, religion, and customs, therefore, has usually to be considered merely as corroborative proof. 4. Some assistance may also be derived in such inquiries from an attention to the physical charac- teristics of nations. Where these happen to be very strongly marked, as in the case of the leading distinctions of the three great races of the Whites, the Malays, and the Negroes, they furnish very decisive evidence ; but in regard to the mere sub- ordinate varieties of the same race — and the con- G INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE troversy is commonly confined to that ground — the tests which they afford us are of much less value. There are probably no distinctions, for instance, between the Celtic and the Germanic races which would not, in course of time, be obliterated by the mere influence of climate. It is with the several Celtic and Germanic races alone that we have to do in discussing the question of the population of the British islands. It may be doubted if any of these could have long preserved a distinct physical appearance, when mixed together, as they would be, if the country is to be supposed to have been indebted for its popvdation to more than one of them. They might, however, remain distin- guishable from each other in that respect for some time; and when Tacitus, for example, alleges the superior size and the red hair of the Caledonians of his time as a proof of their Scandinavian origin, and the dark complexions of the Silures, who inha- bited the south of Wales, as making it probable that they were of Spanish descent, he may have been justified in so reasoning in that age, when the supposed immigrations, if they took place, would be comparatively recent, and the difi"erent tribes or nations that occupied the country remained still in general separate and unmixed. At the best, however, such indications can hardly be taken as anything more than a sort of makeweight— as something that may " — help to thicken other proofs That do demonstrate thinly." 5. Of course, in attempting to trace the migra- tions of nations, the relative geographical positions of the countries from one to another of which they are supposed to have proceeded, must not be over- looked. It is indispensable that the route assumed to have been taken shall be shown to be a natural and a probable one. The mere distance, however, of one country from another, is not the only con- sideration to be here attended to. Of two inha- bited countries equally near to another part of the world as yet destitute of population, or not fully peopled, the inhabitants of that which is the most overcrowded, or those who are the farthest advanced in civilization, or the most distinguished for their adventurous spirit and their habits of extended intercourse, will be likely to be the first to reach and seize upon the unoccupied territory. It has been a disputed question whether the first migra- tions of mankind were made by land or by sea ; but it does not appear that anything can be generally affirmed on the subject. Some tribes, however, seem to have been always more addicted to naviga- tion than others ; and therefore they may be sup- posed to have, in very early times, accomplished voyages of a length which could not be probably presumed in the case of others. In so far as re- spects the British islands, however, whether we suppose them to have derived their population from Ga\il, from Scandinavia, or from Spain, there are no difficulties presented by the breadth of sea which would have to be traversed on any hypothesis. 6. Were the several descriptions of circum- stantial evidence already enumerated our only guides when deserted by the direct testimony oi history, it would scarcely be possible to arrive at much certainty on any of the controverted ques- tions relating to the pedigree of nations. But there is another species of evidence which is in many cases, in respect both of its distinctness and of the reliance that may be placed on it, worth much more than all those that have yet been mentioned put together. This is the evidence of Language. Their peculiar language indeed is, strictly speaking, only one of the customs of a people ; but it stands dis- tinguished from other customs in two particulars, which give it an important advantage for our pre- sent purpose. In the first place, although it may be admitted that there are certain general princi- ples which enter into the structure of all languages, and also, possibly, that all existing languages are sprung from one original, the different degrees of alliance that subsist between diff'erent tongues are yet, in most cases, very distinctly marked ; nor is it possible in the nature of things that there should be a pervading similarity between two tongues that have been formed quite apart from each other. There is not here any such common soil of the human mind as would of itself produce an identity of results in diflferent countries, like what might very well happen, to a great extent, in the case of what are commonly called manners and customs, and even in that of laws and institutions. These last naturally admit ofcomparatively little variety of form. It would seem nothing at all wonderful, for example, that two nations which should never have had any connexion of blood or much intercourse with each other, should yet, at the same stage of their social progress, exhibit a considerable general resemblance in their political institutions and their systems of laws — a certain degree of civilization naturally resolving itself into nearly the same forms and arrangements, in these respects, by its own spontaneous action. The same is the case with many of the ordinary arts and customs of life. These are suggested by their obvious utility, and can hardly arise except in one and the same form everywhere ; or, if we suppose them to have been derived by every people from some common source, their inherent simplicity would in like manner pre- serve them from variation in their transmission through ever so long a period of time ; and in this view also, therefore, they would fail to furnish any indication of the degree of affinity between the races to which the possession of them was found to be common. But the sounds of articulate language admit of infinite variety, and there is, generally speaking, no natural connexion between the objects of thought and their vocal signs ; so that for two nations that never had any communication with each other, to l)e found speaking the same lan- guage, or even two languages, the vocabularies of which, in any considerable degree, resembled each other, would be a phenomenon altogether miracu- lous and unaccountable. Nor could the preserva- tion, down to the present day, of a strong resem- HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. blance between the languages of two particular countries, be in any degree explained simply by the supposition of all existing languages having sprung from a common original ; the insufficiency of such a merely primitive connexion to produce the resemblance supposed, is demonstrated by the great diversity of languages which actually subsists. We are entitled, therefore, to assume, that in all cases where we find this clear and decided relation- ship of languages, there must have been a compa- ratively recent connexion of blood, or long and intimate intercourse of one kind or another, be- tween the races of people by whom they are spoken. For, secondly, it is another peculiarity of a national speech, that it is never adopted from another people on merely that slight acquaintance and communi- cation which has sometimes sufficed not only to transfer a knowledge of the ordinary arts of civi- lized life, but to introduce into and establish in a country, whole systems of religion, of laws, and of philosophy. These things, as already observed, have frequently been conveyed from one part of the earth to another by a few missionaries, or chance emigrants, or simply by the opportunities of commerce and travel. But languages have never been taught in this way. A people always derives its language either from its ancestors, or from some other people with which it has been for a long time thoroughly mixed up in the relations of social and domestic life. It would, we apprehend, be impos- sible to quote an instance of an exchange of the popular speech of any country being produced by anything short of either the amalgamation, or at least the close compression, of one people with another, which is the result only of conquest. This can hardly take place without the history or memory of the event being preserved , and therefore there is little or no danger of a language thus imposed being ever mistaken for one derived in the ordi- nary way, or of any difficulty being thereby occa- sioned in the application of the general rule — that where the languages exhibit a strong resemblance to each other, the nations speaking them ar,e of one stock. A person, for instance, visiting South Britain in the third or fourth century, would have found many of the people speaking Latin, and the people of France, or ancient Gaul, still speak a dialect of the Latin, for the modern French tongue is little else ; but no considerate inquirer into such matters would ever conclude from these facts, in disregard of all other evidence, that the original population of Britain and of Gaul was Roman. The prevalence of the Roman speech is sufficiently accounted for, in these cases, by the Roman con- quest and colonization of both countries, which are events that have left, and could not fail to leave, abundant memorials of themselves behind them, in a great variety of forms. 7. But there is still to be noticed another source of evidence sometimes available on the subject of the original population of a country, which is of kindred character to that derived from the language spoken in it, and of equal distinctness and trust- worthiness. This is the evidence supplied by the topographical nomenclature of the country, or the language to which the most ancient names of places in it are found to belong. Names have all some meaning when first imposed ; and when a place is named, for the first time, by any people, they apply to it some term, in early times generally descriptive of its natural peculiarities, or something else on account of which it is remarkable, from their own language. When we find, therefore, that the old names of natural objects and localities in a country belong, for the most part, to a particular language, we may conclude with certainty that a people speaking that language formerly occupied the country. Of this the names they have so im- pressed are as sure a proof as if they had left a distinct record of their existence in words engraven on the rocks. Such old names of places often long outlive both the people that bestowed them, and nearly all the material monuments of their occu- pancy. The language, as a vehicle of oral com- munication, may gradually be forgotten, and be heard no more where it was once in universal use, and the old topographical nomenclature may still remain unchanged. Were the Irish tongue, for instance, utterly to pass away and perish in Ire- land, as the speech of any portion of the people, the names of rivers and mountains, and towns and villages, all over the country, would continue to attest that it had once been occupied by a race of Celtic descent. On the other hand, however, we are not entitled to conclude, fi-oin the absence of any traces of their language in the names of places, that a race, which there is reason for believing from other evidence to have anciently possessed the country, could not really have been in the occupa- tion of it. A new people coming to a country, and subjugating or dispossessing the old inhabit- ants, sometimes change the names of places as well as all or many other things. Thus when the Saxons came over to this island, and wrested the principal part of it from its previous possessors, they seem, in the complete subversion of the former order of things which they set themselves to efiect, to have everywhere substituted new names in their own language, for those which the towns and vil- lages throughout the country anciently bore. On this account the topographical nomenclature of England has ever since been, to a large extent, Saxon ; but that circumstance is not to be taken as proving that the country was first peopled by the Saxons. Guided by the principles that have been laid down, we will now proceed to explain those views respecting the original population of the British islands which seem best to accord with the various facts bearing upon the question, and to form to- gether the most consistent whole. It will be con- venient to consider the several parts of the subject in the order of the population, I. of England; II. of Ireland; III. of Scotland; IV. of Wales. I. For a long time, what was held to be the ortho- dox belief respecting the original population of the INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE southern part of Britain, was the story of the descent of the first Britons from the Trojans, a colony of whom was supposed, after the destruction of their native city, to have been conducted to this island by Brutus, a grandson or great-grandson of ^neas, more than a thousand years before the commence- ment of our era. The person who first made this story generally known was the famous Geoffrey ap Arthur, Archdeacon of Monmouth, and afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, who flourished in the twelfth century ; but there is no reason to suppose, as has been sometimes asserted, that he was its inventor. His Latin history is, in all probability, what it pro- fesses to be — a translation of an Armorican original, entitled " Brut y Breninodd, or a Chronicle of the Kings of Britain," which was put into his hands by his friend Walter de Mapes, otherwise called Calenius, Archdeacon of Oxford, who had himself brought the manuscript from Bretagne. The same legend, which is found in so amplified a form in Geoffrey's work, is more briefly detailed in various histories of a much earlier date. The earliest writer to whom it can be traced, appears to be the Welsh priest Tysilio, who is believed to have flou- rished in the latter part of the seventh century. The Brut (that is, the Chronicle) of Tysilio seems to have been the prototype both of the work which Geoffrey translated, and of many other similar performances.* The vanity of being supposed to be sprung from the Trojans was common, in early times, to many of the European nations; but the English probably retained their belief in the notion to a later date than any of the rest. It is gravely alleged by Edward I., in a letter which he addressed to Pope Boniface in 1301, as part of the argument by which he attempts to establish the supremacy of the Eng- lish crown over Scotland. As the Romans them- selves pretended to a Trojan descent, it has been plausibly conjectured that the various nations brought under subjection by that people were in- duced to set up the same claim, through an ambi- tion of emulating their conquerors ; and at a later period it obviously fell in with the views or natural prejudices of the churchmen, who were for the most part the compilers of our histories, to encourage an opinion which drew the regards of the people to- wards the ecclesiastical metropolis, as the head city of their race as well as of their religion. The acute and judicious Camden, at the end of the sixteenth century, was almost the first inquirer into our national antiquities who ventured to question the * The best edition of Geoffrey of Monmouth is printed under tlio title of Galfridiis Monumetensis de Origine et Gestis Regiim Britaa- ninorum, in Jerome Commelirie's Britannicarum llerum Scriptores Vetustiores et Praecipui, fol. Heidelb. 1587. It has been translated into English by Aaron Thompson, 8vo. Loud. 1718. An analysis of the work is given by Mr. Geo. Eliis, in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, vol. i. sec. 3. The Brut of Tysilio is printed in the second volume of the Welsh Arcliaiology, 3 vols. 8vo. 1801 ; and there is an English transl.-ition of it by the Rev. Peter Roberts, 8vo. Lond. 1810. On the dispute relating to Geoffrey of Monmouth. see Wartou's Dissertation on the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe, prefixed to his History of English Poetry, 8vo. edit. Lond. 1824, vol. i. pp. viii.-xiv., anil the Preface of the editor (the late Mr. Price), pp. 97-99 ; Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, 4th edit. 8vo. Lond. 1823, vol. i. p. 62; and Britannia after the Romans, 4to. Lond. 1836, pp. xxii.- xxNii. long-credited tale; yet nearly a hundred years afterwards we find a belief in its truth still linger- ing in the poetic imagination of Milton. Geoffrey makes Brutus and his Trojans to have found Britain nearly uninhabited, its only occu- pants being a few giants of the race of Cham, over whom the famous Gogmagog ruled as king; but another form of the fable settles a numerous popu- lation in the country at a much earlier date. " As we shall not doubt of Brutus's coming hither," says Holinshed, " so may we assuredly think that he found the isle peopled, eitlier with the generation of those which Albion the giant had placed here, or some other kind of people whom he did subdue, and so reigned as well over them as over those which he brought with him." Albion is said to have been a son of Neptune, who took the island from the Celts, after they had occupied it for above three hundred years, under a succession of five kings, the first of whom was Samothes, the eldest son of Japhet, and the same who is called by Moses Meshech. From Samothes, Britain received the first name it ever had, Samothea. Albion, and his brother Bergion, who was King of Ireland, were eventually conquered and put to death by Her- cules. The inventor of this history appears to have been Annius or Nanni, a Dominican friar of Viterbo in Italy, who published it about the end of the fifteenth century, in a forged work which he attributed to Berosus, a priest of the Temple of Belus, at Babylon, in the time of Ptolemy Philadel- phus. It was afterwards taken up and further illustrated by the celebrated English Bishop Bale. Another ancient account respecting the original population of Britain, is that preserved in the Welsh poetical histories known by the name of the Triads, in allusion to the three events which each of them commemorates. " Three names," says the first Triad, " have been given to the isle of Britain since the beginning. Before it was inha- bited, it was called Clas Merddin (literally, the country with sea-cliffs), and afterwards, Fel Ynis (the Island of Honey). When government had been imposed upon it by Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great, it was called Inys Prydain (the Island of Prydain) ; and there was no tribute to any but to the race of the Cymry, because they first obtained it ; and before them there were no more men alive in it, nor anything else but bears, wolves, beavers, and the oxen with the high prominence." * The Cymry, or ancestors of the present Welsh, there- fore were, according to this authority, the first inhabitants of Britain. Another triad (the fourth of the same series) states that their leader was Hu Cadarn, that is, Hugh the strong, or the mighty, by whom they were conducted through the Hazy, that is, the German Ocean, to Britain, and to Llydaw, that is Arraorica, or Bretagne. It is added, that they came originally from the country of Summer, which is called Defrobani, where Constantinople • Turner's Anglo-Saxons, i. 33. The series which this triad intro- duces, and which is stated to be one of the most complete that exis' has been printed in the original Welsh, in the second volume of t!io VVelsh Archaiology. HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. is. Some interpreters have been inclined to go so far for Defrobani as to the island of Ceylon, one of the ancient names of which was Tabrobane ;* and we shall find in the sequel that there is another theory, as well as that of the Welsh triads, which connects the British islands with Ceylon. Sub- sequent triads inform us, that the next people who came to Britain were the Lloegrwys, who came from the land of Gwasgwyn, or Gascony, and were of the same race with the Cymry ; as were also the next colonists, the Brython, from the land of Llydaw (Bretagne). These, it is added, were called the three peaceful nations, because they came one to another with peace and tranquillity ; they also all spoke the same language. From the Lloegrwys, a great part of England received the name of Lloegria. Afterwards, other nations came to the country with more or less violence ; according to the enumera- tion of Mr. Turner, " the Romans ; the Gwyddyl Fficti (the Picts), to Alban or Scotland, on the part which lies nearest to the Baltic; the Celyddon (Caledonians), to the north parts of the island ; the Gwyddyl, to other parts of Scotland; the Cor- raniaid from Pwyll (perhaps Poland), to the Hum- ber ; the men of Galedin, or Flanders, to Wyth ; the Saxons; and the Llychlynians, or Northmen. "f The triads, from facts mentioned in them, appear not to be older than the reign of Edward I., J al- though they may have been founded upon the fragments of earlier compositions ; but even if they were of much greater antiquity, they could be no authority for anything more than the traditionary accounts of the first peopling of the country. Of the theories which have been proposed upon this subject by modern inquirers, one supposes the first colonizers, both of Britain and Ireland, to have been the Phcenicians. The original suggester of this notion appears to have been Aylett Sammes, a writer of the latter part of the seventeenth cen- tury. § It has been recently advocated, with con- siderable ingenuity, by Sir William Betham, who, however, is of opinion that the Phoenicians were preceded in the occupation of both islands by the Caledonians, afterwards called the Picts, whom he conceives to have been a people of Scandinavian origin, the Cimbri of antiquity. The Phoenicians he considers to be the same people with the Gael, or Celts. II Notwithstanding any diversity of views, how- ever, which may exist as to some of the remoter points of the investigation, it may be affirmed to be now admitted on all hands that the numerous population which the Romans found in the occu- • Sketch of the Early History of the Cymry, by the Rev. Peter Roberts, 8vo. 1803, pp. 150, &c. + History of the Anglo-Saxons, i. 54. t Britannia after the Romans, pp. x. — xiv. At the end of Mr. Turner's Historyis an elaborateVindicationof the Genuineness of the Ancient Ilritisli'Poems, vol. iii. pp. 493 — 646. See, also, Mr. Robert's Preface to the Poems of Aneurin ; and Mr. E. Davies's Celtic Rescarclips, 8vo. 1804, pp. 152, &c. { See his Britannia Antiqua lllnstrata, or the Antiquities of An- cient Britain derived from tlie Phoenicians, fol. 1676. Wood, in his Athenre Oxonienses, asserts that the true author of this work was Robert Aylett, LL.D., a Master in Cliaucery, who was the uncle of Sammes, and left his papers to his nephew. 11 The Gael and Cymbri. 8vo. Dub 1834. pation of the southern part of this island, about half a century before the commencement of our era, was principally a Celtic race, and had, in all probability, been immediately derived from the neighbouring country of France, then known by the name of Gallia. Caesar, the first of the ancients who saw the people, or who has described them, informs us that their buildings were almost similar to those of the Gauls, and that their religion was the same ; and it appears also from his narrative, that a close political alliance existed between the states of Bri- tain and those of Gaul, and that the latter were all along aided by the former in their resistance to the Romans. The proximity of the one country to the other, indetd — the British coast being visible from that of Gaul — would almost alone authorize us to conclude that the one could not long remain unoccupied, after the other had been settled. Taci- tus, who had the best opportunities of information, has expressly recorded that, in addition to an iden- tity of religious rites, the languages of the Gauls and Britons were nearly the same ; and evidence of this fact remains to the present day, in the Celtic character of the topographical nomenclature of the south, as well as of the other parts of Britain, in so far as it has not been obliterated by the Saxon con- quest. Bishop Percy has observed that in England, " although the names of the towns and villages are almost universally of Anglo-Saxon derivation, yet the hills, fore&ts, rivers, &c., have generally retained their old Celtic names."* It is certainly possible that the country may, pre- viously to the arrival of the Gauls, have been occu- pied by a people of different origin, who on that event were obliged to retire to the northern parts of the island, where they became the progenitors of the Caledonians; but it would be difficult to bring forward any satisfactory proof that such was the case. This supposed previous race has not lel't behind it either any traces of its language, or any other monuments of its existence. Nothing re- mains, either on the face of the soil, or in the customs of the people, which would suggest the notion of any earlier colonization than that from Gaul. Everything of greatest antiquity that sur- vives among us is Celtic. At the same time this view of the subject is not free from some difficulties, which it is fair to state. Caesar, in the first place, in his account, makes a marked distinction lietween the inhabitants of the coast of Britain and those of the interior, not only describing the latter as much more rude in their manners, and altogether less advanced in civiliza- tion than the former, but also expressly declaring them to be, according to the common belief at least, of a different race. He says that the tradi- tion was, that they originated in the island itself ; whereas the inhabitants of the maritime parts had come over from Belgium, and seized by violence upon the portion of the country which they occu- pied. This statement may be considered, at least, to establish the fact, that the occupation of the coast • Preface to translation of Mallefs Northern Antiquities, i. xxxix. 10 INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE by the Belgic invaders was a much more recent event than the colonization from which the people of the interior had sprung. The phraseology of the account throughout is very precise in regard to the distinction intimated to exist between the two races. For instance, it is said in one place that those inhabiting Kent were by far the most civilized portion of the British population, and that in their customs or general manner of life, they differed but little from the Gauls, while most of those in the interior sowed no corn, lived only upon milk and flesh, and were clothed in skins ; and then the writer immediately proceeds to mention some other peculiarities as common to all the Britons.* It is true he does not affirm that different languages were spoken on the coast and in the interior ; but it so happens, that on the subject of language he says nothing whatever in his account of Britain. He informs us, however, that Kent and the mari- time portion of the country generally was inhabited hj Belgians ; and he had already stated in other parts of his work, first, that the Belgse differed from the Gauls or Celts both in language, in institutions, and in laws,t and secondly, that they were a people for the most part of German descent, who had ac- quired a settlement for themselves on the left bank of the Rhine by expelling the Gauls, by whom the district was previously occupied. J In so far, there- fore, as the testimony of Caesar is worth anything, it would seem to imply that the Britons whom he describes were a German or Teutonic race, not a Celtic. It is to be observed, that the inhabitants of the maritime parts were the only portion of the people of Britain whom he had any opportunity of seeing. But if this be the case, what is the value of his assimilation of the Britons to the Gauls, as proving the Celtic lineage of the former ? Notwithstanding what Caesar has said in the passages we have just quoted, it has been a much controverted question to which of the two great races from whom the population of the principal part of Europe appears to be derived — the Celts or the Germans — the ancient Belgse are to be con- sidered as belonging. * It has been argued, that when Caesar describes them as differing in lan- guage from the Celts, he must in all probability be understood as meaning only that they spoke a dif- ferent dialect of the same language ; and that that expression, therefore, is not to be taken as any evidence that they were not a Celtic people. § It must be admitted that the point is an exceedingly doubtful one. The distinction, in respect both of language and of lineage, between the Celtic and the Teutonic, Germanic, or Gothic races, may be said to be the fundamental canon of the modern philo- sophy of the orgin and connexion of nations ; but * De Bell. Gal. v. 14. Tacitus also (Agric. xi.) appears to have In his immediate view only the inhabitants of those parts of Britain which are nearest to France, when he describes them as resembling tlie Gauls in language, religion, &c. + De Bell. Gal. i. 1. t Ibid. ii. i. ; Whitaker's Genuine History of the Britons, 1773 ; Chalmers's Caledonia, 1807, vol. i. p. 16; Pritehard's Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, 1826, vol. ii.. Strabo, it is to be observed, ex- pressly describes the three great nations of Gaul, the CeltiB, the lielgae, and the Aquitani, as only ditfering slightly from each other in language. Geogr.lib. iv. it is not yet very long since its importance came to be understood. The old writers on the subject of the Celts, all include both the Celtic and the Gothic races under that name.* Attention seems to have been first called to the distinction in question by our countryman John Toland, f and it was afterwards much more fully unfolded by Bishop Percy. J The most elaborate discussion, however, the subject has met with, is that which it received from the late John Pinkerton,§ in all whose his- torical investigations the radical distinction between the Celtic and the Gothic races, and the inherent inferiority of the former, are maintained with as much zeal and vehemence, as if the writer had a personal interest in the establishment of the point. The correctness of the new views, in so far as re- spects the general position of the non-identity of the Celtic and Germanic nations, and also their importance to the elucidation of the whole subject of the original population of Europe, are now universally admitted ; but perhaps in avoiding the error of their predecessors, there has been a ten- dency on the part of modem writers to run into the opposite extreme, and to assume a more complete disconnexion between everything Celtic and every- thing Gothic, than can be reasonably supposed to have existed. It is to be recollected that both the Celts and the Goths appear to have come to the west of Europe, though at different times and by different routes, from the same quarter ; both races are undoubtedly of eastern origin, and are admitted by all physiologists to have been branches of the same great paternal stem. Both are classed as belonging to the same Caucasic or Japetic family. This being the case, the distinction between them, when they eventually found themselves planted alongside of each other in the different countries of Europe, could hardly have been so complete in all respects as it is usually considered. Their languages, for instance, notwithstanding the striking dissimilarity both in vocabulary, in structure, and in genius, which they seem now to exhibit, may not have been by any means so unlike each other two thousand years ago, seeing that, according to all historic probability, they must have both sprung from the same common ancestral tongue. Re- ferring to Schilter's ' Thesaurus Antiquitatum Teutonicarum, ' and Wachter's ' Glossarium Germanicum,' " these vastly learned authors," ob- serves a late writer, " demonstrate, without intend- ing it, that the Celtic and Teutonic languages had a * See Ph. Clavier's Germania Antiqua, fol. 1619; J. G. Keysler's Antiquitates Selectae Septentrionales et Celtics, 8vo. 1720 ; Borlase's Antiquities of the County of Cornwall, fol. 1754, p. 22 ; S. Pelloutier's Histoire des Celtes et particuliereuient des Gaulois et des Germains, 4to. 1771. &c. To these may be ndded so recent a work as P.H. Larcher's Geographic D'Herodote, in the last edition, published in 1802. f See his Specimen of a History of the Druids, written in 1718, and published in Posthumous Pieces, 1726, vol. i. A new edition of To- land's History of the Druids appeared, in 1814,in an octavo volume, at Montrose, edited by Mr. R. H uddleston, schoolmaster of Lunan, who has introduced it by a modest and sensible preface, and appended to the original text a large body of notes which display very consider- able ingenuity and learning. t Preface to Mallet's Northern Antiquities, 2 vols. 8vo. 1770. § Dissertation on the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths, 8vo. 1787, and appended to the second volume of his Enquiry into the History of Scotland preceding the Reign of Malcolm III., 1789, HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 11 common origin." * Both the Celtic and the Teu- tonic have been shown to enter largely into the composition of the Greek and Latin ; and it has been lately conclusively proved by Dr. Pritchard, by a minute comparison of vocabularies and gram- matical peculiarities, that the Celtic belongs to the same great family of Indo-European languages with the Sanskrit, the Greek, the Latin, and the German.f Upon the whole, therefore, the probability seems to be, that although the inhabitants of the inland part of South Britain, at the time of the Roman invasion, were the posterity of a much earlier colo- nization than that which had peopled the maritime parts of the island, yet both the tribes of the coast and those of the interior were of the same Celtic descent, and all spoke dialects of the same Celtic tongue. We find the evidences of this community of language and of lineage spread over the whole length of the country, from its northern boundary to the Channel ; for the oldest names of natural objects and locali- ties, even in the portion of this range which is commonly understood to have been eventually oc- cupied by Belgic colonies, are equally Celtic with those that occur elsewhere. This circumstance must be considered as a testimony, in regard to the original population of the country, far outweighing the meagre and vague notices handed down to us upon the subject by Caesar and Tacitvis; and it is to be explained only by supposing either that the seats of the Belgic tribes in Britain had, before their arrival, been in the possession of a Celtic race, or that the Belgians, notwithstanding their German descent, had, before their invasion of Britain, be- come, by their long residence on the west side of the Rhine, more a Celtic than a Teutonic people. If there was any difference of language between them and the other inhabitants of South Britain, it could scarcely have amounted to more than a dif- ference of dialect. There is certainly, at least, no indication in the topographical nomenclature of the country, that any Teutonic people, before the arrival of the Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era, had ever occupied those parts of it of which they then came into possession. It is not unlikely that a few settlements may have been effected, in very early times, on the west coast by the Spa- niards, and on the east coast by emigrants from the opposite Scandinavian regions ; but, with these exceptions, there appears to be little reason to doubt that the whole of what is now called England was first occupied by a Celtic population, which came over in successive swarms from the neighbouring country of Gaul. Some speculators have even at- tempted to show that Britain was originally united by land to Gaul. J At any rate, it may be assumed that the first migration from the one to the other took place at a very early period, most probably con- siderably more than a thousand years before the • Chalmers's Caledonia, 1. 12. t The Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, 8vo. 1831. X See this position learnedly maintained in a dissertation, De Bri- tannia <iuon<lam pene Insula, prefixed to Musgrave's Antiquitates Britaniu> Belgicaj, 3 vols. 8vo. 1719. It will appear presently that Mr. Whitaker, in his Genuine Origin of the Uritons Asserted (1/73), commencement of our era. The Belgic coloniza- tion of the southern coast seems to have been an event of historic memory — that is to say, not yet transformed into the shape of fable — in Caesar's day ; and, therefore, we may suppose it to have happened within two or three centuries preceding that date. The name Britannia, by which our island was known among the Greeks and Romans, was doubt- less formed from the name in use among the na- tives themselves. With respect to its origin and meaning many conjectures have been proposed, a long list of which may be seen in Camden. Geoffrey of Monmouth, of course, and the other retailers of the story of Brutus and his Trojans, derive it from the name of that leader. We have seen from one of the Welsh triads quoted above, that it is deduced by those authorities from an early king of the country — the first, it is affirmed, by whom a regular government was established in it — Prydain, the son of Aedd the Great. These fables are deserving of no attention ; and equally worthless and palpably absurd are most of the other etymologies which have been suggested by the laborious ingenuity of learned word-torturers. Among the more plausible interpretations may be mentioned that of Whitaker, who contends that Britin, which he conceives to be the origin of the Greek and Roman Britannia, was not the name of the island but of its inhabitants, and that it is a plural word, of which the singular is Brit, signifying divided or separated. The Britin, therefore, he translates the separated peo- ple, or the emigrants ; and he supposes that name to have been given them by their kindred in Gaul, whom they left in order to occupy the island. This account of the matter, however, we believe, has not gained much acceptance among Celtic scholars. Yet it is not very distant from the no- tion of Sir William Betham, who conceives the term Britannia to have been formed from the Celtic Brit daoine, that is, painted people — the name, he says, which " the Phoenician Gallic colony," on their arrival, bestowed upon the wild natives of Scandinavian extraction whom they found in pos- session of the country. Whitaker adverts to the application of the word Brit in the sense of painted ; it is the same word, he observes, with Brik or Brechan, the name still given to his tartan plaid by the Scotch Highlander, and signifying properly a garment marked with divided or variegated co- lours. The anonymous author, also, of the lately published volume entitled " Britannia after the Romans," (the work of a scholar and a man of talent, who is apt, however, to have more charity for his own crotchets than might be expected from his contempt for those of other people,) strenuously maintains the derivation of the name Briton from a Welsh, and, as he conceives, old British, word sig- has, without any Tiew to the establishment of this point, suggested that the term Britin means, properly, the separated people, or the emigrants, as he explains it. This epithet would be better accounted for upon the supposition of the actual separation of the two countries by tlie intervention of the sea. 12 INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE nifying painted. Pezron, he observes, although his authority is of no weight, has, nevertheless, the merit of surmising this true etymology. There can be little doubt that the element tan in Britannia is the same word which we find form- ing a part of so many other names of countries, both ancient and modern, such as Mauri-tan-ia, \qui-tan-ia, Lusi-tan-ia, Kur-dis-tan, Afghanis- tan, Kuzis-tan, Louris-tan, Hindos-tan, &c. It appears to signify merely a land or country, though it is not, we believe, found in that sense in any existing dialect of the Celtic, and for anything that is known, it may after all be really Daoine, people, as suggested by Sir William Betham. Bruit, again, is the Celtic term for tin, or metal generally ; so that Bruit- tan, or, as smoothed down by the Greeks and Romans, Britannia, signifies altogether the metal or tin land — an epithet which would be naturally bestowed upon the country, from the cir- cumstance for which it probably first became known to other nations. The meaning of the name is exactly the same with that of the Greek Cassi- terides, by which alone the British islands were known to Herodotus. II. If the traces of an original Celtic population are still to be found over the greater portion of the south of Britain, such traces are much more abundant, and more distinctly legible, over the whole of Ireland. The ancient topographical no- menclature of that country is exclusively Celtic, as the speech of a large proportion of the people still continues to be. A Celtic race, therefore, must either have formed the original population of the country, or must have become its predominant population in very ancient times. Whence was this race derived ? The traditional history preserved among the Irish people makes the island to have been pos- sessed by three nations in succession — the Fir- bolgs, the Tuath de Danans, and the Milesians, or Scots — the last-mentioned of whom it represents as the progenitors of the present Celtic population. The question of who these races were has given occasion to endless controversy. What is certain is, that both the Firbolgs and the Tuath de Danans existed in the country within what may be properly called the historic period. The Firbolgs are gene- rally believed to have been a Belgic colony or in- vading band ; and the Tuath de Danans a Scandi- navian people. Another theory, however, makes the latter, and not the Milesians, to be the Celtic people, from whom have descended the great bulk of the present population of the island. There come to us through the long night of the past many strange glimmerings of an extraordinary civilization existing in Ireland in a very remote antiquity, and of a wide-spread renown which the island had once enjoyed as a peculiarly-favoured seat of letters, the arts, and religion. That during a considerable portion of the period which we are accustomed to call the dark ages, the light of learn- ing and philosophy continued to shine in Ireland after it had been extinsiuished throughout all the rest of Christendom, although so remarkable a cir- cumstance has been little noticed by most of the historians of modern Europe, must be regarded as a fact as well established as any other belonging to that period. From about the beginning of the seventh till towards the close of the eighth cen- tury, Ireland, under the name of Scotia,was undoubt- edly the recognized centre and head of European scholarship and civilization. This is abundantly proved by the testimony of contemporary writers in other countries, as well as by the remaining works of the early theologians and philosophers of Christian Ireland themselves. But long before this Christian civilization, there would seem to have been an- other period, when the arts existed in that country in a high state of advancement, in the midst of surrounding barbarism. If there were no other evidences of this than those extraordinary erections, the Round Towers, which are still found standing in so^many places, the inference would not be easily resisted. The argument derived from these buildings is very short and direct. We have evi- dence which cannot be questioned, not only of their existence in the twelfth century, but of their great antiquity even at that date. Giraldus Cam- brensis, who then visited Ireland, describes them in such terms as show that the memory of their origin had been already long lost among the peo- ple. If, as has been supposed by some writers, they had been erected by the Danes, who occupied a part of the island two or three centuries before, this could not have been the case. But the no- tion that the Danes were the architects of the Round Towers of Ireland is altogether untenable on other grounds. No similar structures are to be found, nor any trace of such ever having existed, either in the native country of the Danes, or in any other country in which they ever obtained a settle- ment. Nay, in Ireland itself, it is curious enough, that while Round Towers are found in many parts of the country where the Danes never were, in other parts which these invaders are well known to have occupied, there are none. Nor can these Round Towers with any probability be looked upon as Christian monuments ; there are no such build- ings in any other part of Christendom, nor any- where, indeed, throughout the western world, if we except Scotland, which, from many other evi- dences, appears to have been in part colonized from Ireland. We are forced therefore to ascend in search of their origin beyond the date of the establishment of Christianity in the latter country, which is well ascertained to have taken place- in the early part of the fifth century. But for some centuries at least preceding that date there is cer- tainly no reason to believe that there existed in Ireland any such superior civilization or knowledge of the arts as would account for the erection of the Round Towers. On the contrary, it appears pro- bable, from all the facts that can be collected, and all the contemporary notices that have come down to us, that at the time of the invasion, and during the occupation of Britain by the Romans, the Irish HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 13 Round Toweb uf Donuuohmobk.* were in much the same semi-barbarous condition with the Britons. The primitive civilization of Ireland, therefore, whether under the same, or, what is more likely, under a different dominant race, must be sought for in a yet more remote anti- quity. The only structures that have been any- where found similar to the Irish Round Towers are in certain countries of the remote east, and espe- cially in India and Persia. This would seem to in- dicate a connexion between these countries and Ireland, the probability of which, it has been at- tempted to show, is corroborated by many other coin- cidences of language, of religion, and of customs, as well as by the voice of tradition, and the light, though faint and scattered, which is thrown upon the sub- ject by the records of history. The period of the first civilization of Ireland then would, under this view, be placed in the same early age of the world which appears to have witnessed, in those oriental countries, a highly advanced condition of the arts and sciences, as well as flourishing institutions of religious and civil polity, which have also, in a similar manner, decayed and passed away. No- thing can be more certain than that the first period of human civilization is at any rate much more ancient than the oldest written histories we now possess. The civilization of Egypt was on the decline when Herodotus wrote and travelled, nearly twenty-three centuries ago. The vast architectural monuments of that country were of venerable an- tiquity, even when his eye beheld them. The ear- liest civilization of Phoenicia, of Persia, and of Hindostan, was, perhaps, of still more ancient origin. We know that the navigating nation of the Phoenicians had, long before the time of Hero- dotus, established flourishing colonies, not only in the north of Africa, but also on the opposite coast of Spain. Even the foundation of Marseilles, on the coast of France, by a Greek colony, has not been stated by any authority to be more recent than six liundred years before the commencement of our era, and there are some reasons for believing a town to have been established there at a much earlier date. There is, therefore, no such impro- bability as is apt to strike persons, not conversant with such investigations, in the supposition that Ireland also may have been colonized by a civilized people at some very remote period. It seems, in- • In most instances the cut of a particular local object will have reference to itsexistinf^ state, except when otherwise expressed. 14 INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE deed, to be scarcely possible otherwise to account either for the Round Towers, or for the other relics and memorials of a formerly advanced state of the arts which the country still contains — the extensive coal-works and other mining excavations which appear in various places, and the many articles of ornamental workmanship in gold and silver which have been found in almost every part of the island, generally buried deep in the soil — all unquestion- ably belonging to a time not comprehended within the range of the historic period.* It is remarkable, and may be taken as some con- firmation of the evidence afforded by circumstances of another kind which appear to indicate a con- nexion in very ancient times between Ireland and the east, that nearly all the knowledge of the coun- try of which we find any traces in the Greek and Roman writers seems to have been derived from oriental sources. If the Orphic poem on the voy- age of the ship Argo be of the age to which it has been assigned by some of the ablest critics, namely, five hundred years before the birth of Christ, it is there that we have the first mention of Ireland by its Celtic name. The writer speaks of an island which he calls lernis, as situated somewhere in the Atlantic ; and, from various passages of his poem, he is believed to have had much of his information from the Phoenicians. He makes no mention of Britain. Herodotus, a century later, had only heard of the British islands by the descriptive epi- thet of the Cassiterides, or Tin Islands. Even Eratosthenes, in the third century before Christ, appears not to have been aware of the existence of Ireland, although the island is mentioned by the name of leme, in a work attributed to Aristotle, and which has been supposed to be at least of the age of that philosopher, who flourished in the fourth century before the commencement of our era.f Po- lybius, in the second century before Christ, just no- tices Ireland. On the other hand, Ptolemy, who is known to have composed his work from materials collected by the Tyrian writer Marinus, gives us, in his Geography, a more full and accurate account of Ireland than of Britain. Another very curious descriptive notice of Ire- land is that which has been preserved in the Latin geographical poem of Festus Avienus, a writer of the fourth century, but who tells us expressly that he drew his information on the subject from the Punic records. Avienus gives us the only ac- count which we possess of the voyage made by the Carthaginian navigator Himilco to the seas north of the Pillars of Hercules, at the same time that *[The question regarding the origin and purpose of the Round Towers is now considered as set at rest by the publication of Mr. J. Petrie's Essay in 1845. He has shown, from their being in- variably connected with churches, and often displaying traces of the same architecture, as well as Christian emblems, that they were simply, what the language of the country has all along called them, belfries, and of mediseval date. The order for con- structing a church, with a detached belfry, exactly answering to the description of a Bound Tower, has been discovered and pub- lished by Mr. Petrie. 1854.] + nt^i Koafiou. The writer says that in the sea beyond the Pil- lars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) are two large islands, called the British Islands, Albion and lerne. Hanno, whose Periplus has come down to us, set out in the opposite direction from the same straits. These voyages seem to have been undertaken about a thousand years before our era. In the narrative given by Avienus, which is a very slight sketch, the islands with which the Carthaginians were wont to trade are designated the CEstrumnides, by which name is supposed to have been meant the Scilly Islands ;* and two days' sail from these is placed, what is said to have been called by the an- cients, the Sacred Island, and to be inhabited by the nation of the Hiberni. The island thus de- scribed there can be no doubt is Ireland. Near, either to the CEstrumnides or the island of the Hi- berni (it is not very clear which is intended), is said to extend the island of the Albiones, that is, Bri- tain. The existence of an abode of science and the arts, and the seat probably also of some strange and mysterious religion, placed in the midst of the waters of the farthest west, and withdrawn from all the rest of the civilized world, could hardly have failed, however obscurely and imperfectly the tale might have been rumoured, to make a powerful impression upon the fancy of the imaginative na- tions of antiquity. Some speculators have been disposed to trace to the Ireland of the primeval world, not only the legend of the famous island of Atlantis mentioned by Plato and other writers, but also the still earlier fables of the Isle of Calypso, and the Hesperides, andthe Fortunate Islands, and the Elysian Fields of Homer and other ancient poets. " The fact," observes Mr. Moore, f " that there existed an island devoted to religious rites in these regions, has been intimated by almost all the Greek writers who have treated of them ; and the position in every instance assigned to it, answers perfectly to that of Ireland. By Plutarch it is stated that an envoy despatched by the Emperor Claudius to explore the British Isles, found, on an island in the neighbourhood of Britain, an order of magi accounted holy by the people ; and in an- other work of the same writer, some fabulous won- ders are related of an island lying to the west of Britain, the inhabitants of which were a holy race ', while, at the same time, a connexion between them and Carthage is indistinctly intimated." In a passage which Strabo has extracted from an ancient geographer, it is expressly stated that in an island near Britain sacrifices were offered to Ceres and Proserpine, in the same manner as at Samothrace, in the Egean, the celebrated isle where the Phoeni- cians had established the Cabiric or Guebre wor- ship, that is, the adoration of the sun and of fire, which they again appear to have received from the Persians. " From the words of the geographer quoted by Strabo," continues Mr. Moore, " com- bined with all the other evidence adduced, it may be inferred that Ireland had become the Samothrace, as it were, of the western seas ; that thither the • See a curious interpretation of this name in Davies's Celtic Re- searches, p. 238. f History of Ireland, i. 13, HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 15 Cabiric gods had been wafted by the early colo- nizers of that region ; and that, as the mariner used, on his departure from the Mediterranean, to breathe a prayer in the Sacred Island of the East, so in the seas beyond the Pillars, he found another Sacred Island, where, to the same tutelary deities of the deep, his vows and thanks were offered on his safe arrival." But the most curious of all the legends preserved by the classical writers, which have been supposed to allude to Ireland, is the account given by Dio- dorus Siculus of the Island of the Hyperboreans, on the authority, as he says, of several investigators of antiquity, and especially of Hecatseus, an author who is believed to have flourished in the sixth cen- tury before our era. The island, in the first place, is stated to lie in the ocean over against Gaul, and under the arctic pole — a position agreeing with that assigned to Ireland by Strabo, who describes it as situated beyond Britain, and as scarce habitable for cold. It is affirmed to be as large as Sicily, which is a sufficiently correct estimate of the size of Ireland. The soil, the narrative goes on to say, is so rich and fruitful, and the climate so temperate, that there are two crops in the year. Mention is then made of a famous temple of round form, which was here erected for the service of Apollo, whom the inhabitants worshipped above all other gods, his mother Latona having been born in the island. Here seems to be an evident reference to the Round Towers, and the Cabiric religion, of which they were in all probability the temples. The re- mainder of the account contains apparent allu- sions to the skill of the inhabitants in playing on the harp, and to their knowledge of astronomy, a study which has always been associated with the worship of the sun. Upon the supposition that this relation refers to Ireland, the famous Abaris, who is said to have come from the Hyperboreans on an embassy to Athens, six centuries before the commencement of the Christian era, and of whose learning and accomplishments so many wonderful stories are told by various authors, would be an Irishman. * These, and other seeming indications of an ori- ental connexion have appeared so irresistible to many of the ablest and most laborious inquirers into the antiquities of Ireland, that, however va- riously they may have chosen to shape their theo- ries in regard to subordinate details, they have found themselves obliged to assume an early colo- nization of the country by some people of the east, as the leading principle of their investigations. Whatever question there may be, however, as to who this people were, it is agreed on all hands that they were a people speaking the present Irish lan- guage. The popular tradition, which makes the • For a more complete examination of the narrative in Diodorus Siculus, see O'Brien's Round Towers, chaps, iv. and xxyii. Toland, however, conceives the island of the Hyperboreans to be " the great island of Lewis and Harris, with its appendages, and the adjacent island of Skye," in the Hebrides. (History of the Druids, p. 155, &c.) Davies is decidedly of opinion that it was Great Britain. (Celtic Re- searches, 181-199, and Appendix, 549, &c.) There is a curious article on Abaris in Bayle's Dictionary. Milesians or Scots to have been a Scythian colony, considers them nevertheless to be Gael, or Gauls. Colonel Vallancey, who in his latter days adopted the hypothesis that the original Irish people were a colony of Indo-Scythians, and denied that they were either Gauls or Celts, maintained at the same time that the Irish was not a Gallic or Celtic tongue. Mr. O'Brien, who deduces the Irish population from Persia, makes the Irish to have been the an- cient language of that country.* Finally, Sir Wil- liam Betham and others, whose system is that Ire- land was colonized by the Phoenicians, contend that the ancient Phoenician or Punic language was the same with the modern Irish, and hold themselves to be able to make out that point from the remains of it which we yet possess. In particular, they supply, by the aid of the Irish tongue, an interpre- tation of the celebrated scene in Punic, in the " Poenulus " of Plautus, which has at least a very imposing plausibility, f *' The complete identity of the Phoenician and Irish languages," observes Sir William Betham, " explains, makes palpable, and elucidates, not only the history and geography of Europe, but most of the ancient maritime world, and in fact removes every difficulty to the acquire- ment of correct notions of the events of the earliest times." There can be no doubt, it may be here observed, that the Irish is a Celtic tongue, and essentially the same with that which was anciently spoken by the chief part of the population both of Gaul and of the south of Britain. Colonel Vallancey and others who have doubted or denied this identity have been misled by taking it for granted that the true representative of the Celtic tongue of the an- cient Britons and Gauls is the modern Welsh, which, as we shall presently have occasion to notice more particularly, appears really to be a different language altogether. It may also be remarked that there does not ap- pear to be any irreconcilable discordance between the two principal modern theories on the subject of the ancient connexion of Ireland with the East, namely that which attributes the colonization of the country to the Phoenicians, and that which deduces the people, together with their language and their religion, from Persia. It is far from improbable that the Phoenicians were originally a Persian peo- ple. The ancient writers generally bear testimony to the fact that the district called Phoenicia, at the extremity of the Mediterranean, was not their ori- ginal seat. They seem to have found their way thither from some country farther to the east or the south-east. Herodotus makes them to have been Chaldaeans, and Strabo brings them from the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf. Their reli- gion, as has been already observed, appears to have • The identity of the Celtic people and the Persians, and of the Celtic and Persian languages, is also considered by Pelloutier as admitting of no doubt. See his Histoire des Celtes. t This interpretation was first published by the late General Val- lancey, by whom, however, it appears to have been obtained, though that fact was not acknowledged, from a manuscript of an Irish scholar of the name of Neachtan. It is given in the most com- plete form in Sir W. Betham's Gael and Cymbri, pp. 112— 13S. 16 INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE been the same Cabiric or Guebre worship which prevailed among the ancient Persians. The popular tradition brings the progenitors of the people of Ireland immediately from Spain, making that country one of the principal resting- places of the Gaelic or Milesian race in their pro- gress from the East. This view also would suffi- ciently harmonize with the supposition that Ireland was indebted for its earliest civilization and its lan- guage to the Phoenicians, who had settlements in Spain, and are expressly stated by Strabo and other ancient writers to have carried on a trading inter- course from very remote times with the British Islands. The Irish traditional history, however, it is to be observed, brings the Spanish colonizers of the country not from Gades, which Strabo speaks pf as the place from which the voyages to Britain were chiefly made, but from Gallicia, at the oppo- site extremity of Spain. Particular mention is made of a lighthouse which stood in the neighbour- hood of the port now called Corunna, and was of great service in the navigation between that coast and Ireland ; and a remarkable coincidence has been noticed between this part of the tradition and an account given by .^thicus, the cosmo- grapher, of a lofty pharos, or lighthouse, stand- ing formerly on the sea-coast of Gallicia, and, as his expressions seem to imply, serving as a beacon in the direction of Britain. Whatever may be thought, indeed, of the share that either the Phoeni- cians or some other eastern people may have had in colonizing Ireland, or at least in communicating to the country its earliest civilization and religion, little doubt can be entertained that the great body of the Celtic progenitors of its present population was derived, not, as in the case of Britain, from Gaul, but from Spain. Even some of the British tribes, as we have already hinted, were probably of Spanish extraction. Tacitus, as has been observed above, conjectures that the Silures, who inhabited the south of Wales, had come from Spain, from their swarthy countenances, their curled hair, and the position of the district in which they dwelt, facing that country. Ireland, from its position, in like manner, offered the most inviting field for the occupation of colonists from the same quarter. Many of the names of the ancient Irish tribes, as recorded by Ptolemy, are the same with those of tribes forming part of the Spanish population. " So irresistible, indeed," observes Mr. Moore, *' is the force of tradition in favour of a Spanish colonization, that every new propounder of an hypothesis on the subject is forced to admit this event as part of his scheme. Thus Buchanan, in supposing colonies to have passed from Gaul to Ireland, contrives to carry them first to the west of Spain ; and the learned Welsh antiquary, Lhuyd, who traces the origin of the Irish to two distinct sources, admits one of those primitive sources to have been Spanish. In the same manner, a late writer, * who, on account of the remarkable simi- larity which exists between his country's Round • Popular History of Ireland, by Mr. Whitty, Part I. Towers and the Pillar-temples of Mazanderan, deduces the origin of the Irish nation from the banks of the Caspian, yields so far to the current of ancient tradition, as, in conducting his colony from Iran to the west, to give it Spain for a rest- ing-place. Even Innes, one of the most acute of those writers who have combated the Milesian pre- tensions of the Irish, yet bows to the universal voice of tradition in that country, which, as he says, pe- remptorily declares in favour of a colonization from Spain."* At the same time, as Mr. Moore has elsewhere remarked, there are sufficient evidences that Gothic tribes from Germany have effected settlements in Ireland as well as the Celts from Spain. This would be proved by Ptolemy's map of the country alone, in which there are several tribes set down whose names clearly indicate them to have been of Teutonic origin. There is every reason to believe, indeed, as we shall have occasion to show in the sequel, that the most famous of all the Irish tribes, the Scots, — a people who seem to have eventually established a dominion over all the other races in the island, — were not Celts, but Germans or Goths. Notwithstanding these mixtures, however, the mass of the population remained essentially Celtic, as it had been from the first ; and so thoroughly was the Celtic character impressed upon and worked into the whole being of the nation, that it speedily fused down, and assimilated everything foreign with which it came in contact. "It cannot but be re- garded as a remarkable result," observes Mr. Moore, " that while, as the evidence adduced strongly testifies, so many of the foreign tribes that in turn possessed this island were Gothic, the great bulk of the nation itself, its language, character, and institutions, should have remained so free from change; that even the conquering tribes them- selves should, one after another, have become mingled with the general mass, leaving only in those few Teutonic words, which are found mixed up with the native Celtic, any vestige of their once separate existence. The fact evidently is, that, long before the period when these Scythic invaders first began to arrive, there had already poured, from the shores of the Atlantic into the country, an abundant Celtic population, which, though but too ready, from the want of concert and coalition, which has ever characterized that race, to fall a weak and easy prey to successive bands of adven- turers, was yet too numerous, as well as too deeply imbued with another strong Celtic characteristic, attachment to old habits and prejudices, to allow even conquerors to innovate materially either on their language or their usages." f According to Sir William Betham, the proper Celtic name of Ireland is not, as commonly stated, Erin, but Eire, of which Erin is the geni- tive, and which is pronounced precisely as lar, a word still in common use, and signifying the west, the end, everything last, beyond, the extremity. So, he observes, we find by the Periplus of Hanno • History of Ireland,!. 18. f Ibid. i. 98. HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. It that the last Plicenician settlement on the west coast of Africa was called Cerne, pronounced Kerne, or Heme, being the same word with Erin. Strabo also tells us that the promontory forming the most western point on the coast of Spain was called lerne. lerne and lernis are among the forms which the Celtic name of Ireland assumes in the pages of the Greek and Roman authors. The same original has, without doubt, also given rise to the forms Juvernia and Hibernia, and to the com- mon Latin names for the people Hiberni and Hiberniones. The derivation of the Celtic name of Ireland from a word signifying the extremity, or the remotest point, is as old as the lime of Camden. It is an important part, however, we ought to note, of Mr. O'Brien's theory, that this name is nearly the same word with Iran, the old and still the native name of Persia. Iran, he says, means the Sacred Land, and Irin the Sacred Island. In support of this explanation he quotes a statement by Sir John Malcolm, to the effect that he had been told by a learned Persian that Eir or Eer sig- nified in the Pahlavi, or court dialect of Persia, a believer, and that that was the root of the name of the country. The uniform spelling of Erin, or Irin, in the oldest manuscripts, according to Mr. O'Brien, is Eirin.* III. The most ancient name by which the north- em part of Britain was known, appears to have been Caledonia, We have no evidence, however, that this name was in use among the inhabitants of the country themselves. It seems to have been that which was employed to designate them by the southern Britons, from whom no doubt the Romans learned it. Caoill signifies wood in Celtic, as Kd\oy,kalon, (which appears to be the same word,) does in Greek ; and the Caledonii of the Roman Briters has been supposed, with much probability, to be merely a classical transformation of Caoill daoin, literally, the people of the woods, or the wild people. The meaning of the term, indeed, is exactly expressed by the modern word savages, in French sauvages, in Italian selvaggie, the ori- ginal of which is the Latin silva^ a wood. If it could be shown that the northern Britons of the time of the Romans called themselves Cale- donians, or Caoill daoin, this circumstance would afford some evidence that they were a Celtic people. But the name in itself, if the commonly received interpretation of it be correct, does not appear to be one which a people would be very likely to adopt as their national appellation. Notwithstand- ing this probably Celtic name, therefore, by which they were known to the Romans and to the south- ern Britons, the Caledonians may not have been a Celtic race. As the south of Britain was in all probability chiefly peopled from Gaul, and Ireland chiefly from Spain, so it has been conjectured that the main source of the original popidation of North Britain was in like manner the part of the conti- * The Round Towfis, chap. ix. VOI,. 1, nent immediately opposite to it, namely, the north of what was then called Germany, including mo- dern Holland and Denmark, and also Norway and Sweden, or the region anciently comprehended under the general name of Scandinavia. Tacitus, as already noticed, expressly tells us that the red hair and big bones of the Caledonians asserted their German origin. If this view be correct, the earliest occupants of the North of Britain were a people not of Celtic, but of Teutonic race. In the later days of the Roman domination the name Caledonians appears to have gradually fallen into disuse and in their stead the Picts appear on the scene. Everything connected with the Picts — their name, their language, their origin, their final history — has been made the subject of long and eager controversy. But it may now be said to be agreed on all hands that, whether we are to consi- der them as having been Gothic or Celtic, the Picts were really of the same stock with the Cale- donians. The Picts are mentioned for the first time about the beginning of the fourth century, by Eumenius, the author of a Panegyric on the Emperor Con- stantine, who speaks of the Caledonians as being a tribe of Picts : Caledones aliique Picti — the Cale- donians and the other Picts — is his expression. About a century later Ammianus Marcellinus de- scribes the Picts as divided into two nations, the Dicaledones, or, according to another reading, Deu- caledones, and the Vecturiones. Upon this pas- sage, a late writer, who holds that both the Cale- donians and the Picts were Celts, observes — " The term Deucaledones is attended with no difficulty. Duchaoilldaoin signifies, in the Gaelic language, the real or genuine inhabitants of the woods. Du, pronounced short, signifies black ; Lut pronovmced long, signifies real, genuine ; and in this accep- tation the word is in common use ; Du Erinnach, a genuine Irishtnan ; Du Albinnach, a genuine Scotsman. The appellation of Deucaledones served to distinguish the inhabitants of the woody valleys of Albinn, or Scotland, fi'om those of the cleared country on the east coast of Albinn, along its whole extent, to certain distances westwarci along its mountains in the interior parts of the country. These last were denominated, according to Latin pronunciation, Vecturiones ; but in the mouths of the Gael, or native inhabitants, the ap- pellation was pronounced Uachtarich." * We do not find, however, that any explanation of this last term is attempted further than the following : — " That a portion of the country was known in an- cient times by the name of Uachtar, is evinced by the well-known range of hills called Diiiim- Uachtar, from which the country deecends in every direction towards the inhabited regions on all sides of that mountainous range." f Sir Wil- liam Betham, also, explaining the names recorded by Marcellinus from the Welsh, will have the * Thoughts on the Origin and Descent of the Gael. By .lanics Grant. Ksq. of Corrimony. 8vo. Loud. 1828, p. 276. t Ibid. p. 277. 18 INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE Dicaledones to mean the separated Caledonians ; ai, he says, in that language, having the same disjunc- tive effect with the particle dis in English ; while he considers Vecturiones to come from the two words f/c, chief, and Deyrn, lord, and to signify a siiperior realm, or the chief district, the residence of the Ucdeyrriy or sovereign prince. Pinkerton considers the Latin Vecturiones to be a corruption of Peohtar or Pehtar, which is the form in which the name Picts was anciently written. * Chalmers, also, derives the Latin appellation from the old name of the Picts, which he conceives to have been Peithi, or Peithwyr, a word that in Welsh is said to signify those that are out or exposed, the people of the open country, t In Scotland the name is still pronounced Pechts, or Pechs, with a strong enunciation of the guttural. After all, the name Picti may not improbably be merely the common Latin term signifying painted, bestowed upon the northern barbarians, from their custom of dyeing or tatooing their bodies, for the existence of which there is abundant evidence. The Latin writers themselves seem to have generally understood the name in this sense. With regard to the language of the Picts, Bede, writing while that name was still their recognized national designation, distinctly informs us that it was diflferent from that of the Britons. He has also preserved one Pictish word, and that does not belong to the Gaelic either of Ireland or Scotland. So, when the Irish saint, Columba, in the sixth century, went to the court of the Pictish king, for the purpose of converting that Prince and his sub- jects to Christianity, it is expressly recorded by his biographer, Adomnan, in more than one pas- sage, that he employed an interpreter. But the strongest proof of all is derived from the old names of places, which throughout the whole of that part of Scotland formerly constituting the kingdom of the Picts, are not Irish or Gaelic, but belong to another language. The same is also the case with the names of the Pictish kings, several lists of which bave been preserved. The people there- fore that originally occupied the territorv in ques* tion would appear not to have been a Celtic race. The kingdom of the Picts, which subsisted under that designation in an independent state, till the mitjdle of the ninth century, extended, as is well known, along the east coast of Scotland, from the Firth of Forth northwards. As for the country to the south of tbe Forth and the Clyde, it did not pro- perly belong to ancient Scotland at all. But while the Picts thus occupied the lowland country, the hilly country to the west was undoubtedly in the possession of a people of genuine Celtic lineage, the progenitors of the present Scottish Highlanders. Of those writers who consider the Caledonians to have been Celts, several hold that the modern Highlanders are the descendants of those earliest occupants of North Britain. This, for instance, • Inquiry (nto the History of Scotland preceding the Reipn of Mulcolm III. t Caledouia, i. 203. is the view propounded by Mr. James Macpher- son in the introduction prefixfd to his celebrated translation of the Poems of Ossian (1162), and also by his relation. Dr. James Macpherson, in his Dissertations on the Caledonians, &c. which the translator of Ossian edited (1768). Yet both these writers contend that the Picts also were the descendants of the same Caledonians ; or, in other words, that the Highlanders and the liowlanders were really the same people — a fact which would make it extremely difficult to account for the com- plete distinction between the two, which we find preserved in all the historical notices that have come down to us respecting them. The Scottish Highlanders consider themselves to be of Irish descent, as Dr. James Macpherson admits. In these respects their own traditions perfectly agree with the uniform voice of the traditional history of Ireland. It may now indeed be said to be admitted on all hands that the Scottish Highlanders are the descendants of a band of Irish who settled in Argyleshire about the middle of the third century, under a leader named Carbry Riada, the lord of a territory in Antrim, named after himself, Dalriada. The descendants of these Irish colonists, about the beginning of the sixth century, founded in that district of Scotland what was long called the Dal- riadic kingdom, or kingdom of the Dalreudini, and which eventually, on the seizure of the Pictish throne, by Kenneth Macalpine, in the year 843, became the kingdom of all Scotland. This is th.' view concurred in by Innes, O'Connor, Chalmers, and all the ablest modern inquirers. Indeed, until the appearance of the publications of the Macphersons, the Irish origin of the Scottish Highlanders does not appear ever to have been doubted or called in question either among them- selves or by others. Their own name for their language is Erse or Ersh, that is, Irish. They de- signate themselves Gael, and they call the Irish by the same name at this day. Of the origin and meaning of the term Gael, it does not appear possible to give any satisfactory account. The Irish tradition is that the name is derived from Gaodhal (pronounced Gael), grand- son of Peine Farsa, the first great leader of the colony, variously designated Milesian, Scotic, Gaelic, and Phoenician, from which the Celtic po- pulation of Ireland is sprung. It has been sup- posed by some that the word Gael, or Galli, is really the same with Celtge (pronounced Kelts*,), as well as with Galatae, the name given to the in- habitants of Galatia, or Gallo-Graecia, in Asia Minor. Sir William Betham conceives that the Phoenicians, long before the Christian era, called themselves Gael and Gaeltach, from the latter of which names the Greeks and Romans formed their Keltoi and Celtge. Others, however, think Celtse to be a corruption of Caoillich, which signifies a woodland people, from Caoillf wood, already men- tioned. The commonly received classical deriva- tion of the name Celts is from the old Greek word, used by Homer, KeXr/c, Keles (originally Kelcts^, a HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 1.9 horse, the Celts being, it is said, everywhere dis- tinguished for their skill in horsemanship. Perhaps the word ought rather to be deduced at once from the verb KtXXw, Kello, to move about, from which Ke\?;e is itself considered a derivative. The wan- dering character of the race would go to vindicate this etymology ; but we do not know that there is any Celtic word corresponding in sound and sense to the Greek KeXXw. Caesar tells us that the peo- ple of ancient France, whom the Romans called Galli, were called Celtse in their own language ; and Pausanias also testifies that the ancient name of the Gauls was Celts. Herodotus, who mentions the Celts, is silent as to the Gauls. The words Gael and Galli have also been by some supposed to be identical with the modem names Waldenses or Walloons, and Waelsh or Welsh. Nothing certainly is more common than the conversion of the sound g into w or gw^ and therefore the name Waelsh, by which the Saxons were latterly wont to designate the alien race who occupied the western corner of South Britain, might possibly be merely a corruption of Gael. At the same time, as the Welsh never have called themselves Gael, it would be somewhat difficult to account for the Saxons bestowing upon them that name, if it was thereby intended to identify them with the Gael of Ireland and of Scotland. There can be no doubt that the word Welsh is the same with the modem German Waelsch, which is still a]iplied in that language to designate generally all strangers or foreign nations. The Italians, in par- ticular, are called at this day Waelsch or Welsch by the Germans, their language the Welsh tongue, and their country Welsh land. Precisely in the same way our German ancestors, the Saxons, called the race of distinct blood and language who occu- pied the west of England Welsh, and the district they inhabited Wales. What original connexion there may have been between the two words Gael and Waelsh (or Wael, as it may perhaps have been in its simplest form), when the Celtic and Teutonic tongues were less widely divided than they eventually came to be, we shall not take upon us to conjecture. If any relationship could be established, it might perhaps help us to the true meaning of the name Gael. It is worth remarking that there appears to be another genuine Celtic word, which, from the similarity of its sound, is apt to be confounded with the word Gael, but to which is attributed exactly the signifi- cation of the German Waelsch. This fact is ob- scurely noticed by Buchanan, who states that the ancient Scots divided all the nations of Britain into Gaol and Calle, which names he translates by the Latin Galli and Gallaeci. But the matter is more clearly explained in the following passage from a modern work : — " Gaoll, in the Gaelic lan- guage, signifies a stranger. All the inhabitants of the kingdom of Scotland, whose native language is not Gaelic, are by the Gael called Caoill ; Gaoll, nom, singular , Gaoill, nom. plural, that is, strangers ; so Gaolldoch is the country of the Scots who speak English, as Gaeldoch is the country of the High- landers who speak Gaelic. Caithness, that part of the northern extremity of Scotland which has been for many centuries inhabited by Anglo-Saxon colo- nies, is called by the Gael, Gaollthao, the quarter of strangers ; and, for the same reason, the He- brides, after their conquest by the Danes, got the name of Insegaoll, which signifies the islands in- habited by strangers. Circumstances of a like nature gave the names of Galloway and Galway to the districts of country known by these appellations in Scotland and Ireland." * The author of * Bri- tannia after the Romans ' conceives that Wal and Gaul are the same word, and is convinced " that the words Wal, Wealh, Welsch, and Walsch were all primarily applied to that extensive family of tribes which we distinguish from the Teutonic to- wards the west, and that whenever it obtained the general force of stranger or foreigner, it had been among such tribes of Teutons as had then little collision with any other description of foreigners." t But how will this theory account for the Gael them- selves calling foreigners Gaoll ? But all this while who and whence were the Scots ? and from whom has North Britain received the name of Scotland ? In the first place, it is to be observed, that down to the eleventh or twelfth century the name Scotia was appropriated not to what is now called Scotland but to Ireland, and by the Scots was meant the Irish, or at least a people dwelling in that country. This is now universally admitted. The Scots are first mentioned by Am- mianus Marcellinus under the year 360, as fighting in alliance with the Picts. If these Scots were a British people, they must be supposed to have been a portion of that band of colonists from Ireland, who, as already mentioned, had a short time before this obtained a settlement in Argyleshire. But it is far from being certain that the Scots spoken of by Marcellinus, and whom, on another occasion, he describes as per diver sa vagantes — vagabond- izing from one place to another, as the words may be translated — were not native Irish who had come over expressly for the purpose of the predatory expeditions in which they are represented as hav- ing been engaged. We find, at any rate, that the fribes of the north of Britain were sometimes joined in their attacks upon the Roman province by bands of Scots, who are expressly stated to have come from Ireland. Thus, the poet Claudian, de- scribing the chastisement inflicted by Theodosius, in the year 368, upon the Saxons, Picts, and Scots, says that of the last-mentioned people icy Ireland (glacialis I erne) wept the heaps that were slaugh- tered. We have seen above that the notion of Ireland commonly entertained among the Greeks and Romans was that the island was sitviated very far to the north, which accounts for the epithet here made use of. Another expression in the poem, proceeding from the same misconception, occurs in the passage in which it is affirmed that • Grant's Origin of the Gael, p. 154. t Biitauuia after the Uomans, p.UxTiU, ER8ITY 20 INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE Theodosius, in pursuing the flying Scots, broke with his daring oars the Hyperborean waves. This may remind us of the island of the Hyperboreans, commemorated by Diodorus Sicukis. In like manner, in another poem, in which he celebrates the exploits of Stilicho, about thirty years later, on the same scene of war, he makes Britannia ex- claim, " By him was I protected " — , " totam cum Scotus lernen Movit, el infesto spumavit remige Tetliys — " , that is, as it has been translated by Dr. Kennet in Gibson's Camden, " When Scots came thunderinsr from the Irish sh.ores, And th« ocean trembled, struck with hostile oars." It may be considered, then, not to admit of any dispute, that the Scots were originally an Irish people. " It is certain," observes Camden, "that the Scots went from Ireland into Britain. Orosius, Bede, and Eginhard bear indisputable testimony that Ireland was inhabited by the Scots." Bede, indeed, who yet had never heard of North Britain being called Scotland,, expressly informs us that the nation of the Scots first came into that part of Britain which belonged to the Picts, from Ireland, under their leader Reuda — the Riada mentioned in a preceding page. As the country eventually re- ceived its kings, so it also received its name from these Irish colonists. The proper Scots, accord- ingly, Canwlen describes to be those commonly called Highlaudmen ; " for the rest," he adds, *' more civilized, and inhabiting the eastern part, though comprehended under the name of Scots, are the farthest in the world from being Scots, but are of the same German origin with us English." The name Scot has been usually supposed to be the same with Scythian, and to be a Celtic term sig- nifying a scattered or wandering people. It has been suggested, however, that it may be a trun- cated form of the Welsh Ysgo-do-gion or Ysgotiaid, which names appear to have been applied to the Scots by the Welsh in the twelfth century, and to be derived from Ysgawd, signifying shade, as if meaning a people of the woods.* We doubt, at all events, the derivation from Ysgawd. But having found the Scots settled in Ireland before they were known in Britain, we have still to endeavour to discover when and whence they found their way to the former country ; and these are much darker questions. The Irish traditionary account, as we have seen, is, that the Scots, or the Milesians, were that great nation who, arriving in Ireland, many centuries before the birth of Christ, brought with them the present Irish or Gaelic lan- guage, and became the progenitors of the great body of the present Irish population. But, to pass over all the other improbabilities involved in this legend, it is sufficient to remark, that the account of the geography of Ireland given by Ptolemy, suf- ficiently proves that tliere were no Scots in Ireland at the time when Marinus of Tyre collected the materials from which that writer drew his informa- tion. And still more decisive is the evidence of a • Britannia after the Eomans, p. Ixiii. work of unquestioned authenticity,"The Confession of St. Patrick," written so recently as the middle of the fifth century, from a passage in which it appears that even then the Scots were a distinct race from the Hiberionaces, or great body of the Irish people. The manner, however, in which they are here spoken of, as well as the ascendancy which their name afterwards acquired, would seem to imply that they formed a superior class ; and the proba- bility is, that they were really a foreign people who, perhaps a century or two at most before our era, had effected a settlement in the country by force, and eventually reduced the natives to sub- jection. One supposition, that proposed by Whit- aker in his History of Manchester, is, that the Scots were emigrants from Britain, and conse- quently Celts ; but this hypothesis is entirely un- supported by evidence, and is directly contrary to the uniform tenor of the Irish tradition respecting the people in qviestion, which peremptorily asserts them to have been of Scythic or Germanic race. Pinkerton, Wood (in his " Inquiry into the Pri- mitive Inhabitants of Ireland "), and others, con- ceive the Scots to have been Belgians ; but the whole course of early Irish history, as Mr. Moore has remarked, " runs counter to this conjecture — the Belgse and Scoti, though joining occasionally as allies in the field, being represented throughout as distinct races." On the whole, we are disposed to agree with this last-mentioned writer, that the Scots were really a tribe of Scythians, that is, a people from Germany, or the north of Europe, who arrived in Ireland subsequently to the Firbolgs or Belg?e, and that they were therefore of Teutonic blood and language. Although they appear to have in course of time reduced all the other inha- bitants of the island under their authority, and to have given their name to the whole country, their numbers were probably very small as compared with those of the original Celtic population. Hence the language of the country continued to be Celtic, and eventually, both in this and in other particulars, the conquering tribe came to be melted down among the mass of those whom it had subdued — just as after the Norman invasion Eng- land still continued to be essentially a Saxon coun- try. It is not therefore necessary to conclude from the facts of the Highlanders of North Britain being sprung from a colony of Irish, and of that country inheriting from Ireland the name of Scotland, that the Irish progenitors of the Scottish Highlanders were of the Scotic race properly so called ; long before the name of Scoti was transferred to the Highlanders of North Britain, it had entirely lost its original distinctive meaning, and was applied to all the people of Ireland indiscriminately. The Irish colonists of Scotland, for anything that is known, may not have even had a drop of Scotic or Scythic blood in their veins. It is certain, at least, that they were Celts or Gael in speech, and that their descendants to this day have never called themselves Scots, or anything else but GaeL In distinguishing themselves from the Irish, the HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 21 Scottish Highlanders designate that people Gael Ej-innich, or Gael of Erin, and themselves Gael Aibinnich, or Gael of Alhin. Albin, or Albion, appears to have been anciently the name of the whole island of Great Britain, and that by which it was first known to the Greeks and Romans. The writer of the geographical treatise ascribed to Ari- stotle, to which we have referred in a former page, says that the two British islands were called Albion and I erne. Pliny intimates that, the whole group of islands being called Britannia, the former name of that then called Britannia was Albion. Eusta- thius, the commentator on the Greek geographical poem of Dionysius Periegetes, tells us that the British islands are two in number, Ouernia and Alouion, or Bernia and Alhion. Albinn, accord- ing to Mr. Grant, means in Gaelic white or fair island. " The Gael of Scotland and Ireland," he observes, " never knew any other name for Scot- land than that of Albinn ; it is the name used by them at this day ; the appellation of Scotia, or any appellation similar to it in sound, is entirely un- known to them. The Gael have preserved, and apply at this day to the kingdom of Scotland, the most ancient name known to the Greeks and Romans, to denominate the whole island of Great Britain. The etymology of the name serves to show that it was denominated Albinn by the con- tinental Gauls, and was naturally called by them the Fair or White Island, from the chalky appear- ance of the British coast opposite to the nearest part of the coast of ancient Gaul." * An old name given to the island by the Welsh is stated to have been Innis-wen, which also in their language sig- nifies the Fair or White Island. f IV. The Welsh, as every one is aware, have been in the habit of regarding themselves as the genuine descendants and representatives of the an- cient Britons, who possessed the whole of the southern portion of the island before the arrival of the Saxons, and were indeed the same people that inhabited the country when it was first invaded by the Romans, and had probably occupied it for many preceding centuries. This descent being assumed, the Welsh language has generally been held to be a Celtic dialect, and essentially the same that was spoken by the original Britons, only mixed with some words of Latin derivation, which it is supposed to have received from the intercourse of those who used it with the Roman colonists. It would probably be difficult to produce any direct evidence for these notions ; but they have been, until very recently, the almost universally • Thoughts on the Gael, p. 29?. + The author of " Britannia after the Romans," however, contends that we must consider the ancient and correct form of All}ion to be Alouion or Alwion. " Neither p nor 6," he is pleased to say, " is ca- pable of mutation into «» ; nor is the converse possible." The Romans, he proeeeds, modifled tlie sound of the word " to suit the etymology furnished by their own language, but not existing in the Greek, albus, white. And they harped upon that idea so long, that it was adopted in the island itself while it was their province." Al- wion, lie is inclined to think, is the Land of Gwion, which appears to nave been a name of " the Hermes, or Mercury, whom the ancient Britons revered above all other deities, and who (in the alchemic su- perstitions) presided over the permutations of nature." — pp. Ixiv— Ixviii. received faith among the students of British anti- quities. Yet it is certain, m the first place, that no trace is to be found in the notices of Britain by the Greek or Roman writers, of any people or tribe settled in the district now called Wales, from which the Welsh can with any probability be supposed to have sprung. They exhibit no marks which would lead us to suspect their progenitors to have been the Silures, whose swarthy countenances and curled hair gave them to Tacitus the appearance of a Spanish race. The Welsh have always called themselves Cymry ; there is no resemblance be- tween this name, and either that of the Silures, or that of the Demetse, or that of the Ordovices, the only British tribes whom we read of, either in Ptolemy, or in any of the historians of the Roman wars, as occupying Wales in the time of the Romans. Indeed, no name resembling the Cymry occurs anywhere in the ancient geography of the island, so far as it is to be collected from these authorities. It is not pretended that this appellation has been adopted by the Welsh since the time of the Romans ; if theretbre the people bearing it were then in the island, and more especially if they formed, as the common account would seem to imply, the most ancient and illustrious of all the tribes by which the country was occupied, how did it happen that they wholly escaped notice? How are we to account for the fact of tribes with other appellations altogether being set down by contemporary geographers and historians in the very district which the Cymry claim as their proper and ancient residence? But further, it clearly appears, and has been ac- knowledged by some of the ablest and most learned of the Welsh antiquaries themselves, that the dis- trict now called Wales must have been inhabited in ancient times by another race than the present Welsh. The oldest names of natural objects and localities throughout Wales are not Welsh. This was long ago stated by Humphrey Lhuyd, and has been since abundantly established. Lhuyd's statement is that the old names through- out Wales are Irish ; and until very lately it was universally assumed that the Welsh and the Irish were only two dialects of the same Celtic speech. It was unquestionable that the Irish and Scottish Gaelic was, as its name imports, the language of the ancient Gael or Celts ; and as no doubt was en- tertained that the Welsh, as descendants of the old Britons, were a Celtic race, it was taken for granted that their language also was only another sister dia- lect of the Celtic. But it would seem that this too was another notion adopted without any evidence, and indeed in the face of evidence, if it had been looked into, quite sufficient to disprove it. It would not, we apprehend, be possible to quote, in support of the asserted identity of the Welsh and Irish, or Gaelic, the authority of any writer who had really made himself master of the two languages, or even ex- amined them attentively with the view of ascertain- ing m how far they resembled or differed from INTRODUCTORY VIEW OF THE PRIMITIVE each other, and whether they were properly to be regarded as belonging to the same or to different stocks. On the other hand, we have in denial of their relationship the distinctly pronounced judg- ment both of Welshmen, of Irishmen, and of in- quirers having no partialities of origin to influence their conclusions, all speaking upon a question which they have deliberately considered, and which some of them, at least, possessed all the necessary qualifications for deciding. The same opinion that had been first expressed upon the subject by the learned and acute Bishop Percy, an Englishman, has since been maintained as not admitting of any doubt both by the Welsh antiquary Roberts, and th« Irish O'Connor, and has also been adopted by tlie German Adelxmg, and finally, to all appear- ance, unanswerably established by Sir William Betham, who has devoted many years to the study of both languages. AH these authorities declare in substance that the Cyraraeg tongue spoken in Wales, and the Gaelic spoken in Ireland and Scotland, exhibit little resemblance even in voca- bultiry, and, to use the words of Dr. O'Connor, " arc as different in their syntactic construction as any two tongues can be." It may be added, that this seems also to have been the opinion of the late learned General Vallancey. This view of the Welsh language throws an en- tirely new light upon other points that have given occasion to a world of controversy. We have already seen that nearly all inquirers are agreed in considering the Picts to have been of the same race with the ancient Caledonians. But it had still continued to be a keenly agitated question, whether the Picts were a Celtic or a Teutonic people. With- out entering into any detail of this long contro- versy, in which the Celtic origin of the Picts has been maintained by Camden, Lloyd (Bishop of St. Asaph), the very learned and able Father Innes, and the late George Chalmers, in his elaborate work entitled " Caledonia," while the opposite side of the question has been supported by Archbishop Usher, Bishop Stillingfleet, and the late John Pin- kerton, to whom may be added. Dr. Jamieson, in the Introduction to his Scottish Dictionary ; we shall merely remark, that the assertors of the Teu- tonic lineage of the Picts have evidently all along had the best of the argument on all other grounds, excepting only on the important ground of the evi- dence afforded by the language of the lost people. All the historical evidence is in favour of their Teu- tonic or Germanic descent. Still, if it could be clearly proved that they spoke a Celtic language, that single fact would go far to prove them to have been Celts, notwithstanding even all the direct his- torical testimony there is to the contrary. Now, this Camden and his followers conceive not to admit of any doubt, from the remains of the Pictish language which are still to be collected, and Chal- mers especially has, by a minute examination of the old topographical nomenclature of the part of Scot- land formerly occvipied by the Picts, completely, as he thinks, established flie position that their language was Celtic. But how is this demonstra- tion made out ? Altogether by the assumption, never for a moment suspected to be unfounded or doubtful, that the ancient British Celtic tongue is still substantially preserved in the modern Welsh. All the instances adduced by Camden, and the much longer list enumerated by Chalmers, are in- stances of Pictish names of places which are not Irish or Gaelic, but Welsh. Chalmers even shows that on the country, after having been occupied by the Picts, falling into the possession of the Celtic Scots, the Welsh, or, as he calls it, the Cambro- British name was in some cases changed into a Celtic name of the same import. The Welsh Aber, for example, applied to places situated at the mouths of rivers, is found to have in this way given place in several names to the corresponding Gaelic term Inver. In examining the list of the Pictish kings, the same writer observes that the names of those kings are not Irish, and, " consequently," he adds, " they are British :" " they are," he says elsewhere, " undoubtedly Cambro-British." And in like manner, the single Pictish word which Bede has preserved, Pengvahel, the name of the piace where the Pictish wall commenced, is ac- knowledged to be not Gaelic, but Welsh. The opinion expressed by Camden and Innes, that the Picts were Welsh, may therefore be ad- mitted, without the consequence which they sup- posed to be involved in it, that either were Celts, being at all established. On the contrary, it would appear from what has been said above, that the fact of the language of the Picts having been the same with that spoken by the present inhabitants of Wales, is the best of all proofs that the former people were not Celts. It comes in confirmation of all the other arguments bearing upon the qwea- tiou, the decided tendency of which is to make it probable that they were a Teutonic race. Here, then, we have two remarkable facts ; the one, that the part of England now o:cupied by the Cymry, as the present Welsh call themselves, was apparently not occupied by them iii ancient times ; the other, that the part of Scotland known to have constituted what is called the Pictish kingdom, was ui ancient times occupied by a people speaking the same language with the modern Welsh. It seems impossible to resist the conclusion, that the same Cymry who are now settled in the west of England were previously settled in the east of Scotland — in other words, that the present Welsh are the de- scendants of the Picts. Usher has, without reference to the evidence of language, and merely upon the strength of the his- toric testimony and the general pri 'babilities of the case, advanced the opinion that the Picts were Cimbrians. The name of Cymri, borne by the Welsh, has long ago suggested a belief that they are a remnant of the ancient Cimbri, Their own tradi- tions, as we have already seen, make them to have been conducted into Britain by their great leader, Hu Cadam, across the German Ocean. Bede ex- pressly states that the Picts came from Scytbia, HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. name -which, as is well known, comprehended at one time all the regions forming the north of mo- dern Germany and Denmark, the Cimbric Cher- sonesus, or Peninsula of Jutland, among the rest. Bede also informs us, that, before arriving in Bri- tain, the Picts were driven towards Ireland, and touched in the first instance at that island. In this relation the venerable Saxon historian is con- firmed by the Irish bardic histories, which, in like manner, represent the Picts to have sought a set- tlement in Ireland, before they resorted to Britain. Finally, it may be mentioned as a curious confirm- ation of the identity here assumed of the Cimbri and the modern Welsh, that the only word which has been preserved of the language of the former people, namely, the term Morimarusa, which Pliny quotes as meaning the Dead Sea, appears to be Welsh, Mor in that language signifying the sea, and Maru dead.* That the Welsh, indeed, were in very ancient times established in Scotland, is matter of authentic and undoubted history. Their kingdom of Strath- clyde, or Reged, otherwise called Regnum Cum- brense, or the kingdom of the Cymry, lay in the south-west of Scotland. There are certainly no probable grounds for believing that there were any Cymry in England till an age subsequent to the establishment of this northern kingdom. " Most of the great Welsh pedigrees," observes Mr. Moore, " commence their line from princes of the Cumbrian kingdom, and the archaiologist Lhuyd himself boasts of his descent from ancestors in the * province of Reged in Scotland, in the fourth cen- tury, before the Saxons came into Britain.' To this epoch of their northern kingdom, all the traditions of the modern Welsh refer for their most boasted antiquities and favourite themes of romance. The name of their chivalrous hero, Arthur, still lends a charm to much of the topo- graphy of North Britain ; and among the many romantic traditions connected with Stirling Castle, is that of its having once been the scene of the festivities of the Round Table. The poets Aneurin and Taliessin, the former born in the neighbourhood of the banks of the Clyde, graced the court, we are told, of Urien, the king of Reged or Cumbria ; and the title Caledonius bestowed on the enchanter Merlin, who was also a native of Strath-Clyde, sufficiently attests his northern and Pictish race." f We have thus, however cursorily, taken a sur- vey of the subject of the original population of these islands, in its whole extent, and have endea- * "The Welsh dialect of the English language (says the Rev. J. Adams), is characterized hy a peculiar intonation, . . and hy the vicarious change of consonants, k for g. Hot d and p, /for v, and ( for z. . . Now this being common to the Germans. . . and moreover not being found in Irish or Highland English (the author means the pronunciation of English by the Scotch Highlanders), there is an opening for a curious inquiry I never met with." [Since the above was written, the publication of the learned and ingenious essay of Mr. W. F. Skene, on the history of the High- landers, has all but established that these people, the modern mountaineers of Scotland, are the same people with the ancient Picts. The Caledonians, Picts, and the subsequent Dalriads, were all, in short, varieties of the Celtic race.] t History of Ireland, p. 103. The view that has been taken of the origin of the Welsh is substantially the same with that given both by Mr. Moore and by Sir William Betham. voured, as we went along, both to note the princi- pal of the various opinions that have been enter- tained on the many obscure and difficult questions it presents, and to collect, from the lights of history and the evidence of facts together, what appears to be the most consistent and otherwise probable con- clusion on each controverted point. The following may be given as a summary of the views that have been offered. Beginning with Ireland, it may be afl&rmed that everything in that country indicates the decidedly Celtic character of its primitive po- pulation ; and taking the geographical position of the island along with the traditions of the people, we can have little doubt that the quarter from which chiefly it was originally colonized was the opposite peninsula of Spain. That settlements were also effected in various parts of it, before the dawn of recorded history, by bodies of people from other parts of the continent — from Gaul, from Ger- many, from Scandinavia, and even possibly from the neighbouring coast of Britain — is highly pro- bable ; but although several of these foreign bands of other blood seem to have acquired in succession the dominion of the country, their numbers do not appear in any instance to have been consi- derable enough to alter the thoroughly Celtic cha- racter of the great body of the population, of their language, of their customs, and even of their insti- tutions. Thus, the Scots, who appear to liave been originally a Teutonic people from the northern parts of the European continent, although they eventually subjugated the divided native Irish so completely as to impose their own name upon tlie island and the whole of its inhabitants, were yet themselves more truly subjugated, by being melted down and absorbed into the mass of the more numerous Celtic race among whom they had set- tled. The invasion of Ireland by the Scots, and the subsequent intermixture of the conquerors with the conquered, resembled the subjugation of Saxon Britain by the Normans, or still more nearly that of Celtic or Romanized Gaul by the Franks, in which latter case the conquerors, indeed, as hap- pened in Ireland, gave their name to the country, but the native inhabitants in turn gave their lan- guage to the conquerors. In this manner it hap- pened that the Irish, after they came to be called Scots, were really as much a Celtic or Gaelic people as ever. The Scots from Ireland who colonized the western coast of North Britain, and came at last to give their name to the whole of that part of our island, were undoubtedly a race of Gael. Thev were called Scots merely because the whole of Ire- land had, by that time, come to be known by the name of the country of the Scots, who had obtained the dominion of it. The original population of ancient Caledonia, however, appears to have been of Gothic lineage, and to have come from the oppo- site coasts of Germany, and what is now called Denmark. Long after the arrival of the Irish Scots in the western part of the country, this original Gothic race, or possibly another body of settlers who had subsequently poured in from tin 24 PRIMITIVE HISTORY OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS. same quarter, retained, under the name of the Picts, the occupation and sovereignty of by far the greater portion of what is now called Scotland. But most probably some ages before they were deprived of their Scottish sovereignty by the suc- cessful arms or intrigues of the king of the High- land Gael, bands of Picts appear to have esta- blished themselves in the west of England, where they came eventually to be known to their Saxon neighbours by the name of the foreigners, or the Welsh. The Welsh, however, still do and always have called themselves only the Cymry, which appears to be the same name with that of the Cimbri or Cimmerii, so famous in ancient times ; and taking this circumstance, along with the tradition they have constantly preserved of their original emigration into Britain from a country on the other side of the German Ocean, there seems to be every reason for concluding that the Cymry of Britain, called by their neighbours of other blood at one time Picts (whatever that name may mean), at another Welsh, are really the remnant of the Cimbri of antiquity. There remains only to be noticed the original population of the rest of South Britain, or of that part of the island now properly called England. It can hardly admit of a doubt that the whole of the south of Britain was originally colonized mainly from the neigli- bouring coast of Gaul. Some bands of Germans may have settled along the east coast, and some Celtic tribes from Spain may have established themselves in the west ; but the great body of the inhabitants by whom the country was occupied when it first became known to the Romans were in all probability Celts from Gaul. We are inclined to think that even the Belgic tribes who, some cen- turies before Caesar's invasion, appear to have ob- tained the possession of the greater part of the south coast, were either really of mixed German and Celtic lineage, or had adopted the Celtic tongue from the previous occupants of the territory, with whom they intermixed after their arrival in Bri- tain, and who were probably much more numerous than their invaders. There does not seem to be any evidence either that what are called the Belgic tribes of Britain spoke a different language from the rest of the natives, or that any people speaking a Gothic dialect had ever been spread over any considerable portion of the south of Britain in those early times. BOOK I. THE BRITISH AND ROMAN PERIOD ; FROM B.C. 55 TO A.D. 449. CHAPTER I. NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS. H E con- quests of Julius Cae- sar in Gaul brought him with- \ in sight of the coast of Britain, and having established the Roman authority in the nearest countries on the continent, which are now called France and Belgium, it was almost as natural for him to aim at the possession of our island as for the masters of Italy to invade Sicily, or the conquerors of India the contiguous island of Ceylon. The disjunction of Bri- tain from the rest of the world, and the stormy but narrow sea that flows between it and the main, were circumstances just sufficient to give a bold and romantic cha- racter to the enterprise, without being real barriers to a skilful and courageous ge- m neral. But there were other motives to impel Caesar. Britain, or the far greater part of it, was inhabited by a people of the same race, language, and religion as the Gauls, and during his recent and most arduous campaigns the islanders had as- sisted their neighbours and kindred of the continent, sending important aid more particularly to the Veneti, who occupied Vannes in Bretagne, and to other people of Western Gaul who lived near the sea- coast. Caesar, indeed, says himself that in all his wars with the Gauls the enemies of the Republic had always received assist- ance from Britain, and that this fact made him resolve to pass over into the island. This island, moreover, seems to have had the character of a sort of Holy Land among the Celtic nations, and to have been considered the great centre and stronghold of the Druids, the revered priesthood of an iron superstition that bound men, and tribes, and nations to- gether, and inflamed them even more than patriotism against the Roman con- 'c> 26 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. QBooK T. querors. With respect to Druidism, Britain per- haps stood in the same relation to Gaul that the island of Mona or Anglesey bore to Britain ; and when the Romans had established themselves in Gaul they had the same motives for attacking our island that they had a century later when they had fixed themselves in Britain, for falling upon An- glesey, as the centre of the Druids and of British union, and the source of the remaining national re- sistance. It is to be remembered, also, that, whatever may have been the views of personal ambition from which Csesar principally acted, the Romans really had the best of all pleas for their wars with the Gauls, who had been their constant enemies for centuries, and originally their assailants. Their possession of Italy, indeed, could not be considered as secure until they had subdued, or at least im- pressed with a sufficient dread of tlieir arms, the fierce and restless nations both of Gaul and Ger- many, some of whom — down almost to the age of Caesar — had not ceased occasionally to break through the barrier of the Alps, and to carry fire and sword into the home territories of the republic. These and the other northern barbarians, as they were called, had had their eye upon the cultivated fields of the Italic peninsula ever since the irruption of Bellovesus in the time of the elder Tarquin ; and the war the Gauls were now carrying on with Caesar was only a part of the long contest which did not terminate till the empire was overpowered at last by its natural enemies nearly five centuries afterwards. In the meantime it was the turn of the Gauls to find the Roman valour, in its highest condition of dis- cipline and efficiency, irresistible ; and the Britons, as the active aUies of the Gauls, could not expect to escape sharing in their chastisement. According to a curious passage in Suetonius, it was reported that Caesar was tempted to invade Britain by the hopes of finding pearls.* Such an inducement seems scarcely of sufficient importance, although we know that pearls were very highly esteemed by the ancients, and Pliny, the natu- ralist, tells us that Caesar offered or dedicated a breastplate to Venus ornamented with pearls which he pretended to have found in Britain. But Caesar might be tempted by other real and more valuable productions, and he could not be igno- rant of the existence of the British lead and tin which the Phoenicians had imported into the Me- diterranean ages before his time, and in which the Phocaean colony of Massilia or Marseilles was actually carrying on a trade. Caesar himself, indeed, says nothing of this; but within a few miles of our coasts, and among a people with whom the British had constant intercourse, he must have acquired more information than appears respecting the natural fertility of the soil, and the mineral and other productions of the island. From evident reasons, indeed, the Gauls in general might not be very communicative on these subjects ; but among that people Caesar had allies and some • VitJul. Ca-s.ch. 47. steady friends, who must have been able and ready to satisfy all his inquiries. His subservient instru- ment Comius, who will presently appear upon the scene, must have possessed much of the infor- mation required. His love of conquest and glory alone might have been a sufficient incentive to Csesar, but a recent and philosophic writer assigns other probable motives for his expeditions into Britain, — such as his desire of dazzling his coun- trymen, and of seeming to be absorbed by objects remote from internal ambition by expeditions against a new world, or of furnishing himself with a pretence for prolonging his provincial command, and keeping up an army devoted to him, till the time should arrive for the execution of his projects against liberty at Rome.* JUT.IL'S C^.SAR. From a Copper Coin in the Biitisli Museum. Whatever were his motives, in the year 55 before Christ, Caesar resolved to cross the British Channel, not, as he has himself told us, to make then a conquest, for which the season was too far advanced, but in order merely to take a view of the island, learn the nature of the inhabitants, and survey the coasts, harbours, and landing-places. He says that the Gauls were ignorant of all these things ; that few of them, except merchants, ever visited the island ; and that the merchants them- selves only knew the sea-coasts opposite to Gaul. Having called together the merchants from all parts of Gaul, he questioned them concerning the size of the island, the power and customs of its inhabitants, their mode of warfare, and the har- bours they had capable of receiving large ships. He adds, that on none of these points cuuld they give him information ; but, on this public occa- sion, the silence of the traders probably proceeded rather from unwillingness and caution than igno- • Sir James Mackintosh, Hist. Kng. vol i. p. 12. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— B.C. 55. 27 ranee, while it is equaly probable that the con- queror received a little more information than he avows. He says, however, that for these reasons he thought it expedient, before he embarked him- self, to dispatch C. Volusenus, with a single galley, to obtain some knowledge of these things ; com- manding him, as soon as he had obtained this ne- cessary knowledge, to return to head-quarters with all haste. He then himself marched with his whole army into the territory of the Morini, a nation or tribe of the Gauls who inhabited the sea- coast between Calais and Boulogne, — "because thence was the shortest passage into Britain." Here he collected many ships i'rom the neighbour- ing ports. Meanwhile many of the British states having been warned of Caesar's premeditated expedition by the merchants that resorted to their island, sent over ambassadors to him with an offer of hostages and submission to the Roman authority. He re- ceived these ambassadors most kindly, and exhort- ing them to continue in the same pacific intentions, sent them back to their own country, dispatching with them Comius, a Gaul, whom he had made king of the Atrebatians, a Belgic nation then settled in Artois. Caesar's choice of this envoy was well directed. The Belgae at a comparatively recent period had colonized, and they still occupied, all the south-eastern coasts of Britain ; and these colonists, much more civilized than the rest of the islanders, no doubt held frequent commercial and friendly intercourse with the Atrebatians in Artois, and the rest of the Belgic stock settled in other places. Caesar himself says not only that Comius was a man in whose virtue, wisdom, and fidelity he placed great confidence, but one " whose autho- rity in the island of Britain was very considerable." He therefore charged Comius to visit as many of the British states as he could, and persuade them to enter into an alliance with the Romans ; inform- ing them, at the same time, that Caesar intended to visit the island in person as soon as possible. C. Volusenus appears to have done little service with his galley. He took a view of the British coast as far as was possible for one who had resolved not to quit his vessel or trust himself into the hands of the natives, and on the fifth day of his expedition returned to head-quarters. With such information as he had Caesar embarked the infantry of two legions, making about 12,000 men, on board eighty transports, and set sail from Portus Itius, or Witsand, between Calais and Boulogne. The cavalry, embarked in eighteen other transports, were detained by contrary winds at a port about eight miles ofl^, but Caesar left orders for them to follow as soon as the weather permitted. This force, however, as will be seen, could never make itself available, and hence mainly arose the re- verses of the campaign. At ten o'clock on a morning in autumn (Halley, the astronomer, in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, has almost demonstrated that it must have been on the 26th of August) Caesar reached the British coast, near Dover, at about the worst DovEE Cmffs. 28 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. ,,j0|||*S!. Landino of Julius C«sar. — After a Picture by Blakey. possible point to effect a landing in face of an enemy, and the Britons were not disposed to be friends. The submission they had offered through their ambassadors was intended only to prevent or retard invasion ; and seeing it fail of either of these effects, on the return of their ambassadors with Comius, as Caesar's envoy, they made that prince a prisoner, loaded him with chains, pre- pared for their defence as well as the shortness of time would permit; and when the Romans looked from their ships to the steep white cliffs above them, they saw them covered all over by the armed Britons. Finding that this was not a convenient landing-place, CcEsar resolved to lie by till the third hour after noon, in order, he says, to wait the arrival of the rest of his fleet. Some laggard ves- sels appear to have come up, but the eighteen transports, bearing the cavalry, were nowhere seen. Caesar, however, favoured by both wind and tide, proceeded at the appointed hour, and sailing about seven miles further along the coast, prepared to land his forces, on an open, flat shore, which pre- sents itself between Walmer Castle and Sandwich.* The Britons on the cliffs perceiving his design, • Horsley (in Britannia Romana) shows that Caesar must have proceeded to the north of the South Foreland, in which case the landing must have been effected between Walmer Castle and Sand- wich. Others, with less reason, think he sailed southward from the South Foreland, and liinded on the flats of Romney Marsh. followed his motions, and sending their cavalry and war-chariots before, marched rapidly on with their main force to oppose his landing anywhere. Caesar confesses that the opposition of the natives was a bold one, and that the difficulties he had to encoun- ter were very great on many accounts ; but superior skill and discipline, and the employment of some military engines on board the war-galleys, to which the British were unaccustomed, and which pro- jected missiles of various kinds, at last triumphed over them, and he disembarked his two legions. We must not omit the act of the standard-bearer of the tenth legion, which has been thought deserving of particular commemoration by his general. While the Roman soldiers were hesitating to leave the ships, chiefly deterred, according to Caesar's ac- count, by the depth of the water, this officer, having first solemnly besought the Gods that what he was about to do might prove fortunate for the legion, and then exclaiming with a loud voice, " Follow me, my fellow-soldiers, unless you will give up your eagle to the enemy ! I, at least, will do my duty to the republic and to our general I" leaped into the sea as he spoke, and dashed with his ensign among the enemy's ranks. The men instantly followed their heroic leader ; and the soldiers in the other ships, excited by the example, also crowded forward along with them. The two armies were for some Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— B.C. 55. 29 time mixed in combat; but at length die Britons withdrew in disorder from the well-contested beach. As their cavalry, however, was not yet arrived, the Romans could not pursue them or advance into the island, which Caesar says prevented his rendering the victory complete. The native maritime tribes, thus defeated, sought the advantages of a hollow peace. They de- spatched amba.ssadors to Caesar, offering hostages, and an entire submission. They liberated Comius, and restored him to his employer, throwing the blame of the harsh treatment his envoy had met with upon the multitude or common people, and entreating Caesar to excuse a fault which proceeded solely from the popular ignorance. The conqueror, after reproaching them for sending of their own accord ambassadors into Gaul to sue for peace, and then making war upon him, loithout any reason, forgave them their offences, and ordered them to send in a certain number of hostages, as security for their good behaviour in future. Some of these hostages were presented immediately, and the Bri- tons promised to deliver the rest, who lived at a distance, in the course of a few days. The native forces then seemed entirely disbanded, and the several chiefs came to Caesar's camp to offer alle- giance, and negotiate or intrigue for their own separate interests. On the day that this peace was concluded, and not before, the unlucky transports, with the Roman cavalry, were enabled to quit their port on the coast of Gaul. They stood across the channel with a gentle gale ; but when they neared the British coast, and were even within view of Caesar's camp, they were dispersed by a tempest, and were finally j. obliged to return to the port where they had been j so long detained, and whence they had set out that I morning. That very night, Caesar says, it hap- pened to be full moon, when the tides always rise highest — ** a fact at that time wholly unknown to the Romans"* — and the galleys which he had with him, and which were hauled up on the beach, were filled with the rising waters, while his heavier transports, that lay at anchor in the roadstead, were either dashed to pieces, or rendered altogether unfit for sailing. This disaster spread a general con- sternation through the camp; for, as every legion- ary knew, there Avere no other vessels to carry back the troops, nor any materials with the army to repair the ships that were disabled, and, as it had been from the beginning, Caesar's design not to winter in Britain, but in Gaul, he was wholly un- provided with corn and provisions to feed his troops. Suetonius says, that during the nine years Caesar held the military command in Gaul, amidst a most brilliant series of successes, he expe- rienced only three signal disasters ; and he counts the almost entire destruction of his fleet by a storm in Britain, as one of the three. • The operations of the Roman troops had hitherto been almost confined to the Mediterranean, where there is no perceptible tide. Yet, during their stay on the coast of Gaul, on the opposite side of the channel, they ought to have become acquainted with these phe- nomena. Probably they had never attended to the irregularities of a spring-tide. Nor were the invaded people slow in perceiving the extent of Caesar's calamity, and devising means to profit by it. They plainly saw he was in want of cavalry, provisions, and ships ; a close inspection showed that his troops were not so nu- merous as they had fancied, and probably fami- liarized them in some measure to their warlike weapons and demeanour; and they confidently hoped, that by defeating this force, or surrounding and cutting off their retreat^ and starving them, they should prevent all future invasions. The chiefs in the camp having previously held secret consultations among themselves, retired, by de- grees, from the Romans, and began to draw the islanders together. Caesar says, that though he was not fully apprized of their designs, he partly guessed them, from their delay in sending in the hostages promised from a distance, and from other circumstances, and instantly took measures to pro- vide for the worst. He set part of his army to repair his shattered fleet, using the materials of the vessels most injured to patch up the rest; and as the soldiers wrought with an indefatigability suit- ing the dangerous urgency of the case, he had soon a number of vessels fit for sea. He then sent to Gaul, for other materials wanting, and probably for some provisions also. Another portion of his troops he employed in foraging parties, to bring into the camp what com they could collect in the adjacent country. This supply could not have been great, for the natives had everywhere gathered in their harvest, except in one field ; and there, by lying in ambush, the Britons made a bold and bloody attack, which had well nigh proved fatal to the invaders. As one of the two legions that formed the expedition were cutting down the com in that field, Caesar, who was in his fortified camp, suddenly saw a great cloud of dust in that direc- tion. He rushed to the spot with two cohorts, leaving orders for all the other soldiers of the legion to follow as soon as possible. His arrival was very opportune, for he found the legion, which had been surprised in the corn-field, and which had suffered considerable loss, now surrounded and pressed on all sides by the cavalry and war-chariots of the British, who had been concealed in the neighbouring woods. He succeeded in bringing off the engaged legion, with which he withdrew to his intrenched camp, declining a general engage- ment for the present. Heavy rains that followed for some days, confined the Romans within their intrenchments. Meanwhile the British force of horse and foot was increased from all sides, and they gradually drew round the intrenchments. Caesar, anticipating their attack, marshalled his legions outside of the camp, and, at the proper moment, fell upon the islanders, who, he says, not being able to sustain the shock, were soon put to flight. In this victory he attaches great import- ance to a body of thirty horse, which Comius, the Atrebatian, had brought over from Gaul. The Romans pursued the fugitives as far as their stren2;th would permit ; they slaughtered many of 30 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book 1. them, set fire to some houses and villages, and then returned again to the protection of their camp. On the same day the Britons again sued for peace, and Caesar being anxious to return to Gaul as quickly as possible, " because the equinox was approaching, and his ships were leaky," granted it to them on no harder condition than that of doubling the number of hostages they had promised after their first defeat. He did not even wait for the hostages, but a fair wind springing up, he set sail at midnight, and arrived safely in Gaul. Eventually only two of the British states sent their hostages ; and this breach of treaty gave the Roman commander a ground of complaint by which to justify his second invasion. In the spring of the following year (b.c. 54) Caesar again embarked at the same Portus I tins for Britain. This time peculiar attention had been paid to the build and equipment of his fleet : he had 800 vessels of all classes, and these carried five legions and 2000 cavalry, — an invading force in all not short of 32,000 men.* At the approach of this formidable armament the natives retired in dismay from the coast, and Caesar disembarked, without opposition, at " that part of the island which he had marked out the preceding summer as being the most convenient landing-place." This was probably somewhere on the same flat between Walmer Castle and Sandwich, where he had landed the year before. Having received intelligence as to the direction in which the Britons had retired, he set out about midnight in quest of them, leaving ten cohorts, with 300 horse behind him on the coast, to guard his camp and fleet. After a hurried night-march, he came in sight of the islanders, who were well posted on some rising grounds behind a river, — probably the Stour, near Canterbury. The confederate army gallantly disputed the passage of the river with their cavalry and chariots; but being repulsed by the Roman horse, they retreated towards the woods, to a place strongly fortified both by nature and art, and which Caesar judged had been strengthened before, on occasion of some in- ternal native war ; " for all the avenues were se- cured by strong barricades of felled trees laid upon • In this calculation an allowance of 500 is made for sickness, casualtifs, and deficiencies. At this period the ia/awtry of a legion, wlien complete, amounted to 6100 men. one another." This strong-hold is supposed to have been at or near to the spot where the city of Canterbury now stands. Strong as it was, the soldiers of the seventh legion (the force that had sufiered so much the preceding campaign in the corn-field) carried it by means of a mound of earth they cast up in front of it ; and then they drove the British from the cover of the wood. The evening closed on their retreat, in which they must have suffered little loss, for Caesar, fearful of following them through a country with which he was unacquainted, strictly forbade all pursuit, and employed his men in fortifying their camp for the night. The Roman eagles were scarcely displayed the following morning, and the trumpets had hardly sounded the advance, when a party of horse brought intelligence from the coast that nearly all the fleet had been driven on shore and wrecked during the night. Commanding a necessary halt, Caesar flew to the sea-shore, whither he was fol- lowed by the legions in full retreat. The mis- fortune had not been exaggerated : forty of his ships were irretrievably lost, and the rest so da- maged that they seemed scarcely capable of repair. With his characteristic activity, he set all the carpenters of the army to work, wrote for more artisans from Gaul, and ordered the legions sta- tioned on that coast to build as many new ships as they could. Apprehensive alike of the storms of the ocean and the fierce attack of the natives, Caesar ordered that all his ships should be drawn up on dry land and inclosed within his fortified camp. Although the ancient galleys were small and light compared to our modern men-of-war, and the transports and tenders of his fleet in all pro- bability little more than sloops and barges, this was a laborious operation, and occupied the soldiers ten days and nights. Having thus secured his fleet, he set off in pursuit of the enemy, who had made a good use of his absence by increasing their army, and appointing one chief to the supreme command of it. The choice of the confederated states fell upon Cassivellaunus (his Celtic name was perhaps Caswallon), whose territories were divided from the maritime states of the river Thames, at a point which was between seventy and eighty miles from Caesar's camp on the Kentish coast. This prince had hitherto been engaged in G*LLEr.— From a Copper Coin in the British GAr.i.EV.— From a Copper Coin in the British Gai.i,et.— From a Copper Coin in the British Museum, of the time of Antony. Museum, of the time of Hadrian, M useum, ol the time ol Hadnan. Chap. T.^ CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— B.C. 55. 31 Side Elevation. ri.AN. MiJihip S«cti Elevalion of IleHd nnd Stern. SCALE OF TKN FEET. ' ' I I ~^ Roman Galley. — Taken from the Model presented to Greeuwich Hospital by Lord Anson.' almost constant wars with his neighbours, whose aifection to him must have therefore been of recent date and of somewhat doubtful continuance; but he had a reputation for skill and bravery, and the dread of the Romans made the Britons forget their quarrels for a time, unite themselves under his command, and intrust him with the whole conduct of the war. Caesar found him well posted at or near to the scene of the last battle. Cassivellaunus did not wait to be attacked, but charged the Roman cavalry with his horse supported by his chariots. Caesar says that he constantly repelled these charges, and drove the Britons to their woods and hills ; but that, after making great slaughter, ven- turing to continue the pursuit too far, he lost some men. It does not appear that the British retreated far ; and some time after these skirmishes they gave the Romans a serious check. Sallying un- expectedly from the wood, they fell upon the soldiers, who were employed as usual in fortifying the camp or station for the night, and cut up the advanced guard. Caesar sent two cohorts to their aid, but the Britons charged these in separate parties, broke through them, routed them, and then retired without loss. A military tribune was slain, — and but for the timely arrival of some fresh cohorts the conflict would have been very disastrous. Even as it was, and though Caesar covers the fact by a somewhat confused narrative, it should appear that a good part of his army was beaten on this occasion. He says that from this action, of which the whole Roman army were spectators, it was evident that his heavy-armed legions were not a fit match for the active and light-armed Britons, who The ooEstTuction of Roman galleys has been more completely investigated since Lord Anson's time ; but as thig model was prepared with (jreat care, and is opin to public inspection, we ^ive an eni{raving of it. 32 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. alwa3^s fought in detachments with a body of reserve in their rear, that advanced fresh supphes when needed, and covered and protected the forces when in retreat ; that even his cavalry could not engage without great danger, it being the custom of the Britons to counterfeit a retreat, until they had drawn the Roman horse a considerable way from the legions, when, suddenly leaping from their chariots, they charged them on foot, and, by this unequal manner of fighting rendered it equally dangerous to pursue or retire. The next day the Britons only showed small bodies on the hills at some distance from the Ro- man camp. This made Caesar believe they were less willing to skirmish with his cavalry ; but no sooner had he sent out all his cavalry to forage, supported by three legions (between horse and foot this foraging party comprised considerably more than half the forces he had with him), than the Britons fell upon them on all sides, and even charged up to the solid and impenetrable legions. The latter bold step was the cause of their ruin : the superior arms, the defensive armour, and the perfect discipline of those masses, rendered the contest too unequal ; the British warriors were repulsed, — thrown off like waves from a mighty rock, — confiision ensued, and, Caesar's cavalry and infantry charging together, utterly broke the con- federate army. The conqueror informs us that after this defeat, the auxiliary troops, which had repaired from all parts to Cassivellaunus's standard, returned severally to their own homes; and that during the rest of the campaign the enemy never again appeared against the Romans with their whole force. These severe contests had not brought Caesar far into the interior of the island ; but now he followed up Cassivellaunus, who retired, for the defence oi his own kingdom, beyond the Thames. Marching through Kent and a part of Surrey, or the beautiful country which now bears those names, the Romans reached the right bank of the Thames, at Coway- stakes, near Chertsey* in Surrey, where the river was considered fordable. The passage, however, was not undisputed : Cassivellaunus had drawn up his troops in great numbers on the opposite bank ; he had likewise fortified that bank with sharp stakes, and driven similar stakes into the bed of the river, yet so as to be concealed or covered by the water. Of these things Caesar says he was in- formed by prisoners and deserters. It should ap- pear that he overcame the obstacles raised at the ford with great ease ; he sent the horse into the • This point, like most of the other localities mentioned by Caesiu% has been the subject of rlispute. We venture to fix it where we do, on the authority of Camdon. and Mr. Gale, a writer in the Archaeo- logia, vol. i.p. 183. Thk Thamf.s at Cow ay Stakss. It is stated, upon local tradition, that the passage was made at the bend of the River. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— B.C. 54. 33 river before, ordering the foot to follow close behind them, which they did with such rapidity that, though nothing but their heads appeared above water, they were presently on the opposite bank, where the enemv could not stand their charge, but fled. The rest of his army having disbanded, Cassivel- launus now retained no other force than 4000 war- chariots, with which he harassed the Romans, always keeping at a distance from their main body, and retiring, when attacked, to woods and inacces- sible places; whither also he caused such of the inhabitants as lay on Caesar's line of march, to withdraw with their cattle and provisions. Being perfectly acquainted with the country, and all the roads and defiles, he continued to lall upon de- tached parties ; and the Romans were never safe, or masters of any ground, except in the space covered by their entrenched camp or their legions. On accoimt of these frequent surprises, Caesar would not permit his horse to forage' at any dis- tance from the legions, or to pillage and destroy the country, unless where the foot was close at hand to support them. The fatal want of union among the petty states into which the island was frittered, and the hatred some of them entertained against their former enemy Cassivellaunus, now, however, began to appear and to disconcert all that chief's measures for resistance. The Trinobantes, who dwelt in Essex and Middlesex, and who formed one of the most powerful states in those parts, sent ambas- sadors to Caesar. Of this state was Mandubratius, who had fled to Caesar into Gaul, in order to avoid the fate of his father, Imanuentius, who had held the sovereignty of the state, and whom Cassivellaunus had defeated and put to death. The ambassadors en- treated Caesar to restore their prince, who was then a guest in the Roman camp, to defend him and them against the fury of Cassivellaunus, promising, on these conditions, obedience and entire submis- sion in the name of all the Trinobantes. Caesar demanded forty hostages, and that they should supply his army with corn. The general does not confess it, but it is very probable that, through the wise measures of Cassivellaunus, the Romans were at this time sorely distressed by want of provisions. The Trinobantes delivered both the corn and the hostages, and Caesar restored to them their prince. Immediately upon this, other tribes, whom Caesar designates the Cenimagni, Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassi, also sent in their submission. Some of these people informed Caesar that he was not far from the capital of Cassivellaunus, which was situated amidst woods and marshes, and whither multitudes of the British had retired with their cattle, as to a place of safety. This town is supposed to have been near to the site of St. Alban's, and on the spot where the flourishing Roman colony of Verulamium arose many years after. Though called a town, and a capital, it appears from Caesar to have been nothing but a thick wood or labyrinth, with clusters of houses or villages scattered about it, the whole being sur- rounded by a ditch and a rampart, the latter made of mud or felled trees, or probably of both materials mixed. In many respects the towns of the Cin- galese in the interior of Ceylon, and the mode of fighting against the English practised by that people, at the beginning of the present century, resemble the British towns and the British warfare of nineteen centuries ago. Caesar soon appeared with his legions before the capital of Cassivellaunus; and he says, that though the place seemed very strong both by art and nature, he resolved to attack it in two several points. He was once more successfiil : the Britons fled to another wood, after a short stand, and the Romans took many prisoners and vast numbers of cattle. Though thus defeated in the inland districts, Cas- sivellaunus still hoped to redeem the fortunes of his country by a bold and well-conceived blow, to be struck on the sea-coast. While the events related were passing beyond the Thames, he dispatched messengers to the four princes or kings of Can- tium (Kent), to instruct them to draw all their forces together, and attack the camp and ships of the Romans hv surjirise. The Kentish Britons obeyed their instructions, but, according to Caesar, the Romans, sallying from their entrenchments, made a great slaughter of their troops, took one of the princes prisoner, and returned in safety to the camp. At the news of this reverse, the brave Cassivellaunus lost heart ; he sent ambassadors to sue for peace, and availed himself of the mediation with Caesar of Comius, the king of the Atrebatians, with whom, at one time or other, he appears to have had friendly relations. The Roman general, as we have noticed, states that the authority or influence of Comius in the island was very considerable. It would be curious to see how he exercised it in favour of his Roman patron ; but here we are left in the dark. Caesar turned a ready ear to the over- tures of Cassivellaunus, and granted him peace on such easy conditions, that some writers have been induced to believe he was heartily tired of the harassing war. For himself he only says that he was in a hurry to return to Gaul, on account of the frequent insurrections in that country. He merely demanded hostages, appointed a yearly fribute (the amount of which is nowhere named, and which was probably never paid), and charged Cassivellaunus to respect Mandubratius and the Trinobantes. Having received the hostages, he led his troops back to the Kentish coast, and crowding them into his ships as closely and quickly as he could, he set sail by night for Gaul, fearing, he says, the equinoxial storms which were now at hand. He tells us he had many prisoners ; but he certainly did not erect a fort, or leave a single cohort behind him to secure the ground he had gained in the island.* Tacitus, writing 150 years later, says distinctly, that even Julius Caesar, the first who entered Bri- tain with an army, although he struck terror into • For the preceding part of our narrative, see Cmsar de Belli) Gallico, from book iv. ch. 18, to book v.ch. 19 (inclusive). 34 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Huts in a CrNOALESE Villaoe. the islanders by a successful battle could only maintain himself on the sea- coast; — that he was a discoverer rather than a conqueror. He only saw a small portion of the island ; but the farther he got from the coast and the Belgic colonies, the more fierce and barbarous he found the natives. We have dwelt more particularly on these cam- paigns, as we have the accomplished general's own account to guide us, and as many of his details may be applied to explain the other Roman wars which followed, when there was no Caesar to de- scribe in the closet his exploits in the field. The sequel, indeed, when we must follow professional historians, who were never even in Britain, is comparatively uninteresting and monotonous. We shall, therefore, set down the great results, with- out embarrassing the reader with unnecessary de- tails ; but at this point it will be well to pause, in order to offer a few general remarks, which will equally elucidate the past and future campaigns of the Romans in our island. The contest which had thus taken place between the British bands and the famed Roman legions at a period when the discipline of those corps was most perfect, and when they were commanded by the greatest of their generals, was certainly very unequal; but less so (even without taking into account the superiority of numbers and other ad- vantages, all on the side of the invaded,) than is generally imagined and represented. A brief exa- mination of the arts and practices of war of the two contending parties may serve to explain, in a great measure, what is past, and render more in- telligible the events which are to ensue. The first striking result of such an examination is a suspi- cion, and indeed a proof, that the Britons were much farther advanced in civilization than the savage tribes to which it has been the fashion to compare them. Were this not the case, the some- what unsuccessful employment against them, of so large an army as that of Caesar, would be disgrace- ful to the Roman name. Their war-chariots, which several times produced tremendous effects on the Romans, and the use of which seems at that time to have been peculiar to the Britons, woiild of themselves prove a high degree of mecha- nical skill, and an acquaintance with several arts. These cars were of various forms and sizes, some being rude, and others of curious and even elegant workmanship. Those most commonly in use, and called Esseda, or Essedcs, by the Romans, were made to contain each a charioteer for driving, and one, two, or more warriors for fighting. They were at once strong and light; the extremity of their axles and other salient points were armed with scythes and hooks for cutting and tearing whatever fell in their way, as they were driven rapidly along. The horses attached to them were perfect in train- ing, and so well in hand, that they could be driven at speed over the roughest coui'try, and even through the woods, which then abounded in all directions. The Romans were no less astonished Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— B.C. 54. 35 at this dexterity than at the number of the chariots. The way in which the Britons brought the chariots into action, was this: at the beginning of a battle they drove about the flanks of the enemy, throw- ing darts from the cars ; and, according to Caesar, the very dread of the horses, and the noise of the rapid wheels, often broke the ranks of his legions. When they had succeeded in making an impression, and had winded in among the Roman cavalry, the warriors leaped from the cliaiiots, and fought on foot. In the meantime, the drivers re- tired with the chariots a little from the combat, taking up such a position as to favour the retreat of the warriors in case of their being overmatched. *' In this maimer," says Caesar, " they perform the part both of rapid cavalry and of steady in- fantry ; and, by constant exercise and use, they have arrived at such expertness, that they can stop their horses when at full speed, in the most steep and difficult places, turn them which way they please, run along the carriage-pole, rest on the harness, and throw themselves back into their chariots with incredible dexterity." For a long time the veteran legions of Rome could not look on the clouds of dust that announced the approach of these war- chariots without trepi- dation. The Gauls had once the same mode of fighting, and equally distressed the Romans with their war-chariots. Nearly 300 years before the invasion of Britain, when the Gauls were esta- blished in parts of Italy, and in close alliance with the Samnites, a successful charge of the Roman cavalry was repulsed, and the whole army thrown into dismay, by a mode of fighting to which they were utter strangers : " A number of the enemy," says Livy, " mounted on chariots and cars, made towards them with such a terrible noise, from the trampling of the horses and the rolling of the wheels, as affrighted the horses of the Romans, unaccustomed to such operations. By this means, the victorious cavalry were dispersed, and men and horses, in their headlong flight, were thrown in heaps to the ground. The same cause produced disorder even in the ranks of the legions : through the impetuosity of the horses, and the carriag-es they dragged through the ranks, many of the Roman soldiers in the van were trodden or bruised to death ; and the Gauls, as soon as they saw the enemy in confusion, followed up the advantage, nor allowed them breathing-time." * The use of war-cha- riots, however, seems to have fallen out of fashion among the Gauls, during the long period that had * Tit. Liv., 1. X. c. 25. HRiii>H War Chariot. Sn]K!.D. AND ^^pkars Ue LMUtheibourg. 36 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book T. intervened ; for Caesar never makes mention of them, in describing his many battles with that people on the continent. The existence of the accessories— the hooks and scythes attaclied to the wheels or axles — has been questioned, as neither Csesar, nor Tacitus, nor any early writer, with the exception of the geographer Pomponius Mela (who wrote, however, in the first century), expressly mentions them in describing the war-chariots. Weapons, answering to the description, have, however, been found, on the field of some of the most ancient battles. Between the Roman in- vasion under Caesar, and that ordered by the Em- peror Claudius, the cars or chariots of the British attracted notice, and were exhibited in Italy. They were seen in the splendid pageantry with which Caligula passed over the sea from Puteoli to Baiae, on his mole and bridge of boats. The emperor, Suetonius tells us, rode in a chariot drawn by two famous horses, and a party of his friends followed, mounted in British chariots. Probably Caesar had carried some of the native war-cars to Rome, as curiosities, just as our navigators bring the canoes of the Indians and South-Sea Islanders to England. At subsequent periods, the war-chariots of the Britons were trequently alluded to by the poets as well as historians of Rome. The ancient Britons were well provided with horses, of a small breed, but hardy, spirited, and yet docile. Their cavalry were armed with shield?, broad-swords, and lances. They were accustomed, like the Gauls, and their own chariot-men, to dis- mount, at fitting seasons, and fight on foot ; and their horses are said to have been so well trained, as to stand firm at the places where they were left, till their masters returned to them. Another com- mon practice among them was, to mix an equal number of their swiftest foot with their cavalry, each of these foot-soldiers holding by a horse's mane, and keeping pace with him in all his mo- tions. Some remains of this last custom were ob- served among the Highland clans in the last cen- tury, in the civil wars for the Pretender ; and in more modern, and regular, and scientific warfare, an advantage has often been found in mounting infantry behind cavalry, and in teaching cavalry to dismount, and do the duty of foot-soldiers. A great fondness for horses, and a skill in riding them, and breaking them in for cars and chariots, were observable in all the nations of the Celtic race. The scythe-armed cars of the Britons may be assumed as one of the many links in that chain which seems to connect them with Persia and the East, where similar vehicles were in use for many ages. The infantry of the Britons was the most nu- merous body, and, according to Tacitus, the main strength of their armies. They were very swift of foot, and expert in swimming over rivers and cross- ing fens and marshes, by which means they were enabled to make sudden attacks and safe retreats. They were slightly clad ; throwing off in battle the whole, or at least the greater part, of whatever clothing they usually wore, according to a custom which appears to have been common to all the Celtic nations. They were not encumbered with defensive armour, carrying nothing of that sort but a small light shield ; and this, added U) their swiftness, gave them, in some respects, a great advantage over the heavily-armed Romans, whose foot could never keep pace with them. This, indeed, was so much the case in the ensuing wars, that the turn of a battle was often left to depend, not on the legions, but on their barbarian auxili- aries, some of whom were as lightly equipped as the Britons themselves. In coming to their offen- sive arms, we reach a point where they were de- cidedly inferior to the Romans ; and a cause, per- haps, as principal as any other, of their invariable defeat when they came to close combat. Their swords were long and unwieldy, without points, and only meant for cutting — awkward and offence- less weapons compared to the compact, manageable, cut-and-thrust swords of their enemies, which could be used in the closed melee. But an important circumstance, which throws the advantage still more on the side of the Romans, is, that while their weapons were made of well-tempered steel, the swords and dirks of the Britons were, in all probability, only made of copper, or of copper mixed with a little tin. We are told that the swords of their neighbours, the Gauls, were made of copper, and bent after the first blow, which gave the Romans a great advantage over them. A prodigious number of warlike implements, as axes, swords, spear-heads, all made of copper, or of copper mixed with tin, and known among anti- quaries by the general name of" Celts," have been dug up in diflerent parts of our island ; but we are not aware of the discovery of any things of the sort made of iron, that can safely be referred to the manufacture of the ancient Britons. In the ab- sence of metals, they used bones and flints to tip their arrows, their spears, and lances. Heavy black stones, perforated to receive a wooden handle, served them as nlaces or battle-axes. These are the very weapons of savages ; and perhaps those which have been found in such abundance buried in the earth, are much more ancient than the period of Caesar's invasion, or were only used at that and later periods in the interior and northern parts of the country. In addition to their clumsy sword, the British infantry carried a short dirk and a spear. The spear was sometimes used as a missile weapon, having a leather thong fixed to it, and retained in the hand when thrown, in order that it might be recovered again : at the butt-end of this spear was sometimes a round hollow ball of copper, or mixed copper and tin, with pieces of metal inside, and, shaking this, they made a noise to frighten the horses when they engaged with cavalry. With the exception of the Druids, all the young men among the Britons and other Celtic nations were trained to the use of arms. Frequent hostili- ties among themselves kept them in practice, and Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— B.C. 54. 37 hunting and martial sports were among their prin- cipal occupations in their brief periods of peace. Even in tactics and stratagetics, the more difficult parts of war, they displayed very considerable talent and skill. They drew up their troops in regular order ; and if the form of a wedge was not the very best for infantry, it has been found, by the Turks and other Eastern nations, most effective for cavalry appointed to charge. They knew the im- portance of keeping a body in reserve ; and in several of their battles they showed skill and promptitude in out-flanking the enemy, and turn- ing him by the wings. Their infantry generally occupied the centre, being disposed in several lines, and in distinct bodies. These corps consisted of the warriors of one clan, commanded each by its own chieftain ; they were commonly formed in the shape of a wedge, presenting its sharp point to the enemy ; and they were so disposed, that they could readily support and relieve each other. The ca- valry and chariots were placed on the wings, but small flying parties of both manoeuvred along the front. In the rear and on their flanks they fixed their travelling chariots and their waggons, with their respective families in them, in order that those vehicles might serve as barriers to prevent attack in those directions, and that their courage might be inflamed by the presence of all who were most dear to them. Some of the native princes displayed eminent abilities in the conduct of war. According to the Roinan writers, Cassivellaunus, Caractacus, and Galgacus all formed combined movements and enlarged plans of operation, and contrived stratagems and surprises which would have done honour to the greatest captains of Greece and Rome. Their choice of ground for fighting upon was almost invariably judicious, and they availed themselves of their superior knowledge of the country on all occasions. In the laborious arts of fortifying, defending, or attacking camps, castles, and towns, they were, however, deficient. Their strongest places were surrounded only by a shallow ditch and a mud wall, while some of their towns had nothing but a parai)et of felled trees placed lengthwise. While the Roman camps, though oc- cupied only for a night, were strongly fortified, their own camps were merely surrounded by their cars and waggons,— 7a mode of defence still common among the Tartar and other nomadic tribes in Asia. But, as the Roman war proceeded, we frequently find them giving more attention to the defence of their night camps ; and some of the more perma- nent positions they took up were strengthened with deep ditches and stone walls. The armies of the ancient Britons were not divided into bodies, mixed, but distinct as a whole, consisting each of a determinate number of men recruited from different families and in different places, and commanded by appointed officers of various ranks, like the Roman legions and our modern regiments; but all the fighting-men of each particular clan or great family formed a sepa- rate band, commanded by the chieftain or head of that family. By this system, which had other dis- advantages, the command was frittered away into minute fractions. All the several clans which composed one state or kingdom were commanded in chief by the sovereign of that state ; and when two or more states formed an alliance and made war in conjunction, the king of one of these states was chosen to be generalissimo of the whole. These elections gave rise to jealousies and dissen- sions, and all through the system there were too many divisions of command and power, and too great a disposition in the wari'iors to look up only to the head of their own clan, or at furthest to the king of their own limited state. Far different from these were the thoroughly organized and inter-dependent masses of the Roman army, where- the commands were nicely defined and graduated, and the legions (each a small but perfect army in itself) acted at the voice of the consul, or its one supreme chief, like a complicated engine set in motion by its main-wheel. As long as Rome maintained her military glory, the legions were composed only of free Roman citizens, no allies or subjects of con- quered nations being deemed worthy of the honour of fighting in their ranks. Each legion was divided into horse and foot, the cavalry bearing what is considered, by modern scientific writers, a just pro- portion, and not more, to the infantry. Under the old kings a legion consisted of 3000 foot, and 300 horse ; under the consuls, of 4200 foot, and 400 horse ; but under Caesar and the emperors it amounted to 6100 foot, and 126 horse. Like our regiments, the legions were distinguished from each other by their number ; being called the first, the second, the third, &c. In the early ages of the republic they had no more than four or five legions kept on foot, but these were increased with increase of conquest and territory, and under the empire they had as many as twenty-five or thirty legions, even in time of peace. The infantry of each legion was divided into ten cohorts. The first cohort, which had the custody of the eagle and the post of honour, was 1105 strong; the re- maining nine cohorts had 555 men each. Instead of a long, awkward sword of copper, every soldier had a short, manageable, well tem- pered Spanish blade of steel, sharp at both edges as at the point; and he was always instructed to thrust rather than cut, in order to inflict the more fatal woimds, and expose his own body the less. In addition to a lighter spear, the legionary carried the formidable jjilum, a heavy javelin six feet long, terminating in a strong triangular point of steel, eighteen inches long. For defensive armour they wore an open helmet with a lofty crest, a breast-plate or coat of mail, greaves on their legs, and a large, strong shield on their left arms. This shield or buckler, altogether unlike the small, round, basket-looking thing used by the Britons, was four feet high, and two and a half broad ; it was framed of a light but firm wood, covered with 38 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Roman General, accompanied by Standard Bearers and common Leoiokaries, landing from a Bridge of Boats. Drawn from a Bas-i-elief on the Column of Trajan. bull's hide, and strongly guarded with bosses or plates of iron or bronze. The cavalry of a legion was divided into ten troops or squadrons ; the first squadron, as destined to act with the strong first cohort, consisting of 132 men, whilst the nine remaining squadrons had only 66 men each. Their principal weapons were a sabre and a javelin ; but at a later period they bor- rowed the use of the lance and iron mace or hammer from foreigners. For de'"ensive armour they had a helmet, a coat of mail, and an oblong shield. The legions serving abroad were generally attended by auxiliaries raised among the provinces and conquests of the empire, who for the most part retained their national arms and loose modes of fighting, and did all the duties of light troops. Their number varied according to circumstances, being seldom much inferior to that of the legions ; but in Britain, where mention of the barbarian auxiliaries constantly occurs, and where, as we have intimated, they performed services for which the legions were not calculated, they seem to have been at least as numerous as the Roman sol- diers. Three legions, say the historians, were competent to the occupation of Britain ; but to this force of 20,418 we must add the auxiliaries, which will swell the number to 40,956. Gauls, Bel- gians, Batavians, and Germans were the hordes that accompanied the legions in our island. Such were the main features and appointments of the Roman legions in their prime, and such they continued during their conflict with the Bri- tons, and long after all the southern parts of our island were subjugated by their might. They were afterwards sadly diminished in numbers and in consideration. They lost their discipline ; the men threw off their defensive armour as too heavy for them to wear ; changes were made in their weapons ; and, not to notice many intermediate variations, a legion, at the final departure of the Romans from Britain, consisted only of from 2500 to 3000 indifferently armed men. After the departure of Caesar, Britain was left undisturbed by foreign arms for nearly one hundred years. But few of the events that happened during that long interval have been transmitted to us. We can, however, make out in that dim obscurity that the country, and more particularly those maritime parts of it occupied by the Belgoe, and facing the coast of Gaul, made considerable advances in civilization, borrowing from the Gauls, with whom they were in close communication, some of those useful and elegant arts which that people had learned from the Roman conquerors, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 43. 39 Charok of Roman I.vfantby. — From the Column of Trajan. now peaceably settled among them. Besides their journeys into Gaul, which are well proved, it is supposed that during this long interval not a few of the superior class of Britons, from time to time, crossed the Alps, and found their way to Rome, where the civilization and arts of the world then centred. This progress, whatever it was, does not appear to have been accompanied by any improvement in the political system of the country, or Ijy any union and amalgamation of the disjointed parts or states. Internal wars continued to be waged ; and this dis- union of the Britons, their constant civil dissen- sions, and the absence of any steady system of defence, laid them open to the Romans whenever those conquerors should think fit to revisit their fair island and renew the struggle in earnest. That time at length arrived. In the ninety- seventh year after Caesar's second expedition (a.d. 43), the Emperor Claudius* resolved to seize the island, and Aulus Plautius, a skilful commander, landed with four complete legions, which, with the cavalry and auxiliaries, must have made above 50,000 men. The Britons, who had made no pre- • Pomponius Mela, who wrote m the time of Claudius, expresses a hope that the success of the Roman arms will soon make the island and its savage inhabitants better known. parations, at first offered no resistr>nce ; and when they took the field under Caractacus and Togodum- nus, sons of the deceased Cunobelinus, who is sup- posed to have been king of the Trinobantes, they were thoroughly defeated in the inland country by the Romans. Some states or tribes, detaching themselves fr(jm the confederacy, then submitted'; and Aulus Plautius, leaving a garrison in those parts which included Gloucestershire and portions of the contiguous counties, followed up his victories beyond the river Severn, and made considerable progress in subduing the inhabitants. After sus- taining a great defeat on the right bank of the Severn, the Britons retreated eastward to some marshes on the Thames, where, availing themselves of the nature of the ground, they made a desperate stand, and caused the Romans great loss. In these campaigns Plautius made great use of his light- armed barbarian auxiliaries (chiefly Germans), many of whom, on this particular occasion, were lost in the deep bogs and swamps. Though Togodumnus was slain, it does not appear that the natives were defeated in this battle; and Plautius, seeing their de- termined spirit, withdrew his army to the south of the Thames to await the arrival of the Emperor Clau- dius, whose presence and fresh forces he earnestly solicited. Claudius embarked with reinforcements 40 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. at Ostia at t\ie mouth of the Tyber, landed at Massiha (Marseilles), and proceeded through Gaul to Britain. It is said that some elephants were included in the force he brought, but we hear nothing of those animals after his arrival in the island. There is some confusion as to the im- mediate effect of the Emperor's arrival, the two brief historians* of the events contradicting each other; but we believe that, without fighting any battles, the pusillanimous Claudius accompanied his army on its fresh advance to the north of the Thames, was present at the taking of Camalodu- num, the capital of the Trinobantes, and that then he received the proiFered submission of some of the states, and returned to enjoy an easily-earned triumph at Rome, whence he had been absent altogether somewhat less than six months. Claudius. From a Copper Coin in the British Museum. Coin of Claudius, representing liis British triumph. From the British Muieura. While Vespasian, his second in command, who was afterwards emperor under the same name, employed himself in subduing Vectis (the Isle of Wight) and the maritime states on the southern and eastern coasts, Aulus Plautius prosecuted a long and, in good part, an undecisive warfare with the inland Britons, who were still commanded by « Dio Cass.(in the abridgment by Xiphilinus), lib.lx. Suetonius in C. Claud, c. xvii. Caractacus. Between them both, Plautius and Vespasian thoroughly reduced no more of the island than what lies to the south of the Thames, with a narrow strip on the left bank of that river ; and when Plautius was recalled to Rome, even these territories were over-run and thrown into confusion by the Britons. Ostorius Scapula, the new propraetor, on his arrival in the island (a.d. 50), found the affairs of the Romans in an all but hopeless state ; their allies, attacked and plundered on all sides, were falling from them, the boldness of the unsubdued states was rapidly increasing, and the people they held in subjection were ripe for revolt. But Ostorius, who had probably brought reinforcements into the island, was equal to this emergency : knowing how much depends on the beginning of a campaign, he put himself at the head of the light troops, and advanced against the marauding enemy by rapid marches. The Britons, who did not expect he would open a campaign in the winter, were taken by surprise, and defeated with great loss. It should appear from Tacitus that Ostorius at once recovered all the country, as far as the Severn, that had been conquered, or rather temporarily occupied, by his predecessor Plautius ; for the great historian tells us, imme- diately after, that he erected a line of forts on the Sabrina (Severn) and the Antona (Nene) ; but it is more probable that this advance was made by a series of battles, rather than by one hasty blow struck in the winter by the light division of his army. Ostorius was the first to cover and pro- tect the conquered territory by forts and lines ; the line he now drew cut off from the rest of the island nearly all the southern and south-eastern parts, which included the more civilized states who had either submitted or become willing allies, or been conquered by Plautius and Vespasian. It was by the gradual advance of lines like these that the Romans brought the whole of England south of the Tyne, under subjection. Ostorius, also, adopted the cautious policy of disarming all such of the Britons within the line of forts as he suspected. This measure, always odious, and never to be carried into effect without shameful abuses of power, particularly exasperated those Britons within the line, who, like the Iceni, had not been con- quered, but, of their own good and free will, had become the allies of the Romans. ■ Enemies could not treat them worse than such friends, — the sur- render of arms was the worst consequence that could result from defeat in a war which they had not yet essayed. It would also naturally occur to them that if the Romans were permitted to coop them up within military posts, and sever them from the rest of the island, their independence, whether unarmed or armed, was completely sa- crificed. The Iceni, a brave tribe, who are supposed to have dwelt in Norfolk and Suffolk, took up arms, formed a league with their neighbours, and chose their ground for a decisive battle. They were beaten by Ostorius, after having fought obstinately Chap. I.J CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 50. 41 to the last and given signal proofs of courage. After the defeat of the Iceni and their allies, the Romans marched beyond their line of demarcation against a people called the Cangi, and, Tacitus says, got within a short march of that sea that lies between Britain and Ireland. From the pursuit of this timid enemy, Ostorius was recalled by a rising of the Brigantes, who occupied Yorkshire, with parts of Lancashire and the adjoining counties. Having subdued these in their turn, and drawn a camp and fixed a colony of veterans among them, Ostorius marched rapidly against the Silures, — the inhabitants of South Wales, — the fiercest and most obstinate enemies the Romans ever encountered in South Britain. To their natural ferocity, says Tacitus, these people added the courage which they now derived from the presence of Caractacus. His valour, and the various turns of his fortune, had spread the fame of this heroic chief throughout the island. His knowledge of the country, his ad- mirable skill in the stratagems of war, were great advantages ; but he could not hope, with inferior forces, to beat a well-disciplined Roman army. He therefore retired to the territory of the Ordo- vices, which seems to have included within it nearly all North Wales. Having drawn thither to his standard all who considered peace with the Romans as another word for slavery, he resolved to wait firmly the issue of a battle. According to the great historian, he chose his field with admirable art. It was rendered safe by steep and craggy hills. In parts where tiie mountains opened and the easy acclivity afforded an asoeat, he raised a rampart of massy stjnes. A river which oft'ered no safe ford flowed between him and the enemy, and a part of his forces showed themselves in front of his ram- parts. As the Romans approached, the chieftains of the confederated British clans rushed along the ranks exhorting their men, and Caractacus animated the whole, exclaiming, — " This day must decide the fate of Britain. The era of liberty or eternal bondage begins from this hour ! Remember your brave ancestors who drove the great Caesar himself from these shores, and preserved their freedom, their property, and the persons and honour of their wives and children!" There is a lofty hill in Shrop- shire, near to the confluence of the rivers Coin and Teme, which is generally believed to be the scene of the hero's last action. Its ridges are furrowed by trenches and still retain fragments of a loose stone rampart, and the hill for many centuries has been called by the -people Caer-Caradoc, or the castle or fortified place of Caradoc, supposed to be the Bri- tish name of Caractacus. Ostorius was astonished at the excellent arrangement and spirit he saw, but his numbers, discipline, and superior arms once more gained him a victory. Tacitus says that the Britons, having neither breast-plates nor helmets, could not maintain the conflict, — that the better Roman swords and spears made dreadful havoc, — that the victory was complete. Caractacus escaped from the carnage ; but his wife and daughter were taken prisoners, and his brothers surrendered BiiiTisH Camp at Caek-Caraddc. — From Roy's Military Antiquities, 42 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. soon after the battle. The hero himself did not, however, escape long, for having taken refuge with his stepnaother, Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, that heartless woman caused him to be put in chains, and delivered up to the Romans. From the camp of Ostorius he was carried, with his wife and all his family, to the foot of the Em- peror's throne. All Rome — all Italy — weie im- patient to gaze on the indomitable Briton, who for nine years had bidden defiance to the masters of the world. His name was everywhere known, and he was everywhere received with marked respect. In the presence of Claudius, bis friends and family quailed and begged for mercy ; he alune was superior to misfortune : his speech was manly without being insolent, — his countenance still un- Caractacus at Rome.— Fuseli altered not a symptom of fear appearing — no sorrow, no mean condescension ; he vvas great and dignified even in ruin. This magnanimous be- haviour no doubt contributed to procure him milder treatment than the Roman conquerors usually bestowed on captive princes ; his chains and those of his family were instantly struck off. At this crisis Tacitus leaves him, and his subsequent his- tory is altogether unknown. Their sanguinary defeat and the loss of Ca- ractacus did not break the spirit of the Silures. They fell upon the Romans soon after, broke up their fortified camp, and prevented them from erecting a line of forts across their country. The prefect of the camp, with eight centurions and the bravest of his soldiers, was slain ; and, but for the arrival of reinforcements, the whole detachment would have been sacrificed. A foraging-party, and the strong detachments sent to Its support, were routed ; this forced Ostorius to bring his legions into action, but, even with his whole force, his success was doubtful and the loss of the Silures very inconsiderable. Continual and most harassing attacks and surprises followed, till at length Os- torius, tlie victor of Caractacus, sunk under the fatigue and vexation, and expired, to the joy of the Britons, who boasted that though he had not fallen in battle, it was still their war which had brought him to the grave. The country of the Silures, in- tersected by numerous and rapid rivers, heaped into mountains, with winding and narrow defiles, and covered with forests, became the grave of many other Romans ; and it was not till the reign of Vespasian, and more than twenty years after the death of Ostorius, that it was conquered by Julius Frontinus. Chap. I.J CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 59. 43 For some time tlie Roman power in Britain was stationary, or, at most, it made very little progress under Aulus Didius and Veranius, the immediate successors of Ostorius. Indeed, under these go- vernors, the Emperor Nero, who had succeeded his father Claudius, is said to have seriously entertained the thought of withdrawing the troops and abandon- ing the island altogether, — so profitless and un- certain seemed the Roman possession of Britain. But the next governor, Paulinus Suetonius, an officer of distinguished merit (a.d. 59 — 61), revived the spirit of the conquerors. Being well aware that the island of Mona, now Anglesey, was the chief seat of the Druids, the reftige place of the defeated British warriors and of the disaffected generally, he resolved to subdue it. In order to facilitate his approach, he ordered the constniction of a number of flat-bottomed boats ; in these he trans- ported his infantry over the strait which divides the island from the main (the Menai), while the ca- valry were to find their way across, partly by ford- ing and partly by swimming. The Britons' added the terrors of their superstition to the force of their arms fur the defence of this sacred island. " On the opposite shore," says Tacitus, " there stood a wildly-diversified host : there were armed men in dense array, and women running among them, who, in dismal dresses and with dishevelled hair, like furies, carried flaming torches. Around were Druids, pouring forth curses, lifting up their hands to heaven, and striking terror, by the novelty of their appearance, into the hearts of the Roman soldiers, who, as if their limbs were paralyzed, ex- posed themselves motionless to the blows of the enemy. At last, aroused by the exhortatior.s of their leader, and stimulating one another to despise a frantic band of women and priests, they make their onset, overthrow their foe?, and burn them in the fires which they themselves had kindled for others. A garrison was afterwards placed there among the conquered, and the groves sacred to their cruel superstition, were cut down." But while Suetonius was engaged in securing the sacred island, events took place in his rear which went far to commit the safety of the entire empire of the Romans in Britain. His attack on the Druids and the grove of Mona could not fail to exasperate all the British tribes that clung to their ancient worship ; other and recent causes of provo- cation were particular to certain of the states. The Romans, in the colonies they had planted in the island, indulged too freely in what are called the rights of conquest : they treated the Britons with cruelty and oppression ; they drove them from their houses, and adding insult to wrong, called them by the opprobrious names of slaves and captives. In these acts the veterans or superiors were actively seconded by the common soldiery, — a class of men who, in the words of Tacitus, are by their habits of life trained to licentiousness. The conquerors, too, had introduced priests of their own creed ; and these, •' with a pretended zeal for religion, devoured the substance of the land." Boadicea, widow of king Prasutagus, and now queen o/ the Iceni, pro- bably because she remonstrated against the forcible seizure of the territory her husband bequeathed her, or possibly because she attempted to resist the Romans in their plunder, was treated with the utmost barbarity : Catus, the procurat ,r, caused her to be scourged, her daughters to be violated in her presence, and the relations of her deceased husband to be reduced to slavery. Her unheard-of wrongs, the dignity of her birth, the energy of her charac- ter, made Boadicea the proper rallying point ; and immediately an extensive armed league entrus-ted her with the supreme command. Boadicea's own subjects were joined by the Trinobantes ; and the neighbouring states, not as yet broken into a slavish submission, engaged in secret coimcils to stand forward in the cause of national liberty. They were all encouraged by the absence of Sueto- nius, and thought it no difficult enterprise to over- run a colony undefended by a single fortification. Tacitus says (and the statement is curious, consider- ing their recent and uncertain tenure) that tlie Roman governors had attended to improvements of taste and elegance, but neglected the useful, — that they had embellished the province, but taken no pains to put it in a state of defence. The storm first burst on the colony of Camalodunum, which was laid waste with fire and sword, a legion which marched to its relief being cut to pieces. Catus, the procurator, terrified at the fury his own enor- mities had mainly excited, fled, and effected his escape into Gaul On receiving the news of these disasters, Suetonius hurried across the Menai strait, and marching through the heart of the country came to London, which city, though not yet digni- fied with the name of a Roman colony, was a popu- lous, trading, and prosperous place. He soon fimnd he could not maintain that important town, and therefore determined to evacuate it, in order to secure the rest of the provinces. The inhabitants, who foresaw the fate of the fair town, implored him with tears to change his plan, but in vain. The signal for the march was given, the legions defiled through the gates, but all the citizens who chose to follow their eagles were taken under their protec- tion. They had scarcely cleared out from London when the Britons entered : of all those who from age, or weakness, or the attractions of the spot, had thought proper to remain behind, scarcely one escaped. The inhabitants of Verulamium were in like manner utterly annihilated, and, the carnage still spreading, no fewer than 10,000 Romans and their confederates fell in the course of a few days. The infuriated insurgents made no prisoners, gave no quarter, but employed the gibbet, the fire, and the cross, without distinction of age or sex. Suetonius, having received reinforcements which made his army amount to about 10,000 men, all highly disciplined, chose an advantageous field, and waited the battle. The Britons were also rein- forced, and from all quarters : Tacitus says they were an incredible multitude ; but their ranks were swelled and weakened h-n women and children. 44 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. IDICKA HAKA.NOUINO THE BRITISH TklBEIi. — Stotliaid. They were the assailants, and attacked the Romans in the front of their strong position. Previously to the first charge, Boadicea, mounted in a war-chariot, with her long yellow hair stream- ing to her feet, with her two injured daughters beside her, drove through the ranks, and harangued the tribes or nations, each in its turn.* She re- minded them that she was not the first woman that had led the Britons to battle ; she spoke of her own irreparable wrongs, of the wrongs of her people and all their neighbours ; and said whatever was most calculated to spirit them against their proud and licentious oppressors. The Britons, however, were defeated with tremendous loss ; and the wretched Boadicea put an end to her existence by taking poison. As if not to be behind the barba- rity of those they emphatically styled barbarians, the Romans committed an indiscriminate massacre, visiting with fire and sword not only the lands of those who had joined the revolt, but of those who were thought to have wavered in their allegiance. Tacitus estimates the number of the Britons who were thus destroyed at 80,000 ; and in the train of war and devastation followed famine and disease. * Dio lias described her costume as beine a plaited tunic of various colours, a chain of );uld round her waist, and a Ion;; mantle over all. Dio Nit: apud Xiphil. But the despondence of sickness and the pangs of hunger could not induce them to submit; and though Suetonius received important reinforcements from the continent (acording to Tacitus, by the directions of the emperor Nero, 2000 legionary soldiers, 8 auxiliary cohorts, and 1000 horse, were sent to him from Germany), and retained the com- mand some time longer, he left the island without finishing this war ; and notwithstanding his victo- ries over the Druids and Boadicea, his immediate successors were obliged to relapse into inactivity, or merely to stand on the defensive, without at- tempting the extension of their dominions. Some fifteen or sixteen years after the departure of Suetonius the Romans recommenced their for- ward movements, and (a.d. 15 — 78) Julius Fron- tinus at last subdued the Silures. This general was succeeded by Cnaeus Julius Agricola, who was fortunate, as far as his fame is regarded, in having for his son-in-law the great Tacitus, the partial and eloquent recorder of his deeds. Exaggeration and favour apart, however, Agricola appears to have had a skill in the arts both of peace and war. He had served under Suetonius during the Boadicean war ; he was beloved by his army, and well ac- quainted with the country ; and now, before he left the supreme command, he completed the conquest Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 79. 45 of South Britain, and showed the victorious eagles of Rome as far north as the Grampian hills. One of his first operations, which proves with what tenacity the British held to their own, was the re- conquest of Mona; for scarcely had Suetonius turned his hack when they repossessed themselves of that island. Having made this successful be- ginning, and also chastised the Ordovices, who had cut a division of cavalry to pieces, he endeavoured by mild measiires to endear himself to the acknow- ledged provincials of Rome, and to conciliate the British tribes generally, by acts of kindness. *' For," says Tacitus," the Britons willingly supply our armies with recruits, pay their taxes without a murmur, and they perform all the services of go- vernment with alacrity, provided they have no reason to complain of oppression. When injured, tlieir resentment is quick, sudden, and impatient : they are conquered, not spirit-broken ; they may be reduced to obedience, not to slavery." * At the same time Agricola endeavoured to sub- due their fierceness and change their erratic habits, by teaching them some of the useful arts, and ac- customing them to some of the luxuries of civilized life. He persuaded them to settle in towns, to build comfortable dwelling-houses, to raise halls and temples. It was a capital part of his policy to establish a system of education, and give to the sons of the leading British chiefs a tincture of polite letters. He praised the talents of the pupils, and already saw them, by the force of their natural genius, outstripping the Gauls, who were distin- guished for their aptitude and abihties. Thus, by degrees, the Britons began to cultivate the beauties of the Roman language, which they had before disdained, to wear the Roman toga as a fashionable part of dress, and to indulge in the luxuries of baths, porticos, and elegant banquets. In the second year of his government (a.d. 79), Agricola advanced into the north-western parts of Britain, and partly by force and more by clemency, brought several tribes to submission. These are not named by Tacitus, but they probably dwelt in the heart of the country to the east of the Ordovices and the Silures. Wherever he gained a district he erected fortifications composed of castles and ramparts. In his third campaign (a.d. 80) Agricola led his army still further north ; but the line of march, and the degree of progress made in it, are not easily ascertained. The outlines presented to us by Tacitus are vague and indistinct, which may be ascribed both to the generality of that writer's lan- guage, and to the limits of his information. It is the opinion of a late writer,* however, that Agricola, setting out from Mancunium, the Man- chester of present times, led his army towards the north-western coasts, and not towards the north-eastern, as is commonly stated ; and that after traversing parts of I^ancashire, Westmoreland, and Cumberland, he came to the Taw, which this writer contends was not the river Tay, but the Sol- • Chalmers, Caledonia. way Frith. The 7a«, he says (the Taus of Taci- tus) was a British word, signifying an estuary, or any extending water ; it might equally imply the Solway, the Tay, or any other estuary. Besides, it was the plan of this cautious general, it is argued, to advance, by degrees, and fortify the country as he advanced ; and we accordingly find him spend- ing the remainder of this season in building a line of forts, in the most convenient situations for keep- ing possession of the territory he had gained. The raising of a part, if not of the whole of that ram- part drawn right across the island, from the Sol- way to near the mouth of the Tyne, and called Agricola's Wall, is supposed to have taken place in this year. It must be confessed, however, that the tenor of Tacitus's narrative, and some of his expressions in particular, require considerable straining before we can reconcile them with this account. In the first place, it is to be observed, that he speaks of Agricola's march to the Taus in his third summer, as merely an inroad, the effects of which were to discover the country, to lay it waste, and to strike terror into the inhabit- ants. It appears to be clear that the occupation of it was not at that time attempted or thought of. Then, when the historian proceeds to relate the operations of the next campaign, he expressly in- forms us that the country which Agricola employed this fourth summer in taking possession of and fortifying, was that which he had thus in the pre- ceding summer overrun. No words are used which can imply that he penetrated into any new country in his fourth compaign ; the statement dis- tinctly is, that he only occupied and secured what he had already surveyed and laid waste. According to the view, however, which supposes him not till now to have ever been beyond the Sol- way, his fourth summer (a.d. 81) was employed in exploring and overrunning the country extending from that arm of the sea to the Friths of Clyde and Forth, and in securing, as usual, the advance he had thus made. Tacitus describes the place where the waters of the Glotta and Bodotria (the Friths of Clyde and Forth) are prevented from joining only by a narroAV neck of land, and tells us, that Agricola drew a chain of forts across that isthmus. These forts are supposed to have stood in the same line where Lollius Urbicus afterwards erected his more compact rampart, and not far from the mo- dern canal which connects the two estuaries. But in making this advance, Agricola seems to have neglected the great pr(;montory of Galloway, which lay between the Solway and the Clyde, and was then occupied by the Novantae, and, in part, by the Selgovae and Damnii ; we mean more parti- cularly the country now included in Wigton, Kirk- cudbright, Dumfries, and Ayrshire. In his fifth campaign (a.d. 82), therefore, he thought it pru- dent to subdue these tribes, who, in the advance he contemplated for the next year beyond the Frith of Forth, would, from their western position, have been in his rear. He accordingly invaded " that part of Britain," says Tacitus, " which is opposite 46 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. to Ireland," being the whole extent of Galloway ; and, to do this, he is supposed to have sailed from Kilbride Loch, in Cumberland and on the Solway, and to have landed on the estuary of Locher. * From the Galloway coast he saw the distant hills of Ireland ; and the sight is said tj have suggested the idea of a fresh invasion, to which, moreover, he was incited by an Irish chieftain, who, being ex- pelled from his native country, had taken refuge with the Roman commander. Having, after va- rious engagements, cleared the south-west of Scot- land as far as his fortified works on the Frith of Clyde, he seems to have put the mass of his army into winter quarters along the line he had drawn from that estuary to the Frith of Forth, so as to have them ready for next year's campaign. In his sixth year (a.d. 83), Agricola resolved to extend his conquests to the north-east, beyond the Frith of Forth. His fleet had already surveyed the coasts and harbours, and his naval officers showed him the most commodious passage, — at Inchgarvey, as it is supposed, — where he seems to have been met by a part of his fleet, and wafted over to the ad- vancing point in Fife, now called Northferry. f Other writers, however, suppose that he marched along the southern side of the Forth, to a point where the river was narrow and fordable, and crossed it somewhere near Stirling. It is possible that both courses may have been adopted by dif- ferent divisions of the troop?. On the north side of the Forth the troops were attended and sup- ported by the ships ; so that their march must have been along the east-coast. The fleet kept so near the shore, that the mariners frequently landed and encamped with the land forces — each of these bodies entertaining the other with marvellous tales of what they had seen and done in these unknown seas and regions. J Having crossed the Frith of Forth, Agricola found himself, for the first time, fairly engaged with the real Caledonians — a people, at the least, as fierce and brave as any he had hitherto con- tended with. They were not taken by surprise, nor did they wait to be attacked. Descending from the upper country, as Agricola advanced into Fife, strong bands of them fell upon the new Roman forts on the isthmus between the Forth and Clyde, which had been left behind without sufficient de- fence. Soon after, they made a night attack on the ninth legion, one of the divisions of the main army, and nearly succeeded in cutting it to pieces, in spite of the strong camp in which it was in- trenched. This camp was probably situated at Loch Ore, about two miles to the south of Loch Leven, where ditches and other traces of it are still seen. In a general battle, however, to which this nocturnal attack led, the Caledonians were beaten ; and, without any other successful exploit, the Ro- mans wintered north of the Frith of Forth, in Fife, where their fleet supplied them with provision?, and kept open their communications with the forts in the south. The Caledonians, no way dispirited, * Chalmers's Caledonia fid. JTacit. Vit Agric. chap. xxv. mustered all their clans for the next summer's cam- paign, and submitted to the supreme command of Galgacus, who ranks with Cassivellaunus and Caractacus, as one of the heroes of the Britisli wars. At the opening of his seventh and last campaign (a.d. 84), when Agricola moved forward, he found the enemy, to the number of 30,000, posted on the acclivities of Mons Gramyius, determined to op- pose his progress in a general battle. The position of the Caledonians on this occasion, and the field of the great battle, although they have been much dis- puted, seem to admit of being fixed on very pro- bable grounds. From the nature of the country, Agricola would direct his line of march by the course of the Devon, would turn to the right from Glen-Devon, through the opening of the Ochil hills, along the course of the rivulet which forms Glen-Eagles, leaving the Braes of Ogilvie on his left. He would then pass between Blackford and Auchterarder, towards the Grampians (or Gran-Pen of the British, meaning the head or chief ridge or summit), which he would see before him as he de- filed from the Ochils. An easy march would then bring him to the Moor of Ardoch, at the roots of the Grampians, where there are very evident signs of ancient conflicts. The large ditch of a Roman camp can still be traced for a considerable dis- tance ; weapons, both British and Roman, have been dug up ; and on the hill above Ardoch Moor, are two enormous heaps of stones, called Cani- wochel, and Carnlee — probably the sepulchral cairns of the Caledonians who fell in the battle.* The host of Galgacus fought with great obsti- nacy and bravery ; but they were no more able to resist the disciplined legions of Rome in a pitched battle, than their brethren the southern Britons had been. Tliey were defeated, and pursued with great loss ; and the next day nothing was seen in front of the Roman army but a silent and deserted country, and houses involved in smoke and flame. Tacitus relates that some of the flying natives, after tears and tender embraces, killed their wives and children, in order to save them from slavery and the Romans. In the battle the Caledonians used war-chariots, like the southern Britons ; and the Roman writer mentions their broadswords and small targets, which remained so long after the pe- culiar arms of the Highlanders. The victory of Agricola, however valueless in its results, was com- plete ; and, though Tacitus does not record his death on the field, he speaks no more of the brave Galgacus. In the course of these two campaigns north of the Forth the Romans seem to have derived an un- common degree of assistance from their fleet, which was probably much better appointed and com- manded than on any former occasion. After de- feating Galgacus, Agricola sent the ships from the Frith of Tay to make a coasting voyage to the north, which may very properly be called a • Chalmers's Caledonia, b. l.ch.iii. Roy's Military Antiquities, plate 10. Stobie'b Map of Perth. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 84. 47 voyage of discovery ; for though nearly a century and a half had passed since Caesar's invasions, the Romans were not yet quite certain that Britain was an island, but thought it might have joined the European continent either at the extreme north or north-east, or at some other, to them, unknown point. Agricola's fleet doubled the promontory of Caithness and Cape Wrath, ran down the western coast from the end of Scotland to the Land's End in Cornwall, then turning to the east, arrived safe at the Trutulensian harbour (supposed to be Sand- wich), and sailing thence along the eastern coast, returned with glory to the point from which it had started, having thus, according to Tacitus, made the first certain discovery that Britain was an island. The fears and imagination of the mariners were no doubt much excited during this periplus ; and Tacitus, who probably heard the recital from his father-in-law AgTicola, and some of the officers of the fleet, was not proof against exaggeration. He *^ells us that the cluster of islands called the Orca- des, till then wholly unknown, was added to the Roman empire (he omits all mention of the Hebri- des) ; that Thule, which had lain concealed in gloom and eternal snows, was seen by the navi- gators, and that the sea in those parts was a sluggish mass of stagnated water, hardly yielding to the stroke of the oar, and never agitated by winds and storms* Agricola did not keep his army, this second winter, north of the Friths ; but withdra\ying them by easy marches, put his troops in cantonments behind his works on the isthmus, if not behind those on the Solway and Tyne. Soon after this he was recalled from his command by the jealous, tyrannical Domitian. There is no evidence that Agricola left any garrison on the north of the Frith of Forth ; and it appears probable that most of the forts thrown up in the passes of the Grampians to check the incursions of the Caledonians, remains of which still exist at Coupar-Angus, Keithock, Harefaulds, Invergowrie, and other places, were either temporary encampments made on his march northwards, or were erected at a later period by the emperor Severus, and never maintained by the Romans for any length of time. The great diffi- culty in these regions was not the act of advancing, but that of remaining; and the poverty of the country was, no doubt, as good a defence as the valour of its inhabitants. It was under Agricola that the Roman dominion in Britain reached its utmost permanent extent ; for a few hurried marches, made at a later period, farther into the north of Caledonia, are not to be coimted as conquests or acquisition of territory. For the long period of thirty years the island re- mained so tranquil that scarcely a single mention of its affairs occurs in the Roman annals ; and we need scarcely remark that, as history has usually been written, the silence of historians is one of the best proofs of a nation's happiness. • Vit. Ai»ric. cli. x, and xxxviii. Hadriam. From a Copper Coin in the British Museum. Copppr Coin of Hadrian, from one in the Urili.-h Museum. But in the reign of Hadrian* the Romans were attacked all along their northern frontiers by the Caledonians, and the whole state of the island was so disturbed as to demand the presence of that energetic emperor (a.d. 120). The conquests of Agricola north of the Tyne and Solway were lost, his ad- vanced line of forts between the Forth and the Clyde swept away, and Hadrian contented himself, without either resigning or reconquering all that territory, with raising a new rampart (much stronger than that drawn by Agricola) between the Solway Frith and the German Ocean. Perhaps it would have been v.'ise in the Romans to have kept to this latter line ; but in the following reign of Antoninus Pius (a.d. 138), the governor of Britain, LoUius Ur-i- cus, advanced from it, drove the barbarians before him, and again fixed the Roman frontier at the isthmus between the Clyde and Forth, where he. erected a strong rampart on the line of Agricola's forts. The praetentura or rampart of Lollius • In a general description of the Roman empire, under Trajan, the immediate predecessor of Hadrian, Appian says that the emperor possessed more than one-half of Britain, that he noglected the rest of the island as useless, and derived no profit from the part he pos- sessed. 48 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Urbicus consisted of a deep ditch, and an earthen wall raised on a stone foundation. There were twenty-one forts, at inter pals, along the line, which, Antoninus Pius. From a Copper Coin in the Britibh Miiscam. Copper Coin of Antoninus Pius, commemorative of his victori<>« in Britain, from one in the British Museum. The earliest figure of Britannia on a Roman Coin, from a Cojiixr Coin of Antoninus Pius, in the British Museum. from one extremity to the other, measured ahout thirty-one miles. A military road, as a necessary appendage, ran within the rampart, affording an easy communication from station to station. The opposite points are fixed at Caer-ridden on the Forth, and Dunglas on the Clyde. The works DuNTOCHER Bridge. On the line of Graham's Dyke, said in the neighbourhood to have been a Roman work, bnt conjectured by Roy to have h?pn erected at 8 later but very distant period, and of the stones from the wall of Urbicus. The bridge is over Duutocher Burn wliio ,> (ails into .he Clyde. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A. D. 121. 49 appear to have been finished about a.d. 140 ; and, notwithstanding the perishable materials, the mound can be traced after the lapse of seventeen centuries. Among the people, whose traditions have always retained some notion of its original destination, it is called Graeme's or Graham's Dyke. Inscribed stones have been discovered there, record- ing that the 2nd legion, and detachments from the 6th and the 20tb legions, with some auxiliaries, were employed 'upon the works.* It had been the boast of the Romans, even from the time of Agricola, that this fortified line was to cover and protect all the fertile territories of the south, and to drive the enemy as it were into an- other island, barren and barbarous like themselves. But the northern tribes would not so understand it : in the reign of Commodus (a.d. 183) they again broke through this barrier, and swept over the country which lay between it and the wall of Hadrian, and which became the scene of several sanguinary battles with the Romans. About the same time a mutinous spirit declared itself among the legions in Britain, and symptoms were every- where seen of that decline in discipline and mili- tary virtue which led on rapidly to the entire disso- lution of the Roman empire. Shortly after, the succession to the empire was disputed with Severus by Clodius Albinus, the governor of Britain. The unequal contest was decided by a great battle in the South of France ; but as the pretender Albinus had drained the island of its best troops, the northern tribes took that favourable opportunity of breaking into and desolating the settled Roman provinces. These destructive ravages continued for years, and cost the live^ of thousands of the civilized British subjects of Rome. The Emperor Severus, in his old age (a.d. 207), and though oppressed by the gout and other ma- ladies, resolved to lead an army in person against the northern barbarians. Having made great pre- parations, he landed in South Britain, and almost immediately began his march to the northern frontier, which was once more marked by tlie walls of Agricola and Hadrian, between the Solway Frith and the mouth of the Tyne. The tremendous difficul- ties he encountered as soon as he crossed that line, suf- ficiently show that the country beyond it had never been thoroughly conquered and settled by the Ro- mans, who invariably attended to the construction of roads and bridges. Even so near to the walls as the present county of Durham the country was an impassable wilderness. Probably there is some exaggeration in the number, and a part of the victims may have fallen under the spear and javelins of the natives ; but it is stated that Severus, in his march northward, lost 50,000 men, who were worn out by the incessant labour of draining morasses, throwing raised roads or causeways across them, cutting down forests, levelling mountains, and building bridges. By these means he at length penetrated farther intj the heart of Caledonia than any of his predecessors, and struck such terror into the native * Roy's Milit. Antiq. VOT,. T. clans or tribes, who, however, had most prudently avoided any general action, that they supplicated for peace. He went so far to the north that the Roman soldiers were much struck with the length of the summer days and the shortness of the nights ; but the Arcs Finium Imperii Romania and the ex- treme point to which Severus attained in this ar- duous campaign, seems to have been the end of the narrow promontory that separates the Murray and Cromarty Friths, the conqueror or explorer still leaving Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, or all the most northern parts of Scotland untouched.* The uses of this most expensive military promenade (for, with the exception of the road-making, it was nothing better) are not very obvious ; no Roman army ever followed his footsteps, and he himself could not maintain the old debatable ground between the Tyne and the Forth. Indeed, after his return from the North, his first care was to erect a new frontier barrier in the same line as those of Agricola and Hadrian, but stronger than either of them, thus acknowledging, as it were, the uncertain tenure the Romans had on the country beyond the Solway and the Tyne. For two years the Romans and their auxiliaries were employed in building a wall, which they vainly hoped would for ever check the incur- sions of the northern clans. The wall of Agricola, which has been so fre- quently alluded to, was in reality a long bank or mound of earth, with a ditch, on the borders of which he built, at unequal distances, a range of forts or castles. This work very nearly extended from sea to sea, being about seventy-four miles long ; be- ginning three miles and a half east of Newcastle, and ending twelve miles west of Carlisle. After existing thirty-seven years, this work, which had been much injured, was repaired (about a.d. 121) by Hadrian, who added works of his own to strengthen it. He dug an additional and much larger ditch, and raised a higher rampart of earth, making his new works run in nearly parallel lines with the old. From the date of these operations and repairs the name of Agricola was lost; and the whole, to this day, has retained the name of Ha- drian's Wall.f During the ninety years that inter- vened between the labours of Hadrian and those of Severus, the rampart, not well calculated to with- stand the frosts and rains of a cold and wet climate, had, no doubt, suffered extensively, and the bar- barians had probably broken through the earthen mound in more places than one. Severus — in this surpassing his predecessors — determined to build with stone : the wall he raised was about 8 feet thick and 12 high to the base of ^he battlements, so that, viewed in profile, a section of it would appear much like a chair, the main part forming the seat and the embattled part the back.]: To the wall were added, at unequal distances, a number of stations or towns, 81 castles, and 330 castelets or turrets. At the outside of the wall (to the north) Avas dug a ditch about 36 feet wide and from 12 to 15 feet deep. Severus's works run nearly parallel with the other * Chalmers' Caledonia. t Hutton. % Ibid, HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Wall and Ditch of Se?eru» 33 A. Profile of the Roman Wall and Vallum, neai the South Agger Port Gate. ^..:ja^miL,... ,_ :M^k Section and Wall of Severus. two (those of Agricola and Hadrian), lie on the north of them and are never far distant, but may* be said always to keep them in view : the greatest dis- tance between them is less than a mile, the nearest distance about 20 yards, — the medium distance 40 or 50 yards. Exclusive of his wall and ditch, these stations, castles, and turrets, Severus con- structed a variety of roads, — yet called Roman roads, — 24 feet wide and 18 inches high in the centre, which led from turret to turret, from one \ 7 Wall and Ditch of Severus. castle to another, and still larger and more distant roads from the wall, which led from one station or town to another, besides the grand military way (now our main road from Newcastle to Carlisle), which covered all the works, and no doubt was first formed by Agricola, improved by Hadrian, and, after lying neglected for 1500 years, was made complete in 1152.* As long as the Roman power lasted this barrier • Button's Hist, of the Roman Wall. \Vai.I. OF Srvkros. nkar I1(iosestr*d, Northumhekland. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 207. 51 ROMAH SOLDICB. KoMAN Imaoe of Victory. Roman Citizen. Tomb-stone of a vouno Roman Physician. Tlie above Cuts were drawn from a large collection of sculpture-: found in the line of the Wall of Sevt-rus, and preserved in the Newcastle Museum. 52 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Wall of Sevebus, on the Sand-stone Quarries, Denton Dean, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. was constantly garrisoned by armed men. The stations were so near to each other that, if a fire was lighted on any one of the bulwarks, it was seen at the next, and so repeated from bulwark to bulwark, all along the line, in a very short time. Severus had not finished his works of defence when the Caledonian tribes resumed the offensive. The iron-hearted and iron-framed old emperor marched northward with a dreadful vow of exter- mination ; but death overtook him at Eboracum (York), in the early part of the year 211. Ca- racalla, his son and successor, who had been serving with him in Britain, tired of a warfare in which he could gain comparatively little, hopeless perhaps of ever succeeding in the so-frequently-foiled attempt of subjecting the country north of the walls, and certainly anxious to reach Rome, in order the better to dispose of his brother Geta, whom his father had named co-heir to the empire, made a hasty peace with the Caledonians, formally ceding to them the debatable ground between the Solway and Tyne and the Friths of Clyde and Forth, and then left the island for ever. After the departure of Caracalla there occurs another long blank, — supposed to have been a tran- quil interval, — for during nearly seventy years history scarcely devotes a single page to Britain and its affairs. The formidable stone rampart of Se- verus had, no doubt, its part in preserving the tranquillity of the southern division of the is- land, but it was not the sole cause of this happy effect. The territory ceded by Caracalla, extending eighty miles to the north of Severus's wall, and averaging in breadth, from sea to sea, not less than seventy miles, was, in good part, a fertile country, including what are now some of the best lands in Scotland. The clans left in possession of this valuable settlement would naturally acquire some taste for the quiet habits of life, — would imbibe some civilization from the Roman provincials on the south side of the wall, — and then their instinc- tive love of property and qui'et would make them restrain, with arms in their hands, the still bar- barous mountaineers to the north of their own ter- ritory, whilst their own civilization, such as it might be, would make some little progress among the clans in that direction. And it certainly did happen that, even when the Roman power had long been in a state of decrepitude, no great or decisive invasions took place from the north to the south, until the Scots, a new enemy, pouring in from Ire- land with an overwhelming force, drove clan upon clan, and advanced beyond the wall of Severus. This latter event ought always to be taken in con- nexion with the growing weakness of Rome to account for the catastrophe which followed. Though it has been generally overlooked, there is another, and ^ great cause too, which will help to account for the tranquillity enjoyed in the South, or in all Roman Britain. Caracalla imparted the freedom of Rome, and the rights and privileges of the Roman citizen, to all the provinces of the Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITAEY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 288. 53 empire; and thus the Briton exempted from arbitrary spoliation and oppression, enjoyed his patrimony without fear or challenge.* Such a boon merited seventy years of a grateful quiet. When Britain re-appears in the aimals of history, we find her beset by fresh foes, and becoming the scene of a new enterprise, which was frequently re- peated in the course of a few following years. In the reign of Diocletian and Maximinian (a.h. 288), the Scandinavian and Saxon pirates began to ravage the coasts of Gaul and Britain. To repress these marauders, the emperors appointed Carausius, a Menapian, to the command of a strong fleet, the head-quarters of which was in the British Channel. The Menapians had divided into several colonies : one was settled in Belgium, one in Hibernia, one in the islands of the Rhine, one at Menevia (now St. David's), in Britain, — and Carausius was by birth either a Belgian or a Briton, — it is not very certain which. Wherever he was born, he appears to have been a bold and skilful naval commander. He beat the pirates of the Baltic, and enriched himself and his mariners with their plunder. It is sus- pected that he had himself been originally a pirate. He was soon accused of collusion with the enemy, and anticipating, from his gi>eat wealth and power, that he would throw ofi^ his allegiance, the emperors sent orders from Rome to put him to death. The wary and ambitious sailor fled, in time, with his fleet to Britain, where the legions and auxiliaries rallied round his victorious standard, and bestowed upon him the imperial diadem. The joint em- perors of Rome, after seeing their attempts to reduce him repelled with disgrace to their own arms, were fain to purchase peace by conceding to him the government of Britain, of Boulogne, and the adjoin- ing coast of Gaul, together with the proud title of Emperor. Under his reign we see, for the first time, Britain figuring as a great naval power : Ca- rausius built ships of war, manned them in part with the intrepid Scandinavian and Saxon pirates, against whom he had fought ; and, remaining absolute master of the Channel, his fleet swept the seas from the mouths of the Rhine to the Straits of Gibraltar. He struck numerous medals, with inscriptions and British Coin of Carausius. From an unique Gold Coin in the British Museum. devices, " which show the pomp and state he as- sumed in his island empire." The impressive names he borrowed were, " Marcus Aurelius Va- lerius Carausius." f He had escaped the daggers of pirates and em- • Palgrave's Rise and Progress of tlie English Commonwealth, chap. X. + Palgrave's Hist. England, chap. i. perors, but a surer executioner rose up m the person of a friend and confidential minister. He was murdered in the year 297, at Eboracum (York), by Allectus, a Briton, who succeeded to his insular empire, and reigned about three years, when he was defeated and slain by an officer of Constantius Chlorus, to whom Britain fell in succession on the resignation of Diocletian and Maximian (a.d. 296). In this short war we hear of a strong body of Franks and Saxons, who formed the main strength of Allectus's army, and who attempted to plunder London after his defeat. Thus, under Carausius and Allectus, the Saxons must have become ac- quainted even with the interior of England. Con- stantius Chlorus died, in the summer of a.d. 306, at Eboracum, or York, a place which seems to have been singularly fatal to royalty in those days. Con- stantine, afterwards called the Great, then began his reign at York, where he was present at his CoNSl ANTINK THK GttEAT. From a Gold Coin in the British Museum. father's death. After a very doubtful campaign north of the wall of Severus, the details of which are very meagre and confused, this prince left the island, taking with him a vast number of British youths as recruits for his army. From this time to the death of Constantine, in 337, Britain seems again to have enjoyed tranquillity. The Roman power was, however, decaying ; the removal of the capital of the empire from Rome to Constantinople had its efiects on the remote pro- vinces of Britain , and, under the immediate suc- cessors of Constantine, while the Frank and Saxon pirates ravaged the ill-defended coasts of the south, the Picts, Scots, and Attacots — all mentioned for the first time by historians in the earlier part of the fourth century — begun to press upon the north- ern provinces, and defy Severus's deep ditches and wall of stone. As the Scots came over from Ire- land in boats, and frequently made their attacks on the coast line, it seems not improbable that in some instances their depredations were mistaken for, or mixed up with those of the Saxons. According to 54 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. our insufficient guide,* however, it was the Picts and Scots alone, that, after breaking through the wall of Severus, and killing a Roman general, and Nectaridius, the " Count of the Saxon Shore" in the reign of Julian the Apostate, were found, about three years after (a.d. 367), in the time of the Emperor Valentinian, pillaging the city of London (Augusta), and carrying oif its inhabitants as slaves. Theodosius, the distinguished general., and father of the emperor of that name, repelled these invaders, and repaired the wall and the ruined forts in different parts of the south ; but the north- ern districts were never afterwards reduced to order or tranquillity, and even for the^ partial and temporary advantage they obtained, the Romans were compelled to follow the host of pirates to the extremity of the British islands, " when," as it is expressed in the verses of the poet Claudian, upon this achievement, " the distant Orcades were drenched with Saxon gore." By watching these occurrences, with others that were equally fatal, step by step, as they happen, we shall be the better able to understand how Bri- tain, when abandoned by the Roman legions, was in so reduced and helpless a state as to fall a prey to the barbarians. If that fact is presented to us in an isolated manner, it almost passes our com- prehension ; but, taken in connexion with great causes and the events of the two centuries that pre- ceded the Saxun conquest, it becomes perfectly in- telligible. Following an example which had become very prevalent in difterent parts of the disor- ganized empire, and which had been first set in Britain by Carausius, several officers, relying on the devotion of the legions and auxiliaries under their command, and supported sometimes by the affection of the people, cast off their allegiance to the emj)eror, and declared themselves independent sovereigns. It was the fashion of the servile histo- rians to call these provincial emperors " tyrants," or usurpers, and to describe Britain especially as being " insula tirannorum fertilis" — an island fer- tile in usurpers. But, in sober truth, these pro- vincial monarchs had as pure and legitimate a basis for their authority as any of the later empe- rors of Rome, in whose succession hereditary right and the will of the governed were alike disre- garded, and whose election depended on the chances of war and the caprices of a barbarian soldiery ; for the right of nomination to the vacant empire so long assumed by the Praetorian bands, and which right, questionable as it was, was still certain and ascertainable — still something like a settled rule — was soon overset, and disallowed by the men of all nations in arms on the frontiers. If a pretension had been set up for purity of Roman blood, or a principle established that the sovereign should be at least a Roman born, there would have been a line of exclusion drawn against the provincial officers ; but so far from this being the case, we find * Ammianus Marcellinusi lib. xxvii. and xxviii. that the large majority of the so-called legitimate Roman emperors were barbarians by race and blood— natives of lUyria and other more remote provinces, while several of the most distinguished of their number sprung from the very lowest orders of society. The most noted of the provincial emperors or pretenders that raised iheir standard in Britain was Maximus (a.d. 382) ; certainly a man of rank, and probably connected with the imperial family of Constantine the Great. If not born in Britain, he was of British descent, and had long resided in the island, where he had repelled the Picts and Scots. Brave, skilful, and exceedingly popular in Britain, Maximus might easily have retained the island, but his ambition induced him to aim at the possession of all that portion of the Western Roman empire which remained to Gratian ; and this eventually not only led to his ruin, but inflicted another dread- ful blow on British piosperity. He witlidrew nearly all the troops, and so many of the Britons followed him to Gaul, that the island was left almost defenceless, and utterly deprived of the flower of its youth and nobility. Many of these were swept off on the field of battle, many pre- vented by other causes from ever returning home. Gaul and Germany also gave willing recruits to the army of Maximus, who was left, by the defeat and death of Gratian, the undisputed master of Britain, Gaul, Spain, and Italy. He established the seat of his government for some time at Treves, and is said to have declared Victor, his son by a British wife, his partner in the empire of the west — a proceeding which could scarcely fail of grati- fying the host of Britons in his army. But Theo- dosius, called the Great, the emperor of the east, marched an overpowering army into the west, and, after being defeated in two great battles, Maximus retired to Aquileia, near the head of the Adriatic gulf, on the confines of Italy and Illyria, where he was betrayed to the conqueror, who ordered him to l)e put to death in the summer of 388. Theodosius the Great now reunited the Roman empires of the east and west. While Maximus was absent, conquering many lands, the Scots and Picts renewed their depredations in Britain. We are wearied of this sad repetition, but the moment of crisis is now at hand. Chrysantus, an able general, and the lieutenant of Theodosius in Bri- tain, wholly or partially expelled the invaders. Soon after this, Theodosius the Great died (a.d. 395), and again divided, by his will, the empire which his good fortune had reunited. Britain, with Gaul, Italy, and all the countries forming the empire of the west, he bequeathed to his son, Ho- norius, a boy only ten years of age, whom he placed under the guardianship of the famous Stili- cho, who fought long and bravely, but in vain, to prop the falling dignity of Rome. Theodosius was scarcely cold in his grave, when Picts, Scots, and Saxons again sought what they could devour. Sti- licho claimed some temporary advantages over them, but the inflated verses of his panegyrist Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS.— A.D. 403. 55 are probably as far from the truth, as Claudian is from being a poet equal to Virgil.* While these events were passing in Britain (A.D. 403), the withered majesty of Rome was shrouded for ever : Africa was dismembered from her empire ; Dacia, Pannonia, Thrace, and other provinces were laid desolate ; and Alaric the Goth was ravaging Italy, and on his way to the eternal city. In this extremity, some Roman troops which had been lately sent into the island by Stilicho, were hastily recalled for the defence of Italy, and the Britons, again beset by the Picts and Scots, were left to shift for themselves. The islanders seem to have felt the natural love of independence, but there was no unanimity, no political wisdom, and probably but little good prin- ciple among them. Seeing the necessity of a com- mon leader to fight their battles, they permitted the soldiery to elect one Marcus emperor of Britain (a.d. 407); and, shortly after, they permitted the same soldiery to dethrone him, and put him to death. The troops then set up one Gratian, whom, in less tlian four months, they also deposed and murdered. Their third choice fell upon Constan- tine, an officer of low rank, or, according to others, a common soldier. They are said to have chosen him merely on account of his bearing the imperial and auspicious name of Constantine ; but he soon showed he had other properties more valuable than a name ; and had he been contented with the sovereign possession of Britain, he might possibly have foiled its invaders, and reigned with peace and some glory. But, like Maximus, he aspired to the whole empire of the west, and, like Maximus, he fell (a.d. 411), after having caused the loss of vast numbers of British youths, whom he disci- plined and took with him to his wars on the conti- nent. At one part of his short career, Constantino made himself master of nearly the whole of Gaul, and pill his son Constans, who had previously been a monk at Winchester, in possession of Spain. In the course of this Spanish campaign, it is curious to remark, that in Constantine's army there were two bands of Scots or Attacotti.f Soon after the fall of Constantine we find Ge- rontius, a powerful chief, and a Briton by birth, cul- tivating a close connexion with.the Teutonic tribes; and, at his instigation, the barbarians from beyond the Rhine, by whom we are to understand the Saxons, continued to invade the unhappy island. Such underhand villanies are always common in the downfall of nations (but can the Romanized Britons fairly be called a nation ?) ; and we find other chiefs, worse than Gerontius, in secret league with the more barbarous Picts and Scots. It appears that after the death of Constantine, Honorius, during the short breathing-time allowed him by his numerous enemies, twice sent over a few troops for the recovery and protection of Britain, the sovereignty of which he still claimed; but his exigencies soon obliged him to recall them, and about the year 420, nearly five centuries after * Cluud, de Bello Uallieo, f Notitia Imperii, sect, xxxviii. Caesar's first invasion, and after being masters of the best part of it during nearly four centuries, the Roman emperors finally abandoned the island. The Britons had already deposed the magistrates appointed by Rome, proclaimed their independence, and taken up arms for that defence against their invaders which the emperor could no longer give ; but the final disseverance was not accompanied by reproach or apparent ill-will. On the contrary, a mutual friendship subsisted for some time after between the islanders and the Romans ; and the emperor Honorius, in a letter addressed to the states or cities of Britain, seemed formally to release them from their allegiance, and to acknow- ledge the national independence. For some years after the departure of the Romans the historian has to grope his way in the dark ; nor is it easy to determine the precise condition of the country. It appears, however, that the free muni- cipal government of the cities was presently over- thrown by a multitude of military chiefs, who were principally of British, but partly of Roman origin. It was a period to appreciate the warrior who could fight against the Scots and Picts rather than the peaceful magistrate ; and the voice of civil liberty would be rarely heard in the din of war and inva- sion. In a very few years all traces of a popular government disappeared, and a number of petty chiefs reigned absolutely and tyrannically under the pompous name of kings, though the kingdoms of few of them could have been so large as a second- rate modern county of England. Instead of uniting for their general safety, at least until the invaders were repelled, these m<e/eL*^, or kinglings, made wars upon each other in the presence of a common danger ; and, unwiser even than their far less civilized ancestors in the time of Caesar, they never thought of forming any great defensive league until it was too late. It is chiefly in this mad disunion that we must look for the cause of what has created astonishment in so many writers, — the miserable weakness of Britain on the breaking up of the Roman government. Other causes of decline, however, had long been at work. Almost from the first establishment of the Roman power, the British youths raised as recruits were drafted off" to the continent, where they were disci- plined, and whence few ever returned. It was con- trary to the policy of the Romans to teach the pro- vincials the arts of war, and establish them as troops in their own country. The soldiers of Bri- tain were scattered from Gaul to the extremities of the empire ; the sedentary and unwarlike remained at home. All this, we think, may account for the absence of a well-disciplined force in the time of need. Moreover, during nearly a century and a half, the drain upon the population for the purposes of Roman war must have been prodigious. In 308 Constantine took with him a vast number of Britons to the continent ; this example was followed as the enemies of the empire increased in number and audacity, or as one pretender disputed the imperial crown with another ; and we have shown, at periods 56 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. so recent as a.d. 383 and 411, how the pride and flower of the youth were sacrificed in foreign war- fare. The exterminating inroads of the Scots and Picts, which began early in the fourth century, and lasted, almost without intermission, until long after the departure of the Roman legions in the fifth cen- tury, must have fearfully thinned the population in the north, where arms were most wanted. The curses that destroy mankind were many, and there were none of the blessings that tend to their increase. Gaul and other provinces with which Britain traded, were in as bad a condition as herself, and thus an end was put to foreign commerce, while the internal trade of the country was gradually destroyed by divisions and wars which made it unsafe for the inhabitant of one district to transport his produce into the next, although only at a few miles distance. Under such a state of things, moreover, agriculture would be neglected, for men would not sow in the sad uncertainty whether they or the enemy should reap. Famine and pestilence ensued ; and Britain, in common with the greater part of Europe, where the same causes had been in operation, was still further depopulated by these two scourges. We can scarcely credit Gildas, who wrote about the middle of the sixth century, when he asserts that, at the departure of the legions, the Britons were sunk in such helplessness and ignorance that they could not repair the stone wall of Severus without the guidance and assistance of Roman workmen ; but we can understand how they could not muster forces sufficient to man that rampart, and also how the Picts and Scots should render it of no avail by turning the wall on its flanks, and landing in its rear at such distances as best suited their convenience. To maintain an adequate gar- rison against a vigilant and restless enemy, along a line upwards of seventy miles in length, would demand a very large disposable force. The northern barbarians would not hesitate to launch their boats in the Solway Frith, or at the mouth of the Tyne, north of the wall, and, by sailing south, pass that rampart at one of its extremities, and land on the coast within the wall, or ascend rivers, where that defence, left far in their rear, could present no obstacle to their progress. Their rudest coracles might have performed this coasting service in fine weather ; but it is not improbable that during their occasional connexions with the Teutonic or Saxon pirates, who had made some progress in naval ar- chitecture, the Scots came into possession of larger and better vessels. An obvious fact is, that from the arrival of the latter people from Ireland, the rampart of Severus began signally to fail in an- British Coracles. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITAEY TRANSACTIONS.— A. D. 441. 57 swenng the purposes for which it was intended ; though, perhaps, if, instead of taking the usual ex- pression of their breaking through the wall, we read that they turned it at one or other of its extremities, by means of their shoals of boats, we shall gene- rally,' in regard to their earlier inroads, be nearer the truth. But the time was now come when siich stratagems, or circuitous courses, were unnecessary, and the Scots and Picts leaped the ditches and scaled the ill-de- fended walls at all points. The fertile provinces of the south tempted them forward till they reached the very heart of the country, which they racked with a most barbarous hand. It was not their object to occupy the country and settle in it as conquerors (had such been their plan the Britons would have suffered less) ; their expeditions were forrays ; they came to plunder and destroy ; and the booty they carried off, season after season, was a less serious loss than the slaughter and devastation that marked their advance and retreat. At this horrid crisis the more southern and least exposed parts of the island appear to have been occupied by two great parties or factions, which had absorbed all the rest, but could not come to a rational understanding witli each other. One of these was a Roman party, including, no doubt, thousands of Roman citizens who had remained on the estates they had acquired, and the many native families that must have been connected with them by marriage and the various ties of civil life ; the other was a British party, composed, or pretending to be composed, exclusively of Britons. As soon as such a line of distinction was drawn, dissension was inevitable. The Roman party was headed by Aurelius Ambrosius, a descendant of one of the emperors ; the British rallied round the noto- rious Vortigem. It is not very clear whether, when it was determined a third time to implore the aid of the Romans, both these parties consented to that measure, or whether Aurelius Ambrosius did not take it upon himself, as his rival Vortigem did the calling in of the Saxons only three years after. The abject prayer, however, entitled ' The Groans of the Britons,' and addressed to ^tius, thrice consul, was sent to the continent (a.d. 441). " The barbarians," said the petitioners, "chase us into the sea ; the sea throws us back upon the bar- barians ; and we have only the hard choice left us of perishing by the sword or by the waves." But ^tius, though as great a warrior as Stilicho, was then contending with Attila, a more terrible enemy even than Alaric, and could not afford a single cohort to the supplicants, whose last, faint reliance on Rome thus fell to the ground. Religious controversy and the mutual hatred that inflames men when they fix the charge of heresy on one another, completed the anarchy of Britain. This is also a very common, though a very strange concomitant with the fall and last agonies of na- tions ; and the Britons, like the Jews some centu- ries before, and like the Greeks at Constantinople, besieged by the Turks, ten centuries after, con- sumed their time in theological subtleties and dis- putations when the enemy was at their gates, and their last defences were falling above their heads. Had some of the disputants been animated with the same martial spirit as Germanus of Auxerre, a Gallic Bishop, who was sent over by the Pope to decide the controversy, their ruin might have been delayed ; but his was a solitary instance. Ger- manus, who had been a soldier before he became a priest, sallied out with a number of Britons, and to the shouts of Hallelujah, if we may believe the narrative of the Venerable Bede, cut up a party of Picts that were plundering the coast. But this Hallelujah victory, as it was called, was far from being sufficient to stay the march of the invaders, and at length Vortigem took his memorable step, and called the Saxons to his assistance — a fierce and predatory people who had frequently ravaged the island, sometimes by themselves, at others in union with the Picts and Scots, whom they were now to oppose. The people of Armorica or Brittany had already set the example, and, more fortunate than their neighbours proved in the end, they had suc- ceeded, by means of some Saxon allies, in maintain- ing the independence, and securing the tranquillity of their country. It may be suspected that, even at this extremity, Vortigern applied for the aid of foreign arms, as much for the purpose of destroying the Roman party in the island, as for the expulsion of its in- vaders ; and this suspicion, though not proved, gains some strength from their past and existing disputes, from the reports of the deadly hatred and bloody conflicts which ensued between Aiirelius Ambrosius, the head of the Roman party, and Vor- tigem, and from the circumstance that Aurelius, from the first landing, made head against the Saxons, while his enemy lived in peace and amity with them for some time. But, whatever were his motives, Vortigern (a.d. 449) called the hardy freebooters of the Bal- tic and northern Germany, and they came most readily at his call. The story of a formal embassy to the court or general assembly of the Saxons and the pathetic speeches put into the mouths of the British envoys, seem to be pure inventions of the old historians. Three chiules (keels), or long ship?, were cruising in the British Channel, under the command of two brothers, distinguished war- riors or pirates among the Saxons, who are called Hengist and Horsa, though it is possible those may not have been really their names, but designations merely derived from the standards they bore.* It appears to have been on the deck of these maraud- ing vessels that the Saxons received the invitation, which eventually led to the conquest of a great kingdom. Vortigern appointed his ready guests to • Hengst, or Hengist, signiflos a stallion ; and Hursa, or Hrost. does not require any explanation. It may be remarked, however, that in Danish, hors signifies not a horse, but a mare. The snow- white steedstill appears as the ensign of Kent, in England, as it anciently did in the shield of the " Old Saxons" in Germany. Hence the Wliite Horse is still borne on the royal shield of Brunswick Hanover. — Palgrave, Hitt. chap. ii. 58 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. dwell ill the east part of the land, and gave them the Isle of Thaiiet for their residence, an insulated and secure tract to those who, like the Saxons, had the command of the sea ; for the narrow, and, at times, almost invisible rill which now divides Thanet from the rest of Kent, was then a channel of the sea, nearly a mile in width. From this date begins the history of the Saxons in Britain. Ension Of Kent. Chap. IT.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 5.9 CHAPTER II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. Section I. — 'Druidism. HERE are two views under wliich the his- tory of religion may form a part of the his- tory of a country or a people. There is the history of religious opinion, and there is the history of the es- tablished church con- sidered as one of the in- stitutions of the state. There never probably was a period in the history of this country when religion was more mixed up with civil affairs than in that earliest period of which we are now treating. Among the ancient Britons the ministers of religion appear to have been also the chief legislators and administrators of the law, as well as almost the sole depositories of whatever knowledge and civilization existed in the country. A?, however, no British history, properly so called, of any kind, has been preserved, all the information that can be given in regard to the religious system which we have reason to believe then prevailed, is such a general account of it as we are enabled to present of the state of the island and its inhabitants in those remote ages in other respects. But even for this our materials are scanty and unsatisfactory ; much of the subject is concealed in a darkness which we can have no hope of piercing ; and there is so much of fanciful speculation and conjecture in the interpretation that has been put upon the few facts from which we must deduce our conclusions, that at the- best the endeavour to shape them into order and meaning is very like tracing pictures in the clouds. The ancient religion of the Britons is generally believed to have been the same with that of their Gallic neighbours and kinsmen. It is proper, however, to observe, that the scepticism of some modern historical writers has carried them so far as to incline them to doubt whether the Druidism of Gaul ever generally prevailed in Britain. It ap- pears from the narrative which has been given of the Roman conquest, that there were Druids in the island of Anglesey ; but it is rather remark- able that no ancient author has expressly mentioned the existence of Druidism in any other part of the country. Both Caesar and Pliny, indeed, have spoken of the British Druids generally ; but their expressions may very well refer merely to the Druidism of Anglesey, or even, as has been sug- gested, to that of Ireland, which, as Pliny himself informs us, was included under the name of the British islands. If the matter therefore depended entirely on the testimony of the Greek and Roman writers, the common opinion would scarcely rest on sufficient grounds. But the general prevalence of Druidism in Britain appears to be abundantly esta- blished both by the material monuments of that system of religion which are spread over all parts of the country, and by popular customs and super- stitions, derived from the same source, which have either survived to our own day, or have only re- cently disappeared. Caesar, who of all the ancients has given us the fullest and clearest account of the Druids, expressly records it to have been the common opinion of the Gauls that the Druidical discipline was discovered or invented in Britain, and from thence brought over to Gaul ; and he adds that those of the Gauls who wished to ol>tain a more perfect knowledge of the system were still wont to pass over into Britain to study it. Although, therefore, his sketch pro- fesses to relate only to the Druidism of Gaul, we may safely assume that it is in general equally ap- plicable to that of Britain. The Druids, according to Caesar, formed throughout the whole of Gaul one of the two honourable classes of the population, the Equites, or military order, forming the other. The office of the Druids was that of presiding over sacred things, of performing all public and private sacrifices, and generally of directing all religious matters. They were also the teachers of great numbers of youth, who resorted to them for instruc- tion in their discipline. But the function which procured them the highest honour was that which they discharged as the judges by whom were de- termined almost all disputes or litigations, both public and private. If any criminal act was done, if any murder was committed, if any difference arose about an inheritance or the boundaries of land, the. decision lay with them ; they appointed the reward or the penalty. But even in this capa- city of administrators of the law, religion was the instrument they made use of to enforce obedience to their sentences. Whoever he was, whether a private individual or a person discharging a public office, that on any occasion refused to abide by their decree, they interdicted him from being pre- sent at the sacrifices. The exercise of this power, resembling the modern ecclesiastical weapon oi excommunication, inflicted a punishment of the greatest severity. The person interdicted was held 60 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. as one impious and accursed ; all men shunned him, and fled from his approach and converse, lest they should receive injury from his very touch ; he lost the protection of the law, and was excluded from all offices of honour. The Druidical hierarchy, it is plain from this account, held in their hands the regulation and control of by far the most important part of the internal aifairs of the commiuiity, thus occupy- ing a position in the state very similar to that formerly held in many countries by the Chris- tian priesthood ; but, if anything, still more com- manding than that was, even in the darkest pe- riod of modem history. It was distinctly another power, if not superior to the civil power, at least certainly not in any respect in subjection to it. Caesar goes on to tell us that there was one head Druid set over the whole body, who was elected to his place of supreme authority by the suffrages of the rest, whenever it happened that there was no single individual of their number whose merits were so pre-eminent as to prevent all competition for the vacant dignity. The struggle, however, among the partisans of various candidates for the primacy sometimes came to a contest of arms. The Druids of Gaul were wont to hold a meeting at a certain time of every year in a consecrated place in the territory of the Camutes, which was considered to be the central region of Gaul ; and hither all people flocked who had any litigations, and sub- mitted themselves to their decisions and judgments. The spot here referred to is supposed to have been that on which the town of Dreux, in the Pais de Chartrain, now stands ; and here it is thought the chief Druid had his residence. The seat of the Druidical primacy in Britain is conjectured to have been the isle of Anglesey. Csesar goes on to state that the Druids were not accustomed to take part in war, nor did they pay any taxes, enjoying both exemption from military service and freedom from all other public burdens. The consequence of these privileges was, that num- bers of persons both came of their own accord to be trained up in their discipline, and were sent to them by their parents and relations. A part of the education of these pupils was said to consist in learning by heart a great number of verses, and on that account some of them remained twenty years at their studies ; for the Druids did not deem it right to commit their instructions to writing, although, in most other things, and in both their public and private affairs of business, they used, Csesar seems to say, according to the reading of most manuscripts of his text, the Greek characters. Even if the epithet Greek is an interpolation here, as some critics have supposed, the important part of the statement remains unaffected, namely, that the Druids were familiar with the art of writing. Caesar supposes that they refrained from commit- ting their religious doctrines to writing for two reasons : first, because they did not wish that the knowledge of their system should be diffused among the people at large ; secondly, because they thought that the learners, having written characters to trust to, would bestow less pains in cultivating their memory, it generally happening that dili- gence in acquiring knowledge, and the exercise of the power of memory, are relaxed under a sense of the security which written characters afford. He then proceeds to give an account of the doc- frines taught by the Druids. The chief doctrine which they inculcated was that commonly known by the name of the metempsychosis or transmigra- tion of souls, a favourite principle of some of the most ancient religious and philosophical creeds both of the east and of the west. They asserted that when a man died his spirit did not perish, but passed immediately into another body ; and this article of faith, by its power of vanquishing the fear of death, they considered to be the most effica- cious that could be instilled into the minds of men for the excitement of heroic virtue. They also discussed and delivered to their pupils many things respecting the heavenly bodies and their motions, the magnitude of the universe and the earth, the nature of things, and the force and power of the im- mortal gods. The whole nation of the Gauls, Caesar remarks, was greatly given to religious observances ; and on that account those persons who were attacked by any serious disease, or were involved in the dan- gers of warfare, were accustomed either to immo- late human victims, or to vow that they would, and to employ the Druids to perform these sacrifices ; their opinion being that the gods were not to be propitiated, unless for the life of a man the life of a man were offered up. There were also sacrifices of the same kind appointed on behalf of the state. Sometimes images of wicker work, of immense size, were constructed, which, being filled with liv- ing men, were then set fire to, and the men perished in the flames. They regarded the destruction in this manner of persons taken in the commission of theft or robbery, or any other delinquency, as most agreeable to the gods ; but when the supply of sxich criminals was insufficient, they did not hesi- tate to make victims of the innocent. The account is concluded by a short enumera- tion of the divinities worshipped by the. Gauls. The chief object of their adoration, it is stated, was Mercury : of this god they had numerous images ; they regarded him as the inventor of all arts, as the guide of men in highways and in their jour- neys, and as having the greatest power in every- thing belonging to the pursuits of wealth and commerce. After him they worshipped Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva, holding nearly the same opinion with regard to each as other nations ; namely, that Apollo warded off diseases — that Mi- nerva w^as the first instructor in manufactures and handicrafts — that Jupiter was the sovereign of the inhabitants of heaven — that Mars was the ruler of war. To him, when they came to the determina- tion of engaghig in a battle, they commonly de- voted whatever spoil they had taken in war ; out of what remained to them after the fight, they sacrificed everything that was alive, and gathered Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 61 the rest together into one spot. Heaps of things thus put aside in consecrated places were to be seen in many of the states, and it was rarely that any person was so regardless of religion as to dare either secretly to retain any part of the spoil in his own possession, or to take it away when thus laid up : for such a crime there was appointed a very severe punishment, accompanied with torture. It is added that all the Gauls believed themselves to be descended from Father Dis or Pluto, saying that the fact was declared to be so by the Druids. On that account, they reckoned time not by days but by nights, so regulating their birthdays, and the beginnings of months and years, that the night came first and then the day.* Such is the outline of the Druidical superstition and system of ecclesiastical polity which has been left to us by this accurate and sagacious observer, not writing from hearsay, but describing what he saw with his own eyes, or had otherwise the best opportunities of learning on the spot. Of all the writers in whom we find any notices of the disci- pline or doctrines of the Druids, there is perhaps scarcely another who can be regarded as speaking to us on the subject from his own observation. We have no reason to suppose that any of the rest ever was in a country where the Druidical religion was established. Some of the ancient authorities who are commonly referred to can scarcely be con- sidered as even the contemporaries of Druidism either in Britain or Gaul. As in these circumstances was to be expected, the account given by Caesar may be affirmed not to he contradicted in any material particular, by those supplied to us from other quarters ; but his sketch is a rapid and general one, and other ancient writers have enabled us to fill it up in various parts with some curious and interesting details. Such of these as seem to be most deserving of attention, we shall now proceed to notice. It is remarkable that Caesar nowhere makes any mention of the sacred groves and the reverence paid to the oak, which make so great a figure in most of the other accounts of Druidism. Among various derivations which have been given of the name of the Druids, the most probable seems to be that which brings it from D7-ui, the Celtic word for an oak, corruptly written in the modem Irish Droi, and more corruptly Draoi, but without the pro- nunciation being altered, and making in the plural Druidhe.f Drui is the same word with Drns, which signifies an oak in the Greek language ; and also, indeed, with the English tree, which in the old Maesogothic was triu. The name Dryades given to their nymphs or goddesses of the woods by the Greeks, is only another form of the name Druids, given to their priests of the woods by the Celts. It is curious that Diodorus Siculus calls the philosophers and theologians of the Gauls, by which he evidently means the Druids, Saronides ; the original signification of the Greek word Saron, according to Hesychius, being an oak. ♦ Caesar de Bello G;.Uico, vi. 13, 14, 16, 17, 18. + Toland, p. 17 " If you come," says the philosopher Seneca, writing to his friend Lucilius, " to a grove thick planted with ancient trees which have outgrown the usual altitude, and which shut out the view of the heaven with their interwoven boughs, the vast height of the wood, and the retired secrecy of the place, and the wonder and awe inspired by so dense and unbroken a gloom in the midst of the open day, impress you with the conviction of a present deity."* These natural feelings of the human mind were taken advantage of and turned to ac- count by the Druids, as we find them to have been in the other most primitive and simple forms of ancient superstition. Pliny informs us that the oak was the tree which they principally venerated, that they chose groves of oak for their residence, and performed no sacred rites without the leaf of that tree. The geographer Pomponius Mela describes them as teaching the youths of noble families, that thronged to them in caves, or in the depths of forests. We have seen that when (a.d. 61) Sue. tonius Paulinus attacked and made himself master of the isle of A\nglesey, he cut down the Druidical groves, " hallowed," says Tacitus, " with cruel superstitions ; for they held it right to stain their altars with the blood of prisoners taken in war, and to seek to know the mind of the gods from the fibres of human victims." f The poet Lucan, in a celebrated passage on the Druids and the doc- trines of their religion, has not forgotten their sacred groves : — " The Druids now, while arras are heard no more, Old mysteries and barbarous rites restore , A tribe, who singular relitjion love. And haunt the lonely coverts of the grove. To these, and these of all mankind alone, The gods are sure reveal'd, or sure unknown. If dying mortals' dooms they sing aris;ht. No ghosts descend to dwell in dreadful night; No parting souls to grisly Pluto go, Nor seek the dreary silent shndes below; But forth they fly, immortal in their kind. And other bodies in new worlds they find. Thus life for ever runs its endless race. And like a line Death but divides the space ; A stop which can but for a moment last, A point between the future and the past. Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies. Who that worst fear, the fear of death, despise Hence they no cares for this frail being feel, But rush undaunted on the pointed steel; Provoke appro.iching fate, and bravely scorn To spare that life which must so soon return."' t No Druidical grove, we believe, now remains in any part of Great Britain ; but within little more than a century, ancient oaks were still standing around some of the circles of stones set upright in the earth, which are supposed to have been the temples of the old religion. In the parish of Holywood in Dumfries-shire, for instance, there is such a temple, formed of twelve very large stones, inclosing a piece of ground about eighty yards in diameter, and although there are now no trees to be seen near the spot, " there is a tradition," says an account of the parish published in 1791, " of their existing in the last age ;" and it is added, " many of their roots have been dug out of the ground by the present minister, and he has still • M. A. Senecae Epist. 41. + Tac. An. xiv. 30 t Pharsalia i. 462 ; Rowe's translation. See also, iii. 390, &c. 62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. 'E-^ ^- — K Grove of Oaks.— From a Picture by Ruysdael. one in his possession." As far as can be gathered from the vestiges of such of these sacred inclosures as remain least defaced, they seem in their perfect state to have generally consisted of the circular row or double row of stones in the central open space (the proper lucus, or place of light), and beyond these, of a wood surrounded by a ditch and a mound. A holy fountain, or rivulet, appears also to have usually watered the grove. The rever- ence for rivers or streams, and more especially for spings or wells, is another of the most prevalent of ancient superstitions ; and it is one which, having, along with many other Pagan customs, been adopted and sanctioned, or at least tolerated, by Christianity as first preached by the Roman missionaries, and being, besides, in some sort re- commended to the reason by the high utility of the object of regard, has not even yet altogether passed away. The cultivation, too, or the decay from lapse of time, which has almost everywhere swept away the antique religious grove, has for the most part spared the holy well. In the centre of the circle of upright stones is sometimes found what is still called a cromlech, a flat stone supported in a horizontal position upon others set perpendicularly in the earth, being apparently the altar on which the sacrifices were offered up, and on which the sacred fire was kept burning.* The name cromlech is said to signify the stone for bowing to or wor- shipping. Near to the temple frequently rises a carnedd, or sacred mount, from which it is con- jectured that the priests addressed the people. The Platonic philosopher Maximus Tyrius, tells us that the Celtic nations all worshipped Jupiter * [Since this was ■written, it has been decidfid that cromlechs are sepulchres. The name may be derived from cromadh (Gaelic), or cromen (Welsh), a roof or vault, and clach or lech, a stone.] I Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 44.9. 63 Kits Cory House, a Cromlech, near Aylesford, Kent. under the visible representation of a lofty oak. But the most remarkable of the Uruidical super- stitions connected with the oak, was the reverence paid to the parasitical plant called the mistletoe, when it was found growing on that tree. Pliny has given us an account of the ceremony of gather- ing this plant, which, like all the other sacred solemnities of the Druids, was performed on the sixth day of the moon, probably because the planet has usually at that age become distinctly visible. It is thought that the festival of gathering the mis- tletoe was kept always as near to the 10th of March, which was their New Year's Day, as this rule would permit. Having told us that the Druids believed that God loved the oak above all the other trees, and that everything growing upon that tree came from heaven, he adds, that there is nothing they held more sacred than the mistletoe of the oak. Whenever the plant was found on that tree, which it very rarely was, a procession was made to it on the sacred day with great form and pomp. First two white bulls were bound to the oak by their horns ; and then a Druid clothed in white mounted the tree, and with a knife of gold cut the mistletoe, which another, standing on the ground, held out his white robe to receive. The sacrifice of the victims and festive rejoicings followed. The sacredness of the mistletoe is said to have been also a part of the ancient religious creed of the Per- sians, and not to be yet forgotten in India; and it is one of the Druidical superstitions of which traces still survive among our popular customs. Virgil, a diligent student of the poetry of old reli- gions, has been thought to intend an allusion to it by the golden branch which ^neas had to pluck to be his passport to the infernal regions. Indeed the poet expressly likens the branch to the mistle- toe : — " Quale solet silvis brumali frigore viscum Fronde virere nova, quod non sua seminat arbos, Et croceo fetii teretes circumdare tnincoR ; Talis erat specifs auri frondenlis opaca nice ; sic leni crepitabat bractea vento." Mn. VI. 209. As in the woods beneath mid-winter's snow Shoots from the oak, the fresh-leaved mistletoe, Girding the dark stem with its saffron glow; So sprung the bright gold from the dusky rind. So the leaf nistled in the fanning wind. The entire body of the Druidical priesthood ap- pears to have been divided into several orders or classes ; but there is some uncertainty and differ- ence of opinion as to the characters and offices of each. Strabo and Ammianus Marcellinus are the ancient authorities upon this head ; and they both make the orders to have been three — the Druids, the Vates, and the Bards. Marcellinus calls the Vates, according to one reading, Euhages, which is most probably a corruption, but according to an- other Eubates, which is evidently the same with Strabo's Ouates, or Vates. It is agreed that the Bards were poets and musicians. Marcellinus says that they sung the brave deeds of illustrious men, composed in heroic verses, with sweet modulations of the lyre ; and Diodorus Siculus, who does not include them among the theologians and philoso- 64 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. phcrs whom he calls Saxonides, also mentions them in nearly the same terms. He states that they com- posed poems, some of which were celebrations, and others invectives, and sung them to the music of an instrument resembling the Greek and Roman lyre. The Vates, according to Strabo, were priests and physiologists ; but Marcellinus seems to assign to them only the latter office, saying that they in- quired into nature, and endeavoured to discover the order of her processes and her sublimest secrets. The Latin word vales, it may be observed, although frequently used for a poet, and sometimes indeed for a person of very eminent skill in other intellectual arts, seems properly to have always implied some- thing prophetic or divine. Such is said also to be the signification of the Celtic Faidhy which, in modern Irish, is used for a prophet, and is believed to have been in former times the name of an order of sooth- sayers or sacred poets both in Ireland and in Scot- land. The Druids Strabo speaks of as combining the study of physiology with that of moral science ; Marcellinus describes them as persons of a loftier genius than the others, who addressed themselves to the most occult and profound inquiries, and rising in their contemplations above this human scene declared the spirits of men to be immortal. Some modern writers, disregarding altogether these ancient authorities, have conjectured that the ])ruids, as forming the chief order of the hierar- chy, had under them first the Bards, whom they make the same with the Saronides, and to have been poets and musicians ; secondly, the Euhages Group of AKrn-DKUiD anp Druids. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 65 or Eubages, who studied natural philosophy; and, thirdly, the Vates, who ])erformed the sacrifices. It is at least highly probable that all these classes were considered as belonging to the Druidical body.* A remarkable fact mentioned by Marcel- linus is that the Druids, properly so called, lived together in communities or brotherhoods. This, however, cannot have been the case with all the members of the order; for we have reason to be- lieve that the Druids frequently reckoned among their number some of the sovereigns of the Celtic states, whose civil duties of course would not per- mit them to indulge in this monastic life. Divi- tiacus, the ^duan prince, who performed so re- markable a part, as related by Caesar, in the drama of the subjugation of his country by the Roman arms, is stated by Cicero to have been a Druid. Cicero tells us that he knew Divitiacus, who was wont both to profess to be familiar with that study of nature which the Greeks called physiology, and to make predictions respecting future events, partly by augury, partly by conjecture. -j" Strabo records it to have been a notion among the Gauls that the more Druids they had among them, the more plentiful would be their harvests, and the greater their abundance of all good things ; and we may therefore suppose that the numbers of the Druids were very considerable. Toland, who, in what he calls his " Specimen of the Critical History of the Celtic Religion and Learning," has collected many curious facts, and who probably had authorities of one kind or another for most of the things he has advanced, although they were unfortunately reserved for a subsequent work of greater detail, which never appeared, has given us the following account of the dress of the Druids. Every Druid, he informs us, carried a wand or staff, such as magicians in all countries have done, and had what was called a Druid's egg (to which we shall advert pre- sently) hung about his neck enclosed in gold. All the Druids wore the hair of their heads short, and their beards long ; while other people wore the hair of their heads long, and shaved all their beards with the exception of the upper lip. " They like- wise," he continues, " all wore long habits, as did the Bards and the Vaids (the Vates) ; but the Druids had on a white surplice whenever they religiously officiated. In Ireland, they, with the graduate Bards and Vaids, had the privilege of wearing six colours in their breacans or robes (which were the striped braccae of the Gauls, still worn by the Highlanders) ; whereas the king and queen might have in theirs but seven, lords and ladies five, governors of fortresses four, oflicers and young gentlemen of quality three, common soldiers two, and common people one. These particulars appear to have been collected from the Irish traditions or Bardic manuscripts. * Strabo.iv. ; Ammian. Marcell. xv. 9; Diod. Sic. v. 31 ; Toland's History of the Druids, pp. 24 — 29; Rowland's Mona Antiqua, p. 65; Borlase's ConiWdll, p. (>/ ; Macpherson's Dissertations, p. 203 ; Bouche's Histoire de Provence, i. G8; Fosbroke's Encyclopaedia of Antiquities, ii. 662. f De Divinatione, 1. 41. It is commonly said that there were Druidessea as well as Druids, and some modern writers have even given us a minute account of the several de- grees or orders of this female hierarchy ; but the notion does not seem to rest upon any sufficient authority. On the contrary, Strabo expressly tells us that it was a rule with the Druids, which they most strictly observed, never to communicate any of their secret doctrines to women, having no faith, it seems, in the doctrine held by some of the moderns, that a woman can keep a secret. Vopiscus, indeed, relates that the Emperor Au- relian on one occasion consulted certain female fortune-tellers of Gaul, whom this historian calls Druidesses, and that one of these personages also another time delivered a warning to Alexander Severus ; but the women in question seem to have been merely a sort of sibyls or witches. The art of divination, as we have already seen from the ex- ample of Divitiacus, was one of the favourite pre- tensions of the Druidical, as it has been of most other systems of superstition. The British Druids, indeed, appear to have professed the practice of magic in this and all its other departments. Pliny observes that in his day this supernatural art was cultivated with such astonishing ceremonies in Bri- tain, that the Persians themselves might seem to have acquired the knowledge of it from that island. In the Irish tongue a magician is still called Drui, and the magic art Druidheach, that is Druidity, as it might be literally translated.* In the Irish translation of the Scriptures the magicians of Egypt are called the Druids of Egypt, and the same name is given to the magi or wise men from the east mentioned in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Julian tells us that the Druids of Gaul were libe- rally paid by those who consulted them for their revelations of the future, and the good fortune they promised. Among their chief methods of divination was that from the entrails of victims offered in sacrifice. One of their practices was remarkable for its strange and horrid cruelty, if we may believe the account of Diodorus Siculus. In sacrificing a man they would grve him the mor- tal blow by the stroke of a sword above the dia- phragm, and then, according to rules which had descended to them from their forefathers, they would draw their predictions from inspection of the posture in which the dying wretch fell, the con- vulsions of his quivering limbs, and the direction in which the blood flowed from his body. A wild story is told by Plutarch, in his Treatise on the Cessation of Oracles, about a discovery made by a person named Demetrius, of an island in the neigh- bourhood of Britain, inhabited by a few Britons who were esteemed sacred and inviolable by their countrymen. Immediately after his arrival, it is affirmed, the air grew black and troubled, and strange apparitions were seen ; the winds rose to a tempest, and fiery spots and whirlwinds appeared dancing towards the earth. Demetrius was told that all this turmoil of the elements was occasioned * Toland, p. 20. vol. I. E 66 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. by the death of one of a certain race of invisible beings who frequented the isle. It has been con- jectured that this island was either Anglesey, or one of the Hebrides, and that the persons inhabiting it were Druids, who thus affected a commerce with the world of spirits and supernatural powers. Some- what resembling this account is that given by Mela of the island of Sena, which he describes as situ- ated in the British sea, opposite to the coast inha- bited by the Osismi, and which is believed to be the isle of Sain, near the coast of Britany. It was famous, according to the ancient geographer, for the oracle of a certain Gallic divinity. The priestesses, who were called Barrigenae, were said to be nine in number, and to have vowed perpetual virginity. They were thought to be endowed with various singular powers, such as that of raising the waves and winds with their songs, of changing themselves into whatever animals they chose, of healing diseases which were incurable by the skill of others, and of knowing and predicting future events ; these, however, they revealed only to ma- riners who came on purpose to consult them. It is highly probable that the moon was the deity which was here worshipped.* There is reason to believe that the Druids, like other ancient teachers of religion and philosophy, had an esoteric or secret doctrine, in which the members of the order were instructed, of a more refined and spiritual character than that which they preached to the multitude. Diogenes Laertius ac- quaints us, that the substance of their system of faith and practice was comprised in three precepts, namely, to worship the gods, to do no evil, and to behave courageously. They were reported, how- ever, he says, to teach their philosophy in enig- matic apophthegms. Mela also expresses himself as if he intended us to understand that the greater part of their theology was reserved for the initiated. One doctrine, he says, that of the immortality of the soul, they published, in order that the people might be thereby animated to bravery in war. The language of this writer would rather imply, that what they promised was merely the continuance of existence in another world. The people, he tells us, in consequence of their belief in this doctrine, were accustomed when they buried their dead to bum and inter along with them things useful for the living ; a statement which is confirmed by the common contents of the barrows or graves of the ancient Britons. He adds a still better evidence of the strength of their faith. They were wont, it seems, to put off the settlement of accounts and the exaction of debts, till they should meet again in the shades below. It also sometimes happened, that persons not wishing to be parted from their friends who had died, would throw themselves into the funeral piles of the objects of their attachment, with the view of thus accompanying them to their new scene of life. It does not seem to be easy to reconcile these statements with the common sup- position that the doctrine on the subject of the * Don Marline: ReliRinn des GaulloU. immortality of the soul taught by the Druids, was that of the Metempsychosis, or its transmigration immediately after death into another body. Yet we find the practice of self-immolation also pre- valent in India, along with a belief in the soul's transmigration, under the Brahminical system of religion. Perhaps we may derive some assistance in solving the difficulty, from the statement which has been little noticed of Diodorus Siculus. This writer, speaking of the Gauls, says that they be- lieved that the souls of the dead returned to animate other bodies after the lapse of a certain number of years. In the mean time, it seems to have been thought, they lived with other similarly dis- embodied spirits in some other world; for it is added that, in this belief, when they buried their dead they were wont to address letters to their de- ceased friends and relations, which they threw into the funeral pile, as if the persons to whom they were addressed would in this way receive and read them. Other writers, in their account of the Druidical doctrine of the immortality of the soul, expressly affirm that the spirits of the dead were thought to enjoy their future existence only in another world. * There has also been some dis- pute as to whether the Druidical metempsychosis included the transmigration of the soul into animals, as well as from one to another human form.f It has been conjectured that the fundamental principle of the Druidical esoteric doctrine was the belief in one God. For popular effect, however, this opinion, if it ever was really held even by the initiated, appears to have been from the first wrapped up and disguised in an investment of materialism, as it was presented by them to the gross apprehen- sion of the vulgar. The simplest, purest, and most ancient form of the public religion of the Druids, seems to have been the worship of the celestial luminal ies and of fire. The sun appears to have been adored under the same name of Bel or Baal, by which he was distinguished as a divinity in the paganism of the East. t We have already had occa- sion to notice their observance of the moon in the regulation of the times of their great religious festi- vals. These appear to have been four in number : the first was the 10th of March, or the sixth day of the moon nearest to that, which, as already men- tioned, was their New Year's Day, and that on which the ceremony of cutting the misletoe was performed ; the others were the 1st of May, Mid- summer Eve, and the last day of October. On all these occasions the chief celebration was by fire. On the eve of the festival of the 1st of May, the tradition is, that all the domestic fires throughout the country were extinguished, and lighted again the next day from the sacred fire kept always burn- ing in the temples. " The Celtic nations," ob- serves Toland, " kindled other fires on Midsum- mer eve, which are still continued by the Roman • Ammian. Marcel, lib. XV. + See Borlase's Antiquities of Cornwall, pp. 94, 95; and Fos- broke's Encyclopaedia of Antiquities, ii. 662. i The author of " Rritannia after the Romans," however, denies that the Celtic Beli or Belinus has any connexion with the Oriental Baal or Bel. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 67 Catholics of Ireland, making them in all their grounds, and carrying flaming brands about their cornfields. This they do likewise all over France, and in some of the Scottish isles. These Midsum- mer fires and sacrifices were to obtain a blessing on the fruits of the earth, now becoming ready for gathering ; as those of the 1st of May, that they might prosperously grow ; and those of the last of October were the thanksgiving for finishing their harvest." In Ireland, and also in the north of Scotland, the 1st of May, and in some places the 21st of June, is still called Beltein or Beltane, that is, the day of the Bel Fire; and imitations of the old superstitious ceremonies were not long ago still generally performed. In Scotland a sort of sacrifice was off'ered up, and one of the persons present, upon whom the lot fell, leaped three times through the flames of the fire. In Ireland the cottagers . all drove their cattle through the fire. Even in some parts of England the practice still prevails of light- ing fires in parishes on Midsummer eve.* The adoration of fire was the adoration of what was conceived to be one of the great principles or sovereign powers of nature. Water was another of^ the elements, or ultimate constituents of things, as they were long deemed to be, which appears to have been in like manner held sacred, and in some sort worshipped. There is reason to believe that as the sun and moon, although sometimes wor- • See Statistical Account of Scotland, iii. 105, t. 84, and xi. 620 j Vallancey's Essay on the Antiquity of the Irish Language, p. 19; and Brande's Popular Antiquities, i. 238, &c. shipped together, had at other times tlieir rival and contending votaries ; so the adorers of water were sometimes considered as the opponents of those of fire. We know, at least, that contests took place between them in the East; and there are some traces to be detected of the separation and mutual aversion of the two creeds, also in the West. All these diff'erences, no doubt, originated in the prefer- ences, gradually more and more displayed, by some persons for one, by others for another, of several imaginary deities which had been all at first the objects of a common worship, till at last the pre- ference became an exclusive adoption, and the god of the rival sect was either altogether deprived of divine honours and veneration, or, what was more in accordance with the spirit of superstition, was denounced as a demon or power of evil, and as such still believed in, though with trembling and abhorrence. But after this state of things had lasted for some time, it might naturally enough happen, in favourable circumstances, that the di- vided creeds would lay aside their hostility and again coalesce; the worship of Baal, for instance, thus recombining with that of Ashtaroth, or the adorers of fire and those of water consenting to bow down and make their ofiferings together to both deities. Some indication of such a reconcilement as this last, seems to be pret-ented in the doctrine according to Strabo, held by the Druids respecting the destiny of the material world, which they taught was never to be entirely destroyed or annihilated, but was nevertheless to undergo an endless succes- Sk.bttbt Hili., in Wiltshire. — Coniectured to be a colossal Barrow. 68 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Stonehenge. sion of great revolutions, some of which were to be eifected by the power of fire, others by that of water. Another of the most remarkable principles of primitive Druidism appears to have been the wor- ship of the Serpent ; a superstition so widely ex- tended, as to evince its derivation from the most an- cient traditions of the human race. Pliny has given us a curious account of the anguinum, or serpent's egg, which he tells us was worn as their distin- guishing badge by the Druids. He had himself seen it, he says, and it was about the bigness of an apple, its shell being a cartilaginous incrustation, full of little cavities like those on the legs of the polypus. Marvels of all kinds were told of this production. It was said to be formed, at first, by a great number of serpents twined together, whose hissing at last raised it into the air, when it was to be caught, ere it fell to the ground, in a clean white cloth, by a person mounted on a swift horse, who had immediately to ride off at full speed, the en- raged serpents pursuing him until they were stopped (as witches still are supposed to be in the popular faith) by a running water. If it were genuine it would, when enchased in gold and thrown into a river, swim against the stream. All the virtues also of a charm were ascribed to it. In particular, the person who carried it about with him was ensured against being overcome in any dispute in which he might engage, and might count upon success in his attempts at obtaining the favour and friendship of the great. It has been conjectured on highly pro- bable grounds, that the great Druidical temples of Avebury, of Stonehenge, of Carnac in Britany, and most of the others that remain both in Britain and Gaul, were dedicated to the united worship of the sun and the serpent, and that the form of their construction is throughout emblematical of this combination of the two religions.* But, however comparatively simple and re- stricted may have been the Druidical worship in its earliest stage, there is sufficient evidence that, at a later period, its gods came to be much more numerous. Caesar, as we have already seen, men- tions among those adored by the Gauls, Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. It is to be regretted that the historian did not give us the Cel- tic names of the deities in question, rather than the Roman names which he considered, from the simi- larity of attributes, to be their representatives. Livy however tells us that the Spanish Celts called Mercury, Teutates ; the same word, no doubt, with the Phoenician Taaut, and the Egyptian Thoth, which are stated by various ancient writers to be the same with the Hermes of the Greeks, and the Mercury of the Latins.t Mercury is probably, also, the Oriental Budha, and the Scandinavian Woden ; the same day of the week, it is observa- ble, being in the Oriental, the Northern, and the Latin countries respectively, called after or dedi- cated to these three names. Hesus appears to • See on this subject a curious Dissertation by the Uev. B. Deane, in the Archaeologia. vol. xxv. (for 1834), pp. 188—229. + Philobiblius ex Sauconiath.— Cic. de Nat. D. iii. 22. Section 1 to 2. [No. 1. — Ground Plan of the Temple, with a sectional view of the same from 1 to 2 — i. e, from cast to west. The plan, though on a small scale, sliows the relative proportions and arrangements of the lofty bank, or vallum, e; the ditch, or moat,/; the commencement of the western, or Beckhampton Avenue, a; the southern, or Kennet Avenue, b; the southern inner temple, c; the northern inner temple, d.] [No. 2.— P/an, or Map of the whole Temple, with its two avenues, c and d; the temple, a; a small temple, e; Silbury Hill,/; high ground, g\ a line of road, or British track-way, A; the course of the river Kennet, t; line of Roman road from Bath to London,*; • * barrows; sites of villages, I.] /TTR i^iv N N C S Gaulish Deities. — From Roman Bas-reliefs under the Choir of Notre Dame, Parts. have been the Celtic name for Mars. Apollo seems to have been considered the same with the Sun, as he also was by the Greeks and Romans, and to have been known by the name of Bel, the same with the Oriental Baal. Jupiter is thought to have been called Jow, which means young, from his being the youngest son of Saturn, whom both Cicero and Dionysius of Halicamassus affirm to have been also adored by the Celtic nations. Bacchus, Ceres, Proserpine, Diana, and other gods of Greece and Rome, also appear to have all had their repre- sentatives in the Druidioal worship ; if, indeed, the classic theology did not borrow these divinities from the Celts. Another of the Celtic gods was Taranis, whose name signifies the God of Thunder. The earliest Druidism seems, like the kindred superstition of Germany, as described by Tacitus, to have admitted neither of covered temples nor of sculptured images of the gods. Jupiter, indeed, is said to have been represented by a lofty oak, and Mercury by a cube — the similarity of that geome- trical figure on all sides typifying that perfect truth and unchangeableness which were held to belong to this supreme deity ; but these are to be 70 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. considered ii3t as attempts to imitate the supposed bodily forms of the gods, but only as emblematic illustrations of their attributes. At a later period, however, material configurations of the objects of worship seem to have been introduced. Gildas speaks of such images as still existing in great numbers in his time, among the unconverted Bri- tons. They had a greater number of gods, he says, than the Egyptians themselves, there being hardly a river, lake, mountain, or wood, which had not its divinity. Montfaucon has given an engraving of an image of the god Hesus, and another of another Celtic god, whose name appears to have been Cernunnos, from bas-reliefs found under the choir of the church of N6tre Dame, at Paris, in 1 T 1 1 . In the preceding page we have inserted copies of both. With regard to the peculiar forms of the Druidi- cal worship, little information has come down to us. Pliny has merely recorded that, in offering the sacrifice, the officiating priest was wont to pray to the divinity to send down a blessing upon the of- ferer. Popular tradition has preserved the me- mory of the practice by the worshippers of the Deasuil or Deisol, which consisted in moving roimd, in imitation of the apparent course of the sun, from the east by the south to the west.* Pliny states that at some of the sacred rites of the Britons tlie women went naked, only having their skins stained dark with the juice of the woad. As for the human sacrifices of which Caesar speaks, his account is fully borne out by the testi- monies of various other ancient authors. Strabo describes the image of wicker or straw, in which, he says, men and all descriptions of cattle and beasts were -roasted together. He also relates, that sometimes the victims were crucified, sometimes shot to death with arrows. The statement of Dio- dorus Siculus is, that criminals were kept under ground for five years, and then offered up as sacri- fices to the gods by being impaled, and burned in great fires along with quantities of other offerings. He adds, that they also immolated the prisoners they had taken in war, and along with them de- voured, burned, or in some other manner destroyed likewise whatever cattle they had taken from their enemies. Plutarch tells us, that the noise of songs and musical instruments was employed on these occasions to drown the cries of the sufferers, f Pliny is of opinion that a part of every human vic- tim was ate by the Druids ; but what reason he had for thinking so does not appear, nor does the supposition seem to be probable in itself. Upon the subject of the practice of human sacrifice it has been observed, that " if we rightly consider this point we shall perceive that, shocking as it is, it is yet a step towards the humanizing of savages ; for the mere brute man listens only to his ferocious passions and horrid appetites, and slays and devours all the enemies he can conquer ; but the priest, per- suading him to select only the best and bravest as sacrifices to his protecting deity, thereby, in fact, preserves numberless lives, and puts an end to the • See upon this subject Borlase's Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 123,&c. * De Superstitione. caimibalism which has justly been looked upon a? the last degradation of human nature." * The origin of Druidism, and its connexion with other ancient creeds of religion and philosophy, have given occasion to much curious speculation. Diogenes Laertius describes the Druids as holding the same place among the Gauls and Britons with that of the Philosophers among the Greeks, of the Magi among the Persians, of the Gymnosophists among the Indians, and of the Chaldeans among the Assyrians. He also refers to Aristotle as affirming in one of his lost works that philosophy had not been taught to the Gauls by the Greeks, but had originated among the former, and, from them, had passed to the latter. The introduc- tion into the Greek philosophy of the doctrine of the Metempsychosis is commonly attributed to Py- thagoras ; and there are various passages in ancient authors which make mention of, or allude to some connexion between that philosopher and the Druids. Abaris, the Hyperborean, as has been noticed above, is by many supposed to have been a Druid ; and he, lamblicus tells us, was taught by Pythagoras to find out all truth by the science of numbers, f Marcellinus, speaking of the conventual associa- tions of the Druids, expresses himself as if he con- ceived that they so lived in obedience to the com- mands of Pythagoras ; " as the authority of Pytha- goras hath decreed," are his words. J Others affirm that the Grecian philosopher derived his philosophy from the Druids. A report is preserved by Cle- ment of Alexandria that Pythagoras, in the course of his travels, studied under both the Druids and the Brahmins. § The probability is that both Py- thagoras and the Druids drew their philosophy from the same fountain. Several of the ablest and most laborious among the modern investigators of the subject of Druidism have found themselves compelled to adopt the theory of its Oriental origin. Pelloutier, from the numerous and strong resemblances presented by the Druidical ajid the old Persian religion, concludes the Celts and Persians, as Mr. O'Brien has lately done, to be the same people, and the Celtic tongue to be the ancient Persic. || The late Mr. Reuben Bur- row, distinguished for his intimate acquaintance with the Indian astronomy and mythology, in a paper in the Asiatic Researches, decidedly pro- nounces the Druids to have been a race of emigrated Indian philosophers, and Stouehenge to be evi- dently one of the Temples of Budha.^ It may be recollected that some of the Welsh antiquaries have, on other grounds, brought their assumed British ancestors from Ceylon, the great seat of Budhism.** The same origin is also assigned by Mr. O'Brien to the primitive religion and civiliza- tion of Ireland. This question has been examined at great length in a " Dissertation on the Origin of the Druids," by Mr. Maurice, who, considering the * Introduction to History, in Encyclopsiiia MetropoliUina, p. 63. + Vita Pythag. e.xix. t Ammian. Marcel, xv. 9. § Strom, i. 35. 8 Histoiro des Celles, p. 19. See also Borlase's Antiquities of Cornwall, c. xxii. — " Of the Great Resemblance betwixt the Druid and Persian Superstition, and the Cause of it inquired into." If Asiatic Researches, ii. 488. •• See ante. p. 9. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 71 Budhists to have been a sect of the Brahmins, comes to the conclusion that " the celebrated order of the Druids, anciently established in this country, were the immediate descendants of a tribe of Brahmins situated in the high northern latitudes bordering on the vast range of Caucasus ; that these, during a period of the Indian empire, when its limits were most extended in Asia, mingling with the Celto- Scythian tribes, who tenanted the immense deserts of Grand Tartary, became gradually incorporated, though not confounded with that ancient nation ; introduced among them the rites of the Brahmin religion, occasionally adopting those of the Scy- thians, and together with them finally emigrated to the western regions of Europe." * It must be confessed that the Druidical system, as established in Gaul and Britain, has altogether very much the appearance of something not the growth of the country, but superinduced upon the native barbarism by importation from abroad. The knowledge and arts of which they appear to have been possessed, seem to point out the Druids as of foreign extraction, and as continuing to form the depositories of a civilization greatly superior to that of the general community in the midst of which they dwelt. It was quite natural, however, that Druidism, supposing it to have been originally an imported and foreign religion, should nevertheless gradually adopt some things from the idolatry of a different form which may have prevailed in Britain and Gaul previous to its introduction ; just as we find Christianity itself to have become adulterated in some countries by an infusion of the heathenism with which it was brought into contact. On this hypothesis we may perhaps best account for those apparent traces of the Druidical religion which are to be detected in some Celtic countries, where, at the same time, we have no reason to believe that there ever were any Druids. It has been contended that although there were no Druids anywhere except in Britain and Gaul, the Druidical religion extended over all the north and west of Europe.t It is probable that what have been taken for the doc- trines or practices of Druidism in other Celtic countries, were really those of that elder native su- perstition from which pure Druidism eventually received some intermixture and corruption. The Germans, Caesar expressly tells us, had no Druids; nor is there a vestige of such an insti- tution to be discovered in the ancient history, tradi- tions, customs, or monuments of any Gothic people. It was probably indeed confined to Ireland, South Britain, and Gaul, until the measures taken to root it out from the Roman dominions seem to have compelled some of the Druids to take refuge in other countries. The emperor Tiberius, accord- ing to Pliny and Strabo, and the emperor Clau- dius, according to Suetonius, issued decrees for the total abolition of the Druidical religion, on the pretext of an abhorrence of the atrocity of the human sacrifices in which it indulged its votaries. • Indian Antiquities, vol. vi. part i. p. 18. + liorlase's Antiquities of Coruwall, p. 70. The true motive may oe suspected to have been a jealousy of the influence among the provincials of Gaul and Britain of a native order of priesthood so powerful as that of the Druids. Suetonius, indeed, states that the practice of the Druidical religion had been already interdicted to Roman citizens by Augustus. We have seen in the course of the preceding narrative how it was extirpated from its chief seat in the south of Britain by Sue- tonius Paulinus. Such of the Druids as survived this attack are supposed to have fled to the Isle of Man, which then became, in place of Anglesey, the head-quarters of British Druidism. It was pro- bably after this that the Druidical religion pene- trated to the northern parts of the island. The vestiges, at all events, of its establishment at some period in Scotland are spread over many parts of that counfry, and it has left its impression in va- rious still surviving popular customs and supersti- tions. The number and variety of the Druid re- mains in North Britain, according to a late learned writer, are almost endless. The principal seat of Scottish Druidism is thought to have been the pa- rish of Kirkmichael, in the recesses of Perthshire, near the great mountainous range of the Gram- pians. * Druidism long survived, though in obscurity and decay, the thunder of the imperial edicts. In Ire- land, indeed, where the Roman arms had not pene- frated, it continued to flourish down nearly to the middle of the fifth century, when it fell before the Christian enthusiasm and energy of St. Patrick. But even in Britain the practice of the Druidical worship appears to have subsisted among the people long after the Druids, as an order of priesthood, were extinct. The annals of the sixth, seventh, and even of the eighth century, contain numerous edicts of emperors, and canons of coun- cils, against the worship of the sun, the moon, mountains, rivers, lakes, and trees, f There is even a law to the same effect of the English king Canute, in the eleventh century. Nor, as we have already more than once had occasion to remark, have some of the practices of the old superstition yet altogether ceased to be remem- bered in our popular sports, pastimes, and anniver- sary usages. The ceremonies of AU-Hallowmass, the bonfires of May-day and Midsummer eve, the virtues attributed to the mistletoe, and various other customs of the villages and country parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, still speak to us of the days of Druidism, and evince that the im- pression of its grim ritual has not been wholly ob- literated from the popular imagination, by the lapse of nearly twenty centuries. On the settlement of the Romans in Britain, the established religion of the province of course became the same classic superstition which these conquerors of the world still maintained in all its ancient honours and pre-eminence in their native Italy, which was diffused alike through all the • Chalmers's Caledonia, i. pp, 69-78. t Pelloutier Hist, des Celtes, iii.4.. 72 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. customs of their private life and the whole system of their state economy, and which they carried with them, almost as a part of themselves, or at least as the very living spirit and sustaining power of their entire polity and civilization, into every foreign land that they colonized. In this far island, too, as in the elder homes of poetry and the arts, "An age halli been wlien Earth was proud Of lustre too intense To be sustained; and mortals bowed The front in self-defence." Beside the rud ; grandeur of Stonehenge, and sur- rounded by the gloom of the sacred groves, glitter- ing temples, displaying all the grace and pomp of finished architecture, now rose to Jupiter, and Apollo, and Diana, and Venus ; and the air of our northern clime was peopled with all the bright dreams and visions of the mythology of Greece. A temple of Minerva, and probably other sacred edifices, appear to have adorned the city of Bath : London is supposed to have had its temple of Diana, occupying the same natural elevation which is now crowned by the magnificent Cathedral of St. Paul's ; and the foundations and other remains of similar monuments of the Roman Paganism have been discovered in many of our other ancient towns. But perhaps no such material memorials are so well fitted to strike the imagination, and to con- vey a lively impression of this long past state of things, as the passage in the Annals of Tacitus in which we find a string of piodigies recounted to have happened in different parts of the province of Britain immeiliately before the insurrection of Boadicea, just as the same events might have taken place in Italy or in Rome itself. First, in the town of Camaloduimm, the image of the goddess Victory, without any apparent cause, suddenly falls from its place, and turns its face round, as if giving way to the enemy. Then, females, seized with a sort of prophetic fury, would be heard mournfully calling out that destruction was at hand, their cries penetrating from the streets both into the curia, or council-chamber, and into the theatre. A re- presentation, in the air, of the colony laid in ruins was seen near the mouth of the Thames, while the sea assumed the colour of blood, and the re- ceding tide seemed to leave behind it the phantoms of human carcases. The picture is completed by the mention of the temple in which the Roman soldiery took refuge on tlie rushing into the city of their infuriated assailants, — of the undefended state of the place, in which the elegance of the buildings had been more attended to than their strength,— of another temple which had been raised in it to Claudius the Divine, — and, finally, of its crew of rapacious priests who, under the pretence of religion, wasted every man's substance, and excited a deeper indignation in the breasts of the unhappy natives than all the other cruelties and oppres- sions to which they were subjected. Three views, copied from Horsley's Hiilannia Romana. of a splendid bronze bowl, or patera, found in Wiltshire, and supposed to have been ascd for the joint lil)ation of the chief raugistrates of the five llouian towns, whose Simes appear on its murgin. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 73 Section II. INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY. Another result, however, of the Roman invasion of Britain was the introduction into the island of the Christian faith. An event so important might be ex- pected to hold a prominent place in our early chro- nicles. The missionary by whom Christianity was first brought to this island, the manner in which it was impressed upon the belief of so primitive a people, and the persons by whom its profession was earliest adopted, are particulars which it would have been interesting and gratifying to find recorded. But from the obscurity that pervades the ecclesiastical records of the first century, and the unobtrusive silence with which the commencing steps of the Christian faith were made, it cannot be accounted strange if Britain, a country at that time so remote and insignificant, should have the beginning of her religious history involved in much obscurity. The investigations of the curious however have, partly by bold conjectures and partly from monkish legends, attempted to show how Britain either was, or might have been. Christianized. Some have attributed the work to St. Peter, some to James the son of Zebedee, and others to Simon Zelotes; but for so important an office as the apostleship of this island the majority of writers will be contented with no less a personage than St. Paul ; and they ground their assumption upon the fact that several of the most active years of his life are not accounted for in the Acts of the Apostles. They think that therefore some part at least of this interval must have been employed among the Britons. By others again, such inferior personages as Aristobulus, who is incidentally mentioned by St. Paul,* Joseph of Arimathea, and the disciples of Polycarp, have been honoured as the founders of Christianity in Britain. Some of these accounts would imply that British Christianity is as old as the apostolic age ; and, although this point too must be considered as very uncertain, a few slight collateral facts have been adduced as affording evidence that the island contained some converts at that early date. Thus, about the middle of the first century, we find Pom- ponia Grsecina, a British lady, and wife of the Pro- consul Plautius, accused of being devoted to a strange and gloomy superstition, by which it has been thought, not improbably, that Christianity is implied ;t and Claudia, the wife of Pudens the senator, a British lady eulogised by Martial, J is supposed by some to have been the person of the same name mentioned by St. Paul. § All that can be regarded as well established is, that at a comparatively early period Christianity found its way into the British islands. Even before the close of the first century, not only Christian refugees may have fled thither from the continent to escape persecution, but Christian soldiers and civilians may have accompanied the invading armies. The path thus opened, and the work com- • Romans, xvi. 10. t Epigram, xl 53. VOL. I. t Tac. Annal. xiii. 32. J 2 Timotliy, iv. 21. menced, successive missionaries, from the operation of the same causes, would follow, to extend the sphere of action and increase the number of the converts. Circumstances, too, were peculiarly fa- vourable in Britain for such a successful progress. The preceding subtle and influential priesthood of Druidism, who might have the most effectually opposed the new faith, had been early destroyed by the swords of the conquerors, and the latter were too intent upon achieving the complete subjection of the country, to concern themselves about the transition of the inhabitants from one system of religious opinions to another. In this manner it would appear that Christian communities were gradually formed, buildings set apart for the pur- poses of public worship, and an ecclesiastical go- vernment established. But the same obscurity that pervades the origin of Christianity in Britain, ex- tends over the whole of its early progress. Un- fortunately, those monastic writers who attempted to compile its history were more eager to discover miracles than facts. Even of the venerable Bede, it must be admitted that his credulity appears to have been, at least, equal to his honesty. The favourite legend with which these writers decorate their history of the first centuries of the British church is that of king Lucius, the son of Coilus. According to their account, Lucius was king of the wliole island, and, having consented to be baptized at the instance of the Roman emperor, he became so earnest for the conversion of his people that he sent to Eleutherius, bishop of Rome, for assistance in the important work. In consequence of this application several learned doctors were sent, by whose instrumentality paganism was abolished throughout the island, and Christianity established in its room. They add, moreover, that three arch- bishops and twenty-eight bishops were established, for the government of the British church, upon the ruins of the pagan hierarchy; and that to them were made over, not only the revenues of the former priesthood, but also large additional means of sup- port. Not to waste a moment in pointing out such impossibilities as a king of the whole island at this time, or a heathen emperor labouring for his con- version in concert with a Roman bishop, we see, dimly shadowed forth in this monkish legend, some petty British king or chieftain, in vassalage to Rome, who, with the aid of Roman missionaries, effected the conversion of his tribe. A passing allusion, in the writings of TertuUian, gives us a more distinct idea of the state of Christianity in Britain than can be obtained from any such nar- ratives as this. In his work against the Jews, written a.d. 209, he says that " even those places in Britain hitherto inaccessible to the Roman arms have been subdued by the gospel of Christ." From this sentence we may form a conjecture as to the extent to which the new religion had spread even at this early period. It must have been planted for a considerable time in the South, and obtained a material ascendancy before it could have pene- trated beyond the northern boimdary of the pro- 74 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. viuce. We cannot suppose, however, that in cir- cumstances so much more unfavovu-able it could make much progress in these barbarous regions. The wild tribes of Scotland, still unconquered, were also disunited, or employed in mutual hostility; and the native priesthood possessed an influence that would materially impede the success of the new faith. We discover accordingly that, at a much later period, Kentigern and Columba found the Scots and Picts still heathens. The expressions of Ter- tullian, however, may very possibly refer to the extension of Christianity, not so much to Scotland, as to Ireland, in which latter part of Britain, for so it was then accounted, there are other reasons for supposing that this religion reckoned some converts even at that early period. As yet, the remoteness of Britain, and the sup- pression of the Druids, had equally preserved its humble church from foreign and domestic perse- cution ; but the time arrived when it was to share in those afflictions which fell to the lot of the Christian world at large. Diocletian, inspired with hatred and jealousy at the predominance of doc- trines which were supposed to menace all civil authority, addressed himself to the entire destruc- tion of Christianity ; and edicts were published in every part of the empire for the suppression of its rites, and the persecution of its followers. In a storm so universal Britain was no longer over- looked ; and St. Alban, the first martyr of our island, perished, with many others whose names have not been recorded. This event, according to Bede, took place in the year 286 ; but if it really hap- pened in the great persecution under Diocletian, a date at least seventeen or eighteen years later must be assigned to it. Although Constantius, who at this time directed the affairs of Britain, was favour- ably inclined towards the Christians, he durst not oppose the imperial mandate; and however he might indirectly alleviate its severities, yet the infe- rior magistrates had no such scruples. One inci- dent at this time betrayed his friendly disposition towards the persecuted. Assembling the officers of his household, he announced to them the pleasure of the emperor, requiring the dismission of the Christians from office, and gave those who were of tliat religion their choice either to renounce their creed or resign their situations. Some of them, unwilling to make the required sacrifice, abjured their faith; upon which Constantius discharged them from his service ; declaring that those who had renounced their God could never prove true to a master.* This persecution continued to rage in Britain, according to Gildas, for the space of two years, during which numbers of the Christian churches were destroyed, and multitudes who escaped from death were obliged to fly to the forests and mountains. But at last Diocletian, having laid down the purple, and compelled his colleague Maximian at the same time to abdicate, a persecu- tion that had been conducted upon a more regular system than any that had preceded it, and had * Euseb. Vit. Constant, i. 16. almost extinguished the Christian faith, subsided as suddenly as it had commenced, and the British church was restored to its former tranquillity. Of the history of Christianity in our island during the third century we know little or nothing ; tho.se subtle or incomprehensible religious disputes which agitated the churches of the East and West appear to have been of too refined a character for the simple understandings of the Britons ; and by these we may perhaps assume, from the silence of history, that they remained nearly unmolested. From the time of the accession of Constantine, however, in the beginning of the fourth century, the hitherto secluded church of Britain seems to have become united to the civilized world, and to have been considered as making a part of the spi- ritual empire which he established. In the year 314, Eborius, bishop of York, Restitutus, bishop ot London, and Adelphius, bishop of Richborough, attended the council at Aries ; and as three bishops formed the full representation of a province, it appears that Britain was thus placed on an equality with the churches of Spain and Gaul. The libe- rality of Constantine gave opportunities to the ecclesiastics of acquiring wealth and distinction, of which many were eager to avail themselves ; but while, in Italy and the East, they gradually began to rival the pomp of temporal princes, nothing of this kind was exhibited in Britain. In fact, we are rather justified in the conclusion that the British bishops had hitherto been, and still continued poor, on account not only of the national poverty, but of the partial conversion of the people, many of whom still remained attached either to the classical or druidical worship. This view is corroborated by a circumstance that occurred in the succeeding reign. When Constantius offered to maintain the bishops of the West from the royal revenues, only those of Britain acceded to the proposal, while the rest rejected it. This would seem to imply that the British bishops must have been but indifferently provided for from other sources. It has generally been supposed that, during the fourth century, the British church was considerably tainted with those corruptions in doctrine that so largely overspread the continental churches ; and that Arianism, so triumphant in the West, exten- sively prevailed in our island : and in proof of this Gildas is quoted, who describes the progress of that heresy among his countrymen with many mournful amplifications. In opposition to the state- ment of Gildas, St. Jerome and St. Chrysostom frequently allude, in their writings, to the ortho- doxy of the British church. This contradiction may perhaps be reconciled by the supposition that while these fathers regarded merely the national creed, the historian described the private interpre- tation of its doctrines which may have been che- rished by certain ecclesiastics. It must be acknowledged that, durmg this cen- tury, the bishops of Britain, if we may believe the account of Facundus,* exhibited in one instance • Facund. V.30. Du Pin, Hist. Cent. iv. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION : B.C. 55.— A.D. 44.9. 75 but a weak and compromising spirit. At the coimcil of Ariminum, summoned by Constantius, in the year 3.59, they are asserted to have allowed themselves to be influenced so much by the per- suasions or threats of the emperor, as to subscribe to sentiments in favour of Arianism ; but, upon their return to Britain, they hastened to retract these concessions, and renew their allegiance to the Nicean creed. These circumstances would seem to show, that though the doctrines of Arius may have been partially cherished, yet they were un- popular, and that the body of the church remained comparatively orthodox and undivided. The only ostensible difference by which the British cliurch was distinguished, during this period, from the churches on the continent, was, its observing the Asiatic computation of time, in keeping Easter, instead of the Roman — a distinction frivolous in itself, but important in its consequences at a later period, when the Roman pontiffs laid claim to universal rule, and sought to secure it by enforcing a universal conformity. After the Christian church had been established in power and splendour, the same results were exhibited in Britain as in other countries; and while the Italian and Greek infused into the Christian faith the classical Paganism of his fathers, the Briton leavened it with his ancestral Druidical superstitions.* To these also were added the religious follies that were now of general preva- lence. Pilgrimages to the Holy Land became fashionable, and were performed by numerous devotees. The orders of monks also became more numerous, though they were obliged, from the poverty of the country, to procure their subsistence by manual labour. In the fifth century, the opinions of Pelagius, most probably a native of Ireland, were zealously disseminated through the British islands, by his disciples and countrymen, Agricola and Celestius ; and we are told by Bede, that, alarmed at the rapid progress of these doctrines, but unable to "refute them, the British ecclesiastics implored assistance • Suutliey's Book of the Church, i 16. from the bishops of Gaul. The latter sent Ger- manus, bishop of Auxerre, and Lupus, bishop of Troyes, to their aid, who arrived in Britain about the year 429. After having been welcomed by the orthodox clergy, they appointed a meeting for public disputation with the Pelagians. The latter, according to the narrative of the venerable histo- rian, came to the arena in great pomp, and advo- cated their cause with the most showy rhetoric, but Germanus and Lupus, when it was their turn to reply, so overwhelmed them with arguments and authorities, that they were completely silenced, and the whole assembly triumphed in their discom- fitiu-e. Bede was too orthodox and too credulous to have doubted the tradition, if it had affirmed that the arguments of the Gallic bishops on this occa- sion struck their antagonists dead as well as dumb. But these bishops were skilled in the handling of other weapons as well as those of controversy. We have already related how tlie military force of the South Britons, being led on by Germanus against the Scots and Picts, put the barbarians to flight with shouts of " Hallelujah." Having thus con- quered the temporal as well as the spiritual ene- mies of Britain, the bishops departed. In a short time, however, the narrative proceeds, the baffled Pelagians again raised their heads, and their cause became more triumphant than before. A fresh application was in consequence made to the victorious Germanus, the British bishops having, as it would seem, profited little by the arguments with which he had formerly defended their cause. He returned m 446, accompanied by Severus, bishop of Treves; and this time, not contented with merely silencing the Pelagians for the moment, he procured the banishment of their leaders from the island ; and thus peace and order were restored for the short interval that preceded the arrival of the Saxons. It would appear, there- fore, that, equally disunited and helpless, the church and the state were at this period both obliged to invoke aid against their domestic adver- saries. Bede has garnished the whole of this detail with many miraculous circumstances, which we have not considered it necessary to retain. 76 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS. Section 1. POLITICAL DIVISIONS OF THE BRITISH NATIONS. EFORE proceeding to the sketch which the brief notices of the an- cient writers enable us pears to have prevailed in Britain before the Roman Conquest, it will be convenient to take a rapid survey of the manner in which the country was divided among the several nations or tribes that inhabited it. These tribes were not only distinguished by different names, and by the occupation of sepa- rate territories, but they were to a certain extent so many different races, which had come to the island from various districts of the opposite con- tinent, and still continued to preserve themselves as unmixed with each other as they were in their original seats. Thus Caesar tells us that the several bodies of Belgians which he found settled on the sea-coast, although they had united to wrest the tract of which they were in possession from the previous inhabitants, had almost all retained the dis- tinguishing names of their mother states ; and the same thing no doubt had been done in most in- stances by the earlier settlers from Gaul and else- where. We derive all the direct information we possess respecting the ancient British nations partly from Caesar, Tacitus, Dio Cassius, and the other authors who have given us details of the military operations of the Romans in the island, and partly from certain professedly geographical accounts of it. One of these is that contained in the great geographical com- pilation of the celebrated Ptolemy of Alexandria, who wrote in the early part of the second century, but who, as we have already observed, is believed to have drawn the materials for much of his work, and for the portion of it relating to the British islands in particular, from sources of considerably greater antiquity. We may probably regard his description, therefore, as, in part at least, applicable to the counfry rather before Caesar's invasion than after the Roman conquest ; in other words, rather as it was known to the Phoenicians than to the Romans. It is evident, however, that Ptolemy must have made a good many additions to his original Tyrian authorities from later accounts. Another detailed description of Britain is that con- tained in what is called the Itinerary of Antoninus, a most valuable survey of all the roads throughout the Roman empire, evidently drawn up by public authority, and the last additions to which do not appear to have been made later than the beginning of the fourth century, while its original compila- tion has been ascribed, on probable grounds, to the time of Julius Caesar. It presents us with a view of the high roads and chief towns of South Britain during the most flourishing period of the Roman occupation. Another ancient account of Roman Britain of undoubted authenticity is that found in the work entitled " Notitia Imperii," wliich is an enumeration of the civil and military establishments of all the provinces of the empire, brought down, according to the title, to beyond the times of Arcadius and Honorius. In the case of Britain, the Notitia may be understood to give us the imperial establishment at the latest date at which the island formed a part of the Roman em- pire. It has preserved the names (though un- fortunately merely the names) of the several pro- vinces into which Roman Britain was divided, and of the several military stations. Lastly, there is a remarkable performance, professing to be a geo- graphical account of Britain in the time of the Romans, drawn up from the papers of a Roman general, by a Benedictine monk of the fourteenth century named Richard of Cirencester. Of the existence of Richard of Cirencester there is no doubt ; we have other works from his pen, of which some have been printed, and others remain in ma- nuscript. It may also be admitted, that if he really wrote the present work, he did not, in its composi- tion, draw upon his own learning or ingenuity, which appear to have been quite unequal to such an achievement, but transcribed what he has set down from some other document. The only reasonable doubt is, whether the work be not altogether a modern forgery. It was never heard of till the year 1757, when the discovery of the manuscript was announced by Mr. C. Bertram, Professor of the English Language in the University of Copenhagen, and a copy of it transmitted to this country to Dr. Stukely, by whom an exfract, containing the most material part of the work, was immediately printed. The whole was published the same year at Copen- hagen by Mr. Bertram. The original manuscript, however, we believe, has never since been seen, and no trace of it was to be found among Mr. Bertram's papers after his death. On the other hand, the Chap. Ill,] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 77 internal evidence has appeared to many persons to be in favour of tlie authenticity of the work ; and it has been very generally received as an important contribution to our knowledge of ancient Britain. Richard of Cirencester's description, which is ac- companied by a rudely-drawn map, contains much information, if we could be assured of its trust- worthiness, especially respecting the geography of the northern part of the island, which is not to be found either in Ptolemy or the Itinerary. Caesar, in his two descents upon Britain, saw no more than a corner of the country. The farthest point to which he penetrated was the capital of Cassivellaunus, which is generally supposed to have stood on the site of the now ruined town of Veru- 1am in the vicinity of St. Alban's, in Hertfordshire. Caesar himself describes the dominions of this prince as lying along the north bank of the Thames, at the distance of about eighty miles from the sea, by which he probably means the east coast of Kent, from which he began his march. Unfortunately we are nowhere told of what people Cassivellaunus was king. The only British nations mentioned by Caesar are the people of Cantium, the Trinobantes, the Cenimagni, the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, the Bibroci, and the Cassi. All these must have dwelt In the part of the country which he hastily overran. Cantium was undoubtedly Kent, so called from a Celtic word signifying a head or promontory. The Saxons, it has been observed,* called Kent Cantir- land, whence our present Canterbury ; and we may therefore conjecture that the original name of the district was Cean-tir, that is, the head or protruding part of the land, the same word with Cantire, the name still borne by the long peninsular tract which forms the south-western extremity of Argyleshire. " Vanguard of Liberty !" exclaims a modern poet, " Ye men of Kent, Ye children of a soil that doth advance Its haughty Ijrow against the coast of France I" Ptolemy, it may be noted, sets down London, or as he writes the name, Londinium, as one of the towns of the Cantii ; and from this it has been conjec- tured, with much probability, that the original Lon- don stood on the south side of the Thames. Caesar mentions no such place; but indeed he has not recorded the name of a single British town. The Trinobantes, called by Ptolemy the Trinoantes, occupied Essex, and, probably, the greater part of Middlesex. London on the north bank of the Thames, therefore, the proper foundation of the present British metropolis, was one of their towns. Geofirey of Monmouth's story, however, about that people having derived their name from Trinovant, that is, New Troy, the original name of London, cannot be received. Trinobantes is said to mean, in Celtic, a powerful people.t Of the other tribes mentioned by Caesar none are noticed, at least under the same names, by any other authority except Richard of Cirencester. He enumerates the Bibroci, the Segontiaci, and the Cassi, whom he calls the Cassii. The Bibroci are commonly Bctbam's Gael and Cymri. + Hethan supposed to have been the inhabitants of Berkshire, and to have left their name to that county ; the Segontiaci of Hampshire ; and the Cassi of Hert- ford, one of the hundreds of which, that in which St. Alban's stands, still retains the name of Cassio. The Cassi would therefore appear to have been the subjects of Cassivellaunus, if Verulam was his capital ; but this supposition, it must be admitted, does not appear to be very consistent with the nar- rative of Caesar, in which the Cassi are stated to have made their submission along with other tribes, while Cassivellaunus still held out. The Cenimagni have been supposed to be the same with the Iceni mentioned by Richard and also by Tacitus, and with the Semini of Ptolemy, who appear to have inhabited the shires of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge ; and the Ancalides with the Atrebatii of Ptolemy and the Attrebates of Richard, whose residence is placed in Wiltshire. If this latter notion be well founded, it is probable that the name, which only occurs once in Caesar, has not come down to us as he wrote it ; for he was well acquainted with the Atrebates of Belgic Gaul (the ancient occupants of the territory of Artois), of whom this British people are supposed to have been a colony, and could not have mistaken the name when it met him again here. On the whole, it must be confessed that nothing can be more unsatisfactory than these attempted identifi- cations of the tribes of whom Caesar speaks. We should be inclined to think that they were not spread over nearly so great an extent of territory as they are by this account made to occupy. All of them, except the Cantii, who are not recorded to have submitted, would almost appear, from the manner in which they are mentioned, to have been merely dependent upon the Trinobantes, whose policy in making terms with the Roman general they are stated instantly to have followed, and tliat is really all that is said of them. We do not believe that any of them ever formed part of the confederation organized to oppose the invasion, at the head of which Cassivellaunus was. According to Ptolemy, who, after all, is the only authority upon whom much dependence can be placed, the space over which the tribes mentioned by Caesar, and by no other writer, if we cast aside the very suspicious authority of Richard of Ciren- cester, have been commonly diffrised, appears to have been fully occupied by other tribes. The following is the order in which he enumerates the several nations inhabiting what we now call South Britain, with the manner in which he appears to distribute the country among them. 1. The Brigantes. Their territory is described as extending across the island from sea to sea, and it appears to have comprehended the greater part of the modern counties of Durham, York, Cum- berland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire. The Brigantes were considered the most powerful of the British nations. Among their towns men- tioned by Ptolemy are Eboracum, now York, and Isurium, now Aldborough, reduced to a small vil- 78 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. lage, though it retained till lately the right of sending a member to parliament, an evidence of its importance even in comparatively modern times. 2. The Parisi are stated to have been adjacent to the Brigantes, and about the well-havened bay. They are thought to have occupied the south- eastern angle of Yorkshire, now called Holderness, lying along the coast of Bridlington or Burlington Bay. 3. The Ordovices dwelt to the south of the Brigantes and tlie Parisi, in the most westerly part of the island. They appear to have been the inha- bitants of North Wales. 4. The CoRNAVii were east from these last, and seem to have occupied Cheshire, Shropshire, Staf- ford, Worcester, and Warwick. Their towns men- tioned by Ptolemy are Deuna, now Chester, and Uiroconium, supposed to be Wroxeter, near Shrewsbury. 5. The CoRiTANi are described as adjacent to the Cornavii. They probably occupied the whole of the space intervening between the Cor- navii and the east coast, comprehending the modern counties of Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, Rutland, and part of Northampton. Their chief towns were Lindum, now Lincoln, and Rhage, now Leicester. 6. The Catyeuchlani (or Catuellani, as they are called by Dio Cassius) come next in the list. They are conjectured to have occupied the remain- der of Northampton, and all Buckingham, Bed- ford, Hertford, and Huntingdon. To these we should be inclined to add the south-western portion of Oxfordshire, lying along the Thames. One of their towns mentioned by Ptolemy is Urolanium, universally admitted to be Verulam, near St. Alban's. It does not necessarily follow, however, that this was the capital of Cassivellaunus, although it is perhaps most probable that this prince was really the chief of the Catyeuchlani. 7. The SiMENi are described as adjacent to these last, and are supposed to have occupied Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge. They are conjectured, as has been already stated, to be the same with the Icetii, of whom mention is made by Tacitus. Ptolemy assigns to them only one town, and to that he gives the name of Uenta or Venta, which appears to have been a common British name for the capital of a state. The Venta of the Simeni or Iceni is supposed to have been at Caister, near Norwich, 8. The Trinoantes (or Trinobantes, as they are called by Caesar and Tacitus), the next nation mentioned, are placed more to the eastward than the Simeni ; and this may suggest a doubt as to these last being really the same with the Iceni, who appear, from the Itinerary, to have certainly inhabited Norfolk. Probably, however, Ptolemy erroneously supposed the coast of Essex to stretch farther to the east that that of Norfolk and Suffolk. He places Camulodanum, the capital of the Tri- noantes, half a degree to the east of the Venta of the Simeni. Camulodanum, or, as it is called in the Itinerary, Camoludimum, is generally supposed to be Maldon, though some place it at Colchester There can be no doubt as to Essex being the dis- trict, or part of the district, assigned by Ptolemy to the Trinoantes, since he settles them beside the estuary lamensa, or, as the word is found written in another place, lamissa, evidently a transcriber's corruption of Tamissa, the Thames. 9. The Demetje follow next in the enumeration, being described as dwelling to the south of the tribes already mentioned, and in the extreme western part of the island. They seem to have occupied the three south Welsh counties of Caer- marthen, Cardigan, and Pembroke. One of their towns, Maridunum, is believed to be the present Caermarthen. 10. Tlie SiLUREs were to the east of these, occupying, it is supposed, the modern counties of Radnor, Brecknock, Glamorgan, Hereford, and Monmouth. Ptolemy makes no mention of two important towns which were certainly situated in the territory of the Silures, namely the Venta Silurum, now Caerwent, and Isca Silurum, now Caerleon, both in Monmouthshire. IL The DoBUNi (probably the same who are called by Dio Cassius the Boduni) are described as next to the Silures, and probably inhabited Gloucestershire with the greater part of Oxfordshire. Their chief town, Corinium, appears to be the present Cirencester. 12. The Atrebatii follow in the enumeration. They are thought, though the point is disputed, to have been the occupants of Berkshire. As they were, if we may trust to their name, a Belgic people, it is more probable that they were seated to the south than to the north of the Thames ; and the order in which they are enumerated by Ptolemy — among the nations to the south of the Catyeuch lani and the Trinobantes — appears also clearly to indicate the former position. 13. The Cantii are described as adjacent to the Atrebatii, and as extending to the eastern coast of the island. These two states, therefore, Y^^oba- bly met somewhere in the north part of Surrey. Besides Londinium, Ptolemy mentions Daruenum (believed to be Canterbury) and Rutupiae, the Rutupse of the Itinerary (probably Richborough, near Sandwich), as towns of the Cantii. 14. The Regni are next mentioned, and are stated to lie to the south of the Atrebatii and the Cantii. They therefore occupied Surrey, Sussex, and probably the greater part of Hampshire. 15. The Belg^ are described as situated to the south of the Dobuni, and are supposed to have possessed the eastern part of Somerset, Wilts, and the western part of Hampshire. Their towns were Venta Bclgarum, generally believed to be Win- chester ; Ischalis, probably Ilchester ; and the Hot Springs (in Latin, Aquse Calidse), undoubtedly Batli. 16. The Durotriges are described as south- west from the Belgae. Their seat was the present Dorsetshire, which still preserves their name, sig- Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS nifying in the Celtic the dwellers by the water. Their town Dunium is supposed to be the present Dorchester. 17. The DuMNONii (or Damnonii, as they are called in the Itinerary) close the list, and are described as occupying the western extremity of the island. They were the inhabitants of Devon, Cornwall, and the west of Somerset ; their name Dumn, or, as it would be in Celtic, Duvn, probably still subsisting in the modem Devon. Their capital was Isca Dumnonionim, supposed to be the pre- sent Exeter. Of course, although we have thus indicated the localities of the several tribes by the names of our present counties, it is not to be understood that the ancient boundaries were the same as those of these comparatively modern divisions. But to ascertain the precise line by which each territory was sepa- rated from those adjacent to it, is now in most in- stances utterly impossible. All that can be at- tempted is, to determine, generally, the part of the country in which each lay. In a good many cases the evidence of inscriptions and of other remains has confirmed Ptolemy's account; and, making allowance for a very corrupt text, it may be affirmed that his distribution of the several ancient British states has not been proved to be erroneous in any material respect by the discoveries of this kind that have from time to time been made. We do not believe that a view of the ancient geography, at least of the southern part of the island, on the whole, so complete, so distinct, and so accordant at once with the testimony of history and of monu- ments, as that which he has given us, is to be ob- tained from any other source, or from all other existing sources of information combined. The tribes mentioned by Richard of Cirencester, in addition to those enumerated by Ptolemy, within the space we have now been surveying, are, the Segontiaci, Ancalites, Bibroci, and Cassii (as already noticed), the Hedui in Somersetshire, the Cimbri in Devonshire, the Volantii and Sistuntii in Lancashire, and the Rhemi in Surrey and Sussex ; but these last are probably intended to be consi- dered the same people with the Regni of Ptolemy. Richard's list also includes the Cangiani, supposed to be the same with the Cangi mentioned by Taci- tus, and with the Cangani of Dio. These, how- ever, do not appear to have been a distinct nation, but to have been those of the youth of each tribe, or at least of many of the tribes, who were employed as the keepers of the flocks and herds.* Richard fixes them in Caernarvonshire, a location which by no means helps to make' the passages in which they are mentioned by the ancient historians more intelligible. Ptolemy's description of North Britain is, in various respects, not so satisfactory as that which he has given of the southern portion of the island. In particular, his account is rendered obscure and confused by a strange mistake, into which he has fallen, as to the direction of the land, which he ex- • Baxter Gloss. Brit. tends, not towards In other words, he\ what he ought to ha tude. His enumerat also be safely presume that which he gives of ., 18. The NovANT^ a tions. He describes ther coast of the island (by wh. the west), immediately undt. same name. The peninsula . Novantae is admitted, on all h. now called the Mull of Gallow vantse are considered to have occu^ of Wigton, the western half of Kirk the southern extremity of Ayrshi) ries probably being the Irish ' Frith, the river Dee, and the districts now called Galloway a of their towns was Loucopibia, <= present Whithorn. 19. The Selgov^ are d*. south (meaning east), from the pear to have occupied the eastern i bright and the greater part of Dumi *.,. are supposed to have given its present m Solway, along which their territory extend have received theirs from it. The Solway i by Ptolemy the I tuna, probably from the which falls into that estuary. 20. TheDAMNii lay north from these, and a seem to have extended over the shires of Ayr, nark, Renfrew, and Stirling, a corner of that Dumbarton, and a small part of that of Pert Among their towns were Vanduara, believed to ^ Paisley, and Lindum, which has been generally supposed to be Linlithgow, but which Chalmers places at Ardoch, in Perthshire, where there is a famous Roman camp. The wall of Antoninus passed through the territory of the Damnii. 21. The Gadeni, of whom all that Ptolemy says is, that they were situated more to the north. This cannot, however, mean more to the north than the Damnii last mentioned, who, as we have seen, were placed along the sea coast of what Pto- lemy understands to be the north side of the island. The meaning must be more to the north than the Otadeni, who are next mentioned, and are by a corresponding epithet, described as more to the south. With the notion which Ptolemy had of the shape of the island, this would place the Gadeni along a tract in the interior, which might extend from the Tyne to the Forth, embracing the north of Cumberland, the west of Northumberland, the west of Roxburgh, together with the counties of Selkirk, Peebles, west Lothian, and the greater part of Midlothian. There is no pretence, on a fair interpretation of Ptolemy's words, for saying, as has been done by some of the supporters of the authority of Richard of Cirencester,* that he places the Gadeni on the north of the Damnii beyond the Clyde, contrary to the evidence of inscriptions. Id • Oialmers's Caledonia. .TORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. orth of the it river Jed, seem still to south of this / to the south- intervening be- ehending the re- Roxburgh, and .othian. at is, north) from (that is, westerly), northwards), from The promontory in eninsula of Cantyre, re the inhabitants of Al the rest of Argyle- de on the east to Loch 3 next to the Epidii, and oited the part of Argyle- Linne, and the continua- nning the western half of who are described as lying e north) of the Cerones, pro- ,rly the whole of the present it it may be doubted if the Ce- ,ones were not the same people ; neir territory must have included i we have assigned to the two. yARNONAC^ came next, and would, cupy the west coast of Sutherland, in- /bably a small part of the north of Ross. .e Careni, who lay beyond them, may osed to have inhabited the north coast of and, and perhaps a small portion of Caith- Richard of Cirencester, indeed, calls them Jatini, in which name it has been suggested , may find the origin of the present Caithness. 28. The CoRNAVii are described as lying to the east (that is, the north) of these, and as being the last people in that direction. They, therefore, occupied the north and east of Caithness. In their country were the three promontories, of the Tar- vedrum, or Orcas, now Dunnet Head ; the Vir- vedrum, now Duncansby Head ; and the Virubium, now the Noss Head. 29. The Caledonii, properly so called, are the next people mentioned by Ptolemy • but the enu- meration here starts from a new point, namely, from the Ijelamnonian Bay on the west coast, which appears to be Loch Fyne. The Caledonii are described as extending from that bay across the country to the estuary of Varar, undoubtedly the Moray Frith, a river falling into the upper part of which still retains the ancient name. They, there- fore, occupied the eastern portion of Inverness, with probably the adjoining parts of the shires of Argyle, Perth, and Ross. In the north-western part of this tract was the great Caledonian Forest. 30. The Cantje were more to the east (that is, the north), and are supposed to have possessed the eastern angle of Ross-shire included between the Murray and the Dornoch Friths. 31. The LoGi were between them and the Cor- navii, and must, therefore, have occupied the south- east part of Sutherland, and probably a portion of the south of Caithness. 32. The Mert^ lay north (that is, north-west) from the Logi, which would place them in the central parts of Sutherland. 33. Ihe Vacomagi are described as lying to the south (that is, the south-east) of the Caledoiiii, and appear to have occupied the counties of Nairn, Elgin, and Banff, with the west of Aberdeenshire, and perhaps a small portion of the east of Inver- ness. 34. The Venicontes are described as lying south from these last, to the west, and as, along with the Texali, they appear to have occupied the v/hole space between the tribes to the south of the Forth, the Caledonians, and the Vacomagi, we must assign to them the whole of the peninsula now forming the counties of Fife, Kinross, and Clack- mannan, with a portion of the east and south-east of Perth, and probably also the counties of Forfar and Kincardine. Richard of Cirencester, however (who calls the VenicOntes, Venricones) places the tribe of the Horestii (mentioned by Tacitus under the name of the Horesti), in the peninsula of Fife. All that appears with regard to the situation of the Horestii, from the narrative of Tacitus is, that they lay somewhere between the Grampian Hills and the previously conquered nations to the south of the Forth. It is probable enough that they may have been the inhabitants of Fife ; but they may also very possibly have dwelt on the north side of the Frith of Tay. They seem to be included by Ptolemy under the name of the Venicontes. 35. The Texali are described as lying also to the south of the Vacomagi, and to the east, that is, the north-east, of the Venicontes. As Kinnaird's Head appears to have been called after them the promontory Taizalum (probably an error for Tex- alum, or Taixalum), and as, moreover, their chief town is designated Devana, and appears to have stood on the Diva (the modern Dee), either where Old Aberdeen now stands, or more probably on the spot occupied by Norman-Dykes, about six miles further from the sea, we can scarcely have any doubt that the present Aberdeenshire, with, perhaps, a part of Kincardine, formed the territory of the Texali. Besides the Horestii, two other tribes, the Al- bani, or Damnii Albani, and the Attacotti, are mentioned by Richard of Cirencester, and not by Ptolemy. The Albani are placed in the moun- tainous region now forming the district of Breadal- bane and Athol in the west of Perth, and south of Inverness-shire ; but it is admitted that they had been subjugated by the Damnii, and that this re- gion, therefore, might be considered as forming part of the territory of the latter. The Attacotti are mentioned by Ammianus Marcellinus , but it must be considered as very doubtful whether they were Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. a British or an Irish nation. A territory is found for them, on the authority of Richard, in the space between Loch Fyne and Loch Lomond, compre- hending a portion of Argyle and th-e greater part of Dumbartonshire. Another name mentioned by some later writers, and not occurring in Ptolemy, is that of the Mseatse. This term, of the meaning of which different in- terpretations have been offered, appears to have been a collective name given to the tribes included be- tween the wall of Antoninus Pius, which joined the Friths of Forth and Clyde, and that of Severus, ex- tending from the ^olway Frith to the mouth of the Tyne. These tribes were, the Novantae, the Selgovae, the Gadeni, the Otadeni, and, in part, the Damnii. In a loose way of speaking, the Mseatse and the Caledonii seem to have come at length to be used as a general expression for all the tribes beyond the more limited Roman province : the Maeatae being understood to mean the inhabitants of the comparatively level and open country ; the Caledonii, those who dwelt among the woods and mountains of the north and west. From about the beginning of the fourth cen- tury, we begin to find the Caledonians and Maea- tae giving place to the new names of the Scots and Picts. A late writer has, from this and other con- siderations, inferred that the Picts were the same people with the Mseatse ;* but perhaps all that we are warranted in concluding is, that the same pro- minent place which the fierce Irish tribe of the Scots had now assumed among the mountaineers had been taken by the Picts among the lowlanders. The Picts, if not the descendants of the Maeatse, appear certainly, at least, to have been their suc- cessors in the occupation of the same tract of country. It may here be convenient very shortly to re- capitulate the progress of the Roman arms as it affected the several British tribes that have just been enumerated. Tacitus, in his Life of Agricola, has sketched it very distinctly up to the commence- ment of the campaigns of that celebrated general. The efforts of Claudius and the two first governors, Aulus Plautius and Ostorius Scapula, had, by a.d. 50, either subdued by force or otherwise obtained the submission of all the nations included within the line of forts by which Ostorius may be said to have in some degree connected the opposite estuaries of the Wash and the Severn; namely, (taking them in the order of Ptolemy's enumera- tion,) the Catyeuchlani, the Iceni (supposing this people to be the same with the Semini), the Trino- bantes, the Dobrmi, the Atrebatii, the Cantii, the Regni, the Belgse, the Durotriges, and the Dum- nonii. Some of these, however, were not so com- pletely reconciled to the yoke as not afterwards to make repeated attempts to regain their indepen- dence ; and, in fact, it was not till about a.d. 64 or 65, under Petronius Tarpilianus, that the whole of this section of the island, now known by the name of the Province, could be said to be brought into a etfite of entire subjection and tranquillity. Mean- • Lingard, History of England, i. 54. VOL. 1. while, beyond the boundary of the Province, in- cursions had been made into the territories of the Brigantes in the north, and of the Silures, the Or- dovices, and the people of Anglesey in the west; but no permanent impression had been made in those parts. It was not till the reign of Vespasian (a.d. 70 — 78) that the Brigantes were subdued by Petilius Cerealis, and the Silures by Julius Fron- tinus. Agricola assumed the government a.d. 78, and the same summer completely conquered the Ordovices and the island of Anglesey. In the course of the next three years he appears to have reduced to subjection all the nations to the south of the rampart which he constructed between the Friths of Forth and Clyde, with the exception only of those inhabiting the part of the west coast nearest to Ireland, — the Novantse and the Selgovae in all probability, — whom, however, he reduced in his next campaign. This was really the utmost ex- tent to which the conquest of the country by the Romans was ever carried. Agricola, indeed, after- wards defeated the Caledonians in the famous battle fought at the foot of the Grampians ; but it is not alleged that the victory was followed by any per- manent results, or that even a single new tribe, the Horesti only excepted, made their submission for the moment. Certainly no establishments were ever attempted by the Romans beyond the Forth ; nor were the conquests made by Agricola long maintained even up to that limit. Within twenty or thirty years after his time, we find the emperor Hadrian abandoning everything beyond the Solway. Antoninus Pius, indeed, soon after extended the province to its former boundary ; but it was found impossible effectually to reduce the turbulent native occupants of the country between the two walls ; and in the beginning of the second century, the attempt to hold it may be said to have been finally given up, first by the erection of the new barrier between the Solway and the Tyne by Severus, and', a few years afterwards, by the formal cession of the greater part of the disputed territory by Caracalla. After this, although the legions may have been sometimes found in conflict with the barbarians, perhaps, at a considerable distance beyond the wall of Severus, yet there seems to be no ground for believing that the Roman power ever renewed the attempt to gain a footing in these outer regions. The common hypothesis that, after this time, in the decline and rapidly accumulating difficulties of the empire, a new province, whether under the name of Valentia or of Flavia Csesariensis, was formed in this part of the island, cannot be received upon the slight evidence that is brought forward in its sup- port. At all events, if any such province was really established, as is assumed, in the latter part of the fourth century, it is quite impossible that the ex- tension of the empire in that direction could have been more than nominal. When the northern tribes, on the final retirement of the imperial le- gions not many years after this, poured in upon the provincials, we hear of no obstruction whatever that they met with till they came to the wall of Severus. 82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Although the native British tribes, before their subjugation by the Romans, were so far from being united into one community that they were very generally at war one with another, yet there are circumstances which indicate that, to a certain extent, many of theiji felt themselves to have a common interest as the occupants of the same country. Even their intestine wars wovild of ne- cessity often array them into opposing confederacies, and thus establish among them the habits and feel- ings of a nmtual relationship and dependence. But it is not easy to form a judgment as to the range of territory over which, in such a state of society, any connexion, or even any comnmnication, was kept up between the various tribes. Perhaps their inter- course with each other was carried on between points more remote from each other than we should be at first inclined to suppose. The nations to the south of the Thames and the Severn, or rather we ought pro- bably to say of the Severn and the Wash, appear evidently to have been all accustomed to co-operate on emergencies, and to consider themselves as in some sort forming one society : although even when pressed by a common danger, their differences of origin may have afforded great facilities for fomenting di- visions between those of Belgic descent, for instance, and the aborigines (as Caesar calls them) of the interior ; and the inhabitants of Devon and Cornwall, withdrawn within their peninsula, may be supposed to have been apt to feel less interest than the rest in the general cause. But even the Brigantes in the north seem early to have taken a part in the resist- ance to the Roman invasion ; and, on more than one occasion, we find them apparently acting in concert with the insurgent tribes within the con- quered territory or with the yet unsubdued com- batants in the west. The notion of a common nationality, however, even in its faintest form, seems scarcely to have extended beyond the Bri- gantes ; the ruder occupants of the bleak and wild country farther to the north were probably always regarded as the people of another land. Yet although we do not find any actual association of the tribes of the north and south, as thus dis- tinguished, we should perhaps be in error if we were to assume that they kept up no intercourse with each other. If any reliance is to be placed on the correctness even of the general import of the speech which Tacitus puts into the mouth of the Caledonian General Galgacus, we must suppose that the events which had happened in South Britain, since the arrival of the Romans, were both well known, and had excited a deep interest beyond the Grampians. Galgacus, in rousing the valour of his followers, makes his appeal throughout to feel- ings which he assumes to be common to all Bri- tons, and he alludes to the revolt of the Trinobantes under Boadicea, and to other passages of the con- quest of the southern tribes, as to transactions that were familiar to all his hearers. Section II. THE GOVERNMENT AND LAWS OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS BEFORE THE INVASION OF THE ROMANS. We learn from Caesar, whose account is confirmed by other writers of good authority, that the govern- ment of the ancient British nations was, in form at least, monarchical. We are scarcely, however, entitled to assume that each of the tribes or nations we have enumerated had its own king or chief, and formed, in all respects, a distinct and inde- pendent state. The same sovereign may in some cases have governed several tribes ; or, on the other hand, what is described as a single district inhabited only by one people, may have been di- vided into several sovereignties. Caesar, for in- stance, mentions four kings in Kent ; and yet no geographer, or other ancient writer, has spoken of that territory as occupied by more than one nation. Of the rules of succession to the royal authority little is known. We are informed, however, that they made no distinction of sexes in the succession to the royal office ;* differing in this from the tribes of the Germanic stock. We have examples of British female sovereigns in Boadicea and Carlis- mundua. But though the form of government was monar- chical, the British princes appear to have possessed but a small portion of the substance of sovereignty. One of their chief prerogatives was that of com- manding the forces of their respective tribes in the time of war. But even then their authority was very much circumscribed by their nobility, and still more by their priests. The Druids, as we have already had occasion to observe, were pos- sessed of very great power among the rude Britons, almost, it would appear, as much as was possessed by the Egyptian priesthood ; insomuch that the government among the ancient Britons was more properly a theocracy than either a monarchy, aris- tocracy, or democracy. Dio Chrysostom says, speaking of the Celtic nations generally, " Their kings are not allowed to do anything without the Druids ; not so much as to consult about putting any design into execution without their participation. So that it is the Druids who reign in reality ; and the kings, though they sit on thrones, feast in splendour, and live in palaces, are no more than their instruments and ministers for executing their designs. " But the government appears to have had also a mixture in it of popular elements. Ambiorix, king of a people of Gaul, made this excuse to Caesar for having assaulted his camp : — " That it had not been done with his advice or consent ; and that his government was of such a nature that the people had as much power over him as he had over them." The British princes made a similar excuse to Caesar for having seized and imprisoned his ambassadors, — that is, they laid the blame upon the multitude. These slight intimations, however, are not sufficient to enable us to form any opinion as to the share which • Tacit. Agrie. xvi. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVEENMENT, AND LAWS : B.C. 55.— A.J). 449. 83 the people really had in the government. With regard to the power of the Dniids we have more distinct information. Among most rude nations the laws receive their force from being regarded as the express commands of their gods. Where a particular order of men are supposed to be the only persons to whom the gods have communicated the knowledge of their commands, this order of men are of course the only persons capable of declaring and explaining those commands to the people, fn a word, they are the sole legislators of that people. Moreover, the vio- lations of these laws being considered as violations of the will of heaven, the punishment of such vio- lations could not be committed to any but the ministers of heaven, — to wit, the order of men above specified. In an early state of society a very large proportion of these laws are penal, consequently punishment is the chief employment of the judicial office. Consequently, too, we have the same men who have declared the law as the ministers, and as it were the secretaries of the gods, executing it in virtue of the same privilege. That is, we have the same men performing the legisla- tive and judicial functions. Among the ancient Britons these vast powers were enjoyed by the Druids.* Of the times, places, and forms of the judicial proceedings of these ghostly judges little or nothing is known. Most of the notices preserved by • Diod. SicuL v. 31.— Strabo iv. p. IO7. (Lutetiee 1620.)— Coesir, B. G. vi. 13, 16. Arch-Dbuis in his full Judicial Costume, aod wearing the Breastplate of Judgment, pronouncing Sentence, L: 84 HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Csesar in relation to these matters we have already given in our general abstract of his account of the Druidical system. The courts of justice in which the Druids presided were, there can be little doubt, like their temples, open to the sky. The vestiges of that in which the chief British tribunal is sup- posed to have been held are still to be traced in the Isle of Anglesey, and are thus described by Rowland : — " In the other end of this township (of Tre'r Dryw), wherein all these ruins already men- tioned are, there first appears a large cirque or theatre, raised up of earth and stones to a great height, resembling a horseshoe, opening directly to the west, upon an even, fair spot of ground. This cirque or theatre is made of earth and stones, carried and heaped there to form the bank. It is, within the circumvallation, about twenty paces over ; and the banks, where whole and unbroken, above five yards perpendicular height. It is called Bryn-Gwyn, or Brein-Gwyn, i. e. the supreme or royal tribunal."* It appears from Caesar that the extraction of evidence by torture was a form of judicial procedure sometimes resorted to among the Gauls, and most probably it was also in use among the Britons. Caesar tells us that it was applied by the Gauls in the case of women who were suspected of having occasioned the death of their husbands ; but he does not say that this was the only case in which it was applied. One of the few laws of the Gauls which he expressly men- tions is, that when a woman was found guilty of this crime, she was delivered to the flames, and put to death by the aid of excruciating torments. We may here observe that, notwithstanding what is related respecting the promiscuous concubinage in use among the Britons, the marriage connexion appears still to have been distinctly acknow- ledged and protected by the law. The history of Cartismundua, whose subjects rose in re- volt against her and drove her from her king- dom, in their indignation at her profligate aban- donment of her husband's bed, shows the general feeling that was entertained upon this subject. Caesar also informs us that among the Gauls the husbands had the power of life and death both over their wives and their children. Another Gallic law relating to marriage which he mentions is, that, whatever dowry the husband received with his wife, he added to it an equivalent amount; the whole then continued the common property of the two 80 long as both lived, and, after the death of either, devolved, with all accumulations, upon the survivor. It also appears froni his account of the Druids, already quoted, that theft and some other crimes were punished capitally, according to the laws administered by these judges. Their system of law, there can be little doubt, was of as sangui- nary a character as their system of religion, of which it made a part. Of the taxes paid by the Britons to their kings we know nothing further than that the Druids, as already mentioned, took care to be exempted from • Mona Antiqua, pp. 89, 90. them, as well as from servmg in war, and indeed all other burdens. We shall conclude this section, necessarily a very meagre one (since we refrain from swelling out our history with idle conjectures), with the ac- count given by Solinus of a singularly constituted government, which he places in the Western Islands of Caledonia, and to which possibly in some fea- tures the government of the other British na- tions may have borne a resemblance. These islands, called the Hebrides, " being only," he says, "separated from each other by narrow firths, or arms of the sea, constitute one king- dom. The sovereign of this kingdom has nothing which he can properly call his own, but he has the free use of all the possessions of all his subjects. The reason of this regulation is, that he may not be tempted to acts of oppression and injustice, by the desire or hope of in- creasing his possessions, since he knows that he can possess nothing. This prince is not even allowed to have a wife of his own, but he has free access to the wives of all his subjects, that, having no children which he knows to be his own, he may not be prompted to encroach on the privileges of his subjects, in order to aggrandize his family." It is curious that this was one of the means devised by Plato in his Republic, to guard against the same evil. Solinus, however, is not a writer of any authority, and, although most of his stories are stolen, no confirmation or trace of this very strange statement is, we believe, to be found anywhere else. It is not unlikely that he may be merely here exer- cising his invention in giving " a local habitation and a name " to the philosophical fiction of Plato. Section III. THE GOVERNMENT AND LAWS OF ROMAN BRITAIN. The transformation of South Britain into a Roman province necessarily swept away the native govern- ment, and established another in its place ; the least of the novel characteristics of which was, that it was a government of foreigners. It was a sudden substitution of the institutions of civilization for those of a condition nearly approaching to bar- barism. The Romans were certainly, as a nation, the greatest practical statesmen whom the world has yet beheld. Among other people indivi- duals have from time to time arisen who have exhibited vast genius in devising schemes of go- vernment, or have shown great capacity for admi- nistration. But among the Romans alone there existed institutions which were able to ensure a succession of men who were systematically taught to " sway the rod of empire." The celebrated lines of their great poet were no mere poetical rhapsody — ^no vain and empty boast. — Exciident alii spirautia mollius aera> Credo equidem : vivos ducent de maimore vultus; Orabunt causae melius ; ccelique meatus Describent radio, et eurKentia sidera dicent. Chap. TIL] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS : B.C. 55.— A.J). 449. 8.5 Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento ; Hse tibi erunt artes ; pacisque imponere moiem, Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. JEneid, vi. 848. Let others better mould the running mass Of metals, and inform the breathing brass ; And soften into flesh a murble face : Plead better at the bar; describe the skies, And when the stars descend, and when they rise. But, Rome, 'tis thine alone, witli awful sway. To rule mankind, and make the world obey ; Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way; To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free ; These are imperial arts, and worthy thee. Dryden's Translation, The Roman was probably the wisest oligarchy that ever existed. In Rome, unlike what we have seen happen in other oligarchies, the education of the ruling class was as carefully attended to, as jealously watched over, as the preservation of their privileges. The Roman patrician was carefully and systematically instructed in the art of war, and in such, and such only, of the arts of peace as were to be the source of power, the foundation of domi- nion over those who aimed at universal dominion. Thus, they made their law, and above all their actiones legis — their law of procedure — a mystery into which a plebeian could never penetrate, but with which they themselves took care to be familiar. Tlius among the Romans we sometimes see the most various and apparently (at least to our modern notions on the subject) inconsistent qualities united in the same individual. Without bringing forward cases such as that of the all-accomplished Julius Caesar, of men of great power and extent of ori- ginal genius, we might cite instances from the Roman annals of the same man being juris-consult, general, public professor of law, pontifex maximus, consul, dictator.* When we consider that to these various accomplishments were added in the Roman an iron discipline, and a courage, cool, steady, col- lected, we shall not wonder that his march was to uninterrupted victory and universal empire. Long after a military despotism had succeeded to the power of that mighty oligarchy, Rome still continued as much of her ancient policy as required that able men, though no longer so exclusively selected from one class, should be appointed to govern her provinces and command her armies. We have only to look at the result to be convinced that Britain was not an exception to this salutary rule. The ministers of the Roman state, whether called republic or empire, the representatives of the majesty of the Roman name, were educated sol- diers, jurisconsults, statesmen ; and whatever might be their errors and their vices — and they were, no doubt, many — they conquered, and, up to a certain point, civilized a large portion of the world. In a greater degree than any other people have done, the Romans communicated to the nations they con- quered (not merely, as is often falsely asserted, their vices, but) whatever of the blessings of civilization they themselves possessed. It is interesting to an inhabitant of Great Bri- tain at the present day, to reflect that, towards the • Gravinae Orig., lib.i. cap. 47 et seq. See also Heineccii Historia ■Juris Romani. beginning of the Christian era, more than 1500 years ago, this island actually possessed, for a period of above 300 years, nearly the whole of the Roman civilization ; that^ in the second and third centuries of the Christian era, the inhabitants of Britain enjoyed personal security ; and, after the payment of the Roman taxes, security of property ; arts and letters ; elegant and commodious build- ings ; and roads, to which no roads they have had since could bear comparison, till the establishment of the present railways. As we look along the line of tile Greenwich railroad, and contemplate its massive yet elegant arches, — its compact and solid masonry, — its iron highway, and the ponderous yet compact carriages that fly along it, and reflect that the whrole kingdom will soon be intersected with similar gigantic structures, we feel as if the times of Roman enterprise, as regards vastnfess of design and durability of workmanship, had returned. It is an inquiry of no common importance and in- terest to attempt to learn what were the principal features of that civilization which rose so early, and, after lasting some three centuries, was so rapidly and totally destroyed. The Roman settlements were originally divided into colonies, municipia, and Latin cities ; but, in the decline of the empire, the distinctions between them were obliterated, and they were all invested with equal rights. However, from the importance of the subject, it is fit that we should say some- thing of the rise and progress, as well as of the leading characteristics of the municipia. When we come to treat of the military government of the province, we shall have to say something of the colonies. One leading distinction between them, noted by Aulus Gellius, we may mention here, that the colonies were sent out from, the municipia taken into, the Roman state. The Romans, in their conquests, so far pursued a diflcrent system from that of most of the ancient nations, that they neither sought to exterminate nor reduce to slavery the nations they conquered. It is the opinion of M. Guizot,* whose opinion on most points of the philosophy of history is entitled to great respect, that this difiference arose from the situation of most of the neighbouring tribes on which Rome at first made war. They were assembled in towns, not dispersed over the coun- try. At first, the Romans did not venture to leave their former inhabitants in the conquered towns. They were occupied either by soldiers, or by inha- bitants taken from Rome. Caere was the first which preserved its laws and magistrates, and re- ceived, in part at least, the rights of Rome, t This example soon became general. There were dif- ferent degrees, however, of the privilege ; and it was only the highest degree that conferred the right of voting at Rome like the Romans. The towns of the last class, whose citizens were thus admitted to all the rights of Roman citizens, were called municipia. • Essais sur I'Histoire de France: Paris, 1834. Premier Essai. Du Regime Municipal dans I'Empire Remain, p. 5, et seq. I Liv. lib. V. cap. i. 86 HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Thence arose in those towns a separation between the municipal rights and duties, and the political rights and duties : the former were exercised upon the spot ; the latter were transported to Rome, and could only be exercised within its walls. The principal matters which remained local were — 1. The religious worship. 2. The administration of the municipal property and revenues. 3. The police, to a certain extent ; with 4. A few judicial functions specially connected with it. All these local affairs were regulated either by individual magistrates, named by the inhabitants, or by the curia of the town, that is, the college of decuriones, or inhabitants possessed of a territorial revenue to a certain amount. In general, the ma- gistrates were named by the curia, though some- times by all the inhabitants. As a necessary con- sequence of slavery, there were fev/ free men who were not admissible into the curia. Later, the decuriones were called curiales. When the Roman government from an aristo- cracy was changed into an absolute monarchy, the chief men of the municipia, who had repaired to Rome for the purpose of exercising their political powers, and from a natural ambition to share in the government, having no longer the same motive to go to Rome, remained at their respective muni- cipia. Thus the municipia obtained a portion of the importance which Rome lost. This was the flourishing time of the Roman municipia. Their importance during this epoch is attested by the number of laws regarding them, and the attention bestowed upon them by the jurisconsults. But this epoch of their history was, in process of time, succeeded by another far less prosperous. The imperial despotism had difficulties to struggle with which required vast sums of money. On one side were the barbarians, who were either to be bought off, or beaten. In either case money was wanted— in the first, to pay the barbarians ; in the second, to pay the soldiers who fought them. On the other side was a vast and increasing populace, to be fed, amused, and kept under. In order to obtain resources, an administrative machinery was created, capable of extending its action everywhere, but vast and complicated, and consequently itself a source of great expense. The revenues of the towns, as well as those of individuals, came to be in this way laid under contribution. At different times the emperor seized a great quantity of muni- cipal property. Nevertheless, the local burdens for which that property was intended to provide, remained the same, or rather went on increasing, from the increase of the population. When the revenues of a municipality were insufficient for its expenses, the members of the curia (or corporation) were obliged to provide for them out of their pri- vate property. Thus the station of decurio became a source of ruin to those who held it, that is, to all the inhabitants in easy circumstances of all the municipia of the empire. And thus was destroyed the middle class of citizens, and the way prepared most effectually for the total ruin of the empire. This result was accelerated by an exemption from the curial functions being granted to certain individuals and classes as a privilege. So that, as the burdens of the decuriones increased, this privi- lege came in to diminish their numbers. Conse- quently, the weight pressed with increased and increasing force on those that remained, till it ulti- mately annihilated the order ; and, for a season, a middle class may be said to have disappeared from among mankind. And as human society, without that middle class, is as infirm as any fabric of which the extremities are not bound together, or are bound but by a rope of sand, it is not sur- prising that the Roman world should have fallen an easy prey to the hordes of warlike barbarians that poured in upon it. * Besides the main incorporation, each city con- tained various colleges, or corporations of ope- ratives, who held, says Sir Francis Palgrave, an ambiguous station between slavery and freedom. In these societies employments were hereditary, so that the son of the handicraftsman became a member of the college by birth or caste. It is foreign to our present purpose to enter into an ac- count of these Roman guilds; but we refer the reader who wishes for more information respecting them, to the elaborate and learned discussion on the subject contained in the tenth chapter of Sir Francis Palgrave's work on the " Rise and Pro- gress of the English Commonwealth." That prince of jurisprudential expositors, Heineccius, has also written a work, " De CoUegiis et Corporibus Opificum." When the Romans had established themselves in Britain, they proceeded, according to their usual policy, to make Verulamium a municipium, or free town, bestowing on the inhabitants all the privi- leges of Roman citizens. When this first hap- pened, the municipal system was in the second stage or epoch of the progress which we have briefly traced above, that is, it was in its flourishing state. London, too, though it does not appear to have been a municipium, nor even distinguished by the name of a colony, was, we are informed by Tacitus, t famous for its trade, enjoying, no doubt, some of the advantages of the Roman Municipia. The fact in this particular instance of Britain, agrees with and illustrates the general fact stated above. In a few years the two places above named were crowded with inhabitants, who were all zea- lous partisans of the Roman government. Both these facts are demonstrated by what happened to these two cities in the great revolt under Boadicea. The revolted Britons, as already related, attacked with fury London and Verulamium, on account of their attachment to the Romans, and destroyed no •In the above bnef account of the Roman municipia, we have chiefly followed the Essay of M. Guizot, above quote.!. + Annal. lib. xiv. cap. xxxiii. His words are, " Londinium — cognomento quidem coloniae non insigne, sed copia negotiatorum et commeatuum maxime celebre." He expressly calls Verulamium a municipium. See also Suetonius, Vit. Neron. cap. xxxix. Both Tacitus and Suetonius use the words civium et sooor«m, -while civium may refer to Verulamium, sociorum to London. See also Hors- ley's Britannia Romana, pp. 16 and 28 Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 87 fewer than 10,000 of their inhabitants — a sufficient proof of the populousness of those towns. That pDpulousness also, in so short a time after the establishment of the Romans in the island, is a sufficient proof of the wise policy of the Romans, in reconciling the conquered people to their domina- tion, by their municipal institutions ; for the won- der is, not that a part of the Britons made the re- volt above alluded to, but that so many of them were already quietly settled, along with the colonists sent out from Italy, or their descendants, in London and Verulamium. The principal towns of every Roman province, besides, as we have already stated, being governed by laws and magistrates similar to those of Rome, were adorned with temples, courts of justice, theatres, statues, and other public buildings and monuments, in imitation of that mighty city — thus imitating the external and physical, as well as the internal and moral characteristics of their me- tropolis. " The country was replete," says Sir Francis Palgrave, " with the monuments of Roman magnificence. Malmesbury appeals to those stately ruins as testimonies of the favour which Britain had enjoyed ; the towers, the temples, the theatres, and the baths, which yet remained undestroyed, ex- cited the wonder and admiration of the chronicler and the traveller ; and even in the fourteenth cen- tury, the edifices raised by the Romans were so numerous and costly, as almost to excel any others on this side the Alps. Nor were these structures among the least influential means of establishing the Roman power. Architecture, as cultivated by the ancients, was not merely presented to the eye ; the art spake also to the mind. The walls covered with the decrees of the legislature, engraved on bronze, or sculptured in the marble ; the triumphal arches, crowned by the statues of the princes who governed the province from the distant Quirinal ; the tesselated floor, pictured with the mythology of tlie state, whose sovereign was its pontiff — all con- tributed to act upon the feelings of the people, and to impress them with respect and submission. The conquered shared in the fame, and were exalted by the splendour of the victors."* The government of Britain, so long as it formed only one province, is supposed to have been com- mitted, according to custom, to a single president, whose powers appear to have at first been almost discretionary, and but little controlled even by the established laws of the empire. It is sufficiently clear, from what Tacitus says in his Life of Agri- cola, that the government of the Romans in Britain, before the arrival of Agricola, was extremely op- pressive. That excellent person employed his first winter in redressing the grievances of the Britons, which had been so great as to occasion frequent revolts, and render a state of peace more terrible to them than a state of war. One remark of Tacitus, in describing the course of policy pursued by his father-in-law, seems to contain nearly the whole secret of the Roman art of governing their provinces, as distinguished from the barbarous imbecility ♦ Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol. i. part i. p. 323. 4to. London, 1832. usually displayed by conquering states in their con- duct towards the conquered. " Doctus," he says of Agricola, " per aliena experimenta, parum projid armis, si injuria sequerentur ;" — taught by the experience of others, that little was gained by arms, if success was followed by injuries. The edict of Ha- drian, however, promulgated, a.d. 131, and called the perpetual edict, had no doubt the effect of mitigating the tyranny of the provincial presidents, since it contained a system of -rules by which they were to regulate their conduct in their judicial capacity, and by which the administration of justice was rendered uniform throughout all the empire.* From the promulgation of the perpetual edict of the emperor Hadrian to the final departure of the Romans out of this island, was about 300 years ; and during that period the laws of Rome were firmly established in all the Roman dominions in Britain. In our sketch of the municipal institutions we have already given the substance of a portion of those laws, — and in what remains to be said we shall have to allude to others. Most of them were embodied in the Theodosian Code, by com- mand of the emperor Theodosius, about the year 438. This code did not, however, as Montesquieu seems to suppose, constitute the whole body of the Roman law in the fifth century. It was a collection of the constitutions of the emperors from Constan- tine to Theodosius the younger.f Independently of those constitutions, the law of the Twelve Tables ; the ancient senatus-consulta, and plebiscita; the edicts of the praetors, or rather the perpetual edict of Hadrian, which had superseded these; and, lastly, the responsa prudentum, the opinions of the jurisconsults, formed part of the Roman law. In- deed, in the year 426, by a constitution of Theo- dosius the younger and Valentinian, the works of five of the great jurisconsults, Papinianus, Paullus, Gaius, Ulpianus, and Modestinus, and of four others secundo loco, Scsevola, Sabinus, Julianus, and Marcellus, had expressly received the force of law. J The Theodosian Code, however, doubtless contained the most important portion of the law of the empire, and is also the document which throws most light on that epoch, particularly when aided by the very learned commentary of Jacobus Go- thofred. To attempt to give any detailed account of that vast body of laws in this place would evi- dently be futile. It is almost unnecessary to add that the corpus juris, or body of law, promulgated by Justinian, contains in substance much of what was in the Theodosian Code, as well as in the works of those great jurisconsults. And although we cannot join in the admiration expressed by some for the " re- gular order " of that digest, where order there is none, we must needs admit that, as a body of law, it remains a monument of the good sense of that illustrious people, and of their great practical talents for government and legislation. * Heinec. Antiq. Roman, lib. i. cap. iv. J 104. See also Heineccii Hist. Jur. Rom. i. § 275 and Graving Origin, lib. i. cap. 38. t Heineccii Hist. Jur. Rom. lib. i. {379. Gravinse Orig, lib. i. cap. 131. t Heineccii Hist. Jar. Rom. lib.i. \ 368. 88 HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. It has been the fashion with historical writers * to attribute much of the progress of modem Eu- ropean civihzation to the revival of the knowledge of the Roman law, by the discovery of a copy of the Pandects of Justinian at Amalphi, a.d. 1137. Von Savigny, in his History of the Roman Law during the Middle Ages, has completely proved that the Roman law had never perished, and there- fore that the story of its resuscitation by the dis- covery of the Pandects at Amalphi in the twelfth century is erroneous. Indeed, more than half a century before the appearance of the work of Von Savigny, Heineccius had arrived at nearly the same conclusion, though he did not go into such fulness of detail as Von Savigny. f But the reported dis- covery of the Pandects, and the rapid effects ascribed to that one cause, bear about them something of that air of the miraculous which has always found such favour with mankind. For the purposes of administration, the Roman territories in Britain were, about 150 years after its first occupation by these conquerors, divided into two provinces, to which three more were afterwards added. The only notice of these divisions which can be perfectly depended on, so far as it goes, is contained in the " Notitia," already mentioned, a document which is of about the same date with the Theodosian Code ; | but all that we learn from this document is, that the names of the five provinces were Flavia Caesariensis, Britannia Prima, Bri- tannia Secunda, Valentia, and Maxima Caesariensis. As to the parts of the island to which these names were respectively applied, we are altogether in the dark. It is even doubtful whether they were all contained within the wall of Severus, or whether one of them (but which is matter of conjecture) did not comprehend the space between that rampart and the wall of Antoninus. Richard of Ciren- cester adds a sixth province, to which he gives the name of Vespasiana, and which he makes to ex- tend from the wall of Antoninus to the Moray Frith. The machinery for governing Britain as well as the other provinces of the Roman empires, varied with the extent of that empire. We shall now give an account of it when it was in its most com- plete and extensive form. In the fifth century, the emperor Constantine the Great divided the whole Roman empire into the four prefectures of the East, Illyricum, Italy, and Gaul, over each of which he established a prefect. § Each of these prefectures was subdivided into a certain number of dioceses, each of which was governed, under the prefect, by an officer called the vicar of the diocese. The diocese of Britain, as well as those of Gaul and Spain, was comprehended in the prefecture of Gaul. • See Henry, Hist, of Biit^n, book i. chaj). iii. § 3. Also Heiuec- cius, Robertson, Hume, &c. + Heineccij Hist. Ju».Rora. lib. i. § 413, 414, 415. X Tlie best edition of it is that with the Commentary of Paticirolus, given in the seventh volume of the Roman Antiquities of Grievius. An account of the portion of it relating to Britain will be found in Horsley's Britannia Romana. § Heineccii Hist. Jur. Romani, lib. i.§ 365.— Notitia Imperii, with Paiicirolus's Commentary. The court of the vicar of Britain, who resided chiefly at London, was composed of tlie following officers : — a principal officer of the agents ; a prin- cipal secretary ; two chief accountants ; a master of the prisons ; a notary ; a secretary fur despatches ; an assistant ; under-assistants ; clerks for appeals ; sergeants and other inferior officers. Each of the five provinces of Britain had a parti- cular governor, styled a president, who resided within the province. From these governors appeals lay to the vicar, and from him to the prefect of Gaul. The title of the vicar of Britain M'as Spectabilis, and the ensigns of his office were a book of instructions in a green cover, and five castles, representing the five provinces under his jurisdiction, and placed within a line which imitated the triangular form of the island. Two of the provinces — probably the two most northerly — were governed by persons of con- sular dignity, the three others by persons styled presidents. The court, or more properly bureau, of each of these governors was almost an exact copy, on a smaller scale, of that of the vicar of the diocese and of the prefect of the prefecture.* It is not necessary to enter into more detail in regard to the various subordinate administrative offices. It is sufficient to observe that they form a complete example of pure and simple administrative despotism. There is no independence for the func- tionaries ; they are subordinate one to another, up to the emperor, who has the absolute disposal of their destiny. There is no appeal for the subjects against the functionaries, but to their superiors. We meet with no co-ordinate powers destined to act as checks upon one another : everything pro- ceeds according to a strictly graduated scale ; and yet M. Guizot thinks, and not a few will agree with him, that this administrative machinery of the im- perial despotism was less grievous to those who lived under it than the powers which preceded it, — whether the short-lived, but on that account more rapacious, tyranny of the Roman proconsul, republi- can at least in name, or the barbarous oppression of their native rulers, — their ignorant and ferocious chieftains, and fanatic priests. With respect to the administration of the laws, the Roman governors had the sole judgment of all causes, without other appeal than to the emperor. In the first ages of the empire, and conformably to the ancient customs, he to whom the jurisdiction belonged, whether praetor, governor of the province, or municipal ma- gistrate, when a case came before him for trial, did nothing but determine the rule of law. He then appointed a private citizen, called judex (literally " judge "), corresponding to our jury, who exa- mined and decided upon the point of fact. The principle laid down by the magistrate was applied to the fact recognized by the judex, and the trial was completed. In proportion as the imperial despotism was esta- blished, the intervention of the judex became less regular. The magistrates, without having recourse • Notitia Imperii, chap. xlix. lib. 1. Heineccii Anllq. Rom. Ap|«Ed. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 89 to that contrivance, decided certain affairs whicli they called extraordinarice cognitiones. Diocle- tian formally abolished the institution of the judex in the provinces ; it no longer appeared but as an exception to a rule ; and, in the time of Justinian, it seems to have fallen completely into desuetude.* From this it will appear that, in Britain as else- where, the governors had two sorts of duties : — 1. They were the emperor's ministers, intrusted with the collection of the revenues, with the com- mand and recruiting of the armies, with the manage- ment of the imperial posts, and, in a word, of every relation in which the emperor stood to his subjects ; 2. They had the administration of justice.f The ad- ministrative and judicial departments were thus, contrary to some of the most important principles of good government, strictly combined; the Roman emperors not being of the opinion of George III., when he declared that " he looked upon the in- dependence and uprightness of the judges as es- sential to the impartial administration of justice, — as one of the best securities of the rights and liberties of his subjects, — and as most conducive to the honour of the crown. "J When the Romans conquered a people, they ge- nerally pursued with them one of two modes j — they either imposed on them an annual tribute, or tliey took from them their lands, colonizing them from Rome, or restoring them to the conquered people on the condition of their paying a certain proportion of the revenue of them to the conquerors. Those treated in the former manner were called trihutarii; those treated in the latter, vectigales. At first Britain belonged to the former class, but afterwards to the latter. The vectigales -paid from their arable land a tax called decunKje, from their pasture a tax called scriptura^ and from their ports a tax called por<onMm.§ The decumcB, as the name implies, was properly a tithe; but this proportion varied, being some- times less, sometimes more, than a tenth, according to the exigencies of the occasion and the poverty and fertility of the country. |1 Afterwards, under the emperors, the proportion was settled by the Canon frumentariu^t or law for supplying Rome, and afterwards Constantinople, with com.^ Certain grievances in the manner of levying this tax im- posed upon the inhabitants of Britain were remedied by Agricola.** This tax was also levied on other things besides corn, such as vineyards and or- chards. The Romans also levied a tax on pasture-grounds and fruits. This tax was called scriptura, because the collector of it wrote down in his books the number of the cattle.ft Under the emperors, this tax was partly levied in kind.JJ This tax, when • Instit. lib. iv. tit. 1?. De officio Judicis— Guizot. Courg d' Histtrire Modferne, vol. ii. p. 54. Heinecc. Antiq. Rom. ubi supra. + Heineceii Antiq. Rom. Appendix, lib. i. § iii. i Commons' Journals, 3rd March, 1761. § Heiu. Antiq. Rom. App. lib. i. J. 114. i Hein. Id. § 115.— Burmann. de Vectigal. Pop. Rom. cap. ii. IT Jac. Gothofrcd. ad Tit. Cod. Theod. Can. Frum. •• Tacit. Agric. cap. xix. H Heinecc. Id. §116. it Burmann. de Vectigal. I op. Rom. cap. iv. p. 65, et seq. first imposed on them, proved very oppressive to the Britons, their property chiefly then consisting in cattle, and they being obliged to borrow money from some of the wealthy Romans at an exorbitant rate of interest. Seneca is said to have lent the Bri- tons above 322,000/. ; and his demanding it with rigour at a time when they were unable to pay is supposed to have contributed to the great revolt under Boadicea.* Another important tax was the portoria^ or cus- toms, which in Britain are said to have been re- markably heavy. Another was raised from mines of every description. Besides these, there were various other taxes, which pressed heavily on the conquered people.f The charge of collecting all these taxes was com- mitted to an imperial procurator, who had the superintendence of all the inferior officers employed in this branch of administration ; and in Britain, as elsewhere, the principal taxes were let to farmers at a yearly rent. We have the authority of Taci- tus, that the Britons were exposed to grievous ex- tortions in the raising of them. The troops which the Romans stationed in Bri- tain to secure their conquest were, according to their usual policy, collected from many distinct and remote provinces of the empire, and differed from the Britons and from each other in their manners and languages. { About the same time that the changes which have been described were made in the civil administration of the empire, a similar change was made in the government of the military establishment. Constantine the Great deprived the praetorian prefects of their military command, and appointed in their stead two new officers called magistri militum, one of whom had the command of the cavalry, the other of the infantry. These had not their ordinary residence in Britain; but the Roman troops there were commanded under them by the three following officers: 1. Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britanniam, the Count of the Saxon shore in Britain. 2. Comes Britanniae, the Count of Britain. 3. Dux Britanniarum, the Duke of Bri- tain. § Wherever the government is a pure despotism, the principal officers of state will be, at least to a certain extent, the private friends or associates of the monarch, or individual in whose hands is lodged the sovereign power. These will be his counsel- lors and his ministers. Thus, in the courts of the middle ages, as we shall have occasion to remark hereafter, those who held offices about the king's person, many of which we should consider menial, were, in effect, the king's ministers. In fact, tlie more modem practice was borrowed from the later Roman and Byzantine emperors. In the courts of • Xiphilinus, Epitome Dionis Niesei in Nerone. ♦ Heinecc. Id. §118. i Notitia, § 52. 6.3. or 71—87. Hb. ii. of Pancirolus's division. § Notitia, §52, 53,63 in Horsley; or 71, 72, 87, lib. ii. of Panci- rolus's division. This is the order in which they occur in the Notitia, as we apprehend, without reference to their rank. For it is pro- bable, for reasons which will be assigned in the note on the Count of Britain, that the Duke of Britain, though placed last, was at leusl equal in rank to the other two functionaries. 90 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. the Roman emperors, from Augustus downwards, these counsellors were styled Comites Augustales, or Comites Augusti, companions of the emperor, from their constant attendance on his person. They were divided into three orders or degrees. When they left the imperial court, to take upon them the government of a province, town, or castle, in the exercise of any office, they were no longer called Comites Augustales, hut Comites of that province, town, castle, or office. * Of this the Comites Bri- tanniarum, the Counts of Britain, and the Comites Littoris Saxonici per Britanniam, the Counts of the Saxon Shore in Britain, were examples. The Counts of Britain t are supposed to have had the command originally of about 3000 foot, and 600 horse, in the interior parts of Britain. But afterwards these forces seem to have been with- drawn, or stationed on the frontiers ; for, in the section of the Notitia, where the court of this officer is described, there is no mention of any forces un- der his command. J In the third century the south and east coasts of Britain began to be much infested by Saxon pi- rates ; and thence it is supposed to have got the name of Littus Saxonicum, the Saxon shore.§ To protect the country from these pirates, the Romans not only kept a fleet on these coasts, but also built a chain of forts, which they garrisoned. The officer who commanded in chief all these forts and garrisons, was called Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britaimiam, the Count of the Saxon Shore in Bri- tain. These forts were nine in number, and were situated at the following places : 1 . Branodunum, Brancaster. 2. Gariannonum, Burghcastle, near Yarmouth, both on the Norfolk coast. 3. Othona, • Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 241, et seq. Du Cange, Gloss, voc. Comites. + Sir Francis Palgrave (Rise and Progress of the English ("om- monwealth, yol. i. part i. p. 359) says that the Comites Britanniarum are conjectured to have been the supreme commanders of the diocese. This, too, is the opinion of Brady. (Hist: p. 41.) We do not think this conjecture well founded. There appears reason to believe (see pavticulurly Cod. Theod. lib. vi. t. 14. 1. 3, and Gothofred's Com- mentary upon it) that generally the ditx was a military officer of supe- rior rank to the Comes. The law referred to is for the express pur- pose of placing certain Comites primi ordinis rei militaris upon .in eqvality with the duces, with the special exception of two — the "duces ^gypti et Ponticfe." t Notitia, 72, lib. ii., edit, of Pancirolus. § On this subject Sir Francis Palgrave has the following remark: " It has been conjectured that this extensive tract was so denomi- nated, in consequence cif being continually exposed to the incursions of the Saxons ; but is it not more reasonable to assume that they had already fixed themselves in some portion of the district? For it is a strange and anomalous process to name a country, not from its inhabitants, but from its assailants, and on the opposite " littus Saxonicum," afterwards included in Normandy, they had obtained a permanent domicile in the neighbourhood of Baieux." — Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol i. part i. p. 384. And yet the reader will remark, that the Roman forts were- all situated on the very verge of the ocean, some of them on places which it has since oTerflowed. Ithanchester, not far from Maldon, in Essex, now overflowed by the sea. 4. Regulbium, Reculver. 5. Rutupse, Richborough. 6. Dubrae, Dover. 7. Lemannae, Lime ; these four last on the coast of Kent. 8. Anderida, Hastings, or East Bourn, in Sussex. 9. Portus Adumus, Portsmouth, in Hampshire.* They were garrisoned by about 2200 foot, and 200 horse. The ensigns of the count of the Saxon shore in Britain were, a book of instructions, and the figures of nine castles, repre- senting the nine forts under his command. His court was composed of the following officers : — a principal officer from the court of the master of the foot ; two auditors from the same court ; a master of the prisons, from the same ; a secretary ; an assistant ; an under-assistant ; a registrar ; a clerk of appeals ; Serjeants and other inferior officers. f The word dux (which originally signified the leader of an army in general) became, under the lower empire, the title of a particular military officer^ who commanded the Roman forces in a certain district, commonly on the frontiers J. Such was the Dux Britanniarum, the Duke of Britain, who had command on the northern frontier over thirty- seven fortified places, and the troops stationed in them. Twenty-three of these forts were situated on the line of Severus's wall, and the other fourteen at no great distance from it. § In these thirty-seven forts about 14,000 foot and 900 horse were stationed.il The court of the Duke of Britain was exactly similar to that of the Count of the Saxon Shore, which has been described above. The Roman soldiers were not less remarkable for their industry than for their discipline and valour. These several bodies of troops, com.posing the standing army of the Romans in Britain, be- sides performing the then important services of guarding the coasts against the Saxon pirates, pre- serving the internal tranquillity of the country, and protecting the northern frontiers from the incur- sions of the Scots and Picts, executed many of those noble works of utility and ornament, the vastness and durability of which, though only contemplated after numerous hordes of destroying barbarians have swept over them, have excited the astonish- ment and admiration of every successive generation of mankind. • Horsley, Brit. Rom., p. 472. + Notitia, % 71, lib. ii. ; edition of Pancirolus. i Jac. Gothofred. ad lib. vii. Cod. Theod. (de re militari); see par- ticularly torn. ii. p. 256. — Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 263. § Horsley, Brit. Rom. p. 481, et seq. II Pancirolus ad Notitiam, lib. ii. cay). 37, according to his divi- sion. Brady, Hist., vol. i. p. 47. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY : B.C. 55.—A.B. 449. 91 CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY. NDER this title we propose to present a view of the state and progress, in each pe- riod, of all those arts commonly called the useful arts, the object jf which is to make provision for the main- tenance and physical accommodation of hu- man life, and which in every country must necessarily employ the labours of the great body of its inhabitants. The cultivation of the earth and all other modes of procuring food, — the different handi- crafts and manufactures practised by the people, — the means of communication and conveyance made use of by them, — their internal trade and foreign commerce, will fall to be here considered. Some of these applications of skill and industry constitute the indispensable foundation on which the whole of the national civilization stands ; the rest may be said to form the main body of the fabric. All else that can be added to adorn and elevate the social con- dition of man depends for its existence upon these; for the fine or ornamental arts are to the necessary or useful arts only what the pillars, and sculptures, and domes, and pinnacles of a building are to the apartments within, to which indeed they may be made to serve for something more than mere de- corations, but without which to decorate, and in part also, it may be, to support and covei, they never would have appeared. As in nearly everything else relating to the Bri- tish islands during the period at present under review, so with regard to the arts of life practised by the natives, our knowledge is extremely limited and imperfect. No written records, or other li- terary remains, either of the Britons or of the Gauls, have come down to us. A small number of scat- tered notices in the Greek and Roman writers, few of whom had any good opportimity of ascertaining the facts of which they make mention, while the subject was probably not one about which they felt much interest, make up all the direct information we possess. Our other lights are to be extracted from the few ruined monuments and other almost obliterated relics and memorials of the primitive Britons which the waste of time has spared, the fragments of a wreck which scarcely tell us any- thing positively or distinctly, and many of which do nothing more than afford -some mystic hints for fancy and conjecture to work upon. In distributing our scanty materials, we will begin by noticing the intercourse and traflfic which appear to have been maintained with this island in early times by foreign nations, the facts belonging to this part of the subject constituting our first knowledge of the ancient Britons, and the natural introduction to an examination of the internal con- dition of the country. The small beginnings, hidden in the depths of ancient time, of that which has become so mighty a thing as British commerce, have an interest for tlie imagination, the same in kind with that belonging to the discovery of the remote spring or rill which forms the apparently insignificant source of some famous river, but as much higher in degree as the history of human affairs is a higher study than the history of inanimate nature. The Phoenicians, the great trading people of an- tiquity, are the first foreigners who are recorded to have opened any commercial intercourse with the British islands. There are some facts which make it probable that this extremity of the globe was visited even by the navigators of the parent Asiatic states of Sidon and Tyre. Tin, a product then to be obtained only from Britain and Spain, was cer- tainly -used in considerable quantities by the ci- vilized nations of the earliest times. It was the alloy with which, before they attained the know- ledge of the art of giving a high temper to iron, they hardened copper, and made it serve for war- like instruments and many other purposes. A mixture of copper and tin, in due proportions, was perhaps fitted, indeed, to take a sharper edge as a sword or spear than could have been given to iron itself, for a long time after the latter metal came to be known and wrought. It is certain at least that swords and other weapons fabricated of the com- pound metal continued to be used long after the in- troduction of iron. This composition was really what the Greeks called chalcus and the Romans aes, although these words have usually been im- properly translated brass, which is compounded not of copper and tin, but* of copper and zinc. There is no reason to suppose that zinc was at all known to the ancients ; and if so, brass, properly so called, was equally unknown to them. What is commonly called the brass of the Greeks and Ro- mans, being, as we have said, a mixture of copper and tin, is not brass, but bronze. This is the material, not only of the ancient statues, but also of 92 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. many of their other metallic articles both orna- mental and useful. It was of this, for instance, that they fabricated the best of their mirrors and reflecting specula; for the composition, in certain proportions, is capable of taking a high polish, as well as of being hammered or filed to a sharp and hard edge in others. This also is the material of which so many of the Celtic antiquities are formed, and which on this account is sometimes called Celtic brass, although it might with as much pro- priety be called Greek brass, or Roman brass. In like manner the swords found at Cannae, which are supposed to be Carthaginian, are of bronze, or a composition of copper and tin. Tin, too, is sup- posed, with much probability, to have been used by the Phoenicians at a very early period in those pro- cesses of dyeing cloth for which Tyre in particular was so famous. Solutions of tin in various acids are still applied as mordants for fixing colours in cloth. Tin is understood to be mentioned under the Hebrew term oferet, in the Book of Numbers;* and as all the other metals supposed to have been tlien known are enumerated in the same passage, it would be difficult to give another probable trans- lation of the word. This would carry the know- ledge and use of tin back to a date nearly 1500 years antecedent to the commencement of our era. At a much later date, the prophet Ezekiel is sup- posed to mention it under the name of bedil as one of the commodities in which Tyre traded with Tar- shish, probably a general appellation for the coun- tries lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The age of Ezekiel is placed nearly six centuries before the birth of Christ ; but we have evidence of the knowledge and employment of tin by the Phoenicians at a much earlier period in the account of the erection and decoration of the Temple of Solomon, the principal workmen employed in which — and among the rest the makers of the articles of brass, that is, bronze, and other metals — were brought from Tyre. The oldest notice, or that at least professing to be derived from the oldest sources, which we have of the Phoenician trade with Britain, is that contained in the narrative of the voyage of the Carthaginian navigator Himilco, which is given us by Festus Avienus.f This voyage is supposed to have been performed about 1000 years before the commence- ment of our era. Himilco is stated to have reached the isles of the CEstrymnides within less than four months after he had set sail from Carthage. Little doubt can be entertained, from the description given of their position and of other circumstances, that these were the Scilly islands. The CEstrymnides are placed by Avienus in the neighbourhood of Albion and of Ireland, being two days' sail from the latter. They were rich, he says, in tin and lead. The people are described as being numerous, high-spirited, active, and eagerly devoted to trade ; yet tliey had no ships built of timber wherewith to make their voyages, but in a wonderful manner effected their way along the waters in boats con- * xxxi. 22. 1 See ante.p. 14. structed merely of skins sewed together. We m\ist suppose the skins or hides were distended by wicker- work which they covered, although that is not mentioned. There are well-authenticated accounts of voyages of considerable length made in such vessels as those here described at a much later period. It is observable that in this relation neither the CEstrymnides, nor the Sacred Isle of the Hiberni, nor that of the Albiones in its neighbourhood, ap- pear to be spoken of as discoveries made by Hi- milco; on the contrary, the Isle of the Hiberni is described as known by the epithet of the Sacred Isle to the ancients, and the resort for the purposes of traffic to the CEstrymnides is declared to have been a custom of the inhabitants of Tartessus and Carthage. No mines of any kind are now wrought in the Scilly islands ; but they present appearances of ancient excavations, and the names of two of them, as Camden has remarked, seem to intimate that mining had been at one time carried on in them. They may in early times have produced lead as well as tin ; or, these metals here ob- tained by the Phoenicians or their colonists of Tartessus and Carthage, may have been brought from the neighbouring peninsula of Cornwall, which produces both, and which besides was most probably itself considered one of these islands. Pliny, it may be noted, has preserved the tradition, that the first person who imported lead (by which name, however, he designates both lead and tin) from the island of Cassiteris was Midacritus, which has been supposed to be a corruption of Melicartus, the name of the Phoenician Hercules. Cassiteris means merely the land of tin, that metal being called in Greek cassiteros. The next notice which we have of the trade of the Phoenicians, or their colonists, with Britain, is that preserved by Strabo. His account is, that the traffic with the isles called the Cassiterides, which he describes as being ten in number, lying close to one another, in the main ocean north from the Artabri (the people of Gallicia), was at first ex- clusively in the hands of the Phoenicians of Gades, who carefully concealed it from all the rest of the world. Only one of the ten islands, he states, was uninhabited ; the people occupying the others wore black cloaks, which were girt about the waist and reached to their ankles : they walked about with sticks in their hands, and their beards were as long as those of goats. They led a pastoral and wandering life. He expressly mentions their mines both of tin and lead, and these metals, he adds, along with skins, they give to the foreign merchants who resort to them in exchange for earthenware, salt, and articles of bronze. We may here observe that the geographer Dio- nysius Periegetes gives the name of the Isles of the Hesperides to the native country of tin, and says that these isles, which he seems to place in the neighbourhood of Britain, are inhabited by the wealthy descendants of the famous Iberians. It is Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 93 remarkable that Diodonis Siculus describes the Celtiberians, or Celts of Spain, as clothed in black and shaggy cloaks, made of a wool resembling the hair of goats, thus using almost the same terms which Strabo employs to describe the dress of the people of the Cassiterides. The chief island of the Scilly group is called Silura by Solinus ; and per- haps the original occupants of these isles were the same Silures who are stated to have afterwards in- habited South Wales, and whose personal appear- ance, it may be remembered, Tacitus has expressly noted as betokening a Spanish origin. It was undoubtedly through the extended com- mercial connexions of the Phoenicians, that the me- tallic products of Britain were first distributed over the civilized word. A regular market appears to have been found for them by these enterprising traffickers in some of the most remote parts of the earth. Both Pliny and Arrian have recorded their export to India, where the former writer says they were wont to be exchanged for precious stones and pearls. It is probable that this commerce was at one time carried on, in part at least, through the medium of the more ancient Palmyra, or Tadmor of the Desert, as it was then called, which is said to have been founded by Solomon a thousand years before our era.* The Phoenicians, and their colonists settled in Africa and the south of Spain, appear to have re- tained for a long period the exclusive possession of the trade with the British islands, even the situa- tion of which they contrived to keep concealed from all other nations. It appears from Herodotus, that, in his time, about four centuries and a half before the birth of Christ, although tin was known to come from certain islands which, on that ac-- count, went by the name of the Cassiterides, or Tin Isles, yet all that was known of their situation was, that they lay somewhere in the north or north-west of Europe. It is generally supposed that the first Greek navigator who penefrated into the seas in this part of the world was Pytheas of Marseilles, who is said to have flourished about a hundred years after the time of Herodotus. From this celebrated colony of Marseilles something of the Greek civilization seems early to have radiated to a considerable distance over the surrounding regions; but whether there ever was any direct intercourse between Marseilles and Britain we are not informed. The only accounts of the frade which have come down to us, represent it as carried on through the medium of certain ports on the coast of Gaul, nearest to our island ; and we are probably to understand that the ships and traders belonged, not to Marseilles, but to these native Gallic towns. From the north-west coast of Gaul, the tin and lead seem to have been for a long • See inMaurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. vi. pp. 249, &c., a " Dis- sertation on the Commerce carried on in very remote ages by tlie Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Greeks, with the British Islands, for their ancient staple of tin, and on their extensive barter of that commodity with those of the Indian Continent; the whole confirmed by extracts from the Institutes of Menu, &c." The extracts from the Institutes of Menu, however, hardl;^ deserve this formal an- nouncement; and the essay, altogether, is, like everything else of this author's, a very wordy performance. time transported across the country to Marseilles, by land-carriage. Strabo relates, on the authority of Polybius, that when Scipio Africanus the younger made inquiry respecting the tin islands of the people of Mar- seilles, they professed to be totally ignorant of where they lay. From this we must infer, either that the Massilians had adopted the policy of the Carthaginians with regard to the navigation to these isles, and studiously concealed what they knew of them, or, what is more probable, that they really knew nothing of the counfries from which their tin came, the trade being, in fact, carried on, as we have just supposed, through the medium of the merchants of the north-west coast of Gaul. The Romans, according to the account given by Strabo in another place, had made many endeavours to discover the route to these mysterious isles, even while the frade was still in the exclusive possession of the Carthaginians. He relates, that, on one occasion, the master of a Carthaginian vessel find- ing himself pursued, while on his way to the Cassi- terides, by one whom the Romans had appointed to watch him, purposely ran his vessel aground ; and thus, although he saved his life, sacrificed his cargo, the value of which, however, was repayed to him, on his return home, out of the public treasury. But the Romans, he adds, at length succeeded in discovering the islands, and getting the tin trade, or at least a part of it, into their own hands. As Sfrabo died a.d. 25, this commercial intercourse of the Romans with the south-west of Britain must have long preceded the invasion of the south-eastern part of the country by Claudius, and may very pos- sibly have preceded even the earlier invasion by Caesar. It is remarkable that Sfrabo does not speak of it as having been a consequence of, or in any degree connected with the last-mentioned event. He says, that some time after its commencement, a voyage was made to the island by a Roman navi- gator of the name of Publius Crassus, who, finding the inhabitants of a pacific disposition, and also fond of navigation, gave them some instructions, as the words seem to imply, for carrying it on upon a larger scale. This passage has attracted less atten- tion than it would seem to deserve ; for, if the Cas- siterides be, as is generally supposed, the Scilly islands, we have here the first notice of any com- mercial intercourse carried on with Britain by the Romans, and a notice which must refer to a date considerably earlier than that at which it is usually assumed that the country first began to be resorted to by that people. We are inclined to believe, however, that the frade of the Romans with the Cassiterides was en- tirely confined to their colonial settlements in the south of Gaul. Of these the city of Narbonne, situated about as far to the west of the mouth of the Rhone as the Greek city of Marseilles stood to the east of it, was the chief, as well as one of the oldest, having been founded about the year b. c. 120. The historian Diodorus Siculus, who was contemporary with Julius Caesar, has given us an 94 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. account of the manner in which the trade between Britain and Gaul was carried on in his day, which, although it does not expressly mention the partici- pation of either the Romans or any of their colo- nies, at least shows that the Cassiterides and the island of Britain had become better known than they were a hundred years before in the time of the younger Scipio. Diodorus mentions the expedition of Caesar, of which he promises a detailed account in a part of his history now unfortunately lost ; but he tells us a good many things respecting the island, the knowledge of which could not have been obtained through that expedition. We must, there- fore, suppose that he derived his information either through an intercourse with the country which had arisen subsequent to and in consequence of Caesar's attempt, or, as is much more probable, from the accounts of those by whom the south-western coast had been visited long before. Indeed, various facts concur to show that, however ignorant of Bri- tain Caesar himself may have been when he first meditated his invasion, a good deal was even then known about it by those of the Greeks and Ro- mans, who were curious in such inquiries. Caesar notices the fact of tin, or white lead, as he calls it, being found in the country; but he erroneously places the stores of this mineral in the interior (m medilerraneis regionibus), probably from finding that they lay a great distance from the coast at which he landed ; and he does not seem to have any suspicion that this was really the famous Land of Tin, the secret of whose situation had been long guarded with such jealous care by its first disco- verers, and which his own countrymen- had made so many anxious endeavours to find out. But a century and a half before Polybius, as he tells us himself, had intended to write respecting Britain ; and Strabo informs us that the great historian had actually composed a treatise on the subject of the British islands, and the mode of preparing tin. His attention had probably been drawn to the matter by the inquiries of his friend Scipio ; for Polybius, as is well known, was the companion of that celebrated general, in several of his military expeditions and other journeys. No doubt, although the people of Marseilles were unwilling or unable to satisfy the curiosity of the travellers, they ob- tained the information they wanted from some other quarter. * And in the title of this lost trea- • Camdpn has here expressed himself in a manner singularly con- trasting with his customary, and, it may be justly added, character- istic accuracy. First.- in order to prove " that it was late before the nameoftlie Britons was heard of by the Greeks and Romans," he quotes a passage from Polybius, which in the original only implies that it was doubtful whether the north of Europe was entirely en- compassed by the sea, but wliich he renders as if it asserted that nothing was known of Europe to the north of Marseilles and Nar- bonne at all. Polybius has, in fact, himself described many parts of Gaul to the north of these towns. Next he makes the historian to hare been the friend, not of the younger, but of the elder Africanus, and to have travelled over Europe not about B.C. 150, but 370 years before Christ. Even if he had been the contemporary of the elder Scinio, this would be a monstrous mistake. The whole of this passage in Camden, however (it is in his chapter on the Manners of the Bri- tons), is opposed to his own opinions as expressed in other parts of his work. The authority of Festus Avienus, which he here disclaims, he elsewhere makes use of very freely (see liis chapter on the Scilly islands, at the end of the Britannia). And whereas he contends here that Britain had never been heard of by the Greeks till a com- paratively recent date, he has a few pages before a long argument to tise of Polybius, as quoted by Strabo, it is im- portant to remark, that we find the tin country dis- tinctly recognized as being the British islands, the vague or ambiguous name of the Cassiterides being dropped It is so, likewise, in the account given by Diodorus. That writer observes that the people of the promontory of Belerium (the Bolerium of Pto- lemy, and our present I^and's End) were much more civilized than the other British nations, in consequence of their intercourse with the great number of foreign traders who resorted thither from all parts. This statement, written subsequently to Caesar's expedition, warrants us in receiving that writer's assertion as to the superior refinement of the inhabitants of Kent, as true only in a restricted sense. In fact, there were two points on the coast of the island separated by a long distance from each other, at which the same cause, a consider- able foreign commerce and frequent intercourse with strangers, had produced the same natural effect Diodorus goes on to describe the manner in which these ancient inhabitants of Cornwall prepared the tin which they exported. To this part of his description we shall afterwards have occasion to advert. After the tin has been refined and cast into ingots, he says, they con- vey it in wheeled carriages over a space which is dry at low water, to a neighbouring island, which is called Ictis ; and here the foreign merchants pur- chase it, and transport it in their ships to the coast of Gaul. The Ictis of Diodorus has, by the majo- rity of recent writers, been assumed to be the Isle of Wight, the Uectis of Ptolemy, and the Vectis or Vecta of some of the Latin writers. But this seems to us altogether an untenable supposition. It is impossible to believe either that Diodorus would call the Isle of Wight an island in the neigh- bourhood of the promontory of Bolerium, seeing that it is distant from that promontory about 200 miles, or that the people of Bolerium, instead of carrying down their tin to their own coast, would make a practice of transporting it by land carriage to so remote a point. Least of all is it possible to conceive how a journey could be accomplished by wheeled carriages from the Land's End to the Isle of Wight over the sands which were left dry at low water, as Diodorus says was the case. There can be no doubt whatever that Ictis was one of the Scilly isles, between which group and the extremity of Cornwall a long reef of rock still extends, part of which appears, from ancient documents, to have formed part of the main land at a comparatively recent date, and which there is no improbability in supposing may have afforded a dry passage the whole way in the times of which Diodorus writes. The encroachments of the sea have unquestionably effected extensive changes in that part of the Bri- tish coast ; and at a very remote period it is evi- dent from present appearances, as well as from prove that it must have been known " to the most ancient of the Greeks." In the same chapter (on the Name ot Britain) he quotes a passage from Pliny, in which that writer characterizes the island as famous in the writings (or records, as it may be translated) of the Greeks and Romans — " clara Graecis nostrisque monumentis." Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTKY : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 95 facts well attested by records and tradition, that the distance between the Scilly isles and the main land must have been very much less than it now is. " It doth appear yet by good record," says a writer of the latter part of the sixteenth century, " that whereas now there is a great distance between the Syllan Isles and point of the Land's End, there was of late years to speak of scarcely a brooke or drain of one fathom water between them, if so much, as by those evidences appeareth that are yet to be seen in the lands of the lord and chief owner of those isles." * Some of the islands even may have been submerged in the long course of years that has elapsed since the Ictis was the mart of the tin trade ; and the numerous group of islets which we now see may very possibly be only the relics left above water of the much smaller number, of a considerable size, which are described as forming the ancient Cassiterides. It may be added that if the south-west coast of Brittany, where the maritime nation of the Veneti dwelt, was, as seems most probable, the part of the continent from which the tin ships sailed, the Isle of Wight was as much out of their way as of that of the people of Bolerium. The shortest and most direct voyage for the merchants of Vannes was right across to the very point of the British coast where the tin mines were. It appears to us to admit of little doubt that the Ictis of Diodorus is the same island which, on the authority of the old Greek historian, Timaeus, is mentioned by Pliny under the name of Mictis, and stated to lie six days' sail inward (introrsus) from Britain (which length of navigation, however, the Britons accomplished in their wicker boats), and to be that in which the tin was produced. It must no doubt have taken fully the space of time here mentioned to get to the Scilly isles from the more distant parts even of the south coast of Britain. Diodorus goes on to inform us that the foreign merchants, after having purchased the tin at the Isle of Ictis, and conveyed it across the sea to the opposite coast of Gaul, were then wont to send it overland to the mouth of the Rhone, an operation which consumed thirty days. At the mouth of the Rhone it was no doubt purchased by the merchants of Marseilles, and at a later period also by their rivals of Narbonne, if we are not rather to suppose that the Gallic traders who brought it from Britain were merely their agents. Caesar, however, ex- pressly informs us that the Veneti, who occupied a part of the present Bretagne, had many ships of their own, in which they were accustomed to make voyages to Britain. From the two great emporia in the south of France the commodity was dif^ised over all other parts of the earth, as it had been at an earlier period from Cadiz and the other Phoe- nician colonies on the south coast of Spain. It appears from Strabo, however, that the operose and tedious mode of conveyance by land -carriage from the coast of Brittany to the gulf of Lyons was eventually abandoned for other routes, in which • Harrisou's A)escription of England, b iii. c. 7. some advantage could be taken of the natural means of transportation afforded by the country. By one of these, the British goods being brought to the mouth of the Seine, in Normandy, were sent up that river as far as it was navigable, and then, being carried on horses a short distance overland, were transmitted for the remainder of the way down the Rhone, and afterwards along the coast to Nar- bonne and Marseilles. It is probable enough that the Isle of Wight, which is opposite to the mouth of the Seine, may have been used as the mart of the British trade in this navigation, for which pur- pose it was also well adapted, as lying about mid- way between Cornwall and Kent, and being there- fore more conveniently situated than any other spot both for the supply of the whole line of coast with foreign commodities, and for the export of native produce. When the route we are now describing came to be adopted for the British trade generally, even a portion of the tin of Cornwall may have found its way to this central depot. But even after land carriage came to be displaced by river navi- gation, a large portion of the British trade still con- tinued to be carried on from the west coast of Gaul, through the medium both of the Loire and the Garonne. The Loire seems to have been taken advantage of chiefly to convey the exports from Narbonne and Marseilles down to the sea-coast after they had been brought by land across the country from Lyons, to which point they had been sent up by the Rhone. The Garonne was used for the conveyance to the south of France of British produce, which was sent up that river as far as it was navigable, and thence carried to its destination over land. This is nearly all that is known respecting the commercial intercourse of Britain with other parts of the world before the country became a province of the Roman empire. The traffic both with Car- thage and the Phoenician colonies in the south of Spain had of course ceased long before Caesar's invasion ; at that date the only direct trade of the island was with the western and north-western coasts of Gaul, from the Garonne as far probably as to the Rhine ; for, in addition to the passage of commodities, as just explained, to and from Pro- vence, the Belgic colonists, who now occupied so large a portion of the maritime districts in the south of Britain, appear also from their first settle- ment to have kept up an active intercourse with their original seats on the continent, which stretched to the last-mentioned river. The British line of communication, on the other hand, may be pre- sumed to have extended from the Land's End to the mouth of the Thames ; though it was probably only at two or three points in the course of that long distance that the continental vessels were in the habit of touching. There is no evidence that any of the vessels in which the trade with the con- tinent was carried on belonged to Britain. The island in those days seems onlv to have been re- sorted to by strangers as the native place of certam valuable commodities, and to have maintained little 96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. or no interchange of visits with foreign shores. Even from this imperfect intercourse with the rest of the world, however, the inhabitants of all this line of coast must have been enabled to keep up, as we are assured they did, a very considerably higher degree of civilization than would be found among the back-woodsmen beyond them. It is to be re- membered that no small amount of the commercial spirit may exist in a country which maintains no intercourse with foreigners except in its own ports. The situation of Britain in this respect, two thousand years ago, may be likened indeed to that of Spitz- bergen or New Zealand at present ; but the same peculiarity, which at first sight seems to us so re- markable and so unnatural, characterizes the great commercial empire of China. There the national customs and the institutions of the government have done their utmost to discourage and restrain the spirit of commercial enterprise ; but that spirit is an essential part of the social principle, and as such is unextinguishable wherever the immutable cir- cumstances of physical situation are not adverse to its development. Hence, although their laws and traditionary morality have operated with so much effect as to prevent the people of China from push- ing to any extent what may be called an aggressive commerce, that is to say, from seeking markets for their commodities in foreign countries, these adverse influences have not been able so far to overcome the natural incentives arising out of their geographical position as to induce them to refrain equally from what we may call admissive com- merce, or indeed to be other than very eager fol- lowers of it. The case of the early Britons may have been somewhat similar. The genius of most of the Oriental religions seems to have been opposed to foreign intercourse of every kind, the prohibition or systematic discouragement of which the priests doubtless regarded as one of their most important securities for the preservation of their influence and authority ; and very probably such may also have been the spirit of the Celtic or Druidical religion. It is remarkable, at least, that the well-ascertained Celtic tribes of Europe, though distributed for the most part along the sea-coast, have never exhibited uny striking aptitude either for navigation or for any employment in connexion with the sea. The most particular account of the exports and imports constituting the most ancient British trade is that quoted above from Strabo, and it is probably not very complete. It only adds the single article of skins to the tin and lead mentioned by Festus Avienus and others. It is probable, however, that the island was known for a few other products besides these, even before the first Roman invasion. Caesar expressly mentions iron as found, although in small quantities, in the maritime districts. And it appears from some passages in the Letters of Cicero, that the fame of the British war^chariots had already reached Rome. Writing to Trebatius, while the latter was here with Caesar, b.c. 55, after observing that he hears Britain yielded neither gold nor silver, the orator playfully exhorts his friend to get hold of one of the esseda of the island, and make his way back to them at Rome with hia best speed. In another epistle he cautions Tre- batius to take care that he be not snatched up and carried off before he knows where he is, by some driver of one of these rapid vehicles. Strabo's account of the foreign commodities imported into Britain in those days is, that they consisted of earthenware, salt, and articles of bronze, which last expression is undoubtedly to be understood as meaning not mere toys, but articles of use, in the fabrication of which bronze, as we have explained above, was the great material made use of in early times. Caesar also testifies that all the bronze made use of by the Britons was obtained from abroad. The metal, however, as we shall presently have occasion to show, was probably imported to some extent in ingots or masses, as well as in ma- nufactured articles. Much of the bronze which was thus brought to them, whether in lumps of metal, or in the shape of weapons of war and other necessary or useful articles, had no doubt been formed by the aid of their own tin. Neither the Britons themselves, nor any of the foreigners who traded with them at this early period, appear to have been aware of the abimdant stores of copper which the island is now known to contain. Indeed the British copper-mines have only been wrought to any considerable extent in very recent times. Having thus collected and arranged the few but interesting facts that have been preserved relating to the earliest interchange of their own commodities for those of foreign parts, carried on by the ancient Britons, we now proceed to take a survey, as far as our scanty sources of information enable us to do, of the different arts of life which appear to have been known and practised among themselves. We begin with their modes of obtaining sub- sistence. The country, as has already appeared, is presented to us, when the first light of history dawns upon it, as inhabited by a mixed race of people, divided into many tribes, varying more or less from each other in dress, customs, and ac- quirements ; those situated farthest from the south coast being the rudest in their manner of life, and the most deficient in general information. These, as we are informed by Caesar, never sowed their land, but followed the primitive callings of the hunter and the herdsman, clad in the skins, and living upon the flesh and the milk of their flocks and herds, and the spoils of the chase, which was at once their sport and their occupation. Although they had abundance of milk, however, some of the Britons, according to Strabo, were ignorant of the art of making cheese ; and it i& asserted by Xiphi- linus, that none of them ever tasted fish, although they had multitudes in their lakes and rivers ; but whether from an ignorance of the art of fishing, or from some religious or other prejudice, does not appear. Caesar, who says nothing of this, states that they thought it wrong to eat either the hare, the common fowl, or the goose, although they reared these animals for pleasure. The limits of Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A. D. 449. 97 Hare Stonk, Cornwall.— From King's Muiiimenta Antiqtia. pasturage were marked as in the patriarchal times, recorded in the Scriptures, by large, upright, single stones, numbers of which are still to be found all over the kingdom, and are known by the names of hoar or hare stones (i. e. literally border or boundary stones) in England, and maen hir or menni gwyr in Wales.* The southern tribes inhabiting the coasts of the British channel, and more particularly the Cantii or people of Kent, are distinguished by Caesar as resembling in habits and manners the Belgic Gauls, their opposite neighbours and kinsmen. They possessed the same knowledge of agriculture, and, according to Pliny, were not only acquainted with the modes of manuring the soil in use in other countries, but practised one peculiar to themselves and the Gauls. This was the application of marl to that purpose ; and one white chalky sort is men- tioned, the effects of which had been found to con- tinue eighty years ; " no man," it is added, " having yet been known to have manured the same field twice in his lifetime." Of the British instruments, and methods of ploughing, sowing, and reaping, we have no information ; but they were probably the same as in Belgium and Gaul, and little different from those used in Italy at that period. To tlie liail the Britons appear to have been strangers ; for Diodorus Siculus tells us they had granaries or subterranean chambers, in which they housed their corn in the ear, beating out no more than they required for the day ; then, drying and bruising the grain, they made a kind of food of it for immediate use. Some vestiges of this ancient • Men liars in Armoric is a bound stone. See on this subject a learned and highly curious letter by the late William Hamper, Esq., F.S.A., iu the 25th vol. of the Archaeologia. • VOL. 1. practice were remaining not long ago in the west- ern isles of Scotland. " It is called graddan" says Martin, " from the Irish word grad, which signifies quick. A woman, sitting down, takes a handful of corn, holding it by the stalks in her left hand, and then sets fire to tlie ears, which are pre- sently in a flame ; she has a stick in her right hand, which she manages very dexterously, beat- ing off the grain at the very instant when the husk is quite burnt ; for, if she miss of that, she must use the kiln ; but experience has taught them this art to perfection. The corn may be so dressed, winnowed, ground, and baked within an hour."* Ground-Plan and Section of the Subterranean Chamber at Carbiohhill, in the County of Cork. Description of the Western Isles of Scotland, p. 204. 98 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [[Book I. Plan of Chambers on a Farm Twelve Miles feom Ballyhendon. vegetables cultivated in the country before its sub- jugation by tlie Romans. With regard to the houses of the Britons, at the period of the Roman invasion, we have the testi- mony of Caesar, that on the southern coast, where they were numerous, they were nearly of the same description with those of the Gauls. Diodorus Siculus calls them wretched cottages, constructed of wood, and covered with straw ; and those of Gaul are described by Strabo as being constructed of poles and wattled work, in the form of a circle, with lofty, tapering, or pointed roofs. Representa- tions of the Gaulish houses occur on the Antouine column, agreeing sufficiently with the description of Strabo, but the roofs are in general domed. Plan of Chambers at Ballthendon. Skction of a Chamber at Kildrumphek. Several subterranean caves were discovered in 1829, on a farm named Garranes, in the parish of Carrighhill, about nine miles east of Cork, per- fectly corresponding with the descriptions of Dio- dorus and Tacitus, the latter of whom mentions the existence of a similar practice amongst the ancient Germans. They were situated withm a circular intrenchment, commonly but improperly called a Danish fort. They consisted of five chambers of an oval or circular form about seven or eight feet each in diameter, communicating with each other by narrow passages. A considerable quantity of char- coal was found in them, and the fragments of a quern or hand-mill.* More were subsequently discovered in other parts of the south of Ireland, differing only from the above in their being lined with stone ;t and some are still remaining in the western isles of Scotland! and in Cornwall. § The pits near Crayford and at Faversham in Kent, at Tilbury in Essex, and at Royston in Hertfordshire, are also presumed to have been made for or appro- priated to that purpose. II Of gardening Strabo expressly states that some of the Britons knew nothing, any more than others did of agriculture ; and we have no notices of any fruits or garden • Archa>ologia,Tol. xxiii. p. 79. + Ibid. p. 82. t Martin's Description, p. 154. 5 Borlase's Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 292-3. II Virte Gongh's Additions to Camden's Brit., vol. 1. p. 341; vol. ii. p. 41. Hasted's Hist, of Kent, vol. i. p 2U. and vol. ii. p.717. »nd King's Muniraenta Antiqua, vol. i. p. 53. Gaulish Huts. — From the Antonine Column. They all have one or more lofty arched entrances ; but from want of skill in the artist, they certainly appear, as a modem writer has remarked, more like the large tin canisters set up as signs by grocers, than habitable buildings.* At Grims- pound, Devonshire,! in the island of Anglesey,^ and in many other parts of the United Kingdom, vestiges are to be seen of stone foundations and walls, apparently of circular houses. Near Chun Castle, in Cornwall, are several dilapidated walls of circular buildings, the foundations de- tached from each other, and consisting of large stones piled together without mortar : each hut measures from ten to twenty feet in diameter, and • Vide also King's Munimenta Antiqua, vol. i. p. 112, for vignette representing a Welsh pig-stye, numbers of which occur in the neigh- bourhood of LlandafT, and have been supposeil to have been btiilt in imitation of the ancient British houses. However unfounded the notion, there can be but one opinion of their accordance in shape to those described by Strabo. \ Lyson's Brit. vi. cccvi. i Rowland's Mona Antiqua. pp. 88.89 Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A.D. 449. 99 Welsh Pio-stye, supposed to represent the form of the Ancient British Houses. (See Note.) has a doorway with an upright stone or ja,mb on each side. There is no appearance of chimneys or windows.* They had nothing amongst them answering to the Roman ideas of a city or town. " What the Britons call a town," says Caesar, " is a tract of woody country, surrounded by a vallum (or high bank) and a ditch for the security of themselves and cattle against the incursions of their enemies ;" and Strabo observes, " The forests of the Britons are their cities; for, when they have inclosed a very large circuit with felled trees, they build within it houses for themselves and hovels for their cattle. These buildings are very slight, and not designed for long duration." What Caesar calls a vallum and ditch is expressed in Welsh by the words caer and din or dinas ; the same with the Gaehc dun. The caer is generally found to consist of a single vallum and ditch. Such is the circular in- trenchment called Caer Morus, in the parish of Ccllan, county of Cardigan. The dun, din, or dinas was a more important work, and generally crested like a fortress some very commanding situation. The Catterthuns in Angusshire, Scot- land, are posts of great strength. The mountain on which they stand is bifurcated with a fortress on each peak, the highest called the White, the other the Black Catterthun. The white is of an oval form, and made of a stupendous dike of loose white stones, whose convexity from the base within to that without is 122 feet. On the outside of a hollow made by the disposition of the stones, is a rampart surrounding the whole, at the base of • Boriase. Britton's Architectural Antiquities, ii, p. 57 Archsa- ologia.Tol. xxii. n. 300, and Appendix. which is a deep ditch, and below that, about 100 yards, are vestiges of another that went round the hill. The area within the stony mound is flat: the greatest extent of the oval is 436 feet; the transverse line is 200. Near the cast side is the Section. Plan anb Section of Chtjn Castle. 100 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. foundation of a rectangular building, and on most parts are the foundations of others, small and cir- cular. There is also a hollow, now almost filled with stones, which was once the well of the place.* The towns of the warlike Britons were all, in fact, military posts ; and we have the testimony of Caesar, that they evidenced distinguished skill in fortification and castrametation. The capital of Cassivellaunus he describes as admirably defended {egregie munitum) both by nature and art. Chun Castle, which we have before mentioned, is another highly interesting specimen of an ancient British dun, or fortress. It consists of two circular walls, having a terrace thirty feet wide between. The walls are built of rough masses of granite of va- rious sizes, some five or six feet long, fitted toge- ther, and piled up without cement, but presenting a regular and tolerably smooth surface on the out- side. The outer wall was surrounded by a ditch nineteen feet in width : part of this wall in one place is ten feet high, and about five feet thick. Borlase is of opinion that the inner wall must have been at least fifteen feet high ; it is about twelve feet thick. The only entrance was towards the south-west, and exhibits in its arrangement a sur- prising degree of skill and military knowledge for the time at which it is supposed to have been con- • Muaimenta Antiqua, vol. i. p. 27. Meyrick's Orig. Inhab. p. 7. Pennant's Tour in Scotland, part ii p. 157 stTucted. It is six feet wide in the narrowest part, and sixteen in the widest, where the walls diverge, and are rounded off on either side. There also appear indications of steps up to the level of the area within the castle, and the remains of a wall, which, crossing the terrace from the outer wall, di- vided the entrance into two parts at its widest end. The inner wall of the castle incloses an area mea- suring 175 feet north and south, by 180 feet east and west. The centre is without any indication of buildings ; but all around, and next to the wall, are the remains of circular inclosures, supposed to have formed the habitable parts of the castle. They are generally about eighteen or twenty feet in dia- meter, but at the northern side there is a larger apartment thirty by twenty-six.* Castle an Dinas and Caer Bran, both in the same county of Corn- wall, exhibit similar vestiges of circular stone walls, containing smaller inclosures. The first is situ- ated on one of the highest hills in the hundred of Penwitli ; the second on a hill in the parish of Sancred.f A fine specimen of a triple ramparted British camp exists on one of the Malvern Hills, called the Herefordshire Beacon. Of ancient Bri- tish earth-works also there is a most interesting relic at Tynwald, in the Isle of Mau.t It is a round hill of earth, cut into terraces, and ascended • Archaeologia, vol. xxii. p. 300. t Ibid. X Engraved in Grose, vol. vhi. p. 61. den, 700,70;. Described in Gougli's Cam- Tbe HHKEFOiCDSli.Kl, HeacoK. Chap. IY.J NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A. D. 449. 101 by steps of earth like a regular staircase. The entrance into the area had stone jambs, covered with transverse imposts, fixed by the contrivance called a tenon and mortice, like those at Stone- Henge. The last-named stupendous monument and similar circles and inclosures in various parts of the kingdom, are evidences of a much higher degree of architectural skill than is displayed either in the domestic or the military erections we have noticed. The application of the principle of the lever must have been known to those by whom such enormous blocks of stone were lifted from the quarry, conveyed to the place where they were to be used, and hoisted and disposed in their present form. It thus appears, that although the towns of the Britons may be likened to the kraals of the Hottentots, their fortresses, castles, and the pillared circles dedicated to the worship of their divinities, or the solemn deliberations of their kings or legis- lators, are not to be paralleled amongst savages. With regard to the furniture and interior decora- Oonstantine Tolman, Cornwall ; consisting of a vast stone 33 feet Ions, 14i deep, and 18^ across, placed on tlie points of two natural rocks The stone, which is calculalel to weigh 750 tons, points due south and north. tions of the habitations of the Britons, a knowledge of which would throw considerable light upon the degree of civilization to which" they had attained, we are (Completely in the dark. But however poorly furnished the houses of private individuals may have been, it is probable enough that the re- sidences of their kings, their sages, and their chiefs, were not destitute of such comforts and even orna- ments or elegancies as their intercourse, first with the Phoenicians, and afterwards with the Gauls, would have procured them, supposing them to have been aboriginal savages, instead of colonists, bear- ing with tliem the arts, customs, and manners of the countries from whence they came. Of the handi- crafts in which they themselves excelled, that of basket-making or wicker-work has been particu- larly mentioned by the Roman poets, Juvenal and Martial. The Latin bascauda, from whence is the modem basket, appears to have been a British word. Wicker-work was used in the construction of their smaller boats by the Britons ; and of this manufacture were made the gigantic idols in which they burned their victims at their religious festi- vals. Long before the arrival of the Romans, it is obvious that the Britons must have possessed cer- tain implements required for the cutting, smooth- ing, shaping, and joining of wood.* Besides their houses, they had, as we have already seen, at the time of Caesar's invasion, not only instruments of husbandry, but carriages both for war and for other purposes. These war-carriages have already been described in our narrative of their protracted con- test with their invaders. The Greek and Roman writers mention the British wheel -carriages under the six different names of Benna, Petoritum, Cur- rus or Carrus, Covinus, Essedum or Esseda, and Rheda ; and it is thought by some, though per- • See a great variety jftho^e instruments called celts in the fifth vol. of the Archa5ologia, p. 106, sliaiied so as to serve for chisela, ailzcs, hatchets, &c. Some have been found with cases to them, as if to preserve their edge. 102 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. haps without sufficient reason, that each of these terms designated a particular description of car- riage. The covinus is supposed to have been the chariot which was armed with a scythe.* There is no reasonable ground for supposing, as some writers have done, that the ancient Britons possessed any description of navigating vessels, which could properly be termed ships of war. The notion has been taken up on an inference from a passage in Caesar, or rather from a comparison of several passages, which the language of that writer rightly understood, certainly does not at all autho- rize. Caesar gives us in one place an account of a naval engagement which he had with the Veueti of western Gaul, whose ships appear, from his de- scription, to have been very formidable military engines. In a preceding chapter he had informed us, that in making preparations for their resistance to the Roman arms, the Veneti, after fortifying their towns, and collecting their whole naval strength at one point, associated with them for the purpose of carrying on the war, the Osismii, the Lexobii, and other neighbouring tribes, and also sent for aid out of Britain, which lay directly over against their coast. But it is not said that the assistance which they thus obtained, either from Britain or any other quarter, consisted of ships. It does not even appear that it consisted of seamen ; for, although it so happened that the war was ter- minated by the destruction of the naval power of the Veneti, in the engagement we have just men- tioned, preparations had evidently been made in the first instance for carrying it on by land as well as by sea. The supposition that the Britcns pos- sessed any ships at all resembling the high-riding, strong-timbered, iron-bound vessels of this prin- cipal maritime power of Gaul — provided, amongst other things, Caesar assures us, with chain cables • " Agmina falcifero circumvenit arcta Covino," Silius Italicus. So also Mela, iii. 6. See the Collect. <le Reb. Hib. pi. 11. for a repre- sentation of one (as It is presumed j thirteen laches long. (anchored, fro funibus, ferrets catenis revinctce')— is in violent contradiction to the general bearing of all the other recorded and probable facts respecting the condition of our island and its inhabitants at that period. There is no evidence or reason for believing that they were masters of any other navi- gating vessels than open boats, of which it may be doubted if any Avere even furnished with sails. Their common boat appears to have been what is still called the currach by the Irish, and the co- racle (cwrwgyl) by the Welsh, formed of osier twigs, covered with hide. The small boats yet in use upon the rivers of Wales and Ireland are in shape like a wahmt-shell, and rowed with one paddle. Pliny, as already noticed, quotes the old Greek historian Timseus, as affirming that the Britons used to make their way to an island at the distance of six days' sail in boats made of wattles, and covered with skins ; and Solinus states that, in his time, the communication between Britain and Ireland was kept up on both sides by means of these vessels. Caesar, in his history of the Civil War, tells us that, having learned their use while in Bri- tain, he availed himself of them in crossing rivers in Spain; and we learn from Lucan, that they were used on the Nile and the Po, as well as by the Britons. Another kind of British boat seems to have been made out of a single tree, like the In- dian canoes. Several of these have been disco- vered. In 1736 one was dug up from a morass called Lockermoss, in Dumfries, Scotland. It was seven feet long, dilated to a considerable breadth at one end : the paddle was found near it. Another, hollowed out of a solid tree, was seen by Mr. Pennant, near Rilblain. It measured eight feet three inches long, and eleven inches deep. In the year 1720 several canoes similar to these were dug up in the marshes of the river Medway, above Maidstone ; one of them so well preserved as to be used as a boat for some time afterwards. On draining Martine Muir, or Marton Lake, in Lan- Side View. Foreshoiteued Vieiv, showhi;; the Kiiil. Anciknt British Canoes — Fuund at North Stoke Sussex. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A.J). 449. 103 cashire, theie were found sunk at the bottom, eight canoes, each made of a shigle tree, much like the American canoes.* In 1834 a boat of the same description was found in a creek near the village of North Stoke, on the river Arun, Sussex. It is now in the British Museum, and measures in length thirty-five feet four inches; in depth one foot ten inches ; and in width, in the middle, four feet six inches. There are three bars left at the bottom, at different distances from each other, and from the ends, which seem to have served the double purpose of strengthening it and giving firm footing to those who rowed or paddled the canoe. It seems to have been made, or at least finished, by sharpened instruments, and not by fire, according to the practices of the Indians .f Although Strabo mentions articles of earthen- ware among the supplies brought to the inhabit- ants of the tin islands by the foreign merchants, it is probable that the art of manufacturing certain descriptions of such articles was not unknown to the Britons. The Gauls had numerous and exten- sive potteries. The British earthenware, however, appears to have been of an inferior description, composed of very coarse materials, rudely formed, before the use of the lathe was known, imperfectly baked, and subject, therefore, to crack by mere exposure to the weather. The ornaments chiefly consisted of the zigzag pattern, and of lines evi- dently worked by some pointed instrument with the hand, and not formed in a mould. The vases most frequently found are divided by Sir R. Colt Hoare into three kinds. 1. The large sepulchral or funeral urn, which contains the burnt bones of the deceased, sometimes in an upright but more frequently in a reversed position. It is usually a truncated cone, plain, standing mouth downwards in a dish to fit, like a pie dish, worked with zig- zags. 2. The drinking cup, most frequently found with skeletons, and placed at the head and feet, of a barrel form, but widening at the mouth, always neatly ornamented with zigzag or other patterns, and holding about a quart in measure : they are sup- posed to have contained articles of food for the dead. 3. Incense-cups, or thuribula, diminutive, more fantastic in shape and ornaments than the former, frequently perforated in the sides, and sometimes in the bottom, like a cullender. These are supposed to have been filled with balsams and precious ointments, or frankincense, and to have been suspended over the funeral pile.} Among the useful arts practised by the ancient Britons, they must be allowed to have had some acquaintance with those relating to the metals, but how much it is not easy to determine. Both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus have briefly noticed their mode of obtaining the tin from the earth. The former observes that Publius Crassus, upon his visit to the Cassiterides, found the mines worked to a very small depth. It may be inferred from this • Kinfi's Munimenta Antiqaa, vol. i. page 28, &c. t Archaeologia.-vol. xxvi. p. 237, &c. { Ancient Wiltshire, Introd. i. 25. expression, that the only mining known to the na- tives was that which consisted in digging a few feet into the earth, and collecting what is now called the stream tin, from the modem process of washing and separating the particles of the ore thus lodged by directing over their bed a stream of water. No tools of which they were possessed could have enabled them to cut their way to the veins of metal concealed in the rocks. The language of Diodorus supports the same conclusion. He speaks of the tin as being mixed with earth when it is first dug out of the mine ; but, from what he adds, it would appear that the islanders knew how to separate the metal from the dross by smelting. After it was thus purified, they prepared it for market by casting it into ingots in the shape of dice. What lead they had was no doubt procured in like manner from the surface of the soil or a very small depth under it. Pliny indeed expressly states that, even in his time, this latter metal was found in Britain in great plenty lying thus exposed or scarcely covered. There is every reason to believe that some know- ledge of the art of working in metals was possessed by the Britons before the Roman invasion. Moulds for spear, arrow, and axe-heads have been fre- quently found both in Britain and Ireland;* and the discovery in 1735, on Easterly Moor, near York, of 100 axe-heads, with several lumps of metal and a quantity of cinders, may be considered Moulds roR Sveak-Heads. • Arcliffiologi*. vol. xiv. pi. Iv. and vol. xv. pi. xxxiv. Collectanta do Reb. Hibern. vol. iv.pl. X. 104 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. suScient testimony that at least the bronze im- ported into Britain was cast into shapes by the in- habitants themselves.* The metal of which the British weapons and tools were made has been chemically analyzed in modern times, and the pro- portions appear to be, in a spear-head, one part of tin to six of copper ; in an axe-head, one of tin and ten of copper ; and in a knife, one of tin to seven and a half of copper. -j- Axe-Heads, commonly called Celts. Whatever knowledge the Gauls possessed of the art of fabricating and dyeing cloth, the more civilized inhabitants of the South of Britain, having come originally from Gaul, and always keeping up a close intercourse with the people of that country, may be fairly presumed to have shared with them. The long dark-coloured mantles in which Strabo de- scribes the inhabitants of the Cassiterides as attired, may indeed have been of skins, but were more pro- bably of some woollen texture. The Gauls are stated by various ancient authors to have both woven and dyed wool ; and Pliny mentions a kind of felt which they made merely by pressure, which was so hard and strong, especially when vinegar was used in its manufacture, that it would resist the blow of a sword. Caesar tells us that the ships of the Veneti of Gaul, notwithstanding their superior strength and size, had only skins for sails ; and he expresses a doubt as to whether that material was not employed either from the want of linen or ig- norance of its use. At a somewhat later period, however, it appears from Pliny that linen cloth was fabricated in all parts of Gaul. The dyes which the Britons used for their cloth were probably ex- tracted from the same plant from which they ob- tained those with which they marked their skin, namely, the isatis, or woad. " Its colour," says a late writer, " was somewhat like indigo, which has in a great degnee superseded the use of it. . . . The best woad usually yields a blue tint, but that herb, as well as indigo, when partially deoxidated, has been found to yield a fine green. . . The robes of the fanatic British women, witches, or * Borlasc's Cornwall, p. 28". t Meyrick's Original Inhabitants, and Philosophical Transactions tor 1796,p.395,&'-. priestesses, were black, vestis feratis; and that colour was a third preparation of woad by the ap- plication of a greater heat."* Woad is still cul- tivated for the purposes of dyeing in France, and also, to a smaller extent, in England. Woad— (Isatis Tinctoria). Some of the facts stated above would seem to afford us reason for suspecting that Britain was better known even to the Roman world before the two expeditions of Caesar than is commonly sup- posed, or than we should be led to infer from Caesar's own account of those attempts. We may even doubt whether he was himself as ignorant of the country as he affects to have been. He may very possibly have wished to give to his achieve- ment the air of a discovery as well as of a conquest. Tacitus, as we have seen, is disposed to claim for Agricola, a century and a half later, the honour of having first ascertained Britain to be an island, although even Caesar professes no doubt about that point ; and from the language of every preceding writer who mentions the name of the country, its insular character must evidently have been well known from time immemorial. The Romans did nothing directly, and, notwithstanding all their con- quests, little even indirectly in geographical dis- covery ; almost wherever they penetrated the Greeks or the orientals had been before them ; and any reputation gained in that field would naturally be valued in proportion to its rarity. But however this may be, Caesar's invasion certainly had the • Biitannia after the Romans, p. 56. Chap. IY.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C, 55— A.D. 449. 105 immediate effect of giving a celebrity to Britain which it had never before enjoyed. Lucretius, the oldest Roman writer who has mentioned Britain, is also, we believe, the only one in whose works the name is found before the date of Caesar's visit. Of the interest which that event excited, the Letters of Cicero, to some passages of which we have already referred, written at the time both to his brother Quintus, who was in Caesar's army, and to Atticus and his other friends, afford sufficient evidence. In the first instance, expectations seem to have been excited that the conquest would probably yield more than barren laurels ; but these were soon dis- sipated. " It is ascertained," Cicero writes to At- ticus, before the issue of the expedition was yet known at Rome, " that the approaches to the island are defended by natural impediments of wonderful vastness {rnirificis mofibus) ; and it is known too by this time that there is not a scruple of silver in that island, nor the least chance of booty, unless it may be from slaves, of whom you will scarcely expect to find any very highly accom- plished in letters or in music."* So, also, in the epistle immediately following to the same cor- respondent, he mentions having had letters both from his brother and from Csesar, informing him that the business in Britain was finished, and that hostages had been received from the inhabitants ; but that no booty had been obtained, although a pecuniary tribute had been imposed {imperata tamen pecunia). Although the island was not conquered by Caesar, the way was in a manner opened to it, and its name rendered ever after familiar, by his sword and his pen. Besides, the reduction of Gaul, which he effected, removed the most considerable barrier between the Romans and Britain. After that, whether compelled to receive an imperial governor or left unattacked, it could not remain as much dissociated from the rest of the world and unvisited as before. A land of Roman arts, letters, and go- vernment, — of Roman order and magnificence, pub- lic and private, — now lay literally under the eyes of the natives of Britain ; and it was impossible that such a spectacle should have been long con- templated, and that the intercourse which must have existed between the two closely approaching coasts could have long gone on, without the ideas and habats of the formerly secluded islanders, semi- barbarians themselves and encompassed by semi- barbarians, undergoing some change. Accordingly Strabo has intimated that, even in his time, that is to say, in the reign of Augustus, the Roman arts, manners, and religion had gained some footing in Britain. It appears also, from his account, that although no aimual payment under the obnoxious name of a tribute was exacted from the Britons by Augustus, yet that prince derived a considerable revenue, not only from the presents which were made to him by the British princes, but also by means of what would certainly now be accounted a very decided exercise of sovereignty over the is- •Epist. adAtt. iv. 16. VOL. I. land, the imposition ot duties or customs upon exports and imports. To these imposts, it seems, the Britons submitted without resistance; yet they must of course have been collected by functionaries of the imperial government stationed within the island, for it is well known to have been a leading regulation of the Roman financial system that all such duties should be paid on goods exported before embarkation, and on goods imported before they were landed. If the duties were not paid according to this rule, the goods were forfeited. The right of inspection, and the other rights with which the collectors vt^ere invested to enable them to appor- tion and levy these taxes, were necessarily of the most arbitrary description; and they must have been even more than ordinarily 'so in a country where the imperial government was not established, and there was no regular superintending power set over them. Strabo says that a great part of Britain had come to be familiarly known to the Romans through the intercourse with it which was thus maintained. All this implies, that the foreign commerce of the island had already been considerably extended ; and such accordingly is proved to have been the case even by the catalogue — probably an incomplete one — of its exports and imports which Strabo gives us. Among the former he mentions gold, silver, and iron, but, strangely enough, neither lead nor tin; com, cattle, skins, — including both hides of horned cattle and the skins and fleeces of sheep, — and dogs, which he describes as possessing various excellent qualities. In those days slaves were also obtained from Britain as they now are from the coast of Africa; and it may be suspected from Cicero's allusion already quoted, that this branch of tra4e was older even than Caesar's invasion. Cicero seems to speak of the slaves as a well- known description of British produce. These several kinds of raw produce the Britons appear to have exchanged for articles the manufacture of which was probably of more value than the mate- rial, and which were, for the greater part, rather showy than useful. The imports enumerated by Strabo are ivory bridles, gold chains, cups of amber, drinking glasses, and a variety of other articles of the like kind. Still, all these are articles of a very different sort from the brass buttons and glass beads, by means of which trade is carried on with savages. After the establishment of the Roman dominion in the country, its natural resources were no doubt much more fully developed, and its foreign trade both in the way of exportation and importation, but in the latter more especially, must have as- sumed altogether a new aspect. The Roman co- lonists settled in Britain of course were consumers of the same necessaries and luxuries as in other parts of the empire ; and such of these as could not be obtained in the country were imported for their use from abroad. They must have been paid for, on the other hand, by the produce of the island, of its soil, of its mines, perhaps of its seas, and by 106 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. the native manufactures, if there were any of these suited to the foreign market. The chief export of Roman Britain, in the most flourishing times of the province, appears to have been corn. This island, indeed, seems eventually to have come to he considered in some sort as the Sicily of the northern part of the empire ; and in the fourth century we find the armies of Gaul and Germany depending in great part for their subsist- ence upon the regular annual arrivals of com from Britain. It was stored in those countries for their use in public granaries. But on extraordinary emergencies a much greater quantity was brought over than sufficed for this object. The historian Zosinus relates that in the year 359, on the Roman colonies situated in the Upper Rhine having been plundered by the enemy, the Emperor Julian built a fleet of 800 barks, of a larger size than usual, which he dispatched to Britain for corn ; and that they brought over so much that the inhabitants of the plundered towns and districts received enough not only to support them during the winter, but also to sow their lands in the spring, and to serve them till the next harvest. It is probable also that Britain now supplied the continental parts of the empire with other agricultural produce as well as grain. No doubt its cattle, which were abun- dant even in the time of Caesar, frequently supplied the foreign market with carcases as well as hides, and were also exported alive for breeding and the plough. The British horses were highly esteemed by the Romans both for their beauty and their training. Various Latin poets, as well as the geo- grapher Strabo, have celebrated the pre-eminence of the British dogs above all others both for courage, size, strength, fleetness, and scent.* Cheese, also, which many of tlie British tribes when they first became known to the Romans appear not to have understood how to make, is said to have been afterwards exported from the island in large quantities. The chalk of Britain, and probably also the lime and the marl, seem to have been held in high estimation abroad ; and an altar or votive stone is stated to have been found in the seventeenth century at Domburgh, in Zealand, with an inscription testifying it to have been dedi- cated to a goddess named Nehalennia, for her pre- servation of his freight, by Secundus Silvanus, a British chalk - merchant (Negociator Cretarius Britannicianus) . We may fairly presume that the trade in the ancient metallic products of the island, tin and lead, was greatly extended during the Roman occu- pation. It seems to have been then that the tin- mines first began to be worked to any considerable depth, or rather that the metal began to be pro- cured by any process which could properly be called mining. It has been supposed that con- victed criminals among the Romans used to be condemned to work in the British mines. f Roman coins, and also blocks of tin, with Latin inscrip- • See a curious collection of these testimonies in Camden's Bri- tannia, by Gibson, i. 139-40. See also Harrison's Description of England, K. iii. n. 7. ♦ Ib.ii. 1523. tions, have been found in the old tin-mines and stream-works of Cornwall. The British Museum contains several pigs of lead stamped by the Romans, which have been discovered in differ- ent parts of the country. Britain then, as now. Pigs of Lhad, in the liRiTisH MwsEtjM. seems to have produced much more lead than all the rest of Europe. But we shall return to this subject presently, when we come to speak of the improvements in the useful arts introduced by the Romans. We have no direct information as to any actual exports of the metals from Britain in the Roman times, and can merely infer the fact from the mention which we find made of them as important products of the country, and from the other evidences we have that they were then obtained in considerable quantities. On these grounds it has been supposed that supplies were in those days obtained from Britain not only of lead and tin, but also of iron, and even of the precious metals. Tacitus expressly mentions gold and silver as among the mineral products of the island.* The same writer adds that Britain likewise pro- duces pearls, the colour of which however is dusky and livid, but this he thinks may probably be attri- buted to the unskilfulness of the gatherers, who do not pluck the fish alive from the rocks, as is done in the Red Sea, but merely collect them as the sea throws them up dead. The pearls of Britain seem to have very early acquired celebrity. We have already quoted the tradition preserved by Suetonius about Julius Caesar having been tempted to invade the island by the hope of enriching himself with its pearls ; and what Pliny tells us of the shield studded with British pearls, which he dedicated to Venus, and suspended in her temple at Rome. Solinus affirms that the fact of the pearls being British was attested by an inscription on the shield, which agrees very well with Pliny's expression, that Caesar wighed it to be so understood. The oldest Latin writer, we believe, who mentions the • Agric. 12. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A.D. 449. 107 British pearls is Pomponius Mela, who asserts that some of the seas of Britain generate pearls and gems. They are also mentioned in the second century by Aelian in his History of Animals, and by Origen in his Commentary on St. Matthew, who, although he describes them as somewhat cloudy, affirms that they were esteemed next in value to those of India. TJiey were, he says, of a gold colour. Some account of the British pearls is also given in the fourth century by Marcellinus, who describes them, however, as greatly inferior to those of Persia. In the same age the poet Auso- uius mentions those of Caledonia under the poetical figure of the white shell-berries.* But the British pearls have also been well known in modern times. Bede notices them as a product of the British seas and rivers in the eighth century. There is a chapter upon those found in Scotland in the de- scription of that country prefixed to Hector Boece's History, in which the writer gives an account of the manner of catching the fish in his time (the beginning of the sixteenth century). It is very different from that which Tacitus has noticed, as will appear from the passage, which is thus given in Harrison's English translation : — " They are so sensible and quick of hearing, that although you, standing on the brae or bank above them, do speak never so softly, or throw never so small a stone into the water, yet they will descry you, and settle again to the bottom, without return for that time. Doubtless they have, as it were, a natural careful- ness of their own commodity, as not ignorant how great estimation we mortal men make of the same amongst us ; and therefore so soon as the fishermen do catch them, they bind their shells together, for otherwise they would open and shed their pearls, of purpose for which they know themselves to be pursued. Their manner of apprehension is this ; first, four or five persons go into the river together, up unto the shoulders, and there stand in a compass one by another, with poles in their hands, whereby they rest more surely, sith they fix them in the ground, and stay with one hand upon them ; then, casting their eyes down to the bottom of the water, they espy where they lie by their shining and clear- ness, and with their toes take them up (for the depth of the water will not suflPer them to stoop for them), and give them to such as stand next them." The Scotch pearls, according to Boece, were en- gendered in a long and large sort of mussel, called the horse-mussel. On the subject of the origin of the pearl he follows Pliny's notion. These mussels, he says, "early in the morning, in the gentle, clear, and calm air, lift up their upper shells and mouths a little above the water, and there receive of the fine and pleasant breath or dew of heaven, and afterwards, according to the measure and • " Albentes concliarum gerraina baccas;" literally, the white bemes, the buds of shells. Ausonius in Mosella. This appears to be the ori^^in of the verse " Gignit et insignes antiqua Britannia baccas," quoted by Camdeu and by other writers after him, from Marbodaeus, a Frenchman of tlie eleventh cmtury, who wrote a Latin poem entitled " De Genimarum Lapldumque preciosorum torrais, natura. et viribus." Of course a writer of tliat age can be no authority in this case. quantity of this vital force received, they first con- ceive, then swell, and finally product the pearl." " The pearls that are so got in Scotland," he adds, " are not of small value ; they are very orient and bright, light and round, and sometimes of the quantity of the nail of one's little finger, as I have had and seen by mine own experience." In his own Description of England, also, written about the middle of the sixteenth century, Harrison notices those still to be found in that part of the island. He accounts for their having fallen into disrepute in a curious way. " Certes," he writes, "they are to be found in these our days, and thereto of divers colours, in no less numbers than ever they were of old time. Yet are they not now so much desired, because of their smallness, and also for other causes, but especially sith church- work, as copes, vestments, albes, tunicles, altar- cloths, canopies, and such trash are worthily abo- lished, upon which our countrymen superstitiously bestowed no small quantities of them. For I think there were few churches or religious houses, besides bishops' mitres, books, and other pontifical vestures, but were either thoroughly fretted or notably garnished with huge numbers of them." He adds, " I have at sundry times gathered more than an ounce of them, of which divers have holes already entered by nature, some of them not much inferior to great peason ( peas) in quantity, and thereto of sundry colours, as it happeneth among such as are brought from the easterly coast to Safiron Waldon in Lent, when for want of flesh stale stinking fish and welked mussels are thought to be good meat, for other fish is too dear amongst us when law doth bind us to use it. They (pearls) are also sought for in the latter end of August, a little before which time the sweetness of the dew is most convenient for that kind of fish which doth engender and conceive them, whose form is flat, and much like unto a lempit. The further north, also, that they be found, the brighter is their colour, and their substances of better valure, as lapidaries do give out." In another place, Harri- son mentions, as found in England, what he calls mineral pearls, " which," he says, " as they are for greatness and colour most excellent of all other, so they are digged out of the main land, and in sundry places far distant from the shore." Cam- den, and his translator, Gibson, have given us an account of pearls found in the river Conway in their time. " The pearls of this river," says the latter, " are as large and well coloured as any we find either in Britain or Ireland, and have pro- bably been fished for here ever since the Roman conquest, if not sooner." The writer goes on to inform us, that the British and Irish pearls are found in a large black mussel ; that they are pecu- liar to rapid and strong rivers ; and that they are common in Wales, in the north of England, in Scotland, and some parts of Ireland. They are called by the people of Caernarvonshire, kretyin diliw, or deluge shells. The mussels that contain pearls are generally known by being a little con- 108 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Iracted, or contorted from their usual shape. A Mr. Wynn had a valuable collection of pearls, pro- cured from the Conway, amongst which, Gibson says that he noted a stool-pearl, of the form and bigness of a lesser button mould, weighing seven- teen grains. A Conway pearl presented to the queen of Charles II., by her chamberlain, Sir Richard Wynn (perhaps of the family of this Mr. Wynn), is said still to be one of the ornaments of the British crown. Camden also speaks of pearls found in the river Irt, in Cumberland. " These," he says, " the inhabitants gather up at low water ; and the jewellers buy them of the poor people for a trifle, but sell them at a good price." Gibson adds (writing in the begiiming of the last century), that not long since a patent had been gi-anted to some persons for pearl fishing in this river ; but the pearls, he says, were not very plentiful here, and were most of the dull-coloured kind, called sand-pearl. Mention is made in a paper in the Philosophical Transactions, of several pearls of large size that were found in the sixteenth century in Ireland; among the rest, one that weighed thirty-six carats.* Pennant (Tour in Scotland, 1169) gives an account of a pearl-fishery then carried on in the neighbourhood of Perth, in Scot- land, which, though by that time nearly exhausted, had, a few years before, produced between three and four thousand pounds worth of pearls annu- ally. An eminent naturalist, we observe, has re- cently expressed some surprise that the regular fisheries which once existed for this native gem should have been abandoned. f The pearl, how- ever, though still a gem of prize, is not now held in the same extraordinary estimation as in ancient times, when it appears, indeed, to have been consi- dered more valuable than any other gem whatever. " The chief and topmost place," says Pliny, " among all precious things, belongs to the pearl. "J * Phil. Trans, for 1 693, p. 659. t Swainson on the Zoology of England and Wales, in MacuUoch's Statistical Account oi the British Empire, vol. i. p 160. i Nat. Hist. ix. 54. British Pearl Shklls. Natural Size. a. Duck Fresh-Water Pearl Mussel (Anodon Anatinus.) b. Swan ditto (Anodon Cjgneus.) Another product of the British waters, which was highly prized by the luxurious Romans, was the oyster. From the manner in which the oysters of Britain are mentioned by Pliny, their sweetness seems to have been the quality for which they were especially esteemed.* Juvenal speaks of them as gathered at Rutupiae, now Richborough, near Sandwich. f Pliny, also mentions as among the greatest delicacies of Britain a sort of geese. * Nat. Hist. ix. 29, and xxxii. 21. + Sat. iv. 141. which he calls chenerotes, and describes as smaller than the anser, or common goose.* Solinus t celebrates the great store found in Bri- tain of the stone called the gagates, in English the black amber, or jetstone. 'J'his mineral, as may be seen from Pliny, J was held by the ancients to be endowed with a great variety of medical and magical virtues. Camden mentions it as found on the coast of Yorkshire. " It grows," he says, • Nat. Hist. X. 29. t Polyhistor. 22. J Nat. Hist, xxxvi. 34- Chap. IV.] NATIONAL-INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A.D. 44.9. 109 " upon the rocks, within a chink or cliff of them ; and before it is polished looks reddish and rusty, but after, is really (as Solinus describes it) dia- mond-like, black, and shining." " Certain it is," says Harrison, " that even to this day there is some plenty to be had of this commodity in Der- byshire and about Berwick, whereof rings, salts, small cups, and sundry trifling toys are made ; although that in many men's opinions nothing so fine as that which is brought over by merchants daily from the main." Marbodaeus, however, gives the preference to the jets of Britain over tiiose of all other countries. The inhabitants of Britam under the Roman government, no doubt carried on traffic with the other parts of the empire in ships of their own ; and the province must be supposed to have pos- sessed a considerable mercantile as well as military navy. It is of the latter only, however, that the scanty history of the island we have during the Roman domination has preserved any mention. A powerful maritime force, as we have already had occasion to observe, was maintained by the Ro- mans for the defence of the east, or, as it was called, the Saxon coast ; and about the end of the third century we have the first example of an ex- clusively British navy under the sovereignty of the famous Carausius.* The navy of Carausius must have been manned in great part by his own Bri- tons ; and the superiority which it maintained for years in the surrounding seas, preserving for its master his island empire against " the superb fleets that were built and equipped," says a contempo- rary writer, t " simultaneously in all the rivers of the Gauls to overwhelm him," may be taken as an evidence that the people of Britain had by this time been long familiar with ships of all descrip- tions. Wholly uncultivated as the greater part of the country was when it was first visited by the Ro- mans, it was most probably not unprovided with a few great highways, by which communication was maintained between one district and another. Caesar could scarcely have marched his forces even so far into the interior as he did, if the districts through which he passed had been altogether without roads. Rude and imperfect enough these British roads may have been, but still they must have been to a certain extent artificial ; they must have been cleared of such incumbrances as ad- mitted of being removed, and carried in a con- tinuous line out of the way of marshes and such other natural impediments as could not be other- wise overcome. Tacitus would seem to be speak- ing of the native roads, when he tells us that Agricola, on preparing in his sixth summer to push into the regions beyond the Forth, determined first to have a survey of the country made by his fleet, because it was apprehended that the roads were infested by the enemy's forces. The old • See antei p. 53. i The Orator Mamertinus, c. xii, j quoted in Britannia after the Romaag.p. 10, tradition is, that the southern part of the island was, in the British times, crossed in variovis direc- tions by four great highways, still in great part to be traced, and known by the names of the Fosse, Watling-street, Ermine-street, and the Ikenild. The Fosse appears to have begiui at Totness, in Devonshire, and to have proceeded by Bristol, Cirencester, Chipping Norton, Coventry, Leicester, and Newark, to Lincoln. Watling-street is said to have commenced at Dover, to have proceeded thence through Kent, by Canterbury, to London ; then to have passed towards the north, over H amp- stead Heath, to Edgeware, St. Alban's, Dunstable, Stoney Stratford, in Northamptonshire, along the west side of Leicestershire, crossing the Fosse near Bosworth. and hence to York and Chester-le-Street, in the county of Durham. Some carry it, in later times, from this point as far as to Lanark and Fal- kirk, in Scotland ; and others even to Caithness, at the extremity of the island. The Ermine-street is understood to have run from St. David's, in Wales, to Southampton, crossing the Fosse between Ciren- cester and Gloucester. The Ikenild is supposed to have been so called from having begun in the country of the Iceni, on the east coast. It is com- monly thought to have crossed Watling-street, at Dunstable, and thence to have taken a north- easterly direction, through Staffordshire, to the west side of the island. The utmost, however, that can be conceded in regard to these roads being of British origin, is, that lines of communication in such directions may have existed in the time of the Britons. It was the Romans, undoubtedly, by whom they were transformed into those elaborate and almost monumental works which their re- mains declare them to have been. Roads coii- structed to last for ever were laid down by that extraordinary people, as the first foundations ot their empire wherever they planted themselves, and seem to have been considered by them as the indispensable veins and arteries of all civilization. In Britain it is probable that they began their opera- tions with the great native high-roads, the course of which would be at least accommodated to the situation of the principal towns and other more important localities throughout the country. These they no doubt levelled, straightened, and paved, so as to fit them not only for the ordinary purposes of pedestrian and carriage communication, but also for the movements of large bodies of infantry and cavalry, in all weathers and in all seasons. But they formed also many new lines of road, leading from one to another of the many new stations which they established in all parts of the country. Camden describes the Roman ways in Britain as running in some places through drained fens, in others through low valleys, raised and paved, and so broad that they admit of two carts easily passing each other. In this country, as elsewhere, the Roman roads were in great part the work of the soldiery, of whose accomplishments skill in this kind of labour was one of the chief. But the na- tives were also forced to lend their assistance ; and 110 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. we fiud the Caledonian Galgacus, in Tacitus, com- plaining, with indignation, that the bodies of his countrymen were worn down by their oppressors, in clearing woods and draining marshes — stripes and indignities being added to their toils. To this sort of work also criminals were sentenced, as well as to the mines. The laws of the empire made special provision for the repair of the public ways, and they were given in charge to overseers, whose duty it was to see them kept in order. The an- cient document called the Itinerary of Antoninus, enumerates fifteen routes or journeys in Britain, all of which we may presume were along regularly formed high-roads ; and probably the list does not comprehend the whole number of such roads the island contained. In every instance the distances from station to station are marked in Roman miles ; and no doubt they were indicated on the actual road by milestones regularly placed along the line. LoNDow Stonb. Of these, the famous London stone, still to be seen leaning against the south wall of St. Swithin's church, in Cannon-street, London, is supposed to have been the first, or that from which the others were numbered, along the principal roads, which appear to have proceeded from this point as from a centre. The Roman roads in Britain have un- dergone so many changes since their first formation, from neglect and dilapidation on the one hand, and from many repairs which they are known to have received long after the Roman times, and in styles of workmanship very different from the Roman, that the mode in which they were originally con- structed is in most cases not very easy of disco- very. One of those which had probably remained most nearly in its primitive condition, was that discovered by Sir Christopher Wren, under the present Cheapside, London, while he w^is pre- paring to erect the church of St. Mary-le-Bow. " Here," says the account in the Parentalia, " to his surprise, he sunk about eighteen feet deep through made ground, and then imagined he was come to the natural soil and hard gravel ; but upon full examination, it appeared to be a Roman causeway of rough stone, close and well rammed, with Roman brick and rubbish at the bottom for a foundation, and all firmly cemented. This cause- way was four feet thick. Underneath this cause- way lay the natural clay, over which that part of the city stands, and which descends at least forty feet lower." Wren eventually determined to erect the tower of the church upon the Roman cause- way, as the firmest foundation he could obtain, and the most proper for the lofty and weighty structure he designed. Some of the other Roman roads in Britain, however, and especially those connecting some of the lines of military posts, were con- structed in a more ambitious style of workmanship than appears to have been here employed — being paved, like the famous Appian way and others in Italy, with flat stones, although of different sizes, yet carefully cut to a uniform rectangular shape, and closely joined together. Some of our grea< roads still in use were originally formed by the Romans, or were used at least in the Roman times. One example is the great western road leading to Bath and Bristol, at least for a considerable part of its course.* We may here most conveniently notice the sub- ject of the description of money which appears to have been in use among the ancient Britons. Caesar's statement is, distinctly, that they had no coined money. Instead of money, he says they used pieces either of bronze or of iron, adjusted to a certain weight. There is some doubt, owing to the disagreement of the manuscripts, as to whether he calls these pieces of metal rings, or thin plates, or merely tallies or cuttings (taleee) ; but the most approved reading is rings. A curious paper on this ring-money of the Celtic nations has been lately printed by Sir William Betham.f Specimens of this primitive currency, according to the writer, have been found in great numbers in Ireland, not only of bronze, but also of gold and silver. Sometimes the form is that of a complete ring, sometimes that of a wire or bar, merely bent till the two extremi- ties are brought near to each other. In some cases the extremities are armed with flattened knobs, in others they are rounded out into cup-like hollows. Sometimes several rings are joined together at the circumferences; other specimens consist of rings linked into one another. The most important pe- • In the ' United Service Journal' for January, 1836, is an aocount of u Survey of the Roman Road from Silchester to the Station on the Thames, called Pontes, lately made by the officers studying at the Senior Department of the Royal Military College. + Papers read before the Royal Irish Academv. 4to., Dublini 1836 Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55— A D. 449. Ill culiarity, however, distinguishing these curious relics, and that which the writer conceives chiefly proves them to have really served the purposes of money, is, that upon being weighed, by far the greater number of them appear to be exact multiples of a certain standard unit. The smallest of gold which he had seen, he says, weighed twelve grains, or half a pennyweight; and of others, one contained this quantity three times, another five, another ten, another sixteen, another twenty-two, another four hundred and eighty (a pound troy), and another five hundred and thirty-four. The case he affirms to be similar both with those of silver and those of bronze. All, he says, with a very few exceptions, which may easily be ac- counted for on the supposition of partial waste or other injury, weigh each a certain number of half pennyweights. The smallest specimens even of the bronze ring money are quite as accurately ba- lanced as those of the more valuable metals ; and among these bronze specimens, indeed, the author states, that, after having weighed a great many, he has never found a single exception to their divi- sibility into so many half pennyweights. It would thus appear that the ancient Celtic scale was the same with that which we now call troy weight. The writer conjectures that the Latin uncia, an ounce, is the Celtic word unsha, which he says signifies one-sixth; in which case we mvist sup- pose the original integral weight of which the ounce was a fraction, to have been half our pre- sent pound troy. " To what remote period of an- tiquity," he observes, " do these singular facts carry us back ! To many ages before the time of Caesar, or even Herodotus. The latter speaks of the Lydians as the first who coined metallic money, at least six centuries before our era. These are no visionary speculations ; we have here the remains and imperishable relics of those early times to verify the whole ; and recent investiga tions and discoveries, in a most singularly con- vincing manner, come to our aid, by showing that the fresco paintings in the tombs of Egypt exhibit people bringing, as tribute to the foot of the throne of Pharaoh, bags of gold and silver rings, at a period before the exodus of the Israelites." These things, .however, are not the only specimens that have been found of the substitutes used by the Britons before the introduction of coined money. Both in barrows and elsewhere there have been occasion- ally turned up hoards of what has all the appear- ance of being another species of primitive cur- rency, consisting of small plates of iron, mostly thin and ragged, and without any impression. Of British coined money, the description which is apparently of greatest antiquity, is that of which the specimens present only certain pictorial figures, without any legends or literal characters. Of this sort of coins a considerable collection was disco- vered about the middle of the last century, on the top of Cambre Hill, in Cornwall. Of these, some were stamped with figures of horses, oxen, hogs, and sheep ; a few had such figures of animals on one side, and a head apparently of a royal per- sonage on the other. All of them were of gold ; and perhaps it was only money made of the more Group of Ring Coins. 1.12 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. precious metals which it was thought necessary at first to take the trouble of thus impressing. When the convenience of the practice had been expe- rienced, and perhaps its application facilitated, it would be extended to the bronze as well as to the gold and silver currency. Although even that point has been disputed, it may be admitted as most probable that the Cambre coins were really British money, that is to say, that they were not only current in Britain, but had been coined under the public authority of some one or more of the states of this island. This we seem to be entitled to infer, from the emblematic figures impressed on them, which distinguish them from any known Gallic or other foreign coins, and are at the same time similar to those commonly found on what ap- pears to be the British money of a somewhat later period. The questions, however, of when, where, and by whom were they coined, still remain. Al- though the figures upon them are peculiar, they still bear a general resemblance to the money, or what has been supposed to be the money, of the ancient Gauls; and as well from this circum- stance, as from the whole character of the early British civilization, which appears to have been mainly borrowed from Gaul, we may presume that they were either fabricated in that country, or were at least the work of GalUc artists. It is remark- able that these coins are all formed of pure gold ; and Diodorus Siculus informs us, that in no articles which they made of gold did the Gauls mix any alloy with the precious metal. As to their date, it would seem to be subsequent to the time of Caesar, since, according to his account, the Britons were then unacquainted with the use of coined money of any description ; and it may be placed with most probability in the interval between his invasion and that of the Emperor Claudius — a period, as we have already endeavoured to show, during which British civilization must have made a very considerable, though unrecorded, progress. Besides this merely pictured metallic money. y,,', .', iii;^"^ '^m^^cymh ^# Ancient Bkitish Coins. however, there exist numerous British coins, or what bear the appearance of being such, which are marked not only with figures of various kinds, but also with legends in Roman characters. One of these, from having the letters Sego inscribed upon it, has been attributed to Segonax, who is mentioned by Caesar as one of the four kings of Kent ; but it is obvious that upon such an inference as this, no reliance can be placed. The greater num- ber of the coins in question bear, either in full or abbreviated, the name of Cunobeliims, who is said to have lived in the reign of Augustus. Some of these have the name Cunohilin at full length ; one has Cunobelinus Re, the latter word being probably the Latin Rex; others have the abbreviations Cnn, Cuno, Cunob, or Cunobc. Several have, in addition, what has been supposed to be the abbre- viated name of their place of coinage; being most frequently Cam, or Camu, for Camulodunum, as it is conjectured ; in one instance Ver, perhaps for Verulamium; in other cases No, or Novane, or Novanit, of which no probable interpretation has been given. And in addition to these inscrip- tions, the greater number present the singular word Tascia, or Tascio, either written at length, or indicated by two or more of its commencing let- Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTKY: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 113 ters. This word has given occasion to much dis- putation ; but perhaps nothing has been proposed on the subject so probable as Camden's sugges- tion, who conceives that the word, derived appa- rently from the Latin taxatio, signified, in the British language, a tribute, or tribute- money. The figures upon these coins of Cvmobeline are very various. Some have a head, probably that of the king, occasionally surrounded with what seems to be a fillet of pearls, in allusion, we may suppose, to the ancient fame of the island for that highly- prized gem ; others have a naked full length human figure, with a club over his shoulder; many have the figure of a horse, sometimes accom- panied by a wheel, which has been supposed to convey an allusion to the formation of highways, but perhaps is rather intended to indicate the na- tional war-chariot ; a crescent, an ear of com, a star, a comet, a tree, a hog, a dog, a sheep, an ox, a lion, a sphinx, a centaur, a Janus, a female head, a woman riding on an animal like a dog, a man playing on a harp, are some of the representations that have been detected on others One shows what evidently appears tj be a workman in the act of making money ; he is seated in a chair, and holds a hammer in his hand, while a number of pieces lie before him. About forty of tliese coins of Cunobeline have been discovered. Many others also exist, which, from the names, or fragments of names inscribed on them, have been assigned to Boadicea, Cartismandua, Caractacus, Venutius, and other British sovereigns. The legends on most of these, however, are extremely obscure and dubious. What is somewhat remarkable is, that no two, we believe, have been found of the same coinage They are almost all more or less dish-shaped, or liollowed on one side — a circumstance which is common also to many Roman coins, and may be supposed to have been occasioned by the want of the proper guards to prevent tlie metal from being bent over the edges of the die by the blow of the hammer. The Bri - tish coins thus inscribed with Roman characters Roman Coin Mould. arc some of them of gold, some of silver, some of bronze, some of copper. Unlike also to the coins mentioned above, without legends, all of them that are formed of the more precious metals are much alloyed. It must be confessed that the whole subject of these supposed British coins, notwithstanding all the disputation to which they have given rise, is still involved in very considerable obscurity. It has even been denied that they ever served the purposes of a currency at all. " They are works," observes a late writer, " of no earlier date than the apostasy and anarchy after the Romans. More- over, they were not money. They were Bardic works belonging to that numerous family of Gnostic, Mithriac, or Masonic medals, of which the illus- tration has been learnedly handled in Chifflet's ' Abraxas Proteus,' Von Hammer's ' Baphometus,' the Rev. R. Walsh's ' Essay on Ancient Coins,' and (as applicable to these very productions) the Rev. E. Davies's ' Essay on British Coins.' The coins engraved by Dom B. de Montfaucon as rem- nants of ancient Gaulish money, are productions of similar appearance and of the same class. Para- celsus alludes to them as money coined by the gnomes and distributed by them among men. Their uses have never been known ; but I explain them thus. Money is a ticket entitling the bearer to goods of a given value. . . Masonic medals were tickets entitling one initiate to receive assist- ance from another. It may be objected, that there was no great difficulty of f tealing or forging them. True ; but to be a beneficial holder of these baubles it was necessary that you should be able to ex- plain the meaning of all the devices upon them. According to the sort of explanation given by the party, it would appear whether he was an au- thorized holder, and, if such, what rank of initia- tion he had attained, and consequently to what degree of favour and confidence he was entitled. The names selected to adorn these British medals are unequivocally marked with hatred for the Ro- mans, and love for the memory of those Britons who warred against them ; and they imply an ex- hortation and a compact to expel and exclude the Roman nation from the iglaiid."* This view is supported by some plausible arguments ; but it is far from being altogether satisfactory. The denial, however, of the title of these coins or medals to be accounted a species of ancient money, is no mere piece of modern scepticism. Camden, though he inclines to a different opinion, expresses himself upon the point with the greatest hesitation. " For my part," he says, " I freely declare myself at a loss what to say to things so much obscured by age; and you, when you read these conjectures, will plainly perceive that I have groped in the dark." " Whether this sort of money passed cur- rent in the way of trade and exchange," he ob- serves in conclusion, " or was at first coined for some special use, is a question among the learned. My opinion (if I may be allowed to hiterpose it) is * Uritannia after the Romans, pp. 218, &c. 114 HISTOEY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. this. After Caesar had appointed how much money should be paid yearly by the Britons, and they were oppressed under Augustus with the payment of customs, both for exporting and importing com- modities, and had, by degrees, other taxes laid upon them, namely, for corn-grounds, plantations, groves, pasturage of greater and lesser cattle, as being now in the condition of subjects, not of slaves ; I have thought that such coins were first stamped for these uses ; for greater cattle with a horse, for lesser with a hog, for woods with a tree, and for corn-ground with an ear of corn ; but those with a man's head seem to have been coined for poll money. Not but I grant that afterwards these came into common use. Nor can 1 reconcile my- self to the judgment of those who would have the hog, the horse, the ear, the Janus, &c. to be the arms of particular people or princes ; since we find that one and the same prince and people used several of these, as Cunobeline stamped upon his coins a hog, a horse, an ear, and other things. But whether this tribute-money was coined by the Romans, or the provincials, or their kings, when the whole world was taxed by Augustus, I cannot say. One may gviess them to have been stamped by the British kings, since Britain, from the time of Julius Caesar to that of Claudius, lived under its own laws, and was left to be governed by its own kings, and since also they have stamped on them the effigies and titles of British princes." After the establishment of the Roman dominion in the island, the coins of the empire would na- turally become the currency of the new province ; and indeed Gildas expressly states that from the time of Claudius it was ordained by an imperial edict that all money current among the Britons should bear the imperial stamp. These expres- sions, by the by, wovild rather seem to countenance the opinion, that coined money not bearing the im- perial stamp had been in circulation in the country before the publication of the edict. Great nvimbers of Roman coins of various ages and denominations have been found in Britain. " There are pro- digious quantities found here," observes Camden, " in the ruins of demolislied cities, in the treasure- coffers or vaults which were hidden in that age, and in funeral urns ; and I was very much sur- prised how such great abundance should remain to this day, till I read that the melting down of ancient money was prohibited by the imperial constitutions." It is highly probable, also, that some of this im- perial money was coined in Britain, where the Ro- mans may be presumed to have established mints, as they are known to have done in their other pro- vinces. There are several coins extant both of Carausius and of Allectus, and these it can hardly be doubted were the productions of a British mint. It is remarkable that in the sepulchral barrows there has been found imperial money of the times of Avitus (a.d. 455), of Anthemius (a.d. 467 — 472), and even of Justinian (a.d. 527 — 565). Many of the Roman coins, also, or imperial medals struck upon particular occasions, from the time of Claudius, bear figures or legends relating to Britain, and form interesting illustrations of the history of the island.* We now proceed to notice shortly the chief im- provements in the necessary or useful arts for which the Britons appear to have been indebted to their Roman conquerors. The Romans, themselves devoted to agriculture, eagerly encouraged and assisted the British hus- bandmen ; and we, therefore, as has been already noticed, find the island eventually not only pro- ducing a sufficient quantity of corn for the support of its own inhabitants and the Roman troops in occupation, but affording a large surplus ani.ually for exportation. In addition also to an improved and extended tillage, the Romans appear, imme diately on their obtaining a firm establishment in Britain, to have introduced the practice, previously scarcely known to the natives, of useful and orna- mental gardening. Tacitus tells us they began to plant orchards, and found, by experience, that the soil and climate were favourable to the growth of all kinds of fruit trees except the vine and the olive, and of all plants and vegetables save a few which were peculiar to warmer countries. Notwithstanding also his particular exception of the vine, it is said that permission was granted long afterwards by the Emperor Probus to plant vines and to make wine in Britain, and that, if so, it was not granted in vain, appears probable from the fact that the vine was certainly flourishing here in the time of the Saxons ; the continual mention of vineyards in their wills and deeds affording us indisputable evidence of its general cultivation. On the settlement of the Romans a change of course took place in the architecture of the British houses and towns, for the commencement of which the country appears to have been indebted to the policy of Agricola, the most excellent of the Roman governors. " That the Britons," says Tacitus, " who led a roaming and unsettled life, and were easily instigated to war, might contract a love of peace and tranquillity by being accustomed to a more pleasant way of living, he exhorted and as- sisted them to build houses, temples, courts, and market-places. By praising the diligent and re- proaching the indolent, he excited so great an emu- lation amongst the Britons, that after they had erected all those necessary edifices in their towns, they proceeded to build others merely for ornament and pleasure, such as porticoes, galleries, baths, ban- queting-houses, &c." Giraldus Cambrensis has left us an account of the remains of the city of Caerleon, in Wales, as he beheld it himself in the twelfth century. " It was," he says, " elegantly built by the Romans, with brick walls. Many vestiges of its ancient splendour still remain, and stately palaces which formerly, with the gilt tiles, displayed the Roman grandeur. It was first built by the Roman nobility, and adorned with sumptuous edifices, with a lofty • See upon this subject, "The Coins of the Uomans reluting to Britain," by J. G. Akerman, 12mo. Lond. 1836. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 115 KeMAIKS or A UuMAN livPOCAUST, UK SaBTEBRANEAN FuRNACK, FOR HkATINO BaTHS, AT I.INCOLN. Pabt of a Human Wall, ok the Site ok the ANtifNT Vebui.am, Nh ak ."-t. Alhan's tower, curious hot baths, temples now in ruins, and theatres encompassed with stately walls, in part yet standing. The walls are three miles in circum- ference, and withhi these, as well as without, sub- terraneous buildings are frequently met with, as aqueducts, vaults, hypocausts, stoves, &c." Matthew Paris also, in his ' Lives of the Abbots,' mentions the numerous interesting remains of Roman architecture discovered near St. Alban's, at the ancient Verulam, by two abbots, previous to the Norman Conquest, and consisting of dilapidated temples, subverted columns, altars, idols, and the fecundations of a large palace. The more recent discoveries of these Roman British ruins it would be endless here to enumerate and useless to describe, as there appears to have — «^ 116 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. been nothing to distinguish them from those of the Romans themselves ; we have however the authority of one of the best informed writers on the subject, that "nothing very good of Roman work ever existed in Britain." . ..." All the fragments of architecture which have been discovered, whetlier large or small, whether the tympanum of a temple as found at Bath, or small altars as found in many places, I believe," says Mr. Rickman,* " were all deficient either in composition or in execution, or in both, and none that I know of have been better, if 80 good, as the debased work of the Emperor Dio- cletian in his palace at Spalatro. With these debased examples we cannot expect that the ii:ihabitants of « Letters on Architecture, vol. xxv. of the Archeeologia, p. 167. Britain would (while harassedwith intestine warfare) improve on the models left by the Romans." " It is not now to be ascertained," he continues, "whether any examples of the actual use of columns, with an architrave incumbent, were left by the Romans, but we have various examples of the plain arch with a pier. As a specimen, the north gate of Lincoln, now used, as it was many centuries ago, for a gate, is perhaps the most per- fect. This plain square pier and a semicircular arch I beheve to have been imitated in the Saxon buildings ; and thus I find actually now a part of Brixworth Church with a bond tier of what we call Roman brick (^. e. flat tiles) carried through the work." The use of mortar, plaster, and cement, of the Roman .^kchks formino Newport Gatk, Lincoln, as it appeared in 1792. Restoratidn of thk Roman Arch fokmino Newport Gate, Lincoln Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 117 various tools and implements for building, the art of making the flat tiles abovemeutioned, and all thmgs connected with masonry and bricklaying, as known and practised by the Romans, must of course, in the progress of these works, have been communicated to their new subjects; and it appears that, by the close of the third century, British Ixiilders had acquired considerable reputation. The panegyrist Eumenius tells us that when the Emperor Constantius rebuilt the city of Autun, in Gaul, about the end of the third century, he brought the workmen chiefly from Britain, which very much abounded with the best artificers. We have already mentioned the labours of the Romans in the improvement of the old roads of the country, and the fprmation of many new ones. Their attention was at" the same time given to the working of the valuable mines throughout the island. The primitive mode of procuring the various metals, by searching the beds of rivers and the depths of valleys, or extracting protruding lumps of ore from fractured lodes in the fissures of the mountains, was replaced by the art of mining. A beautiful specimen of the Roman mode of driving levels exists at a place called Pynsaint, in the parish of Caeo, Caermarthenshire. In the British Museum, as previously stated, are preserved several pigs or masses of British lead, one of which has the name of the Em- peror Domitian inscribed on it, another that of the Emperor Hadrian, and a third bears that of a private individvial. " These pigs or oblong masses," observes a late writer, " afford un- doubted evidence that the lead-mines of Derby- shire and its neighbourhood were worked in the Roman time. The inscriptions also, which they bear, usually indicating the emperor in whose time the metal was obtained, confirm the testimony of Pliny, who says, ' that in Britain lead is found near the surface of the earth in such abundance that a law is made to limit the quantity which shall be taken.' It was therefore necessary in the royal mines to mark the lead with the emperor's name. In a few instances such pigs apparently bear the name of a private proprietor, but all show that the article was under fiscal regulation, which accoimts for the form in which the lead was cast ; the in- scription, and sometimes a border which surrounds it, always covering the upper area of the piece to its full extent."* * Library of Entertaining Knowledge ; The Townley Gallervi ▼ol. ii. p. 285. 118 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. CHAPTER V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS. HIS division of our history will contain an account of the state and progress un- der each period of thoie higher kinds of knowledge and skill, which are distin- guished from the arts treated of in the pre- ceding chapter, by not being directly contri- butory to the suste- nance or physical accommodation of life, but having in view, at least immediately and in the first in- stance, the exercise, gratification, and improvement of the intellectual faculties, and of those other powers and tastes which peculiarly constitute our humanity, and the general exaltation and embel- lishment of the social condition. The intellectual character of the time; the branches of learning and science that were chiefly cultivated in our own country and elsewhere, and the manner in which they were cultivated ; the schools, colleges, and other institutions for the maintenance or difiusion of erudition and philosophy that existed in these islands ; the state and progress of the national lan- guage ; the more eminent literary and scientific names by which the age was adorned ; the great literary works that were produced, and the scien- tific discoveries that were made ; and finally, the state of the fine arts of music, painting, engraving, &c., and of the popular taste, — will all fall under this part of our survey. We need scarcely re- mark, that these things are much more than the mere ornamental flower and crown of our civiliza- tion ; they are the very strength of its fibres, and the main element of its growth and expansion; for, while it is true that the exclusively useful arts both naturally originate learning and the fine arts, and form the indispensable basis and support without which they could neither flourish nor exist, it is equally true that the latter, in the end, amply repay the debt, and that the sure eff'ect of the advance of every form of intellectual culture is to extend or consolidate the fabric of that other prosperity which rests upon the operations of manual, mechanical, and mercantile industry. And, indeed, what is the worth to a nation of the highest state of manu- facturing and commercial greatness, if it do not at the same time assert to itself a high place in re- gard to those tastes and pursuits which can alone prevent the pursuit of wealth from being at once the most stupid and the most debasing of all idola- tries ? The title of the chapter, in the strictest accepta- tion of its terms, is scarcely applicable to what we shall have to state in regard to the present period, when literature, science, and the fine arts can scarcely be said to have yet had their birth in our island. At all events, whatever existed in those remote times deserving the name of learning or scientific knowledge, never having been committed to writing, and having consequently perished with the general subversion of the order of things then established, cannot be regarded as having been even the beginning or rudimental germ of that which we now possess. The present literary civil- ization of England dates its commencement only from the next, or Saxon period, and not from a very early point in that. A learned writer of the last century commences a " Literary History of the Britons before the Ai-rival of Caesar," by gravely informing us that " King Samothes was the first who established a school in this island for instructing the Giants in arts and sciences."* We shall not carry our review quite so far back, but leaving Samothes and his giants at their studies undisturbed, shall content ourselves with taking up the history of learning in Britain from the days of the race of people of ordinary dimensions who were found inhabiting the island on its invasion by the Romans. At this time, as has been already shown, the south of Britain was occupied by a population which, although divided into many distinct tribes, bore throughout the appearance of being of Gallic origin. In particular, we are expressly informed that the language of Britain differed very little from that of the Gaul. Some of the British tribes seem to have come from Celtic, and others from Belgic Gaul ; but it is probable, as indeed Strabo distinctly assures us, that the Celts and the Bel- gians spoke merely two slightly difi"ering dialects of the same tongue. The evidence of the most ancient names of localities throughout the whole of South Britain confirms this account; everywhere these names appear to belong to one language, and that the same which is still spoken by the native Irish and the Scotch Highlanders ; the latter of whom call themselves, to this day, Gael or Gauls. • Primus qui scholara ad instrueiidos Gigiintes in nrtilius et sci- entiis ciexit, erat Rex Samothes, qui, ex Armenia per Galliam pro- fectus, ad litora Britanniae appulit, anno post diluvium CCLIl.,&c. Rev. et Doct. v. Davidis Wilkinsii Praelatio, Histoiiani Literariam Britannicorum ante Ciesaris Adventum complectens, apud Kiblio- tbecam Britannc Hibernicam, auctore Thoma Tannero ; fol., Lond. 1748. Chap. V.] LITEKATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 119 The same evidence goes to prove that this Gallic tongue was then the popular speech in the part of the country now called Wales, as well as through- out the rest of south Britain ; for the oldest names of places in Wales are not Welsh but Gaelic. Nor does the peculiar dialect of Cornwall appear to have been at this time known any more than its sister Welsh, in the southern parts of the island. The Celtic or Gaelic was also undoubtedly the language of the great body of the people of Ire- land. The tribes by whom North Britain was occupied, on the other hand, ^eem to have been for the greater part of German or Scandinavian extrac- tion; and, if so, they must be supposed to have spoken a Teutonic dialect. But in the absence of all direct evidence, historical, traditional, or monu- mental, the point is one upon which it is impos- sible to affirm anything with confidence. As far as the topographical nomenclature of the country affords us any light, it would seem to indicate that the greater part of modem Scotland was anciently occupied by a people speaking a language very nearly allied to the present Welsh. It is with the Britons of the south exclusively, however, that we are now concerned; for among these only have we reason to believe that any kind of learning or scientific knowledge whatever existed at the time to which our inquiry relates. Among the South Britons there was undoubtedly esta- blished a class of persons, forming a clergy, not only in the modem, but in the original and more extensive signification of the term ; that is to say, a body of national functionaries intrusted with the superintendence over all the departments of learn- ing.* The Druids were not merely their theolo- gians and priests, but their lawyers, their phy- sicians, their teachers of youth, their moral and natural philosophers, their astronomers, their ma- thematicians, their architects, their musicians, their poets, and in that character, no doubt, also their only historians. To them, in short, were left the care and control of the whole intellectual culture of the nation. It is most probable that, in discharging this duty, the Druids proceeded upon the principle of imparting none of their knowledge except to such as they trained up to be members of their own body. The state of society would scarcely admit of any diffusion of their instructions among the people at large ; and the genius of their system, as far as it can be detected, appears to have been wholly opposed to any such lavish communication of that to which they owed all their ascendancy over their fellow-countrymen. To them knowledge was power, not only in the sense in which it is so to every individual in the possession of it, as en- abling him to do those things the way of doing which it teaches, but besides, and to a much larger extent, as putting into their hands an instrument of authority and command over all around them. This latter advantage, unlike the former, they * Coleridge on the Constitution of the Church and State, pp. 46, could not share with others without leaving less of it for themselves ; its value lay in its exclusive- ness. They naturally enough, therefore, no more thought of communicating their knowledge to tlie multitude, than people would now think of so com- municating their money or their estates. Yet their institution seems to have had the im- portant merit of being no mere hereditary oli- garchy, or other close corporation, but of being open to all who chose to undergo the requisite preparatory training, and of being accustomed in this way to sustain itself by constant drafts from the mass of the nation. Although the point has been disputed, there is no evidence for the supposition that the Druid ical rank was a heredi- tary dignity. We know that the chief Druid obtained his place by election; and it does not seem likely that this would have been the case if the institution generally bad been founded upon the hereditary principle. The Druidical clergy appear rather to have been a body of the same sort with the clergy of any modern Christian church ; that is to say, consisting not of the mem- bers of particular families, but of persons educated to the profession from any of all the families in the land. It may be assumed, however, that they were principally derived from the more opulent or honourable classes. Caesar describes the young men who — some of their own accord, others sent by their parents and relations — resorted to the Druids of Gaul to obtain instruction in their sys- tem, and to be trained to become members of their body, as very numerous. Pomponius Mela speaks of their pupils as consisting of the most noble indi- viduals of tlie nation. In regard to the particular studies in which these crowds of pupils were exercised, our information, as might be expected, is very unsatisfactory. Both Caesar and Mela state the fact of their sometimes remaining twenty years under tuition; and the former reports that they were said in the course of that time to learn a great number of verses. Caesar adds, as has been detailed in a former chapter nearly in his own words, that besides the theological instruction which they imparted, the Druids instructed their scholars in many things respecting the heavenly bodies and their motion, the magnitude of the uni- verse and the earth, and the nature of things, — the last phrase designating, we may suppose, a sort of mixed course of physics and metaphysics. All these instructions, it seems, they communi- cated orally, the employment of the art of writing being dispensed with for two reasons, — first, that the things taught might be more secure from the chance of coming into the possession of the mul- titude or the uninitiated ; secondly, for the sake of better exercising the memory of the learners. Caesar expressly informs us, however, that the Druids were acquainted with letters, and used them on all common occasions. The characters which they used, however, would hardly seem to have been those of the Greek alphabet, as the common reading of the passage asserts, seeing that, inde- 120 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. pendently of other objections to that reading, we find Caesar upon one occasion in Gaul, when he had a letter to dispatch to some distance which he was afraid might fall into the hands of the natives, writing it in the Greek language, m order that they might not be able to read it. It has been suggested, indeed, that the Druids might use the Greek letters, or letters resembling those of the Greek alphabet, without understanding the Greek tongue. It is a curious circumstance that in the number and powers of the letters, the Celtic alpha- bet, which has been used from time immemorial in Ireland, exactly corresponds with the original Greek ' alphabet said to have been brought by Cadmus from Phoenicia, although the ancient forms of the former have been exchanged in modern times for those of the Saxon characters expressing the same sounds. The Druids, there- fore, may have obtained possession of letters re- sembling those of the Greeks without having been indebted for them to that people. The Gallic God of Eloquence, as we learn from Lucian, was called Ogmius ; and it is remarkable that certain ancient inscriptions in an unknown character found engraven upon the rocks and elsewhere in Ireland, have always been known among the people by the name of Ogam or Ogma. This coincidence would seem to warrant us in inferring a connexion be- tween the ancient Celtic eloquence and the use of letters. The art of eloquence was no doubt assiduously cultivated and held in the highest honour both by the Druids and by the other leading personages among the Celtic nations. In tlie state of society which then subsisted this was the most powerful instrument for ruling the popular mind, as it still is among the islanders of the South Sea and the Indians of America, in a much less advanced social condition. Among both the Gauls and the Britons we read of displays of oratory in all their public proceedings. The debates of their councils and the direction of their armies alike demanded the exercise of this popular accomplishment. The harangues delivered on certain memorable occasions by Galgacus, Boadicea, and other British chiefs, have been preserved to us by the Roman writers. Tacitus has depicted the Druids of Mona, when that sanctuary was attacked by the Roman general Suetonius, rushing, with burning torches out- stretched before them, through the ranks of their armed countrymen arrayed to repel the invaders, and inflaming their courage by pouring forth frenzied prayers with their hands uplifted to heaven. On other occasions, according to Diodo- rus Siculus, they would evince their powers of persuasion by throwing themselves between two bodies of combatants ready to engage ; and by the charm of their words, as if by enchantment, ap- peasing their mutual rage, and prevailing upon them to throw down their arms. In the adminis- tration of the laws also, and in the celebration of their religious solemnities, they would no doubt often have occasion to address the people. The artificial mounts called Carnedds, still remainhig in Anglesey and in other parts of "Wales, are sup- posed, as has been already noticed, to have formed the stations from which they were wont to deliver their regular instructions and admonitions to the listening crowd. The account which Lucian gives of the manner in which their god Ogmius was re- presented by the Gauls shows forcibly the high estimation in which the art was held over which he was supposed to preside. The epithet of Ogmivis, or the God of Eloquence, was given by them to Hercules, whose matchless strength, they finely conceived, did not lie in his thews and sinews, but in the power of his persuasive words, by which he took captive the reason and subdued the hearts of all men ; — a thought which we might almost call an anticipation of the striking and beautiful expression of Burke when he described the common mother tongue of Englishmen and Americans as uniting the two nations by "a tic lighter than air, but stronger than iron." The Gauls accordingly painted their Hercules Ogmius as an old man surrounded by a great multitude of people, who seemed attached to him in willing subjection by slender chains reaching from his tongue to their ears. They made him old, they said, because the richest and strongest eloquence was that of age ; and it might also be because they in this way the more distinctly showed that it was not by bodily strength he effected the subjugation of his fellow-men. This allegory, it may be added, both in its conception and in the manner in which it was represented to the senses, evinces a very considerable advance in civilization and intellectual culture, and would be enough of itself to place these Celtic nations of antiquity in a different cate- gory altogether in these respects from the modern savage communities with which they have some- times been compared. Poetry, and its then inseparable accompaniment. Music, were doubtless also cultivated by the Bri- tish and Gallic Druids, or by that particular divi- sion of their body called the Bards. It was, as we have already related, the especial office of these bards, whom Strabo designates by the epithet of Hymners, to celebrate in verse the praises both of the gods and heroes of their nation. Their com- positions would thus contain all that was by any artificial process preserved from oblivion of the national history. Their recitations were most pro- bably chanted to the accompaniment of some musical instrument resembling the ancient lyre or the modern bar]!. Of the Theology of the Druids a sufficiently full account has already been given. This formed not only the cliief department of the Druidical leaniing, but that with the spirit of which all the rest of their learning was impregnated. I'heir law, their medicine, their ethics, their astronomy, their system of the physical constitution of the universe, were all accommodated to their theolo- gical doctrines, or, to speak more correctly, were all only so many parts of their theology. Of their Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 121 views and the extent of their knowledge in all of these sciences, accordingly, we have already had occasion to detail most of the few particulars that are known in explaining their religious system. A few words may he added however on one or two of the branches of their physical knowledge. Their medicine seems to have been in its gene- ral character, and in most of its professions and practices, a medley of their all alike vain and delusive theology, astrology, divination, and magic, and must have owed the greater part of any efficacy that may have belonged to it to its mere power over the imagination. But they seem also to have been possessed of a limited materia medica, and may even have known some useful secrets respecting the preparation or administration of simples of which we are at present ignorant. Pliny has told us of several herbs which were venerated by the Druids of Gaul for their supposed medicinal virtues, and were applied by them to cure various diseases. We have already quoted his account of the sacred character and moral influ- ences attributed by them to the mistletoe. This plant, which they called by a name signifying all- healing, would seem to have been also their sove- reign remedy for most bodily disorders. The mistletoe is said to have been found useful in modem times in cases of epilepsy.* Another medical herb of the Diiiids was what Pliny calls the selago, and describes as resembling savin, and wliich has been supposed to be a species of hedge- hyssop. This, too, they regarded as an excellent protection against diseases in general, and its smoke as particularly salutary for ailments of the eyes. Another which he mentions was the samo- lus, or marsh-wort ; this they administered to cattle as well as to human patients. But of all vegetable productions, with the exception only of the mistletoe itself, that which they held in the highest estimation seems to have been the vervain. It is described, with the usual mixture of medical and talismanic attributes, as of efficacy to enable those who anointed themselves with it to obtain the objects of their wishes, as having the power to repel fevers, to conciliate friendships, and to aire every disease. Mixed with wine, it was good against serpents. Very little reliance how- ever was placed by the Druidical physicians upon the merely natural properties of these precious plants. Everything depended upon the ceremonial with which they had been gathered. Sonte were to be cut from their stalks with an instrument of iron, others were to be plucked by the hand ; some were to be gathered by the left hand, others by the right ; some while the sun was shining, others in the moonlight, others in the absence of both these luminaries and imder the ascendancy of some ap- propriate star. In some cases the person who went culling was to be attired in white ; in others • See Dissertation on the Mistletoe, by Sir John Colbatch, 1729; Mill Treatisi; on Epilepsy, and the Use of the Viscus Quercinus, or Mistletoe of the Oak in the Cure of that Disease, by Henry Fraser. M.D., 1806, he was to go barefooted ; in others, fasting.* All these minute formalities, in addition to their main purpose of impressing the seal of religion upon everything, would have the secondary advantage of affi)rding a convenient shelter for the credit of the drug and the doctor in all cases in which the pre- scription failed of its promised effect; the ready explanation would be some neglect or irregularity in these ceremonial observances. Some knowledge of real value however may, as we have said, have been hidden under all this delusion and imposture. If the Druids possessed any recondite knowledge whatever (and there can be no doubt that they pos- sessed a great deal), an intimate acquaintance with those productions of the earth by which they were surrounded in the woodland retreats where they spent so much of their studious lives can hardly be denied to them. The few scattered notices in Pliny of their medicine and botany have evidently no pretensions to be considered a full account of their knowledge in these sciences ; and it is probable enough that his details may be in many respects as erroneous as they are obviously fragmentary and imperfect. We have seen that Cicero testifies to the extensive information possessed by one of the fraternity in all that the Greeks called physiology, that is, natural science in general. It may also be presumed that, practised as they were in the sa- crifice both of brute and of human victims, the Druids could hardly fail to have attained a good deal of anatomical knowledge ; but as to whether they made this available either in their medical practice or in any operations of surgery, we have no information. The branch of science respecting the cultivation of which in these islands in early times we have the most direct historical testimony, and also per- haps the best corroborative evidence of another kind, is that of astronomy. Here, in an especial manner, we find science springing out of, and taking the form almost of a part of, the national religion, if indeed we ought not rather to regard the religion as the daughter of the science, and to sup- pose the worship of the sun, moon, and stars as divinities, to have been originally merely the po- pular exhibition made of their discoveries by the sages who studied the movements of these celestial bodies. Wherever, at all events, this particular species of idolatry prevailed, the observation of the celestial motions, in other words, the study of as- tronomy, appears to have been blended with it; and no doubt can be entertained that, whether it was so in the first instance or not, many scientific truths came eventually to be hieroglyphically sig- nified both in the mythology and in the ceremonial forms of the superstition. Ingenious speculators have endeavoured to detect an astronomical mean- ing in the disposition of the stones of Stonehenge and Avebury, and of other similar Druidical or • For the particulars with regard to each plant see the following passages in Pliny's Natural History: — on the Mistletoe, xvi. 95; on the Selago, xxiv! 62 ; on the Samolus, xxiv. 63; on the Vervain, xxv. 59. 122 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. supposed Druidical temples. The Irish Round Towers are also conjectured, in combination with their design as sacred or emblematical monuments, to have served the purpose of observatories or watch- towers of the heavens. They have generally, near the top, four openings or windows facing the four cardinal points.* Both Caesar and Mela (ap- parently copying him) bear testimony, in passages which we have already had occasion to qviote, to the reputation of the Gallic Druids for an acquaintance both with the movements and the magnitudes of the heavenly bodies. We are not aware, however, of any evidence for the supposition, although not unlikely in itself, that, in addition to its general religious application, the science of astronomy was cultivated by these priests as being imagined to afford them the means of looking into futurity, or, in other words, for astrological purposes, unless we are to consider so much to be intimated by the expression of Mela, who mentions their profession of being able to tell the intentions of the gods im- mediately after having informed us of their know- ledge of the motions of the stars, as if their divina- tion had been a part of their astronomy. Another circumstance that in all the ancient ceremonial religions tended to maintain an intimate alliance between religion and astronomical science, was the necessity of some skill in the latter for the regula- tion of the various annual festivals. Such festivals, as we have seen, constituted a remarkable feature of the Druidical system of worship. The slight notices which the classical writers have preserved would lead us'to infer that among the Gauls and Britons, and also among the Germans, all their periods were made to depend upon the movements of the moon. Even what Tacitus has recorded of the Germans and Caesar of tlie Gauls, that they reckoned time not by days but by nights, would favour this supposition. We find both nations, also, holding their great solemnities always under some particular aspect of the moon ; the Germans, according to Tacitus, at the time of the new or full moon ; the Gauls, as Pliny informs us, when that luminary was six days old. From the sixth day of the moon, also, according to Pliny, the Druids began the reckoning not only of their months and years, but likewise of their great cycle, which he says was a period of thirty years. It is remark- able that in the description given by Diodorus Sic\ilus from Hecatseus of the wonders of the Hy- perborean Isle, which has been supposed to be Britain or Ireland, the cycle of nineteen years, called the cycle of the moon, because after that number of solar revolutions, the relation of the moon's place in the heavens to that of the sim becomes the same as it was at the commencement of the period, is mentioned in such a manner as to seem to indicate that it was applied as the great regulator of the national religious calendar. The Hyperboreans believe, the historian tells us, that Apollo descends to their isle at the end of every nineteen years, and plays upon the harp, and sings and dances all the night from the vernal equinox to the rising of the Pleiades (about the autumnal equinox), as if rejoicing in the honours rendered to him by his votaries. The knowledge of the lunar cycle, however, Avould imply a nearly correct knowledge of the solar year; and that also, ac- cordingly, both upon this and vipon other grounds, has been claimed for the ancient British and Irish astronomers. The passage in Diodorus has even been adduced as sanctioning the supposition that their observation of the heavenly bodies may not have been unassisted by optical instruments. The ancient authorities from whom Diodorus copied his account affirmed, it seems, that in this Hyperborean isle the moon appeared as if it were near to the earth, and exhibited distinctly protuberances upon its surface like the mountains on our globe. This is certainly very much the shape which would be assumed in times of wondering ignorance by the rumours transmitted from a distant land, and per- haps through a long succession of generations, of such ah unintelligible marvel as the drawing down of the heavens towards the earth by the optician's glass. The doctrine, however, that the moon was a globular body like the earth, and that its surface was similarly varied by elevations in one place and depressions in another, may naturally enough have been adopted by these ancient astronomical sages, merely on general considerations of theory or pro- bability, and without having been suggested by any spots or excrescences actually detected on the planet by the eye. Astronomical Instrument. An account of a curious relic found in Ireland, which is supposed to be an ancient Celtic astro- nomical instrument, has lately been communicated by Sir William Betham to the Royal Irish Aca- demy. Parts of similar instruments have before been found in that country, but the present is the only perfect specimen that is known to exist. It is of what is called Celtic brass, that is, bronze, Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449, 123 and " consists," to quote the description of Sir William Betham, " of a circle, the outside edge of which represents the moon's orbit, having on it eight rings representing the different phases of the planet. In the inside of this circle is another fixed on an axis, in the line of the inclination of the poles, on which this, which represents the earth, traverses." The size of the instrument is not given, but it is conceived to have been in common use, probably in teaching the science of astronomy, and, in its exhibition, to have been suspended from the ring representing the moon in its first quarter by another ring, which was found loose in that. Several circles of ancient stones, it may be added, exist both in Wales and in Ireland, which still bear, in the language of the people, the name of the Astronomers' Circles, and are supposed to mark the sites of Druidical observatories, or semi- naries for instruction in astronomical science. But this study could not have been prosecuted to any extent without a considerable proficiency in the abstract sciences both of mathematics and num- bers ; and these branches also, therefore, we must suppose to have formed a part of the Druidical learning, and of that extensive course of instruction which we are told the pupils of the Druids some- times spent twenty years in passing through. On the whole, shrouded from our distinct view as the facts of the subject are by the remoteness of the time, and the scantiness of the light shed upon them by history, there is reason to believe that these studious Celtic priests had accumulated no contemptible stock of knowledge in various depart- ments of science and philosophy. According to Ammianus Marcellinus, it was to the Druids that the Gauls were indebted for nearly all that they possessed of civilization and learning; and the same thing in all probability might have been said of the Britons. That with the real and valuable knowledge possessed by the Druids, there was much error and superstition mixed up, there can be no doubt ; everything they believed, and every- thing they taught may have been, at the best, but a mixture of truth and falsehood ; but still it would be very far from being worthless on that account. In the most advanced state to which human know- ledge has yet attained, it has perhaps in no depart- ment been purified from all alloy of error ; and in the greater number of the fields of philosophical speculation, the conjectural and doubtful still forms a large portion of the most successful investiga- tions that the wit of man has been able to achieve. Civilization could never make any progress, if nothing except knowledge free from all error could carry it forward. Nor shall we perhaps be disposed, upon reflection, to pass a very severe judgment upon the Druids, even if they should ap- ]iear to us, in their endeavours to secure an in- fluence over the popular mind, not to have scrupled sometimes to employ such arts of deception as their superior knowledge enabled them to play ofi". It is not necessary to assume tliat in practising these pious frauds, they set no other object before them except the maintenance of their own ascend ancy ; that object may not have been overlooked, but in pursuing it they may have believed at the same time that they were adopting the best course for the people over whom they exercised so powerful a sway. Whatever we may think of the soundness of their reasoning, this may have been their motive ; such a consideration may be supposed to have actuated them, even if we ad- mit, as is very likely, that their judgment in the case was somewhat biassed by their self-interest. Undoubtedly neither fraud nor force seems to be a suitable instrument of civilization ; but it is also not to be doubted that both have often been so employed, not only with the most honest intentions, but what is more, not without some degree of suc- cess. They may not be the best civilizers in ordi- nary circumstances, or their use may not be justi- fiable on principle in any circumstances ; but it does not follow that they have never been used either with any good effect or with any good design. Perhaps what was good in the effect has always been counterbalanced by what was bad in its ac- companiments ; — it has doubtless always been im- paired in that way ; — but still in many instances the attempt cannot reasonably be charged as being, at the very worst, anything worse than a mistake of the judgment. The Druidical religion was a system of delusion and imposture, unquestionably ; we mean, it was not only a false religion, but it was one which its priests systematically sought to support by deluding the understandings of the people, and by a thousand devices and contri- vances which they must have known to be fraudu- lent and dishonest. All this it was, in common with nearly every other form of ancient supersti- tion. Nevertheless, we shall certainly not judge either charitably or wisely if we at once assume that in all these old idolatries, some of which have held in awe half the nations of the earth for thousands of years, the priests were nothing else but an un- interrupted succession of knaves and hypocrites, cherishing no thought and pursuing no end but that of the aggrandizement of their own order and the corruption and degradation of their fellow-men. They were, it cannot be doubted, most generally deceived as well as the rest ; even while deceiving, and consciously deceiving, others, they remained, to a great extent, deceived themselves; they be- lieved that it was the truth which they supported even by their stratagems and tricks. And the more philosophical minds among them, with whom the religion in no part of it had any credit as a super- natural revelation, may still have deemed its influ- ences on the multitude salutary on the whole, and so have justified to themselves their profession and support of it. The national religion was in almost all these cases the principal cement of the national civilization, and the latter would have crumbled to pieces if the former had been suddenly destroyed or removed. When the South of Britain became a part of the Roman empire, the inhabitants, at least of tlie 124 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. towns, both adopted generally the Latin language, and applied themselves to the study of the Latin literature and art. '1 he diffusion among them of this new taste was one of the first means employed by their politic conquerors, as soon as they had fairly established themselves in the island, to rivet their dominion; and a more efficacious they could not have devised. Happily, it was also the best fitted to turn their subjugation into a blessing to the conquered people. Agricola, having spent the first year of his administration in establishing in the province that order and tranquillity which is the first necessity of the social condition, and the in- dispensable basis of all civilization, did not allow another winter to pass without beginning the work of thus training up the national mind to a Roman character. Tacitus informs us that he took mea- sures for having the sons of the chiefs educated in the liberal arts, exciting them at the same time by professing to prefer the natural genius of the Britons to the studied acquirements of the Gauls ; the effect of which was, that those who lately had disdained to use the Roman tongue now became ambitious of excelling Jn eloquence. In later times, schools were no doubt established and maintained in all the principal towns of Roman Britain, as they were throughout the empire in general. There are still extant many imperial edicts relating to these -public seminaries, in which privileges are conferred upon the teachers, and regulations laid down as to the manner in which they were to be appointed, the salaries they were to receive, and the branches of learning they were to teach. But no account of the British schools in particular has been preserved.. It would appear, however, that, for some time at least, the older schools of Gaul were resorted to by the Britons who pursued the study of the law : Juvenal, who lived in the end of the first and the beginning of the second cen- tury, speaks, in one of his Satires, of eloquent Gaul instructing the pleaders of Britain. But even already forensic acquirements must have become very general in the latter country and the sur- rounding regions, if we may place any reliance on the assertion which he makes in the next line, that in Thule itself people now talked of hiring rheto- ricians to manage their causes. Thule, whatever may have been the particular island or country to which that name was given, was the most northern land known to the ancients. It is somewhat remarkable that while a good many names of natives of Gaul are recorded in connexion with the last age of Roman literature, scarcely a British name of that period of any lite- rary reputation has been preserved, if we except a few which figure in the history of the Christian Church The poet Ausonius, who flourished in the fourth century, makes frequent mention of a contemporary British writer whom he calls Sylvius Bonus, and whose native name is supposed to have been Coil the Good, but of his works, or even of their titles or subjects, we know nothing. Auso- nius, who seems to have entertained strong preju- dices against the Britons, speaks of Sylvius with the same animosity as of the rest of his country- men. Among the early British churchmen the celebrated heresiarch Pelagius, his disciple Celes- tius, St. Ninian the converter of the southern Picts, and St. Patrick the great apostle of Ireland, might all be included in this period ; but the mis- sionary exertions of the two last-mentioned will fall to be noticed more conveniently in our next chapter on the History of Religion. Pelagius, although he has been claimed as a native of South Britain, was more probably, like his disciple Celes- tius, a Scot ; that is to say, a native of Ireland. He is said to have been a monk of Bangor ; but whether this was the monastery of Bangor in Wales, or that of Bangor, or Banchor, near Carrickfergus in Ireland, has been disputed. Pelagius supported his peculiar opinions with his pen as well as orally ; and some controversial writings attributed to him still exist. Until he began to propagate the heretical opinions which have made liim so famous, he appears to have enjoyed the highest esteem of his contemporaries for his moral qualities as well as for talent and eloquence ; the extraordinary suc- cess with which he difiused his views may suffice to attest his intellectual ability and accomplish- ments. The reputation of his disciple Celestius was nearly as great as his own. Many of the fol- lowers of the Pelagian heresy indeed styled them- selves Celestians. Celestius also appears to have been an Irishman. St. Jerome, the great oppo- nent of him and his master, almost says as much when, in one of his passionate invectives, he calls him a blockhead swollen with Scotch pottage, that is, what we should now call Irish flummery.* We may quote as a specimen of the eloquence of the age, and also of its most orthodox Christianity, a little more of the " splendid bile" of the learned saint. He goes on to describe Celestius as "a great, corpulent, barking dog, fitter to kick with his heels than to bite with his teeth ; a Cerberus, who, with his master Pluto (so Pelagius is desig- nated), deserved to be knocked on the head, and so put to eternal silence." There still exist some epistles and other works attributed to Celestius, which are believed to be genuine. • The original Latin is " Scotorura pultibns prSBsravatus." — Vossiiis, however, in his Dissertation upon Pelagianisni, considers the Irish flummery with whicli Celestius is here said to have hern swollen, as meaning the notions of his master I'elagius, and adduces the words as a testimony in favour of the Irish origin of the latter. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 125 CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. N the present period, under this head, al- though it would not be difficult to collect a great deal of nfiatter, by availing ourselves of all that has been related of communi- ties conceived to be in the same state of social advancement with the ancient Britons, and thence assuming, by analogy or conjecture, the particulars of the domestic life and habits of the latter, the real information we possess amounts to very little All that we know upon the subject is to be found in the incidental notices that have fallen from the Roman writers in the course of their historical narratives, or to be deduced from the few relics of the British people that have sur- vived the destruction of time; and even when these sources are most carefully studied, what we learn from both of them together is extremely scanty and unsatisfactory. We have already described the houses of the Britons. Of the manner in which these rude hovels were furnished we know scarcely anything. In some of the coins of Cunobeline we find the interior of a habitation furnished with seats resem- bling our modern chairs, stools like the crickets of our peasantry, and others composed of a round block of wood, while the arms of the family are ranged along the wall.* The floor probably served for a bed, and the mantle of the sleeper for a blanket ; in winter they might have recourse to the additional warmth of shaggy skins. Wooden bowls and platters, and their celebrated baskets of osier work, would contain their provisions and other necessaries; and in addition to these they had, as already mentioned, articles of coarse pottery, consisting of bowls, cups, and jars. According to Strabo, they also had cups and other vessels of glass ; but, as these were articles of importation, it is probable that they were confined to the houses of the chiefs. Though the Britons were a hardy race, yet their climate would make the comforts of a fire desirable during the winter, and accordingly we may suppose that they adopted the obvious resource of a fire upon the floor, until the Romans introduced among them the luxury of a brazier. Their forests supplied them abimdantly with fuel ; • Pegge on tho Coins of Cunobelinus. but, in addition to this, they appear to have been acquainted with coal before the arrival of their conquerors, collections of this mineral having been found in various places, attesting their British de- position.* The only coal they had, of com-se, was gathered upon or near the surface, and used in cases where wood could not easily be obtained. Their diet, no doubt, corresponded with the poverty of their dwellings and the general simplicity of their lives. The country, where it was cultivated by that superior race who occupied the sea-coast opposite Gaul, was productive in grain, and the pastures were covered with flocks and herds, so that the fortunate natives of these quarters were well supplied with the materials at least of even comfortable living. Of the milk they made curds ; and while the Romans, contented with their own olives, were ignorant of butter, it was probably known to the Britons, as Pliny informs us it was generally to the barbarous nations. f Salt was an imported article at the period of the Roman in- vasion, and probably was a luxury attainable only by a few. While such were the articles of subsistence among the more favoured and better civilized of the ancient Britons, their more barbarous country- men must have been in a state of considerable des- titution. This is evident from the testimony of several Roman authors. Caesar, who attests the fertility of Kent and the superiority of its people, informs us also that, in the interior of the island, the inhabitants sowed no grain, but lived on the milk and flesh of their flocks and herds. The inhabitants of the northern parts of the island were in a still more wretched condition in the article of food. We are told of the Mseatte and Caledonians, that they lived upon the milk of their flocks, upon wild fruits, and whatever they could procure in hunting. J This was their food even under favourable circumstances ; for it is added that, when they were in the woods, they fed upon roots and leaves. A melancholy proof of their wretchedness may be deduced from what we are told of the substitute they employed in the want of natural sustenance. It was a certain compo- sition, by which, it is said, when they had eaten about the quantity of a bean, their spirits were so admirably supported that they no longer felt hunger or thirst. § This invention, to which siich miraculous effects are attributed, was probably nothing more than a drug made use of ov them • Whittaker's Manchester, sec. iii. chap. 9. f Nat. Hist. xi. 96. X Xiphiliu. in Sever. § Idem. 126 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. to deaden the gnawings of hunger, just as Indian hunters, in similar cases, gird a bandage tightly upon their stomachs. The game upon which the more needy or more adventurous natives, both of the north and south, chiefly subsisted, was probably of a kind only to be procured with difficultv, — the bison, the boar, and the moose-deer, against which their imperfect weapons must have been frequently unavailing. Antiquarians have been more curious about how this game was cooked than were probably the hvmters themselves ; and while some have alleged that the ancient Britons ate it raw in the forests, after expressing the blood between flat stones or pieces of timber, according to the fashion of the Scotch highlanders in former times, others have supposed that the carcase was baked in a pit lined with heated flints, as is done in the present day by the New Zealanders. We have already mentioned the abstinence of the Southern Britons from hares and poultry, and that of those in the north from fish. It is remark- able that in this last particular the ancient occu- pants of the northern part of our island were till lately imitated by their representatives, the Scottish Highlanders. But whatever may have been the cause of this avoidance of what we should deem some of the most natural and salutary kinds of food, the early Britons have been accused of not abstaining from the most revolting of all the gra- tifications of a depraved appetite. Antiquity has subjected them to the odious charge of cannibalism. Diodorus Siculus and Strabo both mention the existence of a report to that effect respecting the Irish ; St. Chrysostom, in one of his sermons, speaks of it as a practice that had prevailed, in the exclamation — " How often was human flesh eaten in Britain?" and St. Jerome seems expressly to affirm that when he was a young man, in Gaul, he saw some of the Attacotti, a British nation, eating human flesh. Gibbon has adduced this as the testimony of an eyewitness to the fact of the canni- balism of some of the Britons, and has declared that he finds no reason to question the veracity of ' the saint ; but the accovmt is certainly in some respects a strange one. It is difficult to believe, in the first place, that an exhibition of cannibalism could be publicly tolerated in the fourth century in the Roman province of Gaul. But Jerome not only would seem to say that he saw the Attacotti eating human flesh ; he adds, as equally what he had ascertained by his own observation in Gaul, that these British savages, when they found herds of hogs and cattle in the woods, were wont to cut off^ and devour certain parts of the bodies of the shepherds, which they accounted particularly deli- cate. Now this certainly he covild not have seen with his own eyes, although he may have heard it reported. Although, therefore, his words are not so cautious as they ought to have been, and are dictated with a view to rhetorical effect, we seem to be justified in regarding him as testifying not to what he had seen, but only to what he had heard, in the whole story. Still his statement will be evidence to the reputation of the Attacotti for man-eating ; and all we can say is, that it is not impossible they may have deserved the character they appear to have acquired. The frequent existence of the practice of cannibalism among tribes not always in the lowest stage of barbarism, has now been completely established. The Battas of Sumatra, who have a written language, and have in other respects made considerable advances in civilization, have perhaps canied the practice further than it has been carried in any other country We know nothing about the habits of the Britons in regard to temperance in drinking. Mead, or metheglin, was probably the common beverage at their social feasts, as it is said to have been among the Celtic nations generally. They are also said to have used a preparation from barley,* forming a coarse sort of wine, or " spurious Bacchus," as the Italians called it, which was of a much more in- toxicating quality. This was nothing more than a species of ale common to the Gauls, the Spaniards, and the nations of the west and north, and alluded to by several writers, f who admired the ingenuity of savages in making even water intoxicate. Witli wine they probably had little if any acquaintance. In their personal appearance, the Britons seem to have been a people of large limbs and much muscular strength and activity. This much may be gathered even from the narrative of tlieir various encounters in fight with the Roman legions. Strabo mentions that he had seen some British young men at Rome half a foot taller than even the Gauls, who were a ])ulky race compared witli the Italians. He alleges, however, that they were not strongly and gracefully formed in pro]3ortion to their great stature, and did not stand very firmly upon their legs ; but this was perhaps owing to the immaturity of those juvenile specimens that came under his notice. Their clothing, both for warmth and ornament, is one of the chief signs by which the degree of civi- lization among an early people is indicated. The half-naked savage shivering amidst the storm of the elements, with no better defence than a loose cloak of skin, betokens a Imman being in the lowest stage of helplessness, and whose intellectual capacities are as yet in great part dormant. The addition of a single pin or button, by which his garment is rendered more comfortable, indicates an advance in intellect that will operate equally upon all his other arrangements ; and as one piece after another, for convenience or decoration, is added to his attire, we may commonly trace the pro- gress of his general civilization. Mere expediency was at first his standard ; but as his wants increase and his tastes improve, the narrow limits of neces- sity are soon overstepped for those of decency, gracefulness, and splendour. The Maeatse and Caledonians are described by the Romans as living in a state of nudity ; but as they seldom saw these warlike tribes except in • Dioscoriil. lib. ii. o. liO. •■ Pliny, Orosius, Isidorus. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS : B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 127 battle or flight, their want of clothing may liavc been only temporary, and for convenience, diiring their desultory warfare. The flinging off of their garments in battle was a custom general among the Celtic nations. Livy informs us that, at the battle of Cannse, there were Gauls who fought naked from the waist upwards ; and Polybius says that some Belgic Gauls fought entirely naked, but it was only on the day of battle that they stripped themselves. It was thus that, in the battles of modern times, the Scottish Highlanders were ac- customed to throw off their plaids, by which they sometimes astonished their antagonists by the view of their naked limbs, as much as their prototypes did the Roman legions, and incurred an equal charge of barbarism. Caesar himself informs us that the inhabitants of the interior of Britain wore clothing of skins. When this was the case with the least refined part of the population, it is obvious that the more advanced portion of them, who inhabited the sea-coast, must have possessed a more plentiful and less primitive wardrobe. Of the several kinds of cloth manufactured in Gaul, one, according to Pliny and Diodorus Siculus, was composed of fine wool dyed of several colours, which being spun into yarn, was woven either in stripes or chequers ; and of this the Gauls and Britons made their summer garments. Diodorus, describing the Belgic Gauls, says, they wore dyed tunics, beflowered with all FiouaES OF Ancient Gauls in the Bsacc^r, Tunic, and Saoum— Drawn from Roman Statues in the Loutie. 128 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. manner of colours. With these they wore close trowsers, which they called braccce. These trowsers, an article of dress by which all the Barbaric nations seem to have been distingu-ished from the Romans, were made by the Gauls and Britons of their striped or chequered cloth, called breach, brycan, or breacan, breac in Celtic signifying anything speckled, spotted, striped, or in any way party- coloured. Over the tunic both the Gauls and the Britons wore a short cloak, called a sagum by the Romans, from the Celtic word saiCf which, ac- cording to Varro, signified a skin or hide, such having been the material which the invention of cloth had superseded. The British sagum was of one uniform colour, genefally either blue or black.* The predominating tint in the chequered trow- sers and tunic was red. Their hair was turned back upon the crown of the head, and fell down in long and bushy curls behind. Men of rank amongst the Gauls and Britons, according to Caesar and Diodorus, shaved the chin, but wore immense tangled mustaches. The ornaments of the Britons consisted, like those of the Gauls, of rings, bracelets, and armlets of iron, copper or brass, silver or gold, according to the rank or means of the wearer, and that peculiar deco- ration the torch or dorch, Latinized torques, which was probably a symbol of nobility or com- mand. When the captive Caractacus was led through the streets of Rome, several of these chains,— the spoils which he had taken from his conquered enemies in Britain, — ^were carried in the procession.t It was a sort of necklace or collar composed of flexible bars of gold or silver, twisted or moulded like a rope or wreath, and hooked together behind. Sometimes the torques were formed of bronze ; and Herodian says that those of the northern part of the island wore torques of iron, " of which they were as vain as other barbarians were of gold."t Specimens of those of gold, silver, and bronze have been frequently found both in Britain and Ireland. Two splendid specimens of gold torques found in the county of Meath have • Diodor. v. 33. t Tac. Aiinal. xii.36 J L. iii. c. xhii. been supposed, from their size, to be meant for girdles instead of collars, as Herodian mentions they were also woni round the waist. From the hook of one proceeded a gold wire, a quarter of an inch thick and eight inches long, terminating in a solid knob, an appendage never before seen in any specimen. The weight of the whole torque was twenty-five ounces.* The ring, Pliny tells us, was worn by the Britons and Gauls upon the middle finger. Of the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the ancient Britons several specimens have been pre- served. The most complete collection is undoubtedly that at Goodrich Court. Hatchets or battle-axes of stone, arrow-heads of flint and lances of bone, supposed to have been the primitive weapons, and others of the same form but of mixed copper and tin ; the leaf-shaped sword of the same metal, worn also by the Gauls, and the metal coatings of tlie flat circular shields or targets, called tarians or dashers, the concentric circles on which, separated by rows of little knobs, forcibly remind us of the Highland target, are all to be seen there in perfect preservation. The shields have a hollow boss in the centre, to admit the hand, as they were held at arm's length in action.f A most interesting relic of this period was lately discovered in a cam at Mold, in Flintshire. It is a golden breastplate or gorget, embossed with a figured pattern in various degrees of relief. It was found containing the bones of the deceased warrior, and in the position in which it would have been worn, with remnants of coarse cloth or serge, beads of amber, and pieces of copper, upon which the gold had been probably fastened. Its extreme length is three feet seven inches, being made, ap- parently, to pass under the arms and meet in the centre of the back ; and its width in front, where it is hollowed out to receive the neck, eight inches. Some separate pieces found with it appear to have passed over the shoulders like straps, but tlie mutilation of the corslet at the very point on each • Meyrick's Orig. Inhab. p. 14. note. Sir W. Betliam, howev r, we suppose would consider this and other s\ich specimens to have been pieces of money. See ante, pp. 110, 111. t See also Archaeologia, v<.l. xxiii. p. 95. Remains of a British Breast- Plate, found at Mold. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: B.C. 55.— A. D. 449. 129 side at whicli they must have been affixed unfor- tunately prevents us from ascertaining precisely the mode of their application. The breastplate is here engraved from the original, which is now in the British Museum.* We have already more than once had occasion to advert to the painted skins of the Britons. Caesar, the first of the Roman writers who mentions this national peculiarity, describes it to have consisted merely in staining themselves of a cerulean colour with the herb vitrum or woad. Solinus, however, represents the process as a laborious and painful one, but permanent in its effect, and speaks of the painting as consisting chiefly of the figures of animals that grew with the growth of the body. Herodian says they punctured their bodies with the figures of all sorts of animals. Isidore is still more explicit, for, in speaking of the Picts whose name he derives from their coloured skins, he tells us that the painting was done by squeezing out the juice of certain herbs upon the body, and punctur- ing the figures with a needle. Here, then, we have the same process of tattooing which is per- formed in the present day by the natives of the South Sea islands. Caesar supposes the Britons to have coloured their skins for the purpose of terrify- ing their enemies; but such could scarcely have been the object with a people among whom the practice was universal, and whose wars were in- ternational. Probably this skin-painting was the national dress, and existed in its highest state of perfection at a period considerably prior to the Roman invasion, when the clothing of the people was more scanty than in the days of Caesar. They might attempt by the operation, also, to indurate the skin more effectually against the inclemency of the elements. But a still stronger motive for the endurance of such pain and labour as the practice occasioned, is to be sought in that love of orna- ment so natural to mankind at large, and so espe- cially powerful in the savage. The ancient Briton, in the absence of other distinctions in the way of clothing and decoration, would find, in these fan- tastic ornaments, his badge of rank in society, and his chief attraction in the eyes of the other sex. As the process also was performed in early youth, it was a probation, among a rude people, for a life of hardihood; and by the profusion of its lines and figures, the wearer evinced his contempt of pain and power of endurance. But when the body began to be covered, such a profusion was found superfluous ; and as the articles of raiment were increased, the blue figures were proportion- ably discontinued, so that the practice gradually declined, and was at last wholly abandoned. It is therefore that we hear no more of this tattooing in the South after it was subdued and civilized into a Roman province ; though it still continued among the rude tribes of the North, where it lingered until it was banished thence also by the full attire of • See also engraving ami account by Mr. Gage In vol. xxvi. of the A.i'chaeologia, p. 22. civilization.* We may here observe that, by the same gradual process this practice is on the wane in New Zealand, and probably, in the course of a century, will be recorded among the things that have been. A still more singular distinction than that of a painted or punctured skin separated the ancient Britons morally from the rest of the world, as much as their insular position did geographically. This was the nature of their institutions or customs of marriage. Those rights of exclusive property in a wife, which even among the rudest tribes are prized so highly, and guarded with such jealous care, are asserted to have been strangely disre- garded by the early inhabitants of this island. According to Caesar, ten or twelve families used to live under the same roof, the husbands having their wives in common. The ties of previous consanguinity, also, so far from being a check, seem rather to have been considered as a recom- mendation in these strange associations, in which, we are told, for the most part brothers joined with brothers, and parents with their sons. The pater- nity of the children was settled by their affiliation upon the person by whom their modiers had been first married. Of the manner in which the children were reared, all the information we have is a story told by Solinus, who relates that the first morsel of food was put into the infant's mouth on the point of his father's sword, with the prayer that he might prove a brave warrior and die on the field of battle. These matrimonial clubs have appeared so pre- posterous and incredible to inquirers of the present day, that many have been disposed to class them among the fictions of antiquity. It has been sup- posed that the Romans drew a wrong conclusion from the British mode of living, which was so unlike their own, and, finding so many families huddled to- gether under one roof, too hastily assumed that they lived in all respects in common. But the Romans were never so mistaken when they found other rude tribes thus crowded together: while they brought this revolting charge against the Britons, they have imputed nothing of the kind to the Ger- mans, for instance, who were placed in similar cir- cumstances. The fact, too, does not depend upon the solitary testimony of Caesar. It is also stated by Dio Cassius, or his abridger Xiphilinus; and that writer reports a conversation respecting it be- tween the Empress Julia and the wife of a British chief, in which the latter, on being rallied about the marriages of her countrywomen, at once admits the charge, only retorting that the Roman matrons acted in a manner much more indefensible by in- dulging themselves in an equal licence covertly, and in violation of the laws of their country. St. Jerome also speaks of the practice as still prevail- ing in his day, in the northern parts of Britain. It lingered in these regions, of course, long after civil- ization and Christianity had extirpated it in the • We shall find in the sequel, however, that it re-appeareil among the Saxons. 130 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. south. But even during the general prevalence of this promiscuous polygamy, the virtue of conjugal fidelity, as already noticed, seems still to have been perfectly well understood, and also held in much respect, Their marriages, however extraordinary their nature appears to us, may still have been protected by a law^, the provisions of which it was both dangerous and disreputable to transgress. Cartismandua, the Queen of the Brigantes, when she transferred her affections from her husband to her armour-bearer, may very probably have vio- lated the established regulations, however liberal; and hence the universal storm of indignation which her conduct raised. Or, the community of husbands and lovers may have been customary only among the lower classes, and not tolerated by the general opinion in the case of the princes and chiefs. Fe- male honour also appears, from the instance of Boadicea, and from various scattered notices in the Roman writers, to have been highly appreciated by the Britons. The general respect in which women were held, indeed, is attested by various circum- stances. They, as well as men, appear to have assumed tlie prophetic office, and dictated for the emergencies of the future. Women occasionally both held the sovereignty of states, and com- [BOOK I. manded armies in the field of battle. This is the reason that some of the female sepulchres, when opened, display an assortment like the commodities of Ulysses, when he went to discover Achilles, viz., implements of housewifery, trinkets, and war- like weapons. Those affections that have cherished a friend or relative when living are generally expressed for his lifeless remains in a great variety of forms ; and as love and friendship are most intense among the uncivilized, the rudest tribes are found to pre- sent the most striking indications of these passions, in their funeral ceremonies and modes of burial. The intensity of their feelings on such occasions the ancient Britons have sufficiently announced to posterity, in the numerous barrows that exist in the southern division of the island, and the cairns that are found in the northern. What particular cere- monies they used in their interment of the dead we know not ; but, from the contents of the graves, we find that, like other rude nations, they buried with the body whatever they accounted most valuable. Weapons of war and of the chace, ornaments of every kind, and even articles of jewellery were thus deposited ; and frequently also the relics of dogs and deer are found mixed with human l)unes. All Group of thk Phincipal Forms of Harrows. I. I^ug narrow, ft. c. Druid HnrrowR. d. Bell-sliar«d Barrow, e. Cuiiical liarrow. f. Twin Barrow, Chap. VL] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: B.C. 55.— A. D. 449. 131 this had, doubtless, a prospective view to the existence of the departed individual in a future state ; he was thus not only arrayed for that other scene in a manner befitting his rank and former estimation, but furnished with the means of defence, subsistence, and amusement. The prodigious labour with which the old British barrows were evidently constructed, by soil in many cases brought from a great distance, and the care and ingenuity dis- played in their forms, excite the wonder of modern ages. These strange sepulchres exhibit great va- riety both in size and shape, and by this, in some cases, we can conjecture not only the period of their construction, but also the condition of those whom they were designed to commemorate. Thus the immense mounds of earth of an oblong form and rude construction, some of which are about 400 feet in length, but containing few bones, and fewer valuable relics, were probably the earliest graves of the island, and designed for chieftains, who could more easily obtain the labour of a thousand vassals, than the possession of a single trinket. Next to these may perhaps be classed the bowl-shaped barrows, as they are called, which are plain hemi- spheric mounds of earth. The bell-shaped barrow is evidently of still later date, being an improve- ment upon the former, having its sides gracefully curved inward, immediately above the surface, and exhibiting greater skill and labour in its construc- tion. To these may be added what have been im- properly termed the Druid-barrows : these are the most elegant of the whole series of graves, and ap- pear to have been in general occupied by females, from containing trinkets of a finer and more femi- nine character, and bones of a smaller size than those of the others. It would appear also that these vast piles were reserved only for chiefs and personages of elevated rank ; while the common people, as in other countries, were buried in those more humble receptacles whose traces are soon erased. In the interment of the dead, the Britons appear to have observed a variety of modes in the dispo- sition of the body. In all probability the earliest « Flint Arrow Heads. Celts. 2. IV 5. Weapon. ' 6. Pin. 7. Arrow Head. 8. Dirk or Knife. 9. Spear Head. lU. Lance Head. 11. Brass Knife in sheath, set in stag's-horn handle. 12. Flint Spear Head. 13. Ivory Tweesers. 14. Ivory Bodkin. 15. Amljier Ornament. 16. Necklace of Shells. 17 Beads of Glass. 18. Ivory Ornament. 19. Nippers. Contents of Ancifni Bp.itish Barrows. 20. Stone for Slinij. 21. Stone to sharpen boue. 22. Ring Amulet. 23. Breastplate of Blue Slate, 24. Incense Cup. 2!>. Ditto. 26. Ditto. 27. Whetstone. 28 to 32. Urns. 33 to 37. Diiukiug Cups. 132 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. Group or Vessels — From Specimeasfound in Boman Burial Places in Itrituln. was, to place it in a cist, with tlie legs bent np towards the head. This practice is generally found to have been adopted in the long barrows mentioned above ; and in these, along with the re- mains of the body, there are sometimes found daggers of bronze, and drinking cups of the rudest workmanship. Sometimes they laid the body in the grave at full length. In these cases, the articles of bronze and iron, such as spear-heads, lances, swords, bosses of shields, and ornaments of chain- work, together with beads of glass and amber, and other trinkets, proclaim a more refined period, and greater skill in the arts. In some instances, their practice seems to have assimilated more nearly to that now followed, the bodies being inclosed in a strong wooden coffin, riveted with bronze, or an unbarked piece of a tree, hollowed out in the centre. It appears, however, that thev were also in the frequent practice of consuming the body by fire. In many of the barrows, the charred, or half-burnt bones are found carefully collected on the floor, or deposited within a cist cut in the chalk. A still more classical mode of burial was also frequently followed among the Britons. When the body had been consumed on the pile, the ashes were carefully collected, inclosed in a linen sheet, which was secured by a brass pin, and deposited in an urn. Many of the barrows, on being opened, are found to contain these urns, which are placed, in most instances, with the bottom uppermost. This practice of sepulture by burning, appears to have been wholly confined to the inhabitants of the southern part of Britain, making it probable that they had learnt it from the Romans. As for the Caledonians, it would seem that they were con- tented with laying the body in the earth entire, and raising over the spot a loose heap of stones, to perpetuate the memory of the departed.* Such are nearly all the facts that are now to be collected under the head of the private life and social habits of the Britons, while they remained an unconquered people. The transformation of the island, or the greater part of it, into a Roman pro- vince, also in course of time transformed the inha- bitants into Romans, in their tastes, manners, and modes of life. The country now, in every respect, assumed a new aspect. The forests were opened, and roads constructed in every direction ; and the wild beasts being dislodged, the occupation of the hunter ceased, or became an occasional amusement. The buildine of towns, and the extension of traffic, banished those rude practices or inconvenient cus- toms, that were only tolerable amidst the dreari- ness of the woods and the idleness of their inha- bitants. Superior modes of agriculture were intro- duced; and the natives, thus taught the fertility of their soil, forsook a precarious mode of subsist- ence for the settled life of the husbandman. Houses of brick or stone gradually superseded those of mud or timber ; and while, in the pro- gress of improvement, the tesselated pavement and domestic ornaments of the " eternal city" adorned the habitations of the British kings and chieftains, their retainers would also, in their humbler sphere, vie with each other in the comforts of their dwell- ings. In this manner, too, the sports and recrea- • See Hoare's Ancient Wiltshire; Douglas's Nenia Brit.mnicji . Gough's Sepulchral Remains of Britain, &c. ^ Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: B.C. 55.— A. D. 449. 133 1. Bronze Spear Uead. U. Plated Iron Stud. 27. 2. Ditto Dagger. 15. Bronze Pin. 28. 3. Iron Knife. 4. Bronze Lance Head. \j- 1 DHIowith Ivory Handles. 29. 30. 5. Iron ditto. 18. Bronze Ornament. 31. 6. Celt. 19. Ditto. 32. 7. Bronze Lance Head. 20. Amulet. 33. 8. Bronze Celt. 2L Gold Box. 34. 9. Ivory Arrow Head. 10. Iron Boss of a Shield. Ig JGold Ornaments. 35. 36. 11. Bronze Buckle. 24. Amber and Bead Necklace. 37. 12. Iron Crook. 25. Gold Breastplate. 38. 13. Iron Ring. 26. Patera. 12, 13. 18, 19, 22, 33, 24, 25, 33, are conjectured to have belonge die the Ivory Bracielet. Drinking Cup Incense Cup. Drinking Cups. I Double Drinking Cups. '.lurns. Druidical Hook for gather- ing the Sacred Mistletoe. Contents o? Romak-Beitish B&rkows. tions of the people would be either changed or modified. The chariot being laid aside, as un- serviceable in the Roman mode of fighting, that enthusiasm for horsemanship which it cultivated must necessarily have decayed. Now that the several native tribes were no longer permitted to war against each other, the warlike exercises in which their youth and manhood were formerly trained became unnecessary, and perhaps were prohibited by the law. Their religious practices, and superstitions of common life, must, in like manner, have rapidly faded away with the disap- pearance of the Druids, by whose authority they were enforced, and the advances of Christianity and a higher civilization. Among other things, the external appearance of the Romanized Britons was altogether different from that of their conquered ancestors. We are informed by Tacitus, that so early as during the command of Agricola in Britain, the sons of the British chieftains began to affect the Roman dress. The Braccae were abandoned by them, and the Roman tunic, reaching to the knee, with the cloak or mantle, still called the sagum, became the gene- ral habit, at least of the superior classes. The change in the female garb was less remarkable, perhaps, as it had originally been similar to that of the Romans. The hair of both sexes was cut and dressed after the Roman fashion. In their arms and weapons similar alterations appear to have taken place, even before the com- plete subjugation of the country. The metal coat- ing of a shield, supposed to have been fabricated by the Britons after they had been induced to imi- tate the Roman fashions, was found some years since duringresearchesatRhydygorsein Cardigan- 134 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. shire, with several broken swords and spear-heads of bronze, and is now in the Meyrick collec- tion. It bears a strong resemblance to the Roman scutum. It appears originally to have been gilt, and is adorned on the umbo, or boss, with the common red camelian of the country. While its shape is Roman, the ornamental detail par- takes strongly of the character of the British pat- terns; and the learned proprietor remarks, that " it is impossible to contemplate the artistic por- tions without feeling convinced that there is a mix- ture of British ornaments with such resemblances to the elegant designs on Roman works as would be produced by a people in a state of less civiliza- tion."* While these changes were gradually taking place, however, in the southern parts of the island, the north, beyond the wall of Hadrian, remained in its original wild and uncultivated state. When the Emperor Severus invaded Caledonia in the be- ginning of the third century, a contemporary author t describes the Mseatae and Caledonians in almost the same words as Ceesar had the Britons of the interior more than two centuries before. • Archaeologia, vol.xxiii. t Xiphilon ex Dione Nic. in Sever. JHeta^ coating of an anpient Romaij-British shield, found at Rhydygrovse, Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: B.C. 55.— A. D. 449. 135 CHAPTER VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. HE account of each period will be con- [ eluded by a chapter under this title, the [^ object of which will be, to take a general view of the whole s social condition of the people, and to endea- vour to estimate the amount and character of the national civili- zation, by collecting into a focus the light that may be thrown upon these subjects, both by the various particulars already noticed, and by certain additional classes of facts not admitting of being conveniently intro- duced under any of the preceding heads. The additional facts will consist principally of such authentic information as can be obtained relating to the distribution of property, the proportions in which the population appears to have been divided into the different classes composing it, the incomes and rates of living of these several classes, the health and sickness of the community, the preva- lent diseases, the ordinary length of life, with the other matters belonging to the department of what has been called Vital Statistics, and the sta- tistics of vice and crime, including both the kinds and extent of crime committed, and the institu- tions for preserving order, and repressing and punishing violations of the law. The sources of information of this description, however, are lamentably deficient even in regard to the most recent times ; and in the earlier periods of our history no regular record of such facts is to be found, even in the most meagre form. In the remote and obscure period with which we are at present engaged, where we are nearly with- out anything that can properly be called history of any kind, we have only a few incidental notices to guide us to some vague general conclusions on one or two points of the inquiry. On the question of the degree of civilization possessed by the Britons at the time of the Roman invasion, although it would be easy enough to draw up a plausible argument in support of any hypothesis that might be proposed, it is extremely difficult to come to any certain or perfectly satis- factory determination. The facts upon which we have to form our judgment are too few and too unconnected to afford us more than the merest glimpses of the subject. And from the insulated and fragmentary way in which they are stated, it is a business of the most conjectural speculation to attempt to reconcile them with one another, and to weave them into a consistent whole. On the one hand, we have a country covered in great part with woods and marshes, without towns, except such forest fastnesses as have been found even among the rudest savages (although those of the Britons may have been more artificially defended from hostile assaults), and in all probability without any roads, except some two or three great tracks, sufficing rather to point the way from one locality to another, than to serve as the means of con- venient communication. We have a people, in fight at least, showing themselves naked or half naked — without books or letters, — without any arts, as far as our evidence goes, save the simplest and rudest, — without even other ha- bitations, apparently, than mud-hovels, not reared for permanent occupation, but hastily put together to be crept into for a few months or weeks, and then possibly to be abandoned or set fire to on the approach of an enemy or on any other occasion that might make it convenient for their occupants to shift their quarters. Thus, in the impressive sketch of Tacitus, the day follow- ing the fatal battle of the Grampians is described as having displayed to the view of the victors a vast silence all around, the hills a wide expanse of loneliness, houses smoking in the distance, not a human being to be met with anywhere by the parties sent out to scour in all directions. This, indeed, was in the wilder regions of the north ; but we can hardly dovibt that in the wars between the different tribes which we are told raged inces- santly even in the southern parts of the island, the people must have been accustomed in like manner to fly for safety to the woods, when a hostile band, too strong to be resisted, swept the country, and without hesitation to leave their slight and mise- rable dwellings to be ransacked and trodden under foot. We learn even from the brief narrative of Caesar's campaign, that the natives made for the woods and hid themselves there after every defeat, and that it was from the woods they came forth whenever they ventured again to attack the invaders. In short, they evidently were in the greater part a people living in the woods, which probably covered most of the country, and in which, as has been just noticed, we are expressly told that the only groups of cottages they had that could be called towns or villages, were all hidden. These are the habits of mere savages, in as far a.s 130 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book I. the climate of a high latitude will allow. On the other hand, we find co-existent witli all this rude- ness, many indications of a much more advanced social state. These Britons appear to have long maintained a commercial intercourse, not only with the adjacent coast of Gaul, but with other and much more distant parts of the world, from which traders regularly resorted to more than one point of the island. The inhabitants of the south coast, we are expressly told, were not clothed in skins; from which we may infer that they had garments made of woollen cloth, or some other woven or manufactured material. Indeed, the common state- ment of Caesar and other writers, that they did not differ much in their way of life from the Gauls, never could have been made of a people who went naked. The Britons of the south were not even dependent for their subsistence solely either upon the chace or upon pasturage ; they sowed corn, as well as possessed great plenty of cattle. They were a large population, and their houses also were very numerous. They had a sort of money, perhaps not ruder than that which ap- pears to have been in use in Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. They showed not only much bravery, but also very considerable skill in war — venturing to encoimter even the Roman legions both in sudden surprises and in pitched battles, and evincing military organization and array in the latter, as well as stratagem in the former. Although their offensive arms were not of the best material, they were still of metal, and not merely of wood, or bone, or stone. Their war-chariots, both in their management and their construction, were machines which never could have been found among a people altogether without civilization. Yet we find them in the possession of Galgacus and his Caledonians, as well as of the Britons of the south. Without taking into acco\int the scythes with which they are said to have been armed, the fact that they were carriages running rapidly upon wheels, and capable of being driven impetuously to and fro according to the sudden exigencies of battle, is enough to prove the existence of considerable me- chanical knowledge and ingenviity among a people provided with such engines of war. Then there seems to have been established in each tribe a re- gular government, presided over by a single chief or king, whose power, however, was not absolute, but was controlled by an aristocracy, and perhaps also, in some degree, by the community at large. Dio Cassius, in an account of the northern tribes, tells us that the people had a great share in the government — a circumstance, by the by, which somewhat tends to corroborate the supposition of the Germanic origin of these tribes. Further, the British states, though often at enmity among them- selves, had made a sufficient advance in policy, to be accustomed to provide against a common danger, by both leaguing themselves together, and placing the general direction of affairs for the time in the hands of a single chief, selected for his sup- posed fitness to hold the supreme command. It was thus that they combined under Cassivellaunus, to repel the first invasion of the Romans, and long afterwards under Boadicea to destroy their con- querors after the latter had gained possession of the country ; and although they were defeated in both these attempts, and the animosities and con- flicting interests or views of the different tribes seem also in both instances to have interfered to hinder the league from being either so extensive or 80 compact as it otherwise might have been, yet such general movements, however unsuccessfully conducted, could only have sprung from a spirit of patriotism or nationality much too comprehensive as well as too considerate for mere barbarians. Above all, there existed among these Britons a numerous order of persons, constituting what we should now call one of the estates of the realm, who were possessed of a knowledge of letters, and also, we have every reason to believe, of a very considerable amount of scientific knowledge. They had a system of laws regularly taught and admi- nistered by these learned sages, and a religion of mysterious doctrines and an imposing ritual of which they were the ministers. These Druids of Britain and Gaul, as we may gather from the in- stance of Divitiacus, mentioned by Cicero, were qualified by their intellectual acquirements to asso- ciate with the most eminent among the literary men of Rome ; and in some departments of natural knowledge they were probably more accomplished than any Roman or Grecian philosopher. Even if we suppose the Druidical learning to have been originally an importation from abroad, and never to have spread beyond the members of the Druid- ical body, it is difficult to conceive that the mass of the population, in the midst of which such a per- manent light was fed and sustained, could have been wholly without a civilization of their own, although it may have differed in many of its fea- tures from the civilization of the Greeks and Ro- mans, and from that which the modern nations of Europe have in great part inherited from them. The civilization of the Southern Britons was tlie same in kind, though perhaps inferior in degree, with that of their neighbours and kindred, the Gauls. It was a social state, implying the posses- sion of many of the more homely accommodations of life, but of very few of its luxuries, or at least of what we should designate by that name. Of luxuries, indeed, in the strictest sense, that is to say, of something more than the indispensable neces- saries of existence, no human condition is wholly destitute ; the savage as well as the civilized man has his enjoyments beyond what nature absolutely requires ; but the luxuries of the latter only are artificial refinements. Of that description of luxuries there was no general diffiision under the civilization of the ancient Britons ; their chief extra gratifications were still no doubt those of the savage state — war, and the chace, and the pleasures of roving adventure, and festive merriment, and such other indulgences of little more than mere animal passion, which enlist no arts in their service, and Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: B.C. 55.— A.D. 449. 187 demand no other materials but sudi as are sponta- neously furnished by nature. But even the highest civilization, it is to be remembered, does not throw these things entirely aside ; and their existence, therefore, as an accompaniment of the social condi- tion of the Britons, affords in itself no criterion of the general character of that social condition. It evidently, however, as has been observed, stood elevated in many other respects far above the pos- session of the mere necessaries of existence; and, therefore, it was not a savage state. It was a state, although of low civilization, yet in which the prin- ciple of progression was at work, and out of which a higher civilization would probably, in course of time, have evolved itself. That peculiarity is the great characteristic distinction between civilization and barbarism. In the mean time, however, came suddenly and by force the substitution of the different and no doubt much more advanced civilization of Rome. Order and magnificence, arts and literature, now took the place of the imperfect government, the constant internal wars, the uninstructed intellects, the mud hovels, the towns in the woods, and the generally rude accommodations of the Britons. The country assumed a new face, and looked as if the light of a new and brighter day had been let in upon it. Cultivation was improved and extended ; forests were swept away, with the beasts of prey by which they were tenanted; roads were formed ; towns arose, ex- hibiting, for the first time, piles of regular, stately, and decorated architecture, and multitudes of people moving along in " the sweet security of streets." There cannot be a question that, after the period of transition and conflict was over, this change was on the whole a happy one for Britain. The very silence of history, in regard to the province during a long period of the Roman domination, attests the tranquillity which it enjoyed. That domination lasted altogetlier for nearly four hundred years ; and with the exception of the incursions of the northern barbarians in the reigns of Hadrian and Severus, which the energetic proceedings of these emperors speedily put an end to, little or nothing seems to have occurred to disturb the southern part of the island throughout almost the whole of the second and third centuries. At this time it was probably as flourishing and as happy a pro- vince as any other in the empire. It was now occupied by a population no longer cut off from the rest of the world, and lagging in the rear of civi- lization, but in possession of all the literature and science, and of all the ixseful and elegant arts, that were cultivated in the most refined parts of the earth, and qualified, therefore, to turn the natural advantages of the country to the best account. The panegyric of the orator Eumenius on Constan- tine the Great may be received as testifying to the general belief of the prosperous and happy condi- tion of Britain, even at a later date. " Oh : fortunate Britannia !" he exclaims, " thee hath nature deservedly enriched with the choicest bless- ings of heaven and earth. Thou neither feelest the excessive colds of winter nor the scorching heats of summer. Thy harvests reward thy labours with so vast an increase, as to supply thy tables with bread and thy cellars with liquor. Thy woods have no savage beasts ; no serpents harbour there to hurt the traveller. Innumerable are thy herds of cattle, and the flocks of sheep, vt>hich feed thee plentifully and clothe thee richly. And as to the comforts of life, the days are long, and no night passes without some glimpse of light." Another panegyrist of the same age, in like manner expatiates upon the excellencies of Britain as " a land so stored with corn, so flourish- ing in pasture, so rich in variety of mines, so pro- fitable in its tributes ; on all its coasts so furnished with convenient harbours, and so immense in its extent and circuit. " "It is the masterpiece of Nature," affectionately adds our own Camden, after quoting these ancient testimonies, " performed when she was in her best and gayest humour, which she placed as a little world by itself, by the side of the greater, for the admiration of mankind ; the most accurate model, which she proposed to herself, by which to beautify the other parts of the universe." BOOK ir. THE PERIOD FROM THE ARRIVAL OF THE SAXONS TO THE ARRIVAL OF THE NORMANS.* 449-1066 A.D. CHAPTER L HISTORY OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS. OME etymologists have derived the word Saxon from the term Seax, a short sword with which the wariike natives of the shores of the Baltic, the Elbe, the Weser, and the Rhine, are supposed, but on somewhat doubtful 'authority, to have been generally armed. It is much more probable, however, that the Saxons are the Sakai-Suna, or descendants of the Sakai, or Sacae, a tribe of Scythians, who are mentioned by ancient writers as making their way towards Europe from the East so early as in the age of Cyrus. Pliny tells us of a branch of the Sacse, who called themselves Sacassani ; and Ptolemy designates another branch by the name Saxones, which seems to be merely another form of the same word. But whatever was the etymology of the name, it was certainly, *at the time of the British invasion, applied, in a very general sense, to tribes or nations who were separate, and differing in some essentials, though they had most probably all sprung from the same stock at no very distant period, and still preserved the same physical features, the same manners and customs, and nearly, though not quite, the same unaltered language, which, at the distance of four- teen centuries, is the basis and staple of the idiom we speak. They were all of the pure Teutonic or Gothic race, and aU their kings claimed their descent fromWodin or Odin, an ancient sovereign, magnified by veneration and superstition into a god, the traces of whose capital (real or traditional) are still shown to the traveller at Sigtuna, on the borders of the great Malar Lake, between the old city of Upsala and Stockholm, the present capital of Sweden. Other tribes that issued both before and after the fifth century from that fruitful storehouse of nations, Scandinavia, were of the same Teutonic origin ; and the Franks, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Norse or Northmen, and the most distinguished of the last mentioned, those known throughout Europe under the name of Normans, were aU of the same race, and • In order to illustrate the History of England at this important period, when were laid the foundations of our language and constitutional forms, a Map of the Civil Divisions of the country forming the Heptarchy, has been prepared for this edition, and is prefixed to the present volume. Chap L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 139 commenced their career from the same regions, though differing subsequently, owing to the time and circumstances of their disseverance from the great northern stock, the direction in which their migrations and conquests had lain, and the character, physical and moral, the habits, and the language of the people they had conquered, or among whom they had settled and been mixed. It would neither be a profitable nor a very easy task to trace all these kindred streams to their primitive fountain-head, by the shores of the Caspian, in Asia, and thence follow them back again to the coasts, promontories and islands of the Baltic and the Rhine ; but it is necessary to give a local habitation to the particular tribes that now began to work a total change in Britain. Although classed under one general head, as Saxons, these tribes were three in number : 1. The Jutes. 2. The Angles. 3. The Saxons. The Jutes and the Angles dwelt in the Cimbric Cher- sonesus, or peninsula of Jutland (now a province of Denmark), and in parts of Schlesswig and Hol- stein, the territory of the Angles extending as far as the modem town of Flensburgh. In Holstein there is a district still called Anglen (the real old England) ; and the narrowness of its limits need not interfere with our belief that this was the seat of the tribe (the Angles) that gave its name to our island. The Saxons Proper, to the south of the Jutes and Angles, were far more widely spread, ex- tending from the Weser to the Delta of the Rhine, and occupying the countries now called West- phalia, Friesland, Holland, and probably a part of Belgium. Their precise limits are not fixed, but, it seems, their gradual encroachments on the con- tinent had brought them from the Baltic to the neighbourhood of the British Channel, when they embraced, as it were, our south-eastern coast. From the very close resemblance the old Frisick dialect bears to the Anglo-Saxon, a recent writer conjectures that the conquerors of Britain must have come principally from Friesland.* But many known fluxes and refluxes of population took place between the fifth and the twelfth centuries : the Jutes and the Angles, whose language may have been as like that of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors as the old Frisick dialect, were partially dispossessed • Pal!;tave. Hist. Eng. .•i<'^^ Arms AN0 Costume OF THE Tribes ON THE Western Shores OF THE Baltic. nesi<»ned from a Plate in Sir S. Meyrick's "Aucieot Costume oi the British Islands;" and taken by him from soite Danish horni ofgolil 140 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. of their territory in the peninsula of Jutland, and mixed up with newer tribes from Scandinavia, who eventually formed the Danish kingdom, and must have influenced the dialect there, as afterwards in Schlesswig and Holstein. On the other hand, the occupants of the remarkable district of Friesland, where language, manners, usages — where all things seem, even in our days, to retain an ancient and primitive stamp, may, from local situation or other causes, have escaped the intermixture that befel the other Saxons. It is generally admitted that Horsa, Hengist, and their followers, were Jutes, and that the tribe or nation they first called in to partake in the pay and spoils of the Britons, were their neighbours the Angles, from Holstein, and not the Saxons, from Friesland, though the latter soon joined the enterprise, and probably derived some advantage from being nearer than the others to the scene of action. When the conquests of the Romans, in the first century of our era, brought them into contact with the Saxons, they found them as brave as the Bri- tons, but, like the latter people, unprovided with steel blades and the proper implements of war. During the three centuries, however, that had elapsed since then, in their wars with the Roman armies, and their friendly intercourse with the Roman colonies in Gaul and on the Rhine, they had been made fully sensible of their wants, and learned, in part, how to supply them. In their long-continued piratical excursions they had looked out for bright arms and well-wrought steel, as the most valuable article of plunder, and a constant accumulation must have left them well provided with that ruder metal which commands gold. When they appeared in Britain, they certainly felt no want of good arms. Every warrior had his dagger, his spear, his battle-axe, and his sword, all of steel. In addition to these weapons, they had bows and arrows, and their champions fre- quently wielded a ponderous club, bound and spiked with iron, a sort of sledge-hammer, a copy, possibly, from the Scandinavian type of Thor's " mighty hammer." These two weapons, the battle-axe and the hammer, wielded by nervous arms, were the dread of their enemies, and con- stantly recurring images in the songs of their bards, who represent them as cleaving helmets and brains with blows that nothing could withstand. When their depredations first attracted the notice of the Romans, they ventured from the mouth of the Baltic and the Elbe, in crazy little boats ; and shoals of these canoes laid the coasts of Gaul, Bri- tain, and other parts of the empire under contribu- tion. Though larger, the best of these vessels could scarcely have been better than the coracles of the British : they were flat-bottomed, their keels and ribs were of light timber, but the sides and upper works consisted only of wicker, with a covering of strong hides. In the fifth cen- tury, however, their chiules,* or war ships, were long, strong, lofty, and capable of containing each a • Heuce our word Iieet. [Book II. considerable number of men with provisions and other stores. If they had boldly trusted them- selves to the stormy waves of the Baltic, the Ger- man ocean, the British channel, and the Bay of Biscay, in their frail embarkations, they would laugh at the tempest in such ships as these. All their contemporaries speak of their love of the sea, and of their great familiarity with it and its dan- gers. "Tempests," says Sidonius, "which inspire fear in other men, fill them with joy : the storm is their protection when they are pressed by an enemy — their veil and cover when they meditate an attack." This love of a maritime life afterwards gained for some of the northmen the title of Sea- kings. The passion was common to all the Saxons and to the whole Teutonic race ; and a recent historian has suggested that the settlement of so many pirates in England, the natives of every country from the Rhine to the North Cape, may have contributed to cultivate those nautical pro- pensities which form a part of the English cha- racter.* Thus supposing that the Britons retained the arms of the Roman legions — and there is no reason to doubt that they did, though the Roman discipline was lost — their new enemy was as well armed as themselves ; while the Saxons had over them all the advantages of a much greater command of the sea, and could constantly recruit their armies on the continent, in the midst of their warlike brethren, bring them over in their ships, and land them at whatever point they chose. At the period of their invasion of Britain, the Saxons were as rough and uncouth as any of the barbarian nations that overturned the Roman em- pire. Of civilization and the arts, they had only borrowed those parts which strengthen the arm in battle by means of steel and proper weapons, and facilitate the work of destruction. They were still Pagans, professing a bloody faith, that made them hate or despise the Christian Britons. Revenge was a religious duty, and havoc and slaughter a delight to their savage tempers. Their enemies and victims who drew their portraits darkened the shades ; and the Saxons had, no doubt, some of those rude virtues which are generally attached to such a condition of society. The obscurity that comes over the history of Britain with the departure of the Romans, continues to rest upon it for the two following centuries. In the first instance, Hengist and Horsa appear to have fulfilled their part of the engagement upon which they had come over by marching with the Jutes, their followers, against the Picts and Scots, and driving these invaders from the kingdom. Soon after this, if it occurred at all, must be placed the story of the feast given by Hengist, at his stronghold of Thong- caster, in Lincolnshire, to the British King Vortigern, and of the bewitch- ment of the royal guest by the charms of Rowena, the young and beautiful daughter of his entertainer. Rowena's address, as she gracefully knelt and pre- * Sir Jamek Mackintosh, Hist. Eng. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 141 VoKTiGERN AND RowKNA. — Angelica Kuuifinan, seated the wine-cup to the king, Liever Kyning wass heal (Dear king, your health), is often quoted as the origin of our still existing expres- sions, wassail and wassail-cup, in which, however, the word wassail might mean health-drinking, or pledging, although it had never been uttered by Rowena. But as the story goes on, the action and the words of the Saxon maid finished the conquest over the heart of the king which her beauty had begun ; and, from that time, he rested not till he had obtained the consent of her father to make her his wife. The latest writer who has investigated the history of this period, sees no reason to doubt the story of Rowena, and has advanced many in- genious and plausible arguments in proof of its truth.* But, at any rate, it appears that, either from Vortigern's attachment thus secured, or from his gratitude for martial services rendered to him, or from an inability on his part to prevent it, the Jutes were allowed to fortify the Isle of Thanet, and to invite over fresh forces. The natural fertility and beauty of Britain, as well as its disorganization and weakness, must long have been familiar to the pirates on the continent ; and as soon as they got a firm footing in the land, they conceived the notion of possessing at least a part of it, not as depen- dent allies or vassals, but as masters. The conquest of the whole was probably an after-thought, which did not suggest itself till many generations had passed away. The sword was soon drawn between the Britons and their Saxon guests, who, there- • Britannia after the Romans, VP- ■12. 62. Sec. upon, allied themselves with their old friends the Scots and Picts, to oppose whom they had been invited by Vortigern. That unfortunate king is said to have been deposed, and his son Vortimer elected in his stead. A partial and uncertain league was now formed between the Roman faction and the Britons ; and several battles were fought by their united forces against the Saxons. In one of these engagements, Vortigern is said to have commanded tlie Britons. Then, after a time, the two nations, according to the story com- monly told, agreed to terminate their contention ; and a meeting was held, at which the chief per- sonages of both were mixed together in festive en joyment, when, suddenly, Hengist, exclaiming to his Saxons, Nimed eure seaxas (Unsheath your swords), they pulled forth each a short sword or knife, which he had brought with him concealed in his hose, and slew all the Britons present, Vorti- gern only excepted. This story, too, has been treated as a fiction by most recent writers ; but the same ingenious and accomplished inquirer who has vindicated the historic existence of Rowena, has also argued ably and powerfully in favour of the truth of this other ancient tradition. " The trans- action," he observes, " certainly occurred. It has been vinjustly brought into doubt. The memory of it is generally diflnsed among the British : it is detailed in their Bnits ; it is referred to in their Triads as a notorious event ; and it is alluded to by their bards, in language of dark and mysterious allusion, which proves its reality better than the 142 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. J^BOOK II. direct narratives do."* ThiswTiter, however, consi- ders Hengist and his Saxons to have been the par- ties plotted against, and, in what they did, to have acted only on the defensive. The bloody congress appears to have taken place at Stonehenge, on a May-day. In the end, Eric, the son of Hengist, remained in possession of all Kent, and became the founder of the Kentish, or first Saxon king- dom, in our island. The conquerors of " Cantwara Land," or Kent, seem to have been Jutes mixed with some Angles ; but now the Saxons appeared as their immediate neighbours. In the year 471, Ella, the Saxon, with his three sons, and a formidable force, landed in the ancient tenitory of the Regni, now Sussex, at or near to Withering, in the isle of Selsey. The Britons, who had certainly recovered much of their martial spirit, made a vigorous resistance ; but they were defeated with great slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, or Andredswold.f According to the old writers, this forest was 120 miles long, and 30 broad; prodigious dimensions, which asto- nish us, although informed that even at the evacu- ation of the country by the Romans, a considerable portion of the island was covered with primeval woods, forests, and marshes. Continuing to re- ceive accessions of force, Ella defeated a confede- racy of the British princes, became master of nearly all Sussex, and established there the second kingdom, called that of the South Saxons. Taking the coast line, the invaders now occupied from the estuary of the Thames to the river Arun ; and to obtain this short and narrow slip had cost them half a century. Cerdic, with another band of Saxons, extended the line westward a few years after, as far as the river Avon, by conquering Hampshire and the Isle of Wight; when he founded Wessex, or the kingdom of the West Saxons. The country to the west of the Hamp- shire Avon, remained for many years longer in possession of the Britons, who now yielded no ground without hard fighting. The next important descent was to the north of the estuary of the Thames, where Ercenwine, about 52*7-9, took possession of the flats of Essex, with some of the contiguous country, and formed the state of the East Saxons. Other tribes carried their arms in this direction as far as the Stour, when there was a short pause, which was not one of peace, for the Britons, driven from the coasts, pressed them incessantly on the land side. About the year 547, Ida, at the head of a formidable host of Angles, landed at Flamborough Head, and leaving a long lapse on the coast between him and the East Saxons, proceeded to settle between the Tees and the Tyne, a wild country, which now includes the county of Durham, but which was then abandoned to the beasts of the forest. This conquest obtained the name of the Kingdom of Bernicia. Other in- vaders, again, stepped in between the Tees and the Humber, but it cost them much time and • Britannia after the Romans, yi. 46. t The forest, or wold, is also called AnderiJa. blood before they could establish their southern frontier on the Humber. Their possessions Avere called the Kingdom of Deira. At the end of the sixth century, a general emigration seems to have t,aken place from Anglen, or Old England ; and under chiefs that have not left so much as a doubt- ful name behind them, the Angles, in two great divisions, called the Southfolk and the Northfolk, lushed in between the Stowe and the Great Ouse and Wash, and gave a lasting denomination to our two counties of Suffolk and Norfolk. Their con- quest was called the Kingdom of East Anglia. The territory thus seized by the East Angles was almost insulated from the rest of the island, by a succession (on its western side) of bogs, meres, and broad lakes, connected, for the most part, by numerous streams. Where these natural defences ended, the East Angles dug a deep ditch, and cast up a lofty rampart of earth. In the middle ages this was called the " Giants' Dyke," a name which was afterwards changed into the more popular de- nomination of the " Devil's Dyke." The marshes upon which it leant have been drained, but the re- markable mound is still very perfect. The other Angles advanced from beyond the Humber, and fresh tribes pouring in from the peninsula of Jut- land and Holstein, the territory now forming Lin- colnshire, between the Wash and the Humber, was gradually but slowly conquered from the Britons, and the only lapse or chasm filled up, that existed in the Saxon line of coast, from the Hampshire Avon to the Northumbrian Tyne. This line was extended as far north as the Frith of Forth by the Angles of Bernicia and Deira, who were united under one sceptre, about the year 61 7, and thence- forward were called Northumbrians. All the western coast from the Frith of Clyde to the Land's End, in Cornwall, and the southern coast from the Land's End to the confines of Hampshire, remained unconquered by the Saxons. Such had been the security of Cornwall, and its indifference to the fate of the rest of the island, that, while the states of the south were falling one by one under the sword of the Saxon invaders, twelve thousand armed Bri- tons left its shore to take part in a foreign war. This curious event took place about tlie year 470, when Gaul was overrun by the Visigoths, and Anthemius, who reigned in Italy, was unable to protect his subjects north of the Alps. He pur- chased or otherwise procured the services of Rio- thamus, an independent British king, whose dominion included, besides Cornwall, parts of Devonshire. The Britons sailed up the river Loire, and established themselves in Berry, where, acting as oppressive and insolent conquerors, rather than as friends and allies, they so conducted themselves, that the people were rejoiced when they saw them cut to pieces or dispersed by the Visigoths.* The breadth of the Saxon territories or their frontiers inland, were long uncertain and wavering, now advancing, and now receding, according to the fortune of war. Under the name of Myrcna-ric, * Jornundes, cap.xlv, Sidonius, lib. iii. Epist. 9. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 143 latinized Mercia* a branch of the Angles, pe- netrating into the heart of the island, founded a kingdom that extended over all the midland counties, from the Severn to the Humber, and that pressed on the borders of Wales. In this district, however, the population was not destroyed or ex- pelled ; the Britons lived mixed up, in about equal numbers, with the Saxons. The Mercian Angles, who, at one period, had spread to the south and east, until they reached the Thames, and included London in their dominion, contributed most exten- sively to the conquest of the island, and formed a kingdom, which was one of the last of the Heptarchy to be overthrown or absorbed. During their power, the Mercians more than once followed the bold mountaineers of Wales, who maintained a constant hostility, right through their country to the shores of St. George's channel and the Irish sea; but they were never able to subdue that rugged land. The other Anglo-Saxons who seized their domi- nions in the ninth and tenth century, were not more successful than the Mercians ; and although, at a later day, some of its princes paid a trifling tribute, and the country was reduced to its present limits of Wales and Monmouthshire, Cambria was never conquered by the Saxons during the six hun- dred years of their domination. t The people of Strathclyde and Cumbria, which territories extended along the western coast from the Frith of Clyde to the Mersey and the Dee, appear to have been almost as successful as the Welsh, and by the same means. Their disposition was fierce and warlike, their hatred to the Saxons inveterate, and, above all, their country was moun- tainous and abounded with lakes, marshes, moors, and forests. Part of the territory of Strathclyde, moreover, was defended by a ditch and a rampart of earth. This work, which is popularly called the Catrail or the March Dykes, can still be traced from the Peel-fell, on the Borders, between Nor- thumberland and Roxburghshire, to Galashiels, a little to the north of Melrose and the river Tweed, and near to Abbotsford.J In our Introduction we have stated the grounds there are for a belief that the Welsh and the occupants of Strathclyde and Cumbria were both the same people, and descended, not from the ancient Britons, but the Picts. But lower down on the western coast, the Saxon arms were more successful. Even there, however, the slowness of their progress denotes the sturdy re- sistance they met with. Nearly two centuries had elapsed since their landing at Thanet before tiiey found their way into Dumnonia or Devonshire, which, together with Cornwall, appears to have remained in the occupation of a great undisturbed • " We are generally told that Mercia signifies the march or fron- tier — a signification peculiarly imi»roper for a central country. MyrrnaMc, m the .\.nglo-Saxon, signifies tin? woodland kingdom, which agrees very closi'ly with Coifani, the latinized name of Ihe old British inhahitants, signifying woodland men or foresters ." — Mac- p\\eriion's Annals of Commerce, i. 237. + A portion of Monmouthsliire was, however, thoroughly cou- qnered a short time before the Norman invasion, when the Saxons occupied the towns of Monmouth, Chepstow, Caerwent, and Caer- leo(i. — Coxf, Monmouthshire. t Gordon's Iter Septentrionale. (Jlialmers's Caledonia. mass of British population. Tlie King Cadwal- lader had resigned his earthly crown and gone to Rome as a pilgrim, in search of a crown of glory; disunited and disheartened, the nobles of the land fled beyond sea to Armorica or Britanny, and, at the approach of the invaders, hardly any were left to oppose them except the peasantry. From the traditions of the country, and the signs of camps, trenches, and fields of battle spread over it, we should judge that the rustics made a vigorous defence.* They made a stand on the river Exe ; but, being routed there, retreated to the right bank of the Tamar, abandon- ing all the fertile plains of Devonshire, but still hoping to maintain themselves in the hilly country of Cornwall, Defeat followed them to the Tamar and the country beyond it, upon which they, in A.D. 647, submitted to the Anglo-Saxons, who by this time may be called the English. In this rapid and general sketch of the Saxon conquest, which, from the dates that have been given, will be perceived to have occupied altogether a space of nearly 200 years, — of which above 100 were consumed even before the eastern and central parts of the island were subdued, and the last of the several new Saxon kingdoms established, a sufficient proof of the obstinate resistance of the Britons, — we have omitted all details of the achievements of the British champions, not ex- cepting even — ' what resounds I n fable or romance of U ther's son," as Milton has chosen to designate the history of the famous King Arthur. It seems impossible to arrive at any certainty with regard to the chronology or particular events of a period the only accounts of which are so dark and confused, and so mixed up and overrun with the most palpable fictions. But as to Arthur, there appear to be the strongest reasons for suspecting that he was not a real but only a mythological personage, the chief divinity of that system of revived Druidism which appears to have arisen in the unconquered parts of the west of Britain after the departure of the Romans, the name being often used in the poetry of the bards as the hieroglyphical representative of the system. This is the most important of the subjects upon which new light has been thrown by the researches of the author of ' Britannia after the Romans,' and his elaborate and masterly examination of the question of Arthur certainly seems to go very near to settle the controversy. " The ' Saxon Chro- nicle,' " he observes upon the several probabilities of the case (the only part of his argument to which we can here advert), " does not suppress the names of islanders with whom the Saxons had to deal, but mentions those of Vortigern, Natanleod, Aidan, Brochvael, Geraint, Constantime of Scots, and Cadwallon. Its author betrays no knowledge of Arthur's existence. The venerable Beda either never heard of it or despised it as a fable." Nor is it mentioned, he goes on to remark, either by • Borluse. Mrs. Bray"s Letters to Southev. 144 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Florence of Worcester or by Gildas. Yet, as he observes elsewhere, "the name of Arthur is so great, that if such a man ever reigned in Britain, he must have been a man as great as the circum- scribed theatre of his actions could permit." And again ; " The Arthurian era was one in the course of which the British frontier receded, and Hants, Somerset, and other districts passed for ever into the hands of the invader. It is not by suffering a series of severe defeats that any Saxon or other man conquers provinces ; it is done by gaining; succes- sive victories. If Arthur lived and fought, he did so with a preponderance of ill success, and with the loss of battles and of provinces. But exagge- ration must be built upon homogeneous truth. For a Cornish prince to be renowned through all coun- tries, and feigned a universal conqueror, he must really have been a hero in his own land and a signal benefactor to it. No man was ever deified in song for being vanquished and losing half a kingdom. But the God of War would retain his rank in any case. . . The God of War would keep his station and preside over valiant acts, whether the results of war were fortunate or not. But the disasters of the British, historically and geographi- cally certain as they are, make it also clear that they were commanded by no king fit for their bards to canonize."* To bring the course of the invaders and the per- manent settlement of the Anglo-Saxons under one point of view, we have glanced from the middle of the fifth to the middle of the seventh century. We may now retrace our steps over part of that dark and utterly confused interval, but in doing so we shall not venture into the perplexing labyrinth pre- sented by the more than half fabulous history of the Heptarchy, or seven separate and independent states or kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons. Modem writers have assumed, that over these separate states there was always a lord paramount, a sort of emperor of England, who might be by inheritance or conquest, sometimes the king of one state and sometimes the king of another. This ascendant monarch is called the Britwalda, or Bretwalda, a Saxon term which signifies the wielder, or domi- nator, or ruler, of Brit (Britain). According to Bede and the Saxon Chronicle, seven or eight of the Saxon princes in irregular succession bore • Britannia after the Romans, pp. 70—141. For a defonce of the historic reality of Arthur, see Turner's Anglo-Saxons, i. 268— 2S3. AuMs *Nr> CosTnuit oif A Saxon Militabt Chict. — Desii^ed from • Saxon Uluminatlon in Bib. Harl. No. 603. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 145 this ])roud title ; and perhaps it may be inferred from Bede's expressions that the other six kings of the island acknowledged themselves the vassals of the Bretwaldas. We are' not thoroughly convinced of any such supremacy (even nominal), and in the real operations of war and government we con- tinually find each state acting in an independent manner, as if separate from all the rest, a proof at least that the authority of the lord paramount was very limited or very uncertain. As, however, their whole history is uninteresting, and as it is easier to trace the reigns of the more marking monarch s than to enter into seven separate dynasties, we shall follow the modem example. Eli,a, the conqueror of Sussex, and the founder there of the kingdom of the South Saxons, — the smallest of all the new states, — was the first Bret- walda, and died, little noticed by the English chro- niclers, about the year 510. After a long vacancy, Ckawlin, king of Wessex, who began to reign about 568, stepped into the dignity, which, how- ever, was contested with him, by Ethelbert, the fourth king of Kent, who claimed it in right of liis descent from Hengist, the brother of Horsa. The dispute led to hostilities ; for long before the Anglo- Saxons had subdued all the Britons, they made fierce wars upon one another. The first example of this practice, which must have retarded their general progress in the subjugation of the island, was set by Ethelbert, who, after sustaining two signal defeats from his rival, and many other re- verses, during the twenty-two years that Ceawlin reigned, acquired the dignity of Bretwalda (a.d. 593) soon after that prince's death. Ceawlin, by the law of the sword, had taken possession of the kingdom of Sussex, and seems to have fought as often against his Saxon brethren as against the Britons. The grand incident under the reign of this, the third Bretwalda, was the conversion of himself and court by Augustine and forty monks, chiefly Italians, who were sent for that purj^ose into Britain, by Pope Gregory the Great. Ethelbert's change of religion was facilitated by the circum- stance of his having espoused a Christian wife shortly before. This was the young and beautiful Bertha, sister or daughter of Charibert, king of Paris, to whom, by stipulation, he granted the free exercise of her religion when she came into the island. Ethelbert's close connexion with the more enlightened nations of the continent, and his fre- quent intercourse with French, Roman, and Italian churchmen, who, ignorant as they were, were in- finitely more civilized than the Saxons, proved highly beneficial to England ; and in the code of laws this prince published before his death, he is supposed to have been indebted to the suggestions and science of those foreigners, although the code has more of the spirit of the old German lawgivers than of Justinian and the Roman jurisconsults. This code was not octroyed, as from an absolute sovereign (a quality to which none of the Saxon princes ever attained), but was enacted by Ethel- VOL. I. bert with the consent of the states of his kingdom of Kent, and formed the first written laws promul- gated by any of the northern conquerors ; the second being the code of the Burgundians, pub- lished a little later ; and the third, that of the Longo- bardi or Ijombards, which was promulgated in their dominions in the north of Italy, about half a century after Ethelbert's code. As king of Kent, Ethel- bert's reign was a very long and happy one ; as Bretwalda, he exercised considerable authority or influence over all the Saxon princes south of the Humber. He died in 616, and was succeeded, as king of Kent, but not as Bretwalda, by his son Eadbald. The Anglo-Saxons at this period were very volatile and fickle in their faith, or very im- perfectly converted to the Christian religion. Pas- sionately enamoured of the youth and beauty of his step-mother, Ethelbert's widow, Eadbald took her to his bed ; and as the Christians reprobated such incestuous marriages, he broke with them altogether, and returned to his priests of the old Teutonic idolatry. The whole Kentish people turned with him, forsook the missionaries and the churches, expelled the Christian bishop, and again set up the rude altars of the Scandinavian idols. Such a relapse as this was not uncommon among the recently converted heathen of other countries, but the sequel is curious, and makes our Saxon ancestors appear like a flock of sheep following the bell-wether. Laurentius, the successor of Augus- tine in the archbishopric of Canterbury, prevailed on Eadbald to put away his step-mother and return to his fold; and no sooner had the king done so than all his subjects returned with him, without murmur or disputation. We have said that Eadbald did not succeed to the dignity of Bretwalda. It appears, however, he made a claim to it, and that the other princes refused their concurrence and obedience. The dig- nity of Bretwalda would seem from this and other instances not to have been obtained by regular and free election, but to have been conceded to him who showed himself ablest to maintain his claim to it by the sword. The three first Bretwaldas, Ella, Ceawlin, and Ethelbert, were Saxons or Jutes, but now the dignity passed to the more powerful Angles in the person of Redwald, about the year 617. Redwald was king of East Anglia, and a kind of a Christian, having been converted some years before by the Bretwalda Ethelbert. But his wife and people were attached to the old idolatry, and, yield- ing to their importunities, he re-opened the temples, taking care, however, to place a Christian altar by the side of the statue of Woden,* in doing which he no doubt hoped to conciliate both parties. During his reign the Scots, who had renewed hostilities in the North, were beaten by the now united and extended Saxon kingdom of Northum- bria. At a later period Redwald himself was hostilely engaged with the Northumbrian king Edilfrid, who is said to have destroyed more Bri- tons than all the other Saxon kings. The armies • Bede. J 146 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. of the Saxon kings met on the banks of the river Idel, in Nottinghamshire, where victory, after a sanguinary engagement, rested on the crest of the Bretwalda. Edilfrid was slain. Edwin, the fifth Bretwalda, succeeded (about 621), in a somewhat irregular manner, both to the dignity of Redwald and the kingdom of Edilfrid ; and so successful was he in his wars and his po- litics that he raised Northumbria to a superiority over all the Saxon kingdoms, thus transferring the ascendancy from the south to the north of the island. After wavering some time between the old national faith of the Saxons and Christianity, Ed- win, as we shall afterwards have to relate more particularly, was converted by the preaching of Paulinus, a Roman missionary, and the influence of his fair wife Edilberga, who was daughter of Ethelbert, the Bretwalda and king of Kent, and a Christian, before she married Edwin. The happiest effects are asserted to have followed the conversion of the hitherto ferocious Northumbrians. " In this time," says one of the old chroniclers, " was so great peace in the kingdom of Edwin that a woman might have gone from one town to another without grief or noyaunce (molestation) ; and for the re- freshing of way-goers, this Edwin ordained, at clear wells, cups or dishes of brass or iron to be fastened to posts standing by the said wells' sides ; and no man was so hardy as to take away those cups, he kept so good justice."* Edwin added the Isles of Man and Anglesey to his Northumbrian dominions, and was so powerful that all the Saxon kings acknowledged his authority, and paid him a kind of tribute. According to some accounts, he also maintained a supremacy over the Scots and Picts. In writing to him, in the year 625, tlie Pope styles Edwin "Rex Anglorum," — king of the Angles, or English. In his person tlie dignity of Bretwalda had a significant and clear meaning ; but he did not hold it very long. About the year 633 Penda, the Saxon prince of Mercia, rebelled • Fabyan. Remains of thk Abhft of Lindisfaexe, Holy Island. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 147 against his authority, and, forming an alliance with Ceadwalla, or Cadwallader, the king of North Wales, he fought a great battle at Hatfield, or Heathfield, near the river Trent, in which Edwin was defeated and slain (a.d. 634). The alliance of one party of the Saxons with the Welsh to fight against another party of Saxons is remarkable, but the case was often repeated. The confe- derate armies between them committed a hor- rible slaughter, sparing neither old men nor children, women, nor monks. Cadwallader and the Welsh remained in the territory of the Nor- thumbrians at York, but Penda marched into Norfolk against the East Angles. This people had embraced the Christian faith some seven years before at the earnest representations of the Bretwalda Edwin, and Sigebert, their old king, had lately renounced his crown to his cousin Egeric, and retired into a monastery. But at the approach of Penda and his pagan host the old soldier left his holy retirement and directed the manoeuvres of his army, with a white rod or wand, his religious scruples not permitting him to resume the sword and battle-axe. Penda was as success- ful here as he had been against the Christians of Northumbria, and both Sigebert and Egeric fell in battle. At this time a struggle for supremacy seems to have existed between the converted and the unconverted Saxons ; and Penda, as head of the latter, evidently aimed at possessing the full dignity of Bretwalda as it had been exercised by Edwin of Northumbria. But the latter prince had laid a broad and sure basis, which enabled the Northumbrians to retain the advantage in their own country, and transmit the dignity to two mem- bers of his family. In the year 634, Oswald, the nephew of Edwin, raised his banner in Northumbria, where Cadwal- lader, after many successes, seemed to despise pre- caution. He and his Welsh were surprised near Hexham, and totally defeated by inferior numbers. On the part of the Anglo-Saxons the battle began with kneeling and prayers ; it ended, on the part of the Welsh, in the death of Cadwallader, whose detestable cruelty, cunning and treachery, prevent us from honouring his bravery or pitying his fall, and in the annihilation of his army, which appears to have assumed the title of " the invincible." Oswald being equally recognized by the two Nor- thumbrian states of Bernicia and Deira, then re- gained all that his uncle Edwin had lost, and soon after most of the Saxons acknowledged him as Bretwalda. He attributed his success to the God he worshipped; and, to show his gratitude, he invited many monks to complete the conversion of the people of Northumbria. The donation of Lindisfarne, or Holy Island, and the magnificent monastery that rose there, testified to his mu- nificence. Churches and monasteries sprung up in other parts of the North, and undoubtedly forwarded civilization, to a certain point, more than any other measures or establishments, Oswald, who repaired Rock of BAMnonouon, with the Castle in its Peesent State. 148 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. to the court of Cynegils, the king of that coimtry, to demand his daughter in marriage, took an active part in the conversion of Wessex ; and when Cyne- gils made a donation of land to Birinus, the Roman missionary and bishop, he confirmed it in his quality of Bretwalda. As Bretwalda, Oswald exercised an authority over the Saxon nations and provinces fully equal to that of his uncle Edwin ; and he is said, beside, although the fact is disputed, to have compelled the Pictish and Scottish kings to acknowledge themselves his vassals. Oswald was slain in battle (a.d. 642) like his uncle Edwin, and by the same enemy, the fierce and still unconverted Penda, king of Mercia, who was as desirous as ever of establishing his own supremacy. But the Nor- thumbrians once more rallied round the family of the beloved Edwin, and on the retreat of the hea- thens from the well-defended rock of Bamborough, they enabled Oswald's brother, named Osvvy, or Oswio, whose wife was the daughter of the great Edwin, to ascend the throne of his father-in-law. His succession, however, was not vmdisputed, nor did his murder of one of his competitors preserve the integrity of the Northumbrian kingdom. About the year 651 it was re-divided into its two ancient independent states ; and whilst Oswy retained to himself Bernicia, the more northern half, Odel- wald reigned in Deira, or the southern part. The disseverance was a fatal blow from which Nor- thumbria never recovered. Oswy had soon to contend with the old enemy of his house, the slayer of his two predecessors. Penda, still anxious to obtain the dignity of Bret- walda, which, as on other occasions, seems to liave been in abeyance for some years, after driving the Christian king of Wessex from his throne (a.d. 652), advanced once more, and this time with fire and sword, into Northumberland. Burning every house or hut he found in his Avay, this savage marched as far as Bamborough. Trembling at his recollections of the past, and his present danger, Oswy entreated for peace, which he at at length obtained by means of rich presents, hostages, and an arrangement of intermarriage. His second son was sent as an hostage to Penda's court. Alch- frid, his eldest son, espoused one of Penda's daughters, and shortly after Penda's son, Peada or Weda, married one of Oswy's daughters, the fair and Christian Alchfreda, who carried four priests in her train, and became instrumental in converting the people of Mercia. " Thus," says Hume, " the fair sex have had the merit of in- troducing the Christian doctrine into all the most considerable kingdoms of the Heptarchy." But as long as Penda was alive in the land there could be no lasting peace. Having desolated East Anglia (a.d. 654), he advanced once more against the Northumbrians, his army being swelled by the forces of thirty vassal kings or chieftains, Welsh or Cumbrians, as well as Saxons. This time gifts and offers were of no avail. Oswy was obliged to fight ; and the hardest fought battle that had been seen for many years before took place between him and Penda not far from York. Here, at last, this scourge of Britain or England (for the first name is now scarcely appropriate) perished by that violent death he had caused so many princes, and thirty of his chief captains were slain with him. Another account is, that of the thirty vassal kings or chiefs who followed him to the field, only one escaped, and that this one was the King of Gwy- nedh, a state in North Wales, which seems to have comprised Cardiganshire, part of Merioneth- shire, and all Caernarvonshire. Twelve abbeys, with broad lands attached, showed the gratitude of Oswy for his unexpected victory ; and, according to a custom which was now obtaining among all the northern conquerors, he dedicated an infant daughter to the service of God, and took her to the Lady of Hilda, who shortly after removed with lier nuns from Hartlepool to the vale of Whitby, where there soon arose one of the most famed and splendid monasteries of the middle ages. But all the pro- ceedings of the victor were not of so pious or tranquil a nature. After Penda's death Oswy rapidly oven'an the country of his old enemies tlie Mercians, on whom he inflicted a cruel vengeance. He attached all their territory north of the Trent to his Northumbrian kingdom ; and Peada, his son-in-law, being treacherously murdered soon after (it is said by his own wife, who was Oswy's daughter), he seized the southern part of Mercia also. It was probably at this high tide of his fortune (a.d. 655) that Osavy assumed the rank of Bretwalda. The usual broad assertion is made, that the Picts and Scots, and the other natives of Britain, acknowledged his supremacy. There was soon, however, another Bretwalda ; the first instance we believe of two such suns shining together in our hemisphere. In 656 the eoldermen or nobles of Mercia rose up in arms, expelled the Northumbrians, and gave the crown to Wulfeue, another of Penda's sons, whom they had carefully concealed from the eager search of Oswy. This Wulfere not only retained possession of Mercia, but extended his dominions by conquests in Wessex and the neighbouring coimtries ; after which he became king of all the " Australian regions," or Bretwalda in all those parts of the island that lie south of the H umber. About tlie same time Oswy was further weakened by the ambition of his eldest son Alchfrid, wlio demanded and obtained a part of Northumbria in independent sovereignty. The sickness called the yellow, or the yellers plague, afliicted Oswy and his enemies alike ; for it began in the south, gradually extended to the north, and at length raged over the whole island with the exception of the mountains of Caledonia. Among the earliest victims of this pestilence were kings, archbishops, bishops, monks, and nuns. As the plague now makes its appearance annually in some of the coun- tries of the East, so did this yellow sickness break out in our island for twenty years. King Oswy, who is generally considered the last of the Bret- Chap. T.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 149 waldas, though others contmue the title to Ethel- bald, king of Mercia, died in 610, during the pro- gress of this fearful disease, but not of it. Although we here lose the convenient point of concentration afforded by the reigns of the Bret- waldas, it is at a point where the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy had merged into three ; for the weak states of Kent, Sussex, Essex, and East Anglia, were now reduced to a condition of vassal- age by one or the other of their powerful neigh- bours ; .and the great game for supreme dominion remained in the hands of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex. We are also relieved fiom any ne- cessity of detail. The preceding narrative will convey a sufficient notion of the wars the Anglo- Saxon states waged with one another ; and as we approach the junction of the three great streams of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex, which were made to flow in one channel under Egbert, we shall notice only the important circumstances that led to that event. Oswy was succeeded in the greater part of his Northumbrian dominions by his son Egfrid, who was scarcely seated on that now tottering throne when the Picts seated between the Tyne and the Forth broke into insurrection. With a strong body of cavalry, Egfrid defeated them in a bloody battle, and again reduced them to a doubtful obedience. Some eight years after, ambitious of obtaining all the power his father had once held, Egfrid invaded Mercia. A drawn battle was fought (a.d. 679) by the rival Saxons on the banks of the Trent, and peace was then restored by means of a holy servant of the church ; but it was beyond the bishop's power to restore the lives of the brave who had fallen, and whose loss sadly weakened both Mercia and Northumbria. In 685 Egfrid was slain in a war with Brude, the Pictish king ; and the Scots and some of the northern Welsh joined the Picts, and carried their arms into England. In the exposed parts of Northumbria the Anglo-Saxons were put to the sword or reduced to slavery, and that kingdom became the scene of wretchedness and anarchy. In the course of a century fourteen kings ascended the throne in a manner as irregular as their descent from it was rapid and tragical. Six were murdered by their kinsmen or other competitors, five were expelled by their subjects, two became monks, and one only died with the crown on his head. Although exposed, like all the Anglo-Saxon states, to sanguinary revolutions in its government, Mercia, the old rival of Northumbria, for a consi- derable period seemed to rise on the decline of the latter, and to bid fair to be the victor of the three great states. After many hardly-contested battles the kings of Wessex were reduced to serve as vassals, and by the year 737 Ethelbai,d, the Mtrcian king, ruled with a paramoimt authority over all the country south of the Humber, with the exception only of Wales. But five years after the vassal state asserted its independence, and in a great battle at Burford, in Oxfordshire, victory declared for the Golden Dragon, the standard of Wessex, Between the years 757 and 794 tlie superiority of Mercia was successfully re-asserted by King OfTa, who, after subduing parts of Sussex and Kent, invaded Oxfordshire, and took all that part of the kingdom of Wessex that lay on the left of the Thames. Then turning his arms against the Welsh, he drove the kings of Powis from Peng- wern (now Shrewsbury) beyond the river Wye, and planted strong Saxon colonies between that river and the Severn. To secure these con- quests and protect his subjects from the inroads and forays of the Welsh, he resorted to means that bear quite a Roman character. He caused a ditch and rampart to be drawn all along the frontier of Wales (a line measuring 100 miles), beginning at Basingwerke in Flintshire, not far from the mouth of the Dee, and ending on the Severn near Bristol. There are extensive remains of the work, which the Welsh still call " Clawdh Offa," or OfFa's Dyke. But the work was scarcely finished when the Welsh filled up part of the ditch, broke through the rampart, and slew many of OfFa's soldiers while they were pleasantly en- gaged in celebrating Christmas. Offa the Ter- rible, as he was called, took a terrible vengeance. He met the mountaineers at Rhuddlan, and en- countered them in a battle there, in which the king of North Wales, and the pride of the Welsh youth and nobility, were cut to pieces. The pri- soners he took were condemned to the harshest con- dition of slavery. Master of the south, it is said that he now compelled the North vmibrians beyond the Humber to pay him tribute ; but the year is not mentioned, and the fact is not very clear. Ten years of victory and conquest, say his monkish eulogists, neither elated him nor swelled him with pride; " yet," adds one of them, " he was not negligent of his regal state ; for that, in regard of his great pre- rogative, and not of any pride, he first instituted and commanded, that even in times of peace, himself, and his successors in the crown, should, as they passed through any city, have trumpeters going and sounding before them, to show that the presence of the king should breed both fear and honour in all who either see or hear him.* " We would forgive him the trumpets, cracked and out of tune as they might be ; but OfFa, in reality, had the worst kind of pride — the most insatiable ambi- tion ; and he was guilty of a series of cruel and treacherous murders that makes the heart shudder, even in the midst of these barbarous annals, where almost every alternate page is soaked through and through with blood. William of Malmesbury declares he is at a loss to determine whether the merits or crimes of this prince preponderated ; but as OfFa was a most munificent benefactor to the church, the monks in general (the only historians of those times) did not partake of this scruple, and praised him to excess. As a sovereign, however, OfFa had indisputable and high merits, and the • The Ligger Book of St. Alban's, as quoted iu Speed's Chro- nicles. 150 HISTORY OF ENGLAND, [Book 11. country made some progress under his reign and by his example. He had some taste for the ele- gancies of life and the fine arts ; he built a palace at "Tamworth Town," which was the wonder of the age ; and his medals and coins are of much better taste and workmanship than those of any other Saxon monarch.* He maintained an epis- SiLvER Coin of Offa. — From British Museum, tolary correspondence with Charlemagne ; and it is highly interesting, and a consoling proof of pro- gression, to see the trade of the nation and the commercial intercourse between England and France made a subject of discussion in these royal letters. When, towards the close of his reign, his body being racked with disease and his soul with a late remorse, he gave himself up to monkish devo- tion and superstitious observances, there was still a certain taste as well as grandeur in his expiatory donations, and a remarkable happiness of choice (though this is said to have been directed by the accidental discovery of a few bones) in his site for the Abbey of St. Alban's, the most magnificent of all the ecclesiastical edifices he erected. f Accord- ing to some of the old writers, his last warlike exploit was the defeat of a body of Danish invaders ; and it is _ generally allowed that, during the latter part of his reign, a few ships' crews, the precursors of those hordes that desolated England soon after, effected a landing on our coast, and did some mis- chief On the death of OfFa, after a long reign, in the year 195, the great power of Mercia, which his craft, valour, and fortune had built up, and which his energies alone had supported, began rapidly to decline ; and as Northumbria continued in a hope- less condition, Wessex, long the least of the three great rival states, soon had the field to herself. At the time of OfFa's death the throne of Wessex was occupied by Brihtric, or Beortric, whose right was considered very questionable even in those days, when the rule of succession was very far from being settled, Egbert, the son of Alchmund, had a better title but fewer partisans ; and, after a short and unsuccessful struggle for the crown, he fled for his life, and took refuge in the court of OfFa, the Mercian. His triumphant rival, Beortric, then despatched ambassadors into Mercia charged with the double duty of demanding the hand of Ead- burgha, one of Oflfa's daughters, and the head of Egbert. OfFa readily gave his daughter (he could hardly have given a greater curse), but he refused the second request. He, however, withdrew his • Piilgrave Hist. + The present venerable Abbey Church of St. Alban's, which stands on the site of that erected by Offa, was built three centuries later, by William Rufus. A considerable portion of the materials employed are Roman bricks or tiles taken from the ruins of the ancient city of Verulamium, which stood in the neighbourhood. protection from his royal guest, who fled a second time for his life. Egbert repaired to the court or camp of the Emperor Charlemagne, who received him hospitably, and employed him in his armies. During a residence of fourteen or fifteen years on the continent, living chiefly among the French, who were then much more polished than the Saxons, Egbert acquired many accomplishments; and, whether as a soldier or statesman, he could not have found a better instructor than Charlemagne. Ead- burglia, the daughter of OfFa, and wife of Beortric, was a woman of a most depraved character, — incon- tinent, wanton, perfidious, and cruel. When men thwarted her love or otherwise gave her offence, she armed the uxorious king against them ; and when he would not be moved to cruelty, she became the executioner of her own vengeance. She had pre- pared a cup of poison for a young nobleman who was her husband's favourite ; by some inadvertence this was so disposed that the king drank of it as well as the intended victim, and died a horrid death (a.d. 800). According to another version of the story she had filled the bowl expressly for the king, and many of his householders and warriors were poisoned by it. The crime was discovered, and the queen degraded and expelled ; the thanes and men of Wessex decreeing, at the same time, that for the future no king's wives should be called queens, nor suffered to sit by their husbands' sides upon the throne. She also took refuge with Charlemagne, who assigned her a residence in a convent or abbey. But in process of time she began to conduct herself so viciously, that she was turned out of this place of shelter. Some years after her expulsion a woman of foreign mien, and faded beauty, was seen begging alms in the streets of Pavia, in Italy; it was Eadburgha, the widow of the king of the West Saxons, — the daughter of Offa, monarch of all England south of the Humber. It is believed she ended her days at Pavia. As soon as Egbert learned the death of Beortric, he returned from France to Wessex, when the Thanes and the people received him with open arms. The first years of his reign were employed in establishing his authority over the inhabitants of Devonshire and Cornwall ; but he had then to meet the hostility of the jealous Mercians, who invaded Wessex with all their forces. Egbert met them at Elyndome, or Ellandum, near Wilton, in Wiltshire, with an army very inferior in numbers, but in superior fighting condition ; being, to use the expression of one of our quaint old chroniclers, "lean, meagre, pale, and long-breathed," whereas the Mercians were " fat, corpulent, and short- winded." He gained a complete victory, and was soon after enabled to attach Mercia and all its de- pendencies to his kingdom. He established sub- reguli, or under-kings, in Kent and East Anglia ; and, not satisfied with the dominion of the island south of the Humber, he crossed that river, and penetrated into the heart of Northumbria. He invaded that once powerfiil state when anarchy was Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 151 at its height. Incapable of resistance, the Nor- thumbrians made an offer of entire submission (a.d. 825) ; and Eanred, their king, became the vassal and tributary of the great monarch of Wessex. It appears, however, that Egbert granted much milder terms of dependence to the Northum- brians than to any of the rest. Silver Coin of Eqbeht, — From British Museum. Thus, in the first quarter of the ninth century, and three hundred and seventy-six years after the first landing of Hengist and Horsa, was effected what some historians call the reduction of all the kingdoms of the Heptarchy under one sovereign. Egbert, however, did not assume the title of King of England. He contented himself with the style of King of Wessex, and with the dignity and au- thority of Bretwalda. This authority was some- times questioned or despised in more than one part of the kingdom; but counting from the river Tweed to the shores of the British Channel and the extremity of Cornwall, there were none could make head against him ; and during the last ten years of his reign he possessed, or absolutely con- trolled, more territory, not only than any Saxon sovereign that preceded him, but than any that followed him. Even Wales, if not conquered, was at one time coerced and kept in a dependent state. But no sooner had England made some ap- proaches towards a union and consolidation, and the blessings of a regular government, than the Danes or Northmen appeared in force, and began to throw everything into confusion and horror. In the year 832, when Egbert was in the plenitude of his power, a number of these ferocious pirates landed in the Isle of Sheppey, and having pluu- AsMS AND Costume of Danish Wabrioks. Ousignedfrom a Plate ia Sir S. Meyvick's" Ancient Costume of the British Islands:" taken by him from figures on a Danish Bas-relief} and from Mr. Astle's Reliquiary engraved in the " Vetusta Monumenta," 152 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. dered it escaped to their ships without loss or liinderance. The very next year the marauders landed from thirty-five ships, and were encountered by the brave and active Egbert at Charmouth, in Dorsetshire. The English were astonished at the ferocity and desperate valour of these new foes, who, though they lost great numbers, maintained their position for awhile, and then made good their retreat to their ships. Indeed, some accounts state that Egbert's army was defeated in the en- gagement ; that two chief captains and two bishops were slain ; and that Egbert himself only escaped by the covert of night. In crviising along the English coasts, where they frequently landed in small bodies at defenceless places, the robbers of the North formed an acquaintance with the inha- bitants of Cornwall, which ended in an ill-assorted alliance. The rugged promontory which stretches out to the Land's End had never been invaded by the Saxon conquerors of the island until the com- paratively recent period of 641, and even then, as we have shown, the native population there was not much disturbed. As recently as 809 Egbert had invaded their territory, where hz found them in such force and spirit that he lost many of his troops before he could reduce them to a nominal obe- dience. They must even now have been numerous and warlike, for on the stipulated landing in their territory of their Danish allies, in 834, they joined them in great force, and marched with them into Devonshire, where they found many old Britons equally willing to rise against the Saxons who had settled among them. But Egbert was again on the alert. He met them with his well- appointed army at Hengsdown-hill, and defeated them with enormous slaughter. This was the last martial exploit of Egbert, who died in 836, after a long reign. The kingdom he had in a manner built up out of many pieces began to fall asunder almost before his coffin was depo- sited in the church of Winchester. He was suc- ceeded by his eldest surviving son Ethelwulp, one of the first operations of whose government was to give the kingdom of Kent, with its dependencies, Sussex and Essex, in separate sovereignty to his son Athelstane. * He retaiijed Wessex ; but Mercia, which Egbert had subdued, again started into independence ; and thus, when union was becoming more and more necessary, to face an enemv as terrible to the Saxons as the Saxons had Silver Coin of Ethelwulf, • Etlielwulf had been sub-regulus of Kent under his father, but then he was in reality subordinate to Egbert, wlio maintained full authority. It is not quite clear whetherAtheUtaue wag the eldest Bon or the brother of Ethelwulf. been to the Britons, the spirit of disunion, jealousy, and discord assumed a fatal ascendancy. The Scandinavian pirates soon found there was no longer an Egbert in the land. They ravaged all the southern coasts of the kingdoms of Wessex and Kent ; they audaciously sailed up the Thames and the Medway ; and stormed and pillaged London, Rochester, and Canterbury. The idea of the need of a common co-operation at last sug- gested itself, and a sort of congress composed of the bishops and thanes of Wessex and Mercia, was held at Kingsbury, in Oxfordshire (a.d. 851). Some energetic, and for the most part successful measures followed these deliberations. Barhulf, King of Mercia, was defeated and slain ; but Ethelwulf and his son Ethelbald, at the head of their men of Wessex, gained a complete victory over the Danes at Okeley, in Surrey, and achieved such a slaughter as those marauders had never before suflered in any of the several countries they had invaded. Soon after Athelstane, the King of Kent, with Alchere, the Eolderman, defeated the pirates, and took nine of their ships at Sandwich. The West of England also contributed a victory ; for Ceorl, with the men of Devon, defeated the Danes at Wenbury. These severe checks, toge- ther with the disordered state of France, which favoured their incursions in that direction, where they soon laid Paris in ashes, seem to have in- duced the marauders to suspend for awhile their great attacks on England ; but such was the mischief they had done, and the apprehensions they still inspired, that the Wednesday of each week was appointed as a day of public prayer to implore the Divine assistance against the Danes. During the confusion their attacks caused in England, the Welsh many times descended from their mountains, and fell upon the Saxons. Ethel- wulf is said to have taken vengeance for this, by marching through their covmtry as far as the Isle of Anglesey, and compelling the Welsh to acknow- ledge his authority ; but precisely the same stories are vaguely related (as this is) of several Saxon kings, who certainly never preserved any conquest or authority there for any length of time. Ever since their conversion the Saxons of superior condition liad been singularly enamoured of journeys or pilgrimages to Rome ; and besides the prelates who went upon business, many princes and kings, crowned or uncrowned and dethroned, had told their orisons before the altar of St. Peter. Ethel- wulf, whose devotion was fervent, though his sense of some moral duties was languid, now felt the general desire, and, as the island was tranquil, he passed over to the continent (a.d. 853), and, crossing the Alps and the Apennines, arrived at Rome, where he was honouralily received, and tarried nearly one year. On his return, forgetting that he was an old man, he became enamoured of Judith, the fair and youthful daughter of Charles the Bald, king of the Franks, and espoused that princess with great solemnity in the cathedral of Rheims, where he placed her by his side, and caused her to be Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 10G6. 153 crowned as queen. Athelstane, his eldest son, was dead, but Etlielwulf had still three sons of man's estate, — Ethelbald, Ethelbert, and Ethered, besides Alfred, then a boy, who was destined to see his brothers ascend and descend the throne in rapid succession, and to become himself "the Great." From the usual thirst for power, it is probable that, before this French marriage, Ethelbald, who was already intrusted with the government of part of his father's kingdom, was anxious to possess himself of the whole ; but the marriage and the circumstances attending it gave plausible grounds of complaint, and Prince Ethelbald, Adelstane, bishop of Sherborn, Enwulf, earl of Somerset, and the other thanes and men of Wessex that joined in a plot to dethrone the absent king, set forth in their manifesto that he had given the name and authority of queen to his French wife, had seated her by his side on the throne, and " openly eaten with her at the table ;" all which was against the constitution and laws of Wessex, which had for ever abolished the queenly dignity in consequence of the crimes of Eadburgha. It is probable also tliat the favour shown to the boy Alfred had some share in Ethelbald's resentment. Ethelwulf had carried his favourite son with him to Rome, where the Pope anointed him as king with holy oil, and with his own hands. It is more than likely that Alfred had always been destined by his father to fill a minor throne in the kingdom, but this act, and the wonderful estimation the oil of consecra- tion was held in, in those days, especially when administered by the Pontiff of the Christian world, may have induced his brothers to suspect that the Benjamin of the family was to be preferred to them all. A recent historian — an indefatigable searcher into the old chronicles and records of the kingdom — is of opinion that, though the fact is not mentioned in express terms in our ancient his- torians, Osburgha, his first wife, and the mother of his children, was not dead at the time, but merely put away by Ethelwulf to make room for Judith.* In spite of their devotion and zeal for the church, such proceedings were not uncommon among kings in the middle ages ; but if Ethelwulf so acted, the undutifulness of his eldest son, who had a mother's wrongs to avenge, would appear the more excusable. Whatever were their motives and grievances, a formidable faction, in arms, opposed Ethelwulf when he returned to the island with his young bride. Yet the old king had many friends ; his party gained strength after his arrival among them, and it was thought he might have expelled Ethel- bald and his adherents. But the old man shrunk from the accumulated horrors of a civil war waged between father and son, and consented to a com- promise, which, on his part, was attended with great sacrifices. Retaining to himself the eastern part of the kingdom of Wessex, he resigned all the western, which was considered the richer and • According to some of tlie cliionieU-rs, the Quern Osburglia was alive twenty-seven years after Ethelwulfs marriage with Judith, and in 878 repaired to Athelney iu Somersetsliire. the retreat of lier son Alfred. better portion, to Ethelbald. " And this unequal division," says Speed, " gave great suspicion that the revolt was rather groxuided upon ambition than any inclination they had for their laws." Ethel- wulf did not long survive this partition, dying in 857, in the twenty-first year of his reign. Ethelbald then not only succeeded to the whole of his father's kingdom, but to his young widow also ; for, according to the chroniclers, howsoever unwilling he had been that this fair queen should sit in state by his father's side, yet, contrary to all laws both of God and man, he placed her by his own, and by nuptial rites brought her to his sinful and incestuous bed. A tolerably well-grounded supposition that Judith was only twelve years old when Ethelwulf married her, and that their marriage had never been consummated, may diminish our horror ; but such a union could in no sense be tolerated by the Romish Church, which, by means of its bishops in England, at last gahied Ethelbald's reluctant consent to a divorce. According to other old authorities, the marriage was only dissolved by his death, and priests and people generally attributed the shortness of his reign, which did not last two years, to the sinful marriage, which had drawn down God's vengeance. As she is connected by her posterity with many succeeding ages of our history, we must devote a few words to the rest of the chequered career of Judith. Either on her divorce, or at the death of Ethelbald, she retired to France, and lived some time in a convent at Senlis, a few miles to the north of Paris. From this convent she either eloped with, or was forcibly carried off by, Baldwin, the grand forester of Ardennes. Her father, Charles the Bald, made his bishops excommunicate Bald- win for having ravished a widow ; but the Pope took a milder view of the case, and by his me- diation the marriage of the still youthful Judith with her third husband was solemnized in a regular manner, and the earldom of Flanders was bestowed on Baldwin. Judith then lived in great state and magnificence : her son, the second earl of Flanders, espoused Elfrida, the youngest daughter of our Alfred the Great, from whom, through five lineal descents, proceeded Maud, or Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, from whom again de- scended all the subsequent kings of England. Ethelbald was succeeded in the kingdom of Wessex by his brother Ethelbert, who had a short reign, troubled beyond measure by the Danes, who now made inroads in almost every part of the island. He had the mortification to see them burn Winchester, his capital, and permanently establish themselves in the Isle of Thanet, which they made their nucleus, and the key of their conquests, just as the Saxons had done more than four centuries before. This king died in tlie year 866 or 867, and was succeeded by his brother Ethelred, who, in the course of one year, had to fight nine pitched and murderous battles against the Danes. Whilst he was thus busied in resisting the invaders in the south and west parts of the island, the kings and 154 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. chiefs of Mercia and Northumbria wholly with- drew from their covenanted subjection or alliance, and, only thinking of themselves, they gave no timely aid to one another or to the common cause. Thus left to their own resources, the men of Wes- sex maintained a doubtful struggle, at times losing, and at others gaining battles. According to the old writers, the destruction of the Danes was im- mense ; and during the five or six years of Ethel- red's reign there were killed in the field nine yarls or earls, one king, " besides others of the meaner sort without number." But this loss was constantly supplied by fresh forces fi-om the north, who brought as eager an appetite for plunder as their precursors, and whose vengeance became the more inflamed as the number of deaths of their brethren was increased. In most of these conflicts Alfred, who was already far more fitted to command, fought along with Ethelred, the last of his brothers ; and at Aston or Ashenden, in Berkshire, while the king was engaged at his prayers, and would not move with his division of the Saxon army till mass was over, Alfred sustained the brunt of the whole Danish force, and mainly contributed to a splendid victory. The victory of Aston was followed by the defeats of Basing and Mereton; and, soon after, Ethelred died (871), at Whittingham, of wounds received in battle, upon which the crown fell to Alfred, the only surviving and the best of all the sons of Ethelwulf. But, under existing cir- cumstances, the crown was a jewel of no price, and for many years the hero had to fight for territory and for life against the formidable Danes. The piratical hordes called Danes, or Norsemen by the English, Normans by our neighbours the French, and Normanni by the Italians, were not merely natives of Denmark, properly so called, but belonged also to Norway, Sweden, and other coun- tries spread round the Baltic sea. They were off- shoots of the great Scandinavian branch of the Teutons, who, under diff'erent names, conquered and re-composed most of the states of Europe on the downfall of the Roman empire. Such of the Scandinavian tribes as did not move to the south and the west to establish themselves permanently in fertile provinces, but remained in the barren and bleak regions of the north, devoted themselves to piracy as a profitable and honourable profession. The Saxons, then scattered along the south of the Baltic, did this in the fourth and fifth centuries, and now, in the ninth century, they were becoming the victims of their old system, carried into practice by their kindred the Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, and others. All these people were of the same race as the Saxons, being an after-torrent from the same Scandinavian fountain-head ; and though time, and a change of country and religion on the part of the Anglo-Saxons had made some difference between them, the common resemblance in phy- sical appearance, language, and other essentials, was still strong. It is indeed remarkable that the three different conquests of England made in the course of six centuries, were all the work of one race of men, bearing different names at different epochs ; for the Normans of the eleventh century were called Danes in the ninth, and were of the same stock as the Danes and Saxons they subdued in England. A settlement of 200 years in France, and an intermixture with the people of that coun- try, had wonderfully modified the Scandinavian character, but still the followers of William the Con- queror had a much greater affinity with the Danes and Anglo-Saxons than is generally imagined. Hume and other historians are of opinion that the remorseless cruelties practised by Charlemagne from the year 7*72 to 803, upon the Pagan Saxons settled on the Rhine and in Germany, were the cause of the fearful reaction and the confirmed idolatry of that people.* There can be little doubt that this was partly the case; and it is a well- established fact that the Northmen or Normans made the imbecile posterity of Charlemagne pay dearly for their father's cruelty. Retreating from the arms, the priests, and the compulsory baptisms of this conqueror, many of these Saxons fixed their homes in the peninsula of Jutland, which had been nearly evacuated three centuries before by the Jutes and Angles who went to conquer England. A mixed population, of which the Jutes formed the larger portion, had, however, grown up in the in- terval on that peninsula, and, as they were uncon- verted, they were inclined to give a friendly reception to brethren suffering in the cause of Woden. The next step was obvious, and in the reprisals made on the French coasts, which were ravaged long before those of England were touched, the men of Jut- land were probably joined by many of their neigh- bours from the mouth of the Baltic, the islands of Zeland, Funen, and the islets of the Cattegat. All these might probably be called Danes ; but there are reasons for believing that the invaders of our island, under Alfred and his predecessors, were chiefly Norwegians and not Danes; and that the real Danish invasions, which ended in final con- quest, were not commenced until nearly a century later. Our old chroniclers, who applied one ge- neral name to all, call Rollo " the Ganger," one of the most formidable of our invaders, a Dane, and yet it is well ascertained that he was a Norwegian nobleman. It is difficult, however, and not very important, to distinguish between two nations speaking the same language and having the same manners and pursuits. All the maritime Scan- dinavian tribes, from Jutland to the head of the Baltic, — from Copenhagen nearly to the North Cape, — were pirates alike ; and the fleet that sailed from the coasts of Norway would often be mixed with ships from Jutland and Denmark, and vice versa. Moreover, on certain great occasions, Avhen their highest numerical force was required, the " Sea-kings," the leaders of these hordes, were known to make very extensive leagues. • Charlemagne massacred the Saxons by thousands, even after they liad laid down their arms. The alternative he offered was death or a Christian baptism. Those who renounced their old gods, or pretended to do so, he sent in colonies into the interior of France. Some were even hurried into Italy. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 155 In their origin the piratical associations of the Northmen partook somewhat of the nature of our privateering companies in war-time, but still more closely resembled the associations of the Corsairs of the Barbary coast, who, crossing the Medi- terranean as the Danes and Norwegians did the German Ocean and the British Channel, for many ages plundered every Christian ship and country they could approach. The governments at home, such as they were, licensed the depredations, and partook of the spoils, having, as it seems, a re- gularly fixed portion allotted them after every suc- cessful expedition. Like the Saxons we have de- scribed, the Danes, the Norwegians, and all the Scandinavians were familiar with the sea and its dangers, and expert mariners. Every family had its boat or its ship, and the younger sons of the noblest of the land had no other fortune than their swords and their chiules (keels). With these they fought their way to fame and fortune, or perished by the tempest or battle, which were both considered most honourable deaths. All the males were practised in the use of arms from their in- fancy, and the art of war was cultivated with more success than by any nation in Europe. The as- tonishing progress of the Danes (as they were called) in England, of the Normans in France, and later, in Italy and Sicily, not only prove their phy- sical vigour, their valour and perseverance, but their military skill and address. Their religion and literature (for they had a literature at least as early as the eighth century) were subservient to the ruling passions for war and plunder, or, more pro- perly speaking, they were both cast in the mould of those passions, and stamped with the deep im- press of the national character. The blood of their enemies in war, and a rude hospitality, with a bar- barous excess in drinking, were held to be the incense most acceptable to the god Woden, who himself had perhaps been nothing more than a mighty slayer and drinker. War and feasting were the constant themes of their scalds or bards ; and what they called their history, which is mixed with fable to such a degree that the fragments re- maining of it are seldom intelligible, recorded little else than piracy and bloodshed. Like their bre- thren the Saxons, they were not at one time very bigoted, or very intolerant to other modes of faith, but when they came to England, they were em- bittered by recent persecution, and they treated the Saxons as renegadoes who had forsaken the faith of their common ancestors to embrace that of their deadly enemies. This feeling waa shown in their merciless attacks on priests, churches, monasteries, and convents. With good steel arms the Danes were abundantly provided. Their weapons seem t() have been much the same as those used by the Salmons at their in- vasion of the island, but the Scandinavian mace and battle-axe were still more conspicuous, particularly a double-bladed axe. " To shoot well with the bow " was also an indispensable qualification to a Danish warrior; and as the Saxons had totally neglected archery, it should seem the English were indebted to the conquest, and intermixture with them, of the Danes for the high fame they after- wards enjoyed as bowmen. They had great skill in choosing and fortifying the positions they took up. Wherever a camp was established, a ditch was dug, and a rampart raised with extraordinary rapidity ; and all the skill and bravery of the Saxons were generally baffled by these intrench- ments. Their ships were large and capable of containing many men ; but in most of their ex- peditions they were attended by vessels drawing little water, that could easily run up the creeks and rivers of our island. Many of our rivers, however, must have been deeper in those times, for we con- stantly hear of their ascending such as would not now float the smallest embarkation. They fre- quently drew their vessels on shore, and having formed an intrenchment around them (as Caesar had done with his invading fleet), they left part of their force to guard them, and then scattered them- selves over the country to plunder and destroy. On many occasions they dragged their vessels over- land from one river to another, or from one arm of the sea to another inlet. If they met a superior force, they fled to their ships, and disappeared ; for there was no dishonour in retreat, when they carried off" the pillage they had made. They then suddenly appeared on some other distant or unprepared coast, and repeated the same manoeuvres ; thus, at length, as their num- bers increased more and more, keeping every part of England in a constant state of alarm, and pre- venting the people of one country from marching to the assistance of those of another, lest in their absence their own district should be invaded, and their own families and property fall the victims of the marauders. The father and brothers of Alfred had established a sort of local district militia ; but the same causes of self-interest and alarm con- tinued, and it was seldom that a sufficient force could be concentrated on one point, in time to pre- vent the depredations of the pirates. On some oc- casions, however, these armed burghers and pea- sants, throwing themselves between the Danes and their ships, recovered the booty, and inflicted a fearful vengeance j quarter was rarely given to the defeated invaders. For a considerable time, the Danes carefully avoided coming to any general en- gagement; for, like the Picts and Scots of old, their object was merely to make forays, and not conquests and settlements. Their success, with the weakness and divisions of England, gradually enlarged their views. They brought no horses with them ; but as cavalry was necessary to scour the country, and an important component of an armed force, they seized and mounted all the horses they could catch ; and as their operations extended in-land, their first care was to provide themselves with those animals, for the procuring of which they would promise neutrality or an exemp- tion from plunder, to the people or districts that furnished them. Thus, on one occasion, the men 156 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IT, of East Anglia mounted the faithless robbers, who rushed upon the men of Mercia, vowing they would not injure the hor^e-lenders. But no promises or vows were regarded, — no treaty was i<ept sacred by the Danes, who had always the ready excuse (when they thought fit to m.ake one), that the peace or truce was broken by other bands, over whom those who made the treaty had no control. Thus, when tlie men of Kent resorted to the fatal expedient of oflering money for their forbearance, the Danes concliided a treaty, took the gold, and, breaking from their permanent head-quarters in the Isle of Thanet, ravaged the whole of their country shortly after. The old writers continually call them "truce-breakers;" and the Danes well deserved the name. We need not follow the gradual development of this sanguinary story, nor trace, step by step, how the Danes established themselves in the island. It will he enough to show their posses- sions and power on the accession of Alfred to the degraded throne. They held the Isle of Thanet, which gave them the command of the river Thames and the coasts of Kent and Essex ; they had thoroughly ovenun or conquered all Northumbria, from the Tweed to the Humber j they had planted strong colonies at York, which city, destroyed during the wars, they rebuilt. South of the Hum- ber, with the exception of the Isle of Thanet, their iron grasp on the soil was less sure, but they had desolated Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Cam- bridgeshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk; and, with num- bers constantly increasing, they ranged through the whole length of the island, on this side the Tweed, with the exception only of the western counties of England, and had established fortified camps be- tween the Severn and the Thames. The Anglo- Saxon standard had been gradually retreating to- wards the south-w^estern corner of our island, which includes Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, and which was now about to become the scene of Alfred's most romantic adventures. For awhile, the English expected the arrival of their foes during the spring and summer months, and their depar- Arms and Costume of ax ANOi.o-SAxoN Kino and Aiuioun-liKARr.B. Dosiyucil liom a Saxon lUumiuated MS. Cotton Lib. Claudius B. IV. Chap L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 157 ture at; the close of autumn ; but now a Danish army liad wintered seven years in the land, and there was no longer a hope of the blessing of their ever departing from it. But Alfred, the saviour of his people, did not despair, even when worse times came : he calmly abode the storm over Avhich his valour, but still more his prudence, skill, and wisdom finally tri- umphed. Though only tvv^enty-three years of age, he had been already tried in many battles. He had scarcely been a month on the throne, when his army, very inferior in force to that of the Danes, was forced into a general engagement at Wilton. After fighting desperately through a great part of the day, the heathens fled ; but seeing the fewness of those who pursued, they set themselves to battle again, and got the field. Alfred was absent at the time, and it is probable his army was guilty of some imprudence; but the Danes suffered so seriously in the battle of Wilton, that they were fain to conclude a peace with him, and evacuate his kingdom of Wessex, which they hardly touched again for three years. The invading army with- drew in the direction of London, in which city they passed the winter. In the following spring, having been joined in London by fresh hosts, both from Northumbria and from their own country, they marched into Lyndesey, or Ijincolnshire, robbing and burning the towns and villages as they went, and reducing the people, whose lives they spared, to a complete state of slavery. From Lincolnshire they marched to Derbyshire, and wintered there at the town of Repton. The next year (a.d. 875) one army under Half- den, or Halfdane, was employed in settling Nor- thumbria, and in waging war with that probably mixed population that still dwelt in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Galloway, or what was called the kingdom of Strathclyde. They now came into hostile collision with the Scots, who were fijrced to retreat beyond the Friths of Clyde and Forth. Halfdane then divided the mass of the Northum- brian territory among his followers, who, settling among the Anglo-Saxons there, and, intermaiTying with them, became, in the course of a few genera- tions, so mixed as to form almost one people. It is not easy, from the vagueness of the old writers, to fix limits; but this fusion was probably felt strongest along our north-eastern coast between tlie Tees a^d the Tweed, where some Danish peculi- arities are still detected among the people. While Halfdane was pursuing these measures in the north, a still stronger army, commanded by three kings, marched upon Cambridge, which they fortified and made their winter-quarters. By this time the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Nortlumibria, Mercia, and East Anglia, were entirely obliterated, and the contest lay between the Danes and Alfred's men of Wessex. At the opening of the year 8*76, the host that had wintered in Cambridge took to their ships, and, re- solving to carry the war they had renewed into the heart of Wessex, tb.ey landed on the coast of Dor- setshire, surprised the castle of Wareham, and scoured the neighbouring country. But in the in- terval of the truce, Alfred's mind had conceived an idea which may be looked upon as the embryo of the naval glory of England. After their establish- ment in our island, the Saxons, who, at their first coming, were as nautical a people as the Danes, imprudently neglected sea affairs ; but, in his pre- sent straits, Alfred saw the advantages to be de- rived from the employment of ships along the coast, where they might either prevent the landing of an enemy, or cut off their supplies and reinforcements, which generally came by sea, and as frequently from the continent as elsewhere. The first flotilla he set afloat was small and almost contemptible ; but in its very first encounter with the enemy, it proved victorious, attacking u Danish squadron of seven ships, one of which was taken, the rest put to flight. This happened immediately after the surprise of Wareham ; and when, in a few days, the Danes agreed to treat for peace, and evacmite the territory of Wessex, the consequences of the victory were magnified in the eyes of the people. In concluding this peace, after the Danish chiefs or kings had sworn by their golden bracelets — a most solemn form of oath with them — Alfred, who was not above all the superstitions of his age, insisted that they should swear upon the relics of some Christian saints.* The Danes swore by both, and the very next night fell upon Alfred as he was riding with a small force, and suspecting no mis- chief, towards the town of Winchester. The king had a narrow escape ; the horsemen who attended him were nearly all dismounted and slain, and, seizing their horses, the Danes galloped off in the direction of Exeter, whither, as they were no doubt informed, another body of their brethren were pro- ceeding, having com.e round by sea, and landed o,t the mouth of the Exe. Their plan now was to take Alfred in the rear of his strong-hold in the west of England, and to rouse again the people of Cornwall against the Saxons. A formidable Da- nish fleet sailed from the mouth of the Thames to reinforce the troops united in Devonshire; but Alfred's infant navy, strengthened by some new vessels, stood ready to intercept it. A storm which arose, caused the wreck of half the Danish ships on the Hampshire coast; and when the others aiTived tardily and in a shattered condition, they were met by the Saxon fleet that blockaded the Exe, and entirely destroyed, after a gallant action. Before this, his second sea victory, Alfred had come up with his land forces, and invested Exeter ; and King Guthrun, the Dane, who held that town, on learning the destruction of his fleet, capitidated, gave hostages and oaths, and marched with his northmen from Exeter and the kingdom of Wessex into Mercia. Alfred had now felt the value of the fleet he had created, and which, weak as it was, maintained his cause on the sea during the retreat to which he was now about to be condemned. The crews of these • 4.sser, 28. 158 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. ships, however, must have been oddly constituted ; for, not finding English mariners enough, he en- gaged a number of Friesland pirates or rovers to serve him. These men did their duty gallantly and faithfully. It is curious to reflect, that they came from the same country which ages before had sent forth many of the Angles to the conquest of Britain ; and they may have felt even at that dis- tance of time a strong sympathy with the Anglo- Saxon adherents of Alfred. The reader has already weighed the value of a Danish treaty of peace. Guthrun had no sooner refreated from Exeter, than he began to prepare for another war ; and this he did with great art, and by employing all his means and influence ; for he had learned to appreciate the qualities of his enemy, and he was himself the most skilful, steady, and persevering of all the in- vaders. He fixed his head-quarters at no greater distance from Alfred than the city of Gloucester, around which he had broad and fertile lands to dis- tribute among his warriors. His fortunate raven attracted the birds of rapine from every quarter ; and when everything was ready for a fresh incur- sion into the west, he craftily proceeded in a new and unexpected manner. A winter campaign had hitherto been unknown among the Danes, but on the first day of January, 8^8, his choicest warriors received a secret order to meet him on horseback, at an appointed place. Alfred was at Chippenham, a strong residence of the Wessex kings. It was the feast of the Epiphany, or Twelfth-night, and the Saxons were probably celebrating the festival, when they heard Guthrun and his Danes were at the gates. Surprised thus, by the celerity of an overwhelming force, they could offfer but an inefi'ec- tual resistance. Many were slain ; the foe burst into Chippenham, and Alfred escaping with a little band, retired, with an anxious mind, to the woods and the fastnesses of the Moors. As the story is generally told, the king could not make head against the Danes ; but other accounts state that he imme- diately fought several battles in rapid succession. We are inclined to the latter belief, which renders the broken spirits and despair of the men of Wessex more intelligible ; but all are agreed in the facts that, not long after the Danes stole into Chippen- ham, they rode over the kingdom of Wessex, where no army was left to oppose them; that num- bers of the population fled to the Isle of Wight and the opposite shores of the continent, while those who remained tilled the soil for their hard taskmasters, the Danes, whom they tried to conciliate with pre- sents and an abject submission. The brave men of S()merset alone retained some spirit, and continued, in the main, true to their king ; but even in their country, where he finally sought a refuge, he was obliged to hide in fens and coverts, for fear of being betrayed to his powerful foe Guthrun. Near the confluence of the rivers Thone and P arret, there is a tract of country still called Athelney, or the Prince's Island. The waters of the little rivers now flow by corn-fields, pasture-land, a farm-house, and a cottage; but in the time of Alfred, the whole tract was covered by a dense wood, the secluded haunt of deer, wild boars, wild goats, and other beasts of the forest. It has now long ceased to be an island ; but in those days, when not washed by the two rivers, it was insulated by bogs and inundations, which could only be passed in a boat. In this secure lurking- place the king abode some time, making himself a small hold or fortress there. For sustenance, he and his few followers depended upon hunting and fishing, and the spoil they could make by sudden and secret forays among the Danes. From an ambiguous expression of some of the old writers, we might believe he sometimes plundered his own subjects ; and this is not altogether improbable, if we consider his pressing wants and the necessity under which he lay, of concealing who he was. This secret seems to have been most scrupulously kept by his few adherents, and to have been main- tained, on his own part, with infinite patience and forbearance. A well-known story, endeared to us all by our earliest recollections, is told by his cotemporary and bosom friend, the monk Asser; it is repeated by all the writers who lived near the time, and may safely be considered as authentic as it is interesting. In one of his excursions he took refuge in the humble cabin of a swineherd, where he stayed some time. On a certain day, it hap- pened that the wife of the swain prepared to bake her loudas, or loaves of bread. The king, sitting at the time near the hearth, was making ready his bow and arrows, when the shrew beheld her loaves burning. She ran hastily and removed them, scolding the king for his shameful negligence, and exclaiming, " You man ! you will not turn the bread you see burning, but you will be glad enough to eat it." " This unlucky woman," adds Asser, " little thought she was talking to the King Alfred." From his all but inaccessible retreat in Athelney, the king maintained a correspondence with some of his faithful adherents. By degrees, a few bold warriors gathered round him in that islet, which they more strongly fortified, as a point upon which to retreat in case of reverse; and between the Easter and Whitsuntide following his flight, Alfred saw hopes of his emerging from obscurity. Ac- cording to some of the superstitious old chroniclers, these hopes were first raised by a supernatural in- tervention. We have passed in silence over the miracles and marvels that swarm in all these ages, but the following is a good trait of the times, and a touching picture of Alfred's destitution and bene- volence. The incident is thus related by an old writer : "• Upon a time, when his company had de- parted from him in search of victuals to eat, and he for pastime was reading on a book, a poor pilgrim came to him, and asked his alms, in God's name. The king lifted vip his hands to heaven, and said, ' I thank God of his grace that he visiteth his poor man this day by another poor man, and vouch- safeth to ask of me that which he hath given me.' Then the king anon called his servant, that had Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 159 but one loaf and a very little wine, and bade him give the half thereof unto the poor man, who re- ceived it thankfully, and suddenly vanished from his sight, so that no step of him was seen on the fen or moor he passed over ; and also what was given to him by the king, was left there even as it had been given unto him. Shortly after, the com- pany returned to their master, and brought with them great plenty of fish that they had then taken. The night following, when the king was at his rest, there appeared to him one in a bishop's wede, and charged him that he should love God, and keep justice, and be merciful to the poor men, and re- verence priests ; and said, moreover, ' Alfred ! Christ knoweth thy will and conscience, and now will make an end of thy sorrow and care ; for to- morrow strong helpers shall come to thee, by whose help thou shalt subdue thine enemies.' ' Who art thou?' said the king. ' I am St. Cuthbert,' said he ; ' the poor pilgrim that yesterday was here with thee, to whom thou gavest both bread and wine. I am busy for thee and thine ; wherefore have thou mind hereof when it is well with thee.' Then Alfred, after this vision, was well comforted, and showed himself more at large." To descend to more sober history. The men of Alfbed and the Pilobim. — B. West. Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Hamp- shire began to flock in ; and, with a resolute force, Alfred was soon enabled to extend his operations against the Danes. In the interval, an important event in Devonshire had favoured his cause. Hubba, a Danish king or chief of great renown, in attempt- ing to land there, was slain, with eight or nine hun- dred of his followers ; and their magical banner, a raven, which had been embroidered in one noon-tide by the hands of the three daughters of the great Lod- broke, fell into the hands of the Saxons. Soon after, receiving the welcome news at Athelney, the king determined to convert his skirmishes and loose partisan warfare into more decisive operations. Previously to this, however, he was anxious to know the precise force and condition of the army- which Guthrun kept together ; and, to obtain tliis information, he put himself in great jeopardy, trust- ing to his own resources and address. He assumed the habit of a wandering minstrel, or gleeman, and with his instruments of music in his hands, gained a ready entrance into tlie camp and the tents and pavilions of the Danes. As he amused these idle warriors with songs and interludes, he espied all their sloth and negligence, heard much of their councils and plans, and was soon enabled to return to his friends at Athelney with a full and satisfactory account of the state and habits of that army. Then secret messengers were sent to all quarters, requesting the trusty men of Wessex to f am i IGO HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book 1 1. meet in arms at Egbert's stone, on the east of Sel- wood Forest.* The summons was obeyed, though most knew not the king had sent it ; and when Alfred appeared at the place of rendezvous, he was received with enthusiastic joy — the men of Hamp- shire, and Dorset, and Wilts rejoicing as if he had been risen from death to life. In the general battle of Ethandune which ensued (seven weeks after Easter), the Danes were taken by surprise, and thoroughly beaten. Alfred's concealment, count- ing from iiis flight from Chippenham, did not last above five months. It is reasonably supposed that the present Yat- ton, about five miles from Chippenham, is the re- presentative of Ethandune, or Assandune ; but that the battle was fought a little lower on the Avon, at a place called " Slaughter-ford," where, according to a tradition of the country people, the Danes suffered a great slaughter. Guthrun re- treated with the mournful residue of his army to a fortified position. Alfred followed him thither, cut off" all his communications, and established a close blockade. In fourteen days, famine obliged the Danes to accept the conditions offered by the Saxons. These conditions were liberal; for, though victorious, Alfred could not ho])e to drive the Danes by one, nay, nor by twenty battles, out of England. They were too numerous, and had secured them- selves in too considerable a part of the island. The first points insisted upon in the treaty were, that Guthrun should evacuate all Wessex, and submit to be baptized. Without a conversion to Chris- tianity, Alfred thought it impossible to rely on the promises or oaths of the Danes ; he saw that a change of religion would, more than anything else, detach them from their savage Scandinavian bre- thren across the seas ; and as he was a devout man, with priests and monks for his counsellors, religion, no doubt, was as precious to him as policy, and he was moved with an ardent hope of propagating and extending the Christian faith. Upon Guthrun's ready acceptance of these two conditions, an extensive cession of territory was made to him and the Danes ; and here the great mind of Alfred probably contemplated the gradual fusion of two people — the Saxons and the Danes — who differed in but few essentials, and foresaw that the pursuits of agriculture and industry, growing U]) among them, after a tranquil settlement, would win the rovers of the north from their old plunder- ing, piratical habits. As soon as this took place, they would guard the coasts they formerly deso- lated. If it had even been in Alfred's power to expel them all (which it never was), he could have had no security against their prompt return and incessant attacks. There Avas territory enough, fertile though neglected, to give away, without straitening the Saxons. In the most happy time of the Roman occupation, a great part of Britain was but thinly inhabited ; and the fa- mines, the pestilences, the almost incessant wars • Asser,33. The wootl extended from Frome to Biirliam, and was probably much larger at one lime. which had followed since then, had depopulated whole counties, and left immense tracts of land without hands to till them, or mouths to eat the produce they promised the agriculturist. Alfred thus drew the line of demarkation be- tween him and the Danes : — " Let the bounds of our dominion stretch to the river Thames, and from thence to the water of Lea, even unto the head of the same w ater ; and thence straight unto Bedford, and finally, going along by the river Ouse, let them end at Watling-street. " Beyond these lines, all the east side of the island, as far as the Huinber, Avas surrendered to the Danes ; and as they had established themselves in Northumbria, that territory was soon united, and the whole eastern country from the Tweed to the Thames, where it washes a part of Essex, took the name of the Dane- larjh, or " Dane-law," which it retained for many ages, even down to the time of the Norman con- quest. The cession was large ; but it should be remembered that Alfred, at the opening of his reign, w^as driven into the western corner of Eng- land, and that he now gained tranquil possession of five, or perhaps ten times more territory than he then possessed.* In many respects, these his mo- derate measures answered the end lie proposed. Soon after the conclusion of the treaty, Guthrun, relying on the good faith of the Saxons, went with only thirty of his chiefs to Aulre, near Athel- ney. His old but gallant and generous enemy, Alfred, answered for him at the baptismal font, and the Dane was christened under the Saxon name of Athelstan. The next w-eek the ceremony was com])leted with great solemnity at the royal town of Wedmor, and after spending twelve days as the guest of Alfred, Guthrun departed (a.d. 878), loaded with presents, which the monk Asser says were viagnijicent. Whatever Avere his inward convictions, or the efficacy and sincerity of his con- version, the Danish prince Avas certainly captivated by the merits of his victor, and ever afterwards continufdthe faithful friend and ally (if not vassal) of Alfred. The subjects under his rule in the Dane- lagh, or " Dane-laAv," assumed habits of industry and tranquillity, and gradually adopted the man- ners and customs of more civilized life. By mu- tual agreement, the laAvs of the Danes were assi- milated to those of the Saxons ; but the former long retained many of their old Scandinavian usages. In the jurisprudence of those days, the life of an Englishman Avas estimated according to his rank, at so many shillings or pieces of coined money ; and now it was agreed that the lives of the Danes should be considered of equal value Avith the lives of the Anglo-Saxons. In other Avords, the same money Avas to be paid in fine by him Avho killed a Dane, as by him Avho slew an Englishman, supposing always the rank of the slain to be equal. The fines payable for all oflfences were determined i Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 161 both in Danish and Saxon monies, to prevent disputes arising from their difference of currency. A wise regulation, considering the recent hos- tilities and implacable hatred that had existed between those forces, forbade all secret inter- course betAveen the soldiery of the Saxon and Danish armies. All sales, whether of vien, horses, or oxen, were declared illegal, unless the purchaser produced the voucher of the seller. This was to put a stop on both sides to the lifting of cattle, and the carrying off of the peasantry as slaves. Both kings engaged to promote the Christian religion, and to punish apostasy. We are not well informed as to the progress the faith made among his sub- jects on Guthrun's conversion ; but it was probably rapid, though imperfect, and accompanied with a lingering affection for the divinities of the Scandi- navian mythology. Alfred's " Jewel,' An ornament of gold, apparenUy intended to hang round the neck, found in Athelney, aud now in the Ashmolean Museum, Ox- ford. Tlie inscription on tiie side here represented, around the female fi<rure holding flowers, is " Aelfred me haet gewercan" (Alfred had me wrought). On the other side is a flower. The workmanship is in a good style. It was about this time, or very soon after Al- fred's breaking up from his refreat at Athelney, and gaining the victory of Ethandune, that, moved by the love of humane letters which distinguished him all his life, he invited Asser, esteemed the most learned man then in the island, to his court or camp, in order that he might profit by his in- structive conversation. The monk of St. David's, who was not a Saxon, but descended from a Welsh family, obeyed the summons, and, according to his own account, he was introduced to the king at Dene, in Wiltshire, by the thanes who had been sent to fetch him. A familiar intercourse followed a most courteous reception, and then the king in- VOL. I. vited the monk to live constantly about Ins person. Tlie vows of Asser and his attachment to his mo- nastery, where he had been nurtured and instructed, interfered with this arrangement ; but, after some delays, it was agreed he should pass half his time in his monastery, and the rest of the year at court. Returning at length to Alfred, he found him at a place called Leonaford. He remained eight months constantly with him, conversing and reading with him all such books as the king possessed. On the Christmas eve following, Alfred, in token of his high regard, gave the monk an abbey in Wiltshire, supposed to be at Amesbury, and another abbey at Banwell, in Somersetshire, together with a rich silk pall, and as much incense as a strong man could carry on his shoulders, assuring him at the same time that he considered these as small things for a man of so much merit, and that hereafter he should have greater. Asser was subsequently pro- moted to the bishopric of Sherburn, and thence- forward remained constantly with the king, enjoy- ing his entire confidence and affection, and sharing in all his joys and sorrows. This rare friendship between a sovereign and suhject continued un- broken till death ; and when the grave closed over the great Alfred, the honourable testimony was read in his will, that Asser was a person in whom he had full confidence. To this singular connexion Alfred and his subjects were, no doubt, indebted for some improvements in the royal mind, which wrought good alike for the king and for the people ; and %ve^ at the distance of nearly a thousand years, owe to it an endearing record of that monarch's personal character and habits. Asser was a sort of Boswell of the dark ages ; and the hero whose private as well as public life he delineated, well deserved so attentive a chronicler. But some time had yet to pass ere Alfred could give himself up to quiet enjoyments, to law-making, and the intellectual improvement of his people. Though Guthrun kept his contract, hosts of ma- rauding Danes, who were not bound by it, con- tinued to cross over from the continent, and infest the shores and rivers of our island. In 879, the very year after Guthrun's treaty and baptism, a great army of Pagans came from beyond the sea, and wintered at Fullanham, or Fulham, hard by the river Thames. From Fulham, this host pro- ceeded to Ghent, in the Low Countries. At this period the Northmen alternated their attacks on England, and their attacks on Holland, Belgium, and East France, in a curious manner, the expedi- tion beginning on one side of the British channel and German Ocean frequently ending on the other side. The rule of their conduct, however, seems to have been this — to persevere only against the weakest enemy. Thus, when they found France sfrong, they fried England j and when they found the force of England consolidated under Alfred, they turned off in the direction of France, or the neighbouring shores of the continent. It is a melancholy fact, that England then benefited by the calamities of her neighbours. In tlie year 880, K 162 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. wiiile the armies of the Northmen were fully em- ployed in besieging or blockading the city of Paris, Alfred took that favovirable opportunity to rebuild and fortify the city of London. Amongst other cities, we are told, it had been destroyed by fire, and the people killed ; but he made it habitable again, and committed it to the care and custody of his son-in-law, Ethelred, earl or eolderman of the Mercians, to whom before he had given his daughter Ethelfleda. Each of the six years imme- diately preceding the rebuilding of London, he was engaged in hostilities ; but he was generally fortu- nate by sea as well as by land, for he had increased his navy, and the care due to that truly national service. In the year 882 his fleet, still officered by Frieslanders, took four, and, three years after (in one fight), sixteen of the enemy's ships. In the latter year (885) he gained a decisive victory over a Danish host that had ascended the Med- way, and were besieging Rochester, having built them a strong castle before the gates of that city. By suddenly falling on them, he took their tower with little loss, seized all the horses they had brought with them from France, recovered the greater part of their captives, and drove them with the sword in their reins to their ships, with which they returned to France in the utmost distress. Alfred was now allowed some breathing ticie, whicli he wisely employed in strengthening his kingdom, and bettering the condition of his people. Instead, however, of tracing these things strictly in their chronological order, it will add to the per- spicuity of the narrative, if we follow at once the warlike events of his reign to their close. The siege of Paris, to which we have alluded, and which began in 886, employed the Danes or Northmen two whole years. Shortly after the heathens burst into the country now called Flanders, which was then a dependency of the Prankish or French kings, and were employed there for some time in a difficult and extensive warfare. A horrid famine ensued in those parts of the conti- nent, and made the hungry wolves look elsewhere for sustenance and prey. England now revived by a happy repose of seven years ; her corn fields had borne their plentiful crops ; her pastures, no longer swept by the tempests of war, were well sprinkled with flocks and herds ; and those good fatted beeves, which were always dear to the capa- cious stomachs of the Northmen, made the island a very land of promise to the imagination of the famished. It is true that of late years they had found those treasures were well defended, and that nothing was to be got under Alfred's present go- vernment without hard blows, and a desperate con- test, at least doubtful in its issue ; but hunger im- pelled them forward ; they were a larger body than had ever made the attack at once ; they were united under the command of a chief equal or superior in fame and military talent to any that had preceded him ; and therefore the Danes, in the year 893, once more turned the prows of their vessels towards England. It was indeed a formidable fleet. As the men of Kent gazed seaward from their clifi's and downs they saw the horizon darkened by it ; — as the winds and waves wafted it forward they counted two hundred and fifty several ships ; and every ship was full of warriors, and horses brouglit from Flanders and France for the immediate mounting of them as a rapid, predatory cavalry. The invaders landed near Ilomney marsh, at the eastern termination of the great wood or weald of Anderida (already mentioned in connexion with an invasion of the Saxons), and at the m.outh of a river, now dry, called Limine. They towed their ships four miles up the river towards the weald, and there mastered a fortress the peasants of the country were raising in the fens. They then pro- ceeded to Apuldre or Appledore, at which point they made a strongly fortified camp, whence they ravaged the adjacent country for many miles. Nearly simultaneously with these movements, the famed Haesten, or Hasting, the skilful commander- in-chief of the entire expedition, entered the Thames with another division of eighty ships, landed at and took Milton, near Sittingbourn, and there threw up prodigiously strong entrenchments. Their past reverses had made them extremely cautious, and for nearly a whole year the Danes in either camp did little else than fortify their posi- tions and scour the country in foraging parties. Other piratical squadrons, however, kept hovering round our coasts to distract attention and create alarm at many points at one and the same time. The honourable and trustworthy Guthnm had now been dead three years ; and to complete the most critical position of Alfred, the Danes settled in the Danelagh, even from the Tweed to the Thames, violated their oaths, took up arms against him, and joined their marauding brethren under Hasting. It was in this campaign, or rather this succession of campaigns, which lasted altogether three years, that the military genius of the Anglo-Saxon monarch shone with its greatest lustre, and was brought into full play by the ability, the wonderful and eccentric rapidity, and the great resources of his opponent Hasting. To follow their operations the reader must place the map of England before him, for they ran over half of the island, and shifted the scene of war with almost as much rapidity as that with which the decorations of a theatre are changed. The first great difficulty Alfred had to encounter Avas in collecting and bringing up sufficient forces to one point, and then in keeping them in adequate number in the field; for the Saxon "fyrd," or levee en masse, were only bound by law to serve for a certain time (probably forty days), and it was indispensable to provide for the safety of the towns, almost everywhere threatened, and to leave men sufficient for the cultivation of the country. Alfred overcame this difficulty by dividing his army, or militia, into two bodies ; of these he called one to the field, while the men composing the other were left at home. After a reasonable length of service those in the field returned to their homes, and those Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 163 left at home took their places in the field. The spectacle of this large and permanent army, to which they had been wholly unaccustomed, struck Hasting and his confederates with astonishment and dismay. Nor did the position the English king took up with it give them much ground for comfort. Advancing into Kent, he threw himself between Hasting and the other division of the Danes : a forest on one side, and swamps and deep waters on the other, protected his flanks, and he made the front and rear of his position so strong that the Danes dared not look at them. He thus kept asunder the two armies of the Northmen, watching the motions of both, being always ready to attack either, should it quit its entrenchments ; and so active were the patrols and troops he threw out in small bodies, and so good the spirit of the villagers and town-folk, cheered by the presence and wise dispositions of the sovereign, that in a short time not a single foraging party could issue from the Danish camp without almost certain de- struction. Worn out in body and spirit, the Northmen resolved to break up from their camps, and, to deceive the king as to their intentions, they sent submissive messages and hostages, and pro- mised to leave the kingdom. Hasting took to his shipping, and actually made sail, as if to leave the well-defended island ; but while the eyes of the Saxons were fixed on his departure, the other divi- sion, in Alfred's rear, rushed suddenly from their entrenchments into the interior of the country, in order to seek a ford across the Thames by which they hoped to be enabled to get into Essex, where tlie rebel Danes that had been ruled by Guthrun would give them a friendly reception, and where they knew they should meet Hasting and his divi- sion, who, instead of putting to sea, merely crossed the Thames, and took up a strong position at Ben- fleet, on the Essex coast. Alfred had not ships to pursue those who moved by water ; but those who marched by land he followed up closely, and brought them to action on the right bank of the Thames, near Farnham in Surrey. The Danes were thoroughly defeated. Those who escaped the sword aiid drowning marched along the left bank of the Thames through Middlesex into Essex ; but being hotly pursued by Alfred, they were driven right through Essex and across the river Coin, when they found a strong place of refuge in the isle of Mersey. Here, however, they were closely blockaded, and soon obliged to sue for peace, pro- mising hostages, as usual, and an immediate de- parture from England. Alfred would have had this enemy in his hand through sheer starvation, but the genius of Hasting and the defection of the Northmen of the Danelagh called him to a distant part of the island. Two fleets, one of a hundred sail, the second of forty, and both in good part manned by the Danes who had been so long, and for the last fifteen years so peacefully, settled in England, set sail to attack in two points and make a formidable diversion. The first of these, which had probably been equipped in Norfolk and Suffolk, doubled the North Foreland, ran down the southern coast as far as Devonshire, and laid siege to Exeter ; the smaller fleet, which had been fitted out in Northumbria, and probably sailed from the mouth of the Tyne, took the passage round Scotland and the extreme north of the island, ran down all the western coast from Cape Wrath to the Bristol Channel, and, ascending that arm of the sea, beleaguered a fortified town to the north of the Severn. Though Alfred had established friendly relations with the people of the west of England, who seem on many occasions to have served him with as much ardour as his Saxon subjects, he still felt Devonshire was a viflnerable part. Leaving, therefore, a part of his army on the confines of Essex, he mounted all the rest on horses, and flew to Exeter. Victory followed him to the west ; he obliged the Danes to raise the siege of Exeter ; he beat them back to their ships with great loss, and soon after the minor expedition was driven from the Severn. The blockade of the Danes in the isle of Mersey does not appear to have been well con- ducted during his absence, and yet that interval was not devoid of great successes : for, in the mean time, Ethelred, eoldcrman of the Mercians and Alfred's son-in-law, with the citizens of London and others, went down to the fortified post at Benfleet, in Essex, laid siege to it, broke into it, and despoiled it of great quantities of gold, silver, horses, and garments ; taking away captive also the wife of Hasting and his two sons, who were brought to London and presented to the king on his return. Some of his followers urged him to put these captives to death, — others to detain them in prison as a check vipon Hasting; but Alfred, with a generosity which was never properly appre- ciated by the savage Dane, caused them imme- diately to be restored to his enemy, and sent many presents of value with them. By this time the untiring Hasting had thrown up another formidable entrenchment at South Showbury, in Essex, when he Avas soon joined by numbers from Norfolk and Suff'olk, from Northumbria, from all parts of the Danelagh, and by fresh adventurers from beyond sea. Thus reinforced, he sailed boldly up the Thames, and thence spread the mass of his forces into the heart of the kingdom, while the rest returned with their vessels and the spoil they had so far made to the entrenched camp at South Showbury. From the Thames Hasting marched to the Severn, and fortified himself at Buttington. But here he was surrounded by the Saxons and the men of North Wales, who now cordially acted with them ; and in brief time Alfred, with Ethelred and two other eoldermen, cut off all his supplies, and blockaded him in his camp. After some weeks, when the Danes had eaten up nearly all their horses, and famine was staring them in the face. Hasting rushed from his entrenchments. Avoiding the Welsh forces, he concentrated his attack upon the Saxons, who formed the blockade to the east of his position. The conflict was ter- rific ; some hundreds (some of the chroniclers say 164 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book TI. thousands) of the Danes were slain in their attempt to break through Alfred's lines ; many were thrown into the Severn, and drowned; but the rest, headed by Hasting, effected their escape, and, marching across the island, reached their entrenchment and their ships on the Essex coast. Alfred lost inany of his nobles, and must have been otherwise much crippled, for he did not molest Hasting, who could have had hardly any horse in any part of liis retreat. Most of the Saxons w-ho fought at But- tington were raw levies, and hastily got together. When Hasting next showed front it was in the neighbourhood of North Wales, between the rivers Dee and Mersey. During the winter that followed his disasters on the Severn he had been again re- inforced by the men of the Danelagh, and at early spring he set forth with his usual rapidity, and marched through the. midland counties. Alfred was not far behind him, but could not overtake him until he had seized Chester, which was then almost uninhabited, and secured himself there. This town had been very strongly fortified by the Romans, and many of the works of those con- querors, still remaining,* no doubt gave strength to Hasting's position, which was deemed too formid- able for attack. But the Saxon troops pressed him on the land side, and a squadron of Alfred's ships, which had put to sea, ascended the Mersey and the river Wirall, and prevented his receiving succour in that direction. Dreading that Chester might become, a second Buttington, the Danes burst away into North Wales. After ravaging part of that country, they would have gone off in tlie direction of the Severn and the Avon, bvit they were met and turned liy a formidal^le royal army, upon which they retraced their steps, and finally marched off to the north-east. They traversed Northumbria, Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, — nearly the whole length of the Danelagh, where they were among friends and allies, and by that circuitous roiite at length regained their fortified post at South Showbury, in Essex, where they wintered and recruited their strength as usual. Earlier next spring tlie persevering Hasting sailed to the mouth of the Lea, ascended that river with his ships, and at or near Ware,t about twenty miles above London, erected a new fortress on the Tjea. On the approach of summer the burgesses of London, with many of their neighbours, who were sorely harassed by this move of the Danes, attacked the stronghold on the Lea, but Avere repulsed with great loss. As London was now more closely pressed than ever, Alfred found it necessary to encamp his army round about the city until the citizens got in their harvest. He then pushed a strong reconnoissance to the Lea, which (far deeper and broader thair now) was covered by their ships, and afterwards surveyed, at great per- sonal risk, the new fortified camp of the Danes. * Some noV.e .irclied ^ixtnivay < liuilt by the Komniis wore staiid'ui!; nlmost entire until a recent pi-rioil, wlien they were laid low l>j » barbarovis decree of the Cheslsr corporation. + Som;- topon;raphers contend that this fortified camp was not at Ware, but at Hertford. His active ingenious mind forthwith conceived a plan which he confidently hoped would end in their inevitable destruction. Bringing up his forces, he raised two fortresses, one on either side the Lea, somewhat below the Danish station, and then dug three deep channels from the Lea to the Thames, in order to lower the level of the tributary stream. So much water was thus drawn oft', that " where a ship," says an old writer, "might sail in time afore passed, then a little boat might scarcely row," — and the whole fleet of Hasting was left aground, and rendered useless. But yet again did that remarkable chieftain break through the toils spread for him, to renew the war in a distant pait of the island. Abandoning the ships where they were, and putting, as they had been accustomed to do, their wives, their children, and their booty under the protection of their friends in the Danelagh, the followers of Hasting broke from their entrenchments by night, and hardly rested till they had traversed the whole of that wide tract of country which separates the Lea from the Severn. Marching for some distance along the left bank of the Severn, they took post close on the river at Quatbridge, which is supposed to be Quatford, near Bridgenorth, in Shropshire. When Alfred came up with them there, he found them already strongly fortified. On our first introducing the Northmen we men- tioned their skill in choosing and strengthening military positions, and the course of our narrative will have made their skill and speed in these matters evident, especially in the campaigns they performed under Hasting, who had many of the qualities that constitute a great general. Alfred was compelled to respect the entrenchments at Quatbridge, and to leave the Danes there undis- turbed during the winter. Li the mean time the citizens of London seized Hasting's fleet, grounded in the Lea. Some ships they burned and destroyed, but others they were enabled to get afloat and con- duct to London, where they were received with exceeding great joy. For full three years this Scandinavian Hannibal had maintained a war in the country of the enemy; but now watched on every side, worn out by con- stant losses, and probably in good part forsaken, as an unlucky leader, both by his brethren settled in the Danelagh and by those on the continent, his spirit began to break, and he prepared to take a reluctant and indignant farewell of England. In the following spring of 897, by which time dissen- sions had broken out among their leaders, the Danes tumultuously abandoned their camp at Quatbridge, and utterly disbanded their army soon after, flying in small and separate parties, in various directions. Some sought shelter among their brethren of the Danelagh, either in Northum- bria, or Norfolk and S^iftblk ; some built vessels, and sailed for the Scheldt and the mouth of the Rhine; while others, adhering to Hasting in his evil fortune, waited until he was ready to pass into France. A small fleet, bearing his drooping raven, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 10G«. 165 was hastily equipped on our eastern coast, and the humbled chieftain, according to Asscr, crossed the Channel, " sine lucro et sine honoi'e" — without profit or honour. It appears that he ascended the Seine, and soon after obtained a settlement on the banks of that river (probably in Normandy) from the weak king of the French. A few desultory attacks made by sea, and by the men of the Danelagh, almost immediately after Hasting's departure, only tended to show the naval superiority Alfred was attaining, and to improve the Anglo-Saxons in maritime tactics. A squadron of Northumbrian pirates cruised off the southern coasts with their old objects in view. It was met and defeated on several occasions by the improved ships of the king. Alfred, who had some mecha- nical skill himself, had caused vessels to be built far exceeding those of his enemies in length of keel, height of board, swiftness and steadiness : some of these carried sixty oars, or sweepers, to be used, as in the Roman galleys, when the wind failed ; and others carried even more than sixty. They differed in the form of the hulk, and probably in their rigging, from the other vessels used in the North Sea. Hitherto the Danish and Friesland builds seem to have been considered as the best models ; but these ships, which were found pecu- liarly well adapted to the service for which he intended them, were constructed after a plan of Alfred's own invention. At the end of his reign they considerably exceeded the number of one hundred sail : they were divided into squadrons, and stationed at different ports round the island, while some of them were kept constantly cruising between England and the main. Although he abandoned their system of ship-building, Alfred retained many Frieslanders in his service ; for they were more expert seamen than his subjects, who still required instruction. After an obstinate engagement near the Isle of Wight, two Danish ships, which had been much injured in the fight, were cast ashore and taken. When the crews were carried to the king, at Winchester, he ordered them all to be hanged. This severity, so much at variance with Alfred's usual humanity, has caused some regret and confusion to historians. One writer says that the Danes do not seem to have violated the law of nations, as such law was then understood, and that, therefore, Alfred's execution of them was inexcusable. Another writer is of opinion that Alfred always, and properly, drew a distinction between pirates and warriors. This line would be most difficult to draw Avhen all were robbers and pirates alike; but the real rule of Alfred's conduct seems to have been this — to dis- tinguish between such Danes as attacked him from abroad, and such Danes as attacked him from the Danelagh at home. On the services and gratitude of the former he had no claim ; but the men of Northumbria, Norf)llc, and Sussex, had, through their chiefs and princes, sworn allegiance to him, had received benefits from him, and stood bound to the protection of his states, which they were ravaging. From the situation they occupied they could constantly trouble his tranquillity; and in regard to them he may have been led to con- sider, after the experience he had had of their bad faith, that measures of extreme severity were allowable and indispensable., The two ships captured at the Isle of Wight came from Northum- bria; and the twenty ships taken during the three remaining years of his life, and of which tlie crews were slain or hanged on the gallows, came from the same country, and the other English lands included in the Danelagh. The excursions of Hasting were accompanied with other calamities ; " so that," to use the words of the chronicler Fabian, " this land, for three years, was vexed with three manner of sorrows, — with war of the Danes, pestilence of men, and murrain of beasts." The horrors of famine, to escape which the Danes had come to England, are not alluded to ; but the pestilence, which is men- tioned by all the chroniclers, carried off vast num- bers, and among them many of the chief thanes or nobles of the Saxons. It seems to have continued some time after Hasting's departure, and then, on its cessation, Alfred enjoyed as much comfort as his rapidly declining health would permit. The intellectual character of this truly great sovereign, his literary productions, his efibrts for promoting the education of his people, his improve- ments in laws and administration, will be noticed in their proper places. But before we descend to the far inferior reigns of his successors, we must select from his biographers a few personal details, and cull a few of those flowers which adorned his reign, and which still give it a beauty and an interest we look for in vain elsewhere during those barbarous ages. Historians have generally attached great conse- quences to his travels on the continent through France and Italy, and, mere child as he was, it is not improbable that Alfred's mind received im- pressions in those countries that were afterwards of benefit to himself and his kingdom. On the first of these journeys to Rome, Alfred was only in his fifth year, but on the second, when he was accom- panied by his father, and anointed by the Pope, he was eight years old. On this last occasion he staid nearly a year at Rome and returning thence, through France, he resided some time at Paris. The eternal city, though despoiled by the barba- rians, and not yet enriched with the works of modern art, must have retained much of its ancient splendour ; the Coliseum, and many other edifices that remain, are known to have been much more perfect in the days of Alfred than they are now : the proud Capitol was comparatively entire ; and in various parts of the city, where we now trace little but foundations of walls, and scattered frag- ments, there then stood lofty and elegant buildings. Alfred, who at home had lived in wooden houses, and been accustomed to see mud-huts with thatched roofs, could hardly fail of being struck with the superior splendour of Rome. The papal court, 166 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. though as yet modest and unassuming, was regu- lated with some taste and great order ; while the other court at which he resided (the French) was more splendid than any in Europe, with the excep- tion of Constantinople, But whatever eft'ect these scenes may have had in enlarging the mind of Alfred, it should appear he had not yet learned to read — an accomplish- ment, by the way, not then very common even among princes and nobles of a more advanced age. He, however, delighted in listening to the Anglo- Saxon ballads and songs which were constantly recited by the minstrels and glee-men attached to his father's court. From frequent vocal repetition, to which he listened day and night,* he learned them by heart ; and the taste he thus acquired for poetry lasted him, through many cares and sor- rows, to the last day of his life. The story told by Asscr is well known. One day his mother, Osburgha, was sitting, surrovmded by her chil- dren, with a book of Saxon poetry in her hands. The precious manuscript was gilded or illumi- nated, and the contents were probably new, and much to the taste of the boys. " I will give it," said she, " to him among you who shall first learn to read it." Alfred, the youngest of them all, ran to a teacher, and studying earnestly, soan learned to read Anglo-Saxon, and won the book. But, with the exception of popular poetry, Anglo-Saxon was the key to only a small portion of the literature or knowledge of the times ; and as his curiosity and intellect increased, it became necessary for him to learn Latin. At a subsequent period of his life, Al- fred possessed a knowledge of that learned language, which was altogether extraordinary for a prince of the ninth century. It is not very clear when he obtained this degree of knowledge ; but after teaching him- self by translating, he was probably greatly im- proved in his mature manhood, when the monk Asser, Johannes Erigena, Grimbald, and other learned men, settled at his court. Alfred was accustomed to say that he regretted the neglected education of his youth, the entire want of proper teachers, and also the difficulties that then barred his progress to intellectual acquirements, much more than all the hardships and sorrows and crosses that befell him afterwards. As one of his great impediments had been the Latin language, which, even with our improved system of tuition, and with all our facilities and advantages, is not mastered without long and difficult study, he earnestly recommended from the throne, in a circu- lar letter, addressed to the bishops, that thencefor- ward "' all good and useful books be translated into the language which we all understand ; so that all the youths of England, but more especially those who are of gentle kind, and in easy circum- stances, may be grounded in letters — for they can- not profit in any pursuit until they are well able to read English." Alfred's own literary works were chiefly translations from the Latin into Anglo- Saxon, the spoken language of his people. It ex- • Asser, 16. cites surprise how he could find time for these laudable occupations ; but he was steady and per- severing, regular in his habits, when not kept in the field by the Danes, and a great economist of his time. Eight hours of each day he gave to sleep, to his meals, and exercise ; eight were ab- sorbed by the affairs of government; and eight were devoted to study and devotion. Clocks, clepsydras, and the other ingenious instruments for measuring time were then unkfiown in England. Alfred was, no doubt, acquainted with the sun- dial, which was in common use in Italy and parts of France ; but this index is of no use in the hours of the night, and would frequently be equally un- serviceable during our foggy sunless days. He, therefore, marked his time by the constant burning of wax torches or candles, which were made pre- cisely of the same weight and size, and notched in the stem at regular distances. These candles were twelve inches long; six of them, or seventy-two inches of wax, were consumed in twenty-four hours, or 1440 minutes; and thus, supposing the notches at intervals of an inch, one inch would mark the lapse of twenty minutes. It appears that these time-candles were placed under the special charge of his mass-priests, or chaplains. But it was soon discovered, that sometimes the wind, rushing in through the windows and doors, and the numerous chinks in the walls of the palace, consumed the wax in a rapid and irregular manner. Hence Asser makes the great Alfred the inventor of horn- lanterns ! He says the king went skilfully and wisely to work ; and having found out that white horn could be rendered transparent, like glass, he, with that material and with pieces of wood, admi- rably (mirahiliter) made a case for his candle, which kept it from wasting and flaring. In his youth Alfred was passionately fond of field sports, and was famed as being " excellent cunning in all hunting;" but after his retreat at Athelney he indulged this taste with becoming moderation ; and during the latter years of his reign he seems to have ridden merely upon busi- ness, or for the sake of his health. He then consi- dered every moment of value, as he could devote it to lofty and improving purposes. We have already mentioned the care and inge- nuity he employed in creating a navy. Sea affairs, geography, and the discovery of unknovvn countries, or rather the descriptions of countries then little known, obtained by means of bold navi- gators, occupied much of his time, and formed one of his favourite subjects for writing. He endea- voured, by liberality and kindness, to attract to England all such foreigners as could give good in- formation on these subjects, or were otherwise qualified to illuminate the national ignorance. From Audher, or Ohthere, who had coasted the continent of Europe from the Baltic to the North Cape, he obtained nuich information ; from Wulfstan, who appears to have been one of his subjects, and who undertook a voyage round the Baltic, he gathered many particulars con- Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 167 cerning the divers countries situated on that sea ; and from other voyagers and travellers whom he sent out expressly himself he obtained a de- scription of Bulgaria, Sclavonia, Bohemia, and Germany. All this information he committed to ^v^iting in the plain mother tongue, and with the noble design of imparting it to his people. Having learned that there were colonies of Christian Sy- rians settled on the coasts of Malabar and Coro- mandel, he sent out Swithelm, bishop of Sherburn, to India — a tremendous journey in those days. The stout-hearted ecclesiastic, however, making what is now called the overland journey, went and returned in safety, bringing back with him pre- sents of gems and Indian spices. Hereby was Alfred's fame increased, and the name and exist- ence of England probably heard of for the first time in that remote country, of which, nine cen- turies after, she was to become the almost absolute mistress. While his active mind, which anticipated the national spirit of much later times, was thus en- gaged in drawing knowledge from the distant cor- ners of the earth, he did not neglect home affairs. He taught the people how to build better houses ; he laboured to increase their comforts ; he established schools ; he founded or rebuilt many towns ; and, having learnt the importance of fortifications during his wars with the Danes, he fortified them all as well as he could. He caused a survey to be made of the coast and navigable rivers, and ordered castles to be erected at those places which were most accessible to the landing of the enemy. Fifty strong towers and castles rose in different parts of the country, but the number would have been threefold had Alfred not been thwarted by the in- dolence, ignorance, and carelessness of his nobles and people. He revised the laws of the Anglo- Saxons, being aided and sanctioned therein by his witenagemot, or parliament ; and he established so excellent a system of police, that towards the end of his reign it was generally asserted that one might have hung golden bracelets and jewels on the public highways and cross-roads, and no man would have dared to touch them for fear of the law. Towards arbitrary, unjust, or corrupt admi- nistrators of the law, he was inexorable ; and, if we can give credit to an old writer,* he ordered the execution of no fewer than forty-four judges and magistrates of this stamp in the course of one year. Those who were ignorant or careless he repri- manded and suspended, commanding them to qua- lify themselves for the proper discharge of their office before they ventured to grasp its honours and emohmients. He heard all appeals with the utmost patience, and, in cases of importance, re- vised all the law proceedings with the utmost in- dustry. His manifold labours in the court, the camp, the field, the hall of justice, the study, must have been prodigious ; and our admiration of this wonderful man is increased by the well-esta- • Andrew Home, author of " Miroirdes Justices," who wrote in Norman French, under Edward I. or Edward 1 1. Wished fact, that all these exertions were made in spite of the depressing influences of physical pain and constant bad health. In his early years he was severely afflicted by the disea.se called the Jicus. This left him ; but, at the age of twenty or twenty-one, it was replaced by another and still more tormenting malady, the in- ward seat and unknown mysterious nature of which baffled all the medical skill of his "leeches." The accesses of excruciating pain were frequent — at times almost unintermittent ; and then, if by day or by night, a single hour of ease was merci- fully granted him, that short interval was embit- tered by the dread of the sure returning anguish.* This malady never left him till the day of his death, which it must have hastened. He expired in the month of October, six nights before All- Hallows-mass-day, in the year 901, when he was only in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried at Winchester, in a monastery he had founded. ^ ::i Silver Coins of Alfred. — From Specimens in the British Museum. In describing his brilliant and incontestable deeds, and in tracing the character of the great Alfred, we, in common with nearly all the writers who have preceded us in the task, have drawn a general eulogy, and a character nearly approach- ing to ideal perfection. But were there no spots in all this brilliancy and purity? As Alfred was a mortal man, there were, no doubt, many ; but to dis- cover them, we must ransack his private life, and his vaguely reported conduct when a mere stripling king; and the discovery, after all, confers no honour of sagacity, and does not justify the exulting yell with which a recent writer announces to the world, that Alfred had not only faults, but crimes to bemoan. It is passed into a truism that he will seldom be in the wrong, who deducts alike from the amount of virtue and vice, in the characters recorded in history; but this deduction will be made according to men's tempers ; and while some largely reduce the amount of virtue, they seem to leave the vice untouched — their incredulity extend- ing rather to what elevates and ennobles human nature, than to the things which degrade and de- base it. The directly contrary course, or that of reducing the crime, and leaving the virtue, if not the more correct (which we will not decide) is cer- tainly the more generous and improving. Every people above the condition of barbarity have their heroes and their national objects of veneration, and are probably improved by the high standard of ex- cellence they present, and by the very reverence they pay to them. We may venerate the memory » Asser. 168 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. of oav Alfred with as little danger of paying an unmerited homage as any of them. On this subject the late Sir James Mackintosh, whose historical sagacity was equal to his good feeling, says, " The Norman historians, who seem to have had his diaries and note-hooks in their hands, chose Alfred as the glory of the land which had become their own. Tliere is no subject on which unani- mous tradition is so nearly sufficient evidence as on the eminence of one man over others of the same condition. His bright image may long he held up before the national mind. This tradition, however paradoxical the assertion may appear, is, in the case of Alfred, rather supported than weakened by the fictions v>'hich have sprung from it. Although it he an infirmity of every nation to ascribe their institutions to the contrivance of a man rather than to the slow action of time and circumstances, yet the selection of Alfred by the English people, as the founder of all that was dear to them, is surely the strongest proof of the deep impression left on the minds of all of his transcendant wisdom and virtue."* Edward, a.d. 901. Alfred, with all his wis- dom and power, had not been enabled to settle the succession to the throne on a sure and lasting basis. On his death, it was disputed between his son Edward, and his nephew Ethelwald, the son of Ethelbald, one of Alfred's elder brothers. Each party armed ; but as Ethelwald found himself the weaker, he declined a combat at Wimburn, and fled into the Danelagh, where the Danes hailed him as their king. Many of the Saxons who lived in that country mixed with the Danes, preferred war to the restraints of such a government as Alfred had established; and an internal war was renewed, which did infinite mischief, and prepared the way for other horrors. Ethelwald was slain in a terrible battle fought in the year 905, upon which the Danes concluded a peace upon equal terms ; for Edward was not yet powerful enough to treat them as a master. The song of the princes and yarls, and in many instances the individuals themselves, who had been tranquil and submissive under Alfred, soon aimed, not merely at making the Danelagh an independent kingdom, but at conquering the rest of the island. Edward was not deficient in valour or military skill. In the year 911 he gained a most signal victory over the Danes, who had ad- vanced to the Severn; but the whole spirit of Alfred seemed more particularly to survive in his daughter Ethelfleda, sister of Edward, and wife of Ethelred, the eolderman of Mercia, who has been so often mentioned, and whose death, in 912, left the whole care of that kingdom to his widow. Her brother Edward took possession of London and Oxford, but she claimed, and then defended the rest of Mercia, with the bravery and ability of an experienced warrior. Following her father's example, she fortified all her towns, and constructed ramparts, and entrenched camps in the proper » Hist. Eng. ch. xi. places : allowing them no rest, she drove the Danes out of Derby and Leicester, and compelled many tribes of them to acknowledge her authority. In the assault of Derby, four of her bravest com- manders fell, but she boldly urged the combat until the place was taken. As some of the Welsh had become troublesome, she condvicted an expedition with remarkable spirit and rapidity against Brec- canmere, or Brecknock, and took the wife of the Welsh king a prisoner. In seeing these her warlike operations, says Ingulf, one would have believed she had changed her sex. The Lady Ethelfleda, as she is called by the chroniclers, died in 920, when Edward succeeded to her authority in Mercia, and prosecuted her plan of securing the country by fortified works. He was active and successful : he took most of the Danish towns be- tween the Thames and the Humber, and forced the rest of the Danelagh that lay north of the Hum- ber to acknowledge his supremacy. The Welsh, the Scots, the inhabitants of Strathclyde and Cum- bria (who still figure as a separate people), and the men of Galloway, are said to have done him homage, and to have accepted him as their " father, lord, and j>rotector." Atiielstane. a.d. 925. Edward's dominion far exceeded in extent that of his father Alfred ; but his son Athelstane, who succeeded him in 925, established a more brilliant throne, and made a still nearer approach to the sovereignty of all England. By war and policy he reduced nearly all Wales to an inoffensive tranquillity, if not to vassalage. A tri- bute was certainly paid during a part of the reign, and together with gold and silver, and beeves, the Welsh were bound to send their best hounds and hawks to the court of Athelstane. He next turned his arms against the old tribes of Cornwall, who were still turbulent, and impatient of the Saxon yoke. He drove them from Devonshire, where they had again made encroachments, and reduced them to obedience and good order beyond the Tamar. In 931 lie was assailed by a more powerful con- federacy than had ever been formed against a Saxon king. Olave, or Anlaf, a Danish prince, who had already been settled in Northumbria, but who had lately taken Dublin, and made considerable con- quests in Ireland, sailed up the Humber with 620 ships ; his friend and ally, Constantine, king of the Scots, the people of Strathclyde and Cumbria, and the northern Welsh, were all up in arms and ready to join him. Yet this coalition, formidable as it was, was utterly destroyed on the bloody field of Brunnaburgh,* where Athelstane gained one of the most splendid of victories, and where five Danish kings and seven earls fell. Anlaf escaped with a wretched fragment of his forces to Ireland ; Constantine, bemoaning the loss of his fiiir-haired son, who had also perished at Brunnaburgh, fled to the hilly country north of the Friths. After this great victory, none seem to have dared • Supi osefl by somR to be Rum in the south of Lincclnshire and others, Biujjh iuthe north of the same county. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 108( 169 agiiin to raise arms against Athelstane in any part of tlie island. It appears to have been from this time that Athel?tane laid aside the modest and limited title of his predecessors, and assumed that of " King of the Anglo-Saxons," or " King of the English" — titles which had been given to several of them in tlie letters of the Roman popes and bishop?, but had never till now been iised by the sovereigns themselves. His father, and his grandfather Alfred, had simply styled themselves kings of Wessex, or of the West Saxons. Under Athelstane, the English court was po- lished to a considerable degree, and became the chosen residence or asylum of several foreign princes. Harold, the king of Norway, entrusted his son Haco to the care and tuition of the en- lightened Athelstane; and this son, by the aid of England, afterwards succeeded to the Norwegian throne, on which he distinguished himself as a legislator. Louis d'Outremer, the French kinsr, took refuge in London before he secured the throne ; and even the Celtic princes of Armorica, or Brit- tany, when expelled their states by the Northmcii or Normans, fled to the court of Athelstane, in pre- ference to all others. Pie bestow-ed his sisters in marriage on the first sovereigns of those times, and, altogether, he enjoyed a degree of respect, and exercised an influence on the general politics of Europe, that were not surpassed by any living N CIPIO eKATueRBi/$w eTueRBXi €KATAPU^T)Cn 6t6s eRATueRBttcohoc grat iNrpRWciFioy\pu5 50^ • Oor>Niy\peRTPsu facmsum; exsmeipsofACTuesTNibil' QMObFACTUCD eST IVTPSOUITAeST* GxaiTA eRATLuxbOfnTNUCY)' 6TLuXl7VTeNGBR1SLuc€T- GT Te V6BRA6 eAOO TsTONT CO0Dpael>€ N aeRUKTT' puiTf>ocooori7SSUSAOo cuTNTomeisreRATjohA^/NES' hTCUeKITTNTeSTlCOOKltT UTT6 ST7 COOlsn UPeRT>TB€1^I I I'oRTiov OF THE FiHST Chaptkr OF THE Gosi'Ef, OF St. JoHN,— from llic Cottonian Ms. Tiberius, A. 2, tt Covy of tli<! I,atin Gospels, whicTi, from an inscription on Uie volume, ;ii>pi'iirs to luive been presentod liv Kin;,' Atlielstane U) tin- ('atbodral Cburcli of Canterbury (Dorobernensii Cailiedrae). This is believed to have been the volume on which the An;,'lo-Saxon kings after Athelstane took the Coronation Oatli. From the names found on a page at the beginninj;, Ooda lUx, and MiHuin.n Matfr Heqis, it is conjectured bv Mr. Turner to have been a present from the Empress Matilda of Germany, and her son the P^raperor Utho, who married the sister of Athelstane. 170 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. sovereign.* A horrid suspicion of giiilt— the crime of murdering his own brother Edwin — has been cast upon him ; but this is scarcely proved by any cotemporary evidence, and his conduct as a sovereign seems almost irreproachable. He re- vised the laws, promulgated some new and good ones, made a provision for the poor and helpless, and encouraged the study of letters by earnest re- commendations and by his own example. Like his grandfather Alfred, he was exceedingly fond of the Bible, and promoted the translation of it into the spoken language of the people. The life of tliis king was, in the words of William of Malmesbury, "in time little — in deeds great." Had it been prolonged, he might possibly have consolidated his power, and averted those tempests from the north which soon again desolated Eng- land. He died a.d, 940, being only in his forty- seventh year, and was buried in the abbey of Malmsbury. Edmund the Atheling, his brother, who was not quite eighteen years old, succeeded to the throne. In him the family virtue of courage knew no blemish or decrease, and he showed a determined taste for elegance and improvement, w^hich obtained for him the name of "the Magnificent;" but his reign was troubled from the beginning, and he was cut off in his prime by the hand of an assassin. He had scarcely ascended the throne when the Danes of Northumbria recalled from Ireland Anlaf, the old opponent of Athelstane at Brunna burgh. The Danish prince came in force, and the result of a war was, that Edmund was obliged to resign to him, in separate sovereignty, the whole of the is- land north of Watling-street. But Anlaf did not enjoy these advantages many months ; and when he died, Edmund repossessed himself of all the ter- ritory he had ceded. During his troubles tlie people of Cumbria, who had submitted to Athel- stane, broke out in rebellion. He marched against them in 946, expelled their king, Dunmail, and gave the country as a fief to Malcolm of Scotland, whom he at the same time bound to defend the north of the island against Danish and other in- vaders. The two sons of Dunmail, whom he took prisoners, he barbarously deprived of their ej^es. Such abominable operations, together Avith the am- putating of limbs, cutting off of tongues and noses of captive princes, had become common on the con- tinent ; but, hitherto, had very rarely disgraced the Anglo-Saxons. Edmund did not long survive the perpetration of this atrocity. On the festival of St. Augustin, in the same year, as he was carousing with his nobles and officers, his eye fell upon a banished robber, named Leof, who had dared to mingle with the company. The royal cup-bearer or dapifer ordered him to withdraw. The robber refused. Incensed at his insolence, and heated by wine, Edmund started from his seat, and, seizing him by his long hair, tried to throw him to the * Aniongthe costly presents sent to Athelstane by foreign sove- reigns, was one from the Kin-; of Norway, " of a goodly ship of fine wovkmanship.wifh giU stern andpurple "sails, furnished round about the deck within with a row of gilt pavises (or shields)." ground. Leof had a dagger hid under his cloak, and in the scuffle he stabbed the king in a vital part. The desperate villain was cut to pieces by Edmund's servants, but not before he had slain and hurt divers of them. The body of the king was in- terred in Glastonbury Abbey, where Dimstan, who was soon to occupy a wider scene, was then Abbot. Edred (946), who succeeded his brother Ed- mund, was another son of Edward the Elder, and grandson of Alfred. He was not twenty-three years old, but a loathsome disease had brought on a premature old age. He was afflicted with a con- stant cough, — he lost his teeth and hair, — and he was so weak in his lower extremities that he was nick-named " Edredus debilis pedibus " (Edred weak in the feet). According to some authorities, his mind was as feeble as his body, and the vigour that marked his reign sprung from the energy of Dunstan, the abbot of Glastonbury, who now began to figure as a statesman, and of Torketul, another churchman, who was Chancellor of the kingdom. Other writers, however, aflSrm that Edred's weak and puny body did not affect his mind, which was resolute and vigorous, and such as became a grand- son of Alfred. Though, in common with the other states of the north, the Danes of Northumbria had sworn fealty to Edred at Tadwine's Cliff, they rose soon after his accession, and being joined by Eric and other princes and pirates from Denmark, Nor- way, Ireland, the Orkneys, and the Hebrides (where the sea-kings had established themselves), they once more tried the fortune of war with the Saxons. The operations of Edred's armies, thougli disgraced by cruelty and the devastation of the land, were marked with exceeding vigour and activity, and, after two or three most obstinate and sanguinary battles, they were crowned with success. The Danes in England, humbled, and apparently crushed, were condemned to pay a heavy pecuniary fine ; Northumbria was incorporated with the rest of the kingdom much more completely than it had hitherto been, the royal title was abolished, and the administration put into the hands of an earl appointed by the king. Even the victorious Athel- stane had left the title of king or sub-king to the Danish rulers of Northumbria ; and it is assumed that the constant rebellions of those rulers were principally excited by their anxious wish to throw off the allegiance due to the English croAvn. We believe, however, there was a powerful excitement from without. The sea-kings still roamed the ocean iir search of plunder or settlements ; many princes or chiefs in Denmark and Nor^vay claimed kindred with those who had made conquests and obtained kingdoms in England, and whenever an opportunity offered they pretended to those pos- sessions by an indefeasible, hereditary right. Such a right might not be recognised by the Anglo- Saxons, but it would pass unquestioned among the Scandinavian rovers, who would profit by its being enforced. The names of a whole series of these Danish pretenders may probably be found in the mythical historians, — in the more than half fabidouc Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 171 Edda and Sagas of the north, — ^l)ut we are not aware that the discovery of them would cast any very important light on our annals. Edred died soon after the reduction of Northum- bria, and, leaving no children, was succeeded by the son of his brother and predecessor on the throne. Edwy was a boy of fifteen when he began his troublous reign (a.d. 955). One of the first acts of his government seems to have been the appoint- ment of his brother Edgar (whom the monks soon played off against him) to be sub-regulus or vassal- king of a part of England,* most probably of the old kingdom of Mercia, where he was to acknow- ledge Edwy's supremacy. As the Northumbrians remained in subjection, and as the Danes generally seem to have ceased from troubling the land, he might have enjoyed a tranquil reign l)ut for some irregularities of his own, and his quarrels with a body more powerful then than warriors and sea- kings, and who fought with a weapon more deadly than the sword. We now reach an interesting part of our history, which, after passing current for many ages, has been fiercely disputed by some recent writers, whose main course of argument is weakened by the glaring fact, that in shifting all the blame from Dunstan to Edwy, they had party or sectarian pur- poses to serve. For ourselves, who are perfectly impartial between a king and a monk, we think the old narrative has been disturbed without rendering any service to historical truth; and that this is proved to be the case, almost to a demonstration, l)y a learned and acute writer who has sifted the whole question, t Like nearly every other part of the Saxon history, the story of Edwy and Elgiva is certainly involved in some difficulties or obscurities. Avoiding discussion and disputations, we will briefly state the facts as they seem to us best esta- blished". Edwy, who was gay, handsome, thoughtless, and very young, became enamoured of Elgiva, a young lady of rank, and married her although she was related to him in a degree within which the ca- nonical laws forbade such unions. She was pro- bably his first or second cousin, and we need not go nearer, as such marriages are still illegal in Ca- tholic countries without the express dispensation of the Pope. Her mother Ethelgiva lived with her at the court of Edwy, and seems to have been a ]>erson of good repute, for, under the honourable designation of the " king's wife's mother," she attested an agreement between St. Ethelwold and the Bishop of "Wells, to which three other bishops were subscribing witnesses. We are entitled to assume that had there been anything more than a • "This fact, which is of some importance, is proveil, like many other points of a similar description, not by historians, but bv a cli;irtev. The document, however, does not designate the locality of the dominions assijjncd to Edgai'." Palgiave, Hist. Eii};. chap. xii. We follow this learned investigator in supposing it was Mercia. + See article on Lingard"s " Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church," in Edinburgh Keview, vol. XXT. pp. 346 — 354; and nrticlo on Liugard's " History of England," in the same work, vol. xlii. pp. 1 — .31. Both these Reviews are acknowledged to be by Johu .\llen, Esq., in his " Letter to Francis .Telfrey, Esq., in reply to Dr. I.ingard's Vindication," 8vo. Lon. 1827. slight infringement of church-law in the marriage of Elgiva, or had she and her mother been the depraved characters some writers have represented them, such personages as saints and bishops, and most orthodox churchmen, would not be found fre- quenting the court where both the ladies lived in pre-eminence and honour. Dunstan and his party, however, must surely have had other provoca- tions than the irregularity of the marriage, or the thoughtlessness of Edwy in quitting their com- pany, when they proceeded to the insolent ex- tremities we are now to relate. On the day of the king's coronation the chief nobles and clergy were bidden to a feast, where they sate long carousing, deep in their cups, which they were too much accustomed to do.* The stomach of the youthful king may have been incapable of such potations, — his taste may have been revolted by such coarse excesses : he was still passionately enamoured of his beautiful bride, and, stealing from the banquet- ing hall, he withdrew with her and her mother to an inner apartment of the palace. His absence was remarked by Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, a Dane by birth,t a harsh, ambitious man, who may be more than suspected of having played false with Edwy's father. King Edmund, when engaged in the Northumbrian troubles, and obliged to renounce half the island to Anlaf. Odo was probably ex- asperated himself, and perceiving that the com- pany were displeased at the king's leaving them, he ordered some persons to go and bring him back to partake of the general conviviality. The in- dividuals addressed seem to have declined the office from motives of respect and decency, but Dunstan, the friend of Odo, feeling no such scru- ples, rushed to the inner apartment, dragged tlie young king from the side of his wife, and thrust him back into the banqueting-hall by main force. Such an outrage, — such a humiliation in the face of his assembled svibjects, — must have passed Edwy's endurance. Nor was this all the wrong. While in the chamber Dunstan addressed the queen and her mother in the most brutal language, and threatened the latter with infamy and the gallows. The king had a ready rod wherewith to scourge the monk. Dunstan, among other offices, filled that of treasurer to Edred, the preceding sovereign, and Edwy had all along suspected him of having been gviilty of peculation in his charge. If Edwy had ever whispered these suspicions, — and from his youth, imprudence, and hastiness of temper, he had probably done so often, — tliis alone would account for Dunstan's ire. However this may be, the fiery Abbot of Glastonbury, who re- turned from the festival to his abbey, was now questioned touching the moneys : his ])roperty was sequestered, his court pLaces were taken from him, the monks who professed celibacy were driven out, and his monastery was given to the secular clergy, who still insisted on having wives like other men ; • "Qiiibus Angli nimis sunt assueti." Wallingford. + Ho was tlie son of one of the chieftains who had invaded En"- land. " 172 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. and finally a sentence of banishment was hurled at Dunstan. He fled for the monastery of St. Peter's in Glient, hnt was scarcely three miles from the shore, on his way to Flanders, when messengers reached it, — despatched l)y Edwy or his mother- in-law, — and who, it is said, had orders to put out his eyes if they caught him in this country. Before this extreme rupture Edwy had probably meddled with the then stormy politics of tlie church, or betrayed an inclination to favour the secular clergy in opposition to the monks ; and this again would, and of itself, suffice to account for Dunstan's outrageous behaviour at the coronation feast. After Dunstan's flight the king certainly made himself tlie protector of the " married clerks;" for, expelling those who professed celi- bacy, he put the others in possession, not only of Glastonbury and Malmsbury, but of several other abbeys, which he thus made (to speak the lan- guage of Dunstan's adherents and successors) " styes for canons." In so doing Edwy, fatally for himself, espoused the weaker party, and still further exasperated Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who entertained the same views in state matters and church discipline as his friend Dunstan. The disputes of these churchmen of the tenth century, together with the extraordinary character of Dunstan, will be noticed more at length in the Chapter of Religious History. Here we have only indicated a few features to render intelligible the story, to the tragical conclusion of which we must now hasten. Shortly after the departure of Dunstan, a general rising of the people, instigated by Odo, took place in Northumbria (the reader will bear in mind that the Archbishop was a Dane), and a corresponding movement following under the same influence or holy sanction in Mercia, it was determined to set one brother in hostile array against the other ; and, in brief time, Edgar was declared independent sovereign of tlie whole of the island north of the Thames ! Dun- stan then returned in triumph from his brief exile, which had scarcely lasted a year. But W'hile these events were in progress, and before they were completed, the young soul of Edwy was racked by an anguish more acute than any that could be caused by the loss of territory and empire. Some knights and aimed retainers of tlie implacable Archbishop tore his beautiful wife Elgiva from one of his residences, branded her in the face with a red-hot iron to destroy lier beauty, and then hurried her to the coast, whence she was transported to Ireland, probably as a slave. Her melancholy fate, her high birth, gracefulness, and youth (for she seems to have been now not more than sixteen or seventeen years old), probably gained her friends among a kind-hearted people. She was cured of the cruel wounds inflicted ; her scars were obliterated, and, as radiant in beauty as ever, she was allowed (and no doubt insisted) to return to England. It is not clear whether Elgiva had actually joined her husband or was flying to his embraces when she was seized near Gloucester ; but all the early accounts agi-ee in stating that slie was there barbarously mangled and hamstrung, and expired a few days after in great torture. The generally received statement is, that the perpetra- tors of this atrocious deed were armed retainers of tlie Archbishop Odo : others, however, are of opinion that the young queen fell into the hands oi the Mercians, who were in insunection against her husband, and that in neither case was the execution ordered eitlier by Odo or Dunstan. However this may be, the deed was undeniably done by the adherents of those churchmen (for the Mercians were armed in their quarrel), and praised as an act of inflexible virtue by their encomiasts. The pallia- tion set up by a recent historian, who cannot deny the fact of the hamstringing, that such a mode of punishment, " though ciuel, was not unusual in that age," leaves the question of justice and law untouched, and seems to us to be conceived in the spirit of an inquisitor of the worst ages. Edwy did not long survive his wife : he died in the fol- lowing year (958), when he could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen years old. His death is generally attributed to grief and a broken heart, but it is just as probable that he was assas- sinated by his enemies.* From the comeliness of his person, he was generally called Edwy the Fair. Edgar (958-9), his brother, who had been put forward against him in his life-time, now suc- ceeded to all his dignities. As a boy of fifteen, he could exercise little authority : he was long a passive instrument in the hands of Dunstan and his party, who used their power in establishing their cause, in enforcing the celibacy of the clergy, and in driving out, by main force, from all abbeys, monasteries, cathedrals, churches, and chantries, all svich married clergymen as would not separate from their wives. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Dunstan and the monks ruled the kingdom with vigour and success, and consoli- dated the detached states into compactor integrity and union than had ever been known before. Several causes favoured this process. Among others, Edgar, who had been brought up among the Danes of East Anglia and Northumbria, was endeared to that people, who, in consequence, allowed him to weaken their states by dividing them into several separate earldoms or govern- ments, and to make other innovations, which thev would have resented under any of his predecessors with arms in their hands. His fleet was also wisely increased to the number of 360 sail ; and these ships were so Avell disposed, and powetful squadrons kept so constantly in motion, that the sea-kings were kept in check on their own ele- ment, and prevented from landing and troubling the country. At the same time, tutored by the in- defatigable Dunstan, who soon was maile, or rather who soon made himself, Archbishop of Canterbury, the king accustomed himself to visit in person every • An old M^. in the Cottoni.in I.ibvary Siiys explicitly, " in jm^'o Gloci'streufii interfectus fuit." Anollier old MS. q'.iotpd by Mr, Sharon Tuinei' says, " mi-eia niorte (.'Xspiiavit ;" but tliis would apply as well (or beltei) to death by grief as to death by the dagfjer. ClIAP I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 10G6. 173 part of his dominions annvially. In the land pro- gresses he was attended by the primate or by energetic ministers of Dunstan's appointing ; and as he went from Wessex to Mercia, from Mercia to Northumbria, courts of justice were held in the different counties, audiences and feasts were given, appeals were lieard, and Edgar cultivated the ac- quaintance of all the nobles and principal men of the kingdom. The neighbouring princes — his vassals or allies — of Wales, Cvmibria, and Scotland, were awed into respect or obedience, and on several occasions seem to have bowed before his throne. When he held his court at Chester, and had oiie day a wish to visit the monastery of St. John's, on the river Dee, eight crowned kings (so goes the story) plied the oars of his barge while he gviided the helm. These sovereign-bargemen are said to have been, Kenneth, king of Scotland, Malcolm, his son, king of Cumbria, Maccus the Dane, king of Anglesey, the isle of Man, and the Hebrides, the Scottish kings of Galloway and " Wcstmere," and the three Welsh kings of Dynwall, Siferth, and Edwall. Edgar certainly bore prouder and more sounding titles than any of his predecessors. He was styled Basileus, or Emperor, of Albion, King of the Eng- lish, and of all the nations and islands around.* He obtained the more honourable epithet of the Peaceable, or Pacific; for, luckily, during his ^whole reign, his kingdom was not troubled by a single war. He commuted a tribute he received from a part or the whole of Wales, into 300 wolves' heads annually, in order to extirpate those ravenous animals ; and, according to William of Malmesbury, this tribute ceased in the fourth year, for want of wolves to kill. The currency ' had been so diminished in weight by the fraudulent practice of clipping, that the actual value was far inferior to the nominal. He therefore reformed the coinage, and had new coins issued all over the kingdom. Though Edgar was now in mature manhood, there is pretty good evidence to show that these measures, with others, generally of a beneficial nature, were suggested and carried into effect by Dunstan, who, most indubitably, had his full share in the next operations which are men- tioned with especial laud and triumph by the monkish writers. He made married priests so scarce or so timid, that their faces were nowhere to be seen ; and he founded or restored no fewer than fifty monasteries which were all sul)jected to the rigid rules of the Benedictine order. It is curious that the monks, who had a debt of' gratitude to pay, and who, in their summary of his whole cha- racter, indeed, uphold Edgar as a godly, virtuous prince, should have recorded actions which prove him to have been one of the most viciously profligate of the Saxon kings. The court of this promoter of celibacy and chastity swarmed at all times with con- • " Nothins;," says Mr. Turner, " can more sfronjly display Ed- gar's vanity than tliB pompous and boasting titles which he assumes ill his charters. They sometimes run to the length of fifteen or eighteen lines. How dilferent from Alfred's " Ego occideutalium Saxonum Ilex." — Hist. Anglo-Sax. cubines, some of whom were obtained in the most violent or flagitious manner. To pass over less authentic cases, in an early part of his reign, during the life of his first wife, he carried off from tlie rrio- nastery of Wilton a beautiful young lady of noble birth, named Wvdfreda, who was either a professed nun, or receiving her education under the sacred covering of the veil. It has been said that Dunstan here interfered with a courage which absolves him from the charge of reserving his reproofs for those who stood like the unfortunate Edwy in the posi- tion of enemies. But what was the amount of his interference in this extreme case, where the sanc- tity of the cloister itself was violated ? He con- demned the king to lay aside an empty, inconve- nient bauble — not to wear his crown on his head for seven years, — and to a penance of fasting, which was probably in good part performed by deputy. This was not the measure of punishment that was meted out to Edwy ; and, for all that we can learn to the contrary, Edgar was allowed to retain Wul- freda as his mistress ! On another occasion, when the guest of one of his nobles at Andover, he ordered that the fair and honourable daughter of his host should be sent to his bed. The yovmg lady's mother artfully substituted a handsome slave, or servant; and this menial was added to his harem, or taken to court, where, according to William of Malmsbury, she enjoyed his exceed- ing great favour until he became enamoured of Elfrida, his second lawful wife. Romantic as are its incidents, the story of his marriage with the execrable Elfrida rests on abou.t as good authority as we can find for any of the events of the time. The fame of this young lady's beauty reached the ears of Edgar, ever hvmgry of svich reports. To ascertain whether her charms were not exagge- rated, the royal voluptuary despatched Athelwold, his favourite courtier, to the distant castle of her father, Ordgar, earl of Devonshire, with whom she resided. Athelwold became himself ena- moured of the beauty, wedded her, and then re- presented her to the king as being rich, indeed, but not otherwise commendable. Edgar suspected, or was told, the real truth. He insisted on paying her a visit. The unlucky husband was allowed to precede him, that he might put his house in order ; but he failed in his real object, which was to ob- tain his wife's forgiveness for having stepped between her and a throne, and to induce her to disguise or conceal the brilliancy of her charms by homely attire and rustic demeanour. The visit was made ; the king was captivated, as she in- tended he should be. Soon after Atlielwold was found murdered in a wood, and Edgar married bis widow. This union, begun in crime, led to tlie foul murder of Edgar's eldest son; and under the imbecile Ethelred, the only son he had by Elfrida, the glorv of the house of Alfred was eclipsed for ever. He himself did not survive the marriage more than six or seven years, when he died at the early age of thirty-two, and was buried in the abbey of Glastonbury, which he had made magni- 174 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Costume of Kixo Edoab, a Saxon Lady, and a Page. Edgar, from, the Cottonian MS., Vespasian, A. viii. Lady, from the Harleian MS. 8908. Page, from the Cottonian MS., Tiberius, C. vi, ficient by vast outlays of money and donations of land. Edward, commonly called the Martyr, who succeeded a.d. 975, was Edgar's son by his first marriage. Like all the kings since Athelstane, he was a mere boy at his accession, being not more than fourteen or fifteen years old. Llis rights were disputed, in favour of her own son, Ethelred, who was only six years old, by the ambitious and re- morseless Elfrida, who boldly maintained that Edward, though the elder brother, and named king in his father's will, was excluded by the illegiti- macy of his birth. The legitimacy of several of tlie Saxon princes who had worn the crown was more than doubtful ; but in the case of Edward the challenge seems to have been unfounded. The cause of Edward and his half-brother was decided on far different grounds. As soon as Edgar was dead the church war was renewed, and Dunstan, after a long and unopposed triumph, was compelled once more to descend to the arena with his old opponents the " married clerks," or secular clergy, who again showed themselves in force in many parts of the kingdom, and claimed the abbeys and churches of which they had been dispossessed. The nobles and the governors of provinces chose different sides. Alfere, the powerful eolderman of Mercia, declared for the secular clergy, and drove the monks from every part of his extensive domi- nions : Alwyn of East Anglia, on the contrary, stood by Dunstan and the monks, and chased the seculars. Elfrida, no doubt because Dunstan and his friends had got possession of Edward, gave the weight of her son Ethelred's name and herself to the party of Alfere and the seculars, which soon proved again to be the weaker of the two factions. Had it been the stronger, Ethelred would have been crowned ; as it turned out, Dunstan Avas enabled to place Edward upon the throne. But the animosities of two religious parties were not to Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 175 be reconciled by the decisions of national or church councils, by disputations, or even by mi- racles ; nor was the ambition of the perfidious Elfrida to be cured by a single reverse. She con- tinued her intrigues with the secular party ; she united herself more closely than ever with Alfere, the eolderman of Mercia ; and soon saw herself at the head of a powerful confederacy of nobles, who were resolved her son should reign, and Dunstan be deprived of that immense power he had so long held. But not even this resolution would prepare us for the horrible catastrophe that followed. About three years after his accession, as Edward was hunting one day in Dorsetshire, he quitted his company and attendants to visit his half-brother, Ethelred, who was living with his mother, hard by, in Corfe Castle. Elfrida came forth with her son to meet him at the outer gate : she bade him welcome with a smiling face, and invited him to dismount ; but the young king, with thanks, de- clined, fearing he should be missed by his company, and craved only a cup of wine, which he might drink in his saddle to her and his brother, and so be gone. The wine was brought, and as Edward was carrying the cup to his lips one of Elfrida's attendants stabbed him in the back. The wounded king put spurs to his horse, but soon fainting from loss of blood, he fell out of the saddle, and was dragged by one foot in the stirrup through woods and rugged ways until he was dead. His but too negligent companions in the chase traced him by his blood, and at last found his disfigured corpse, which they burned, and then buried the ashes of it at Wareham without any pomp or regal ceremonies. " No worse deed than this," says the Saxon chro- nicle, " had been committed among the people of the Angles since they first came to the land of Britain." It is believed that Alfere, the eolderman of Mercia, vvrith other nobles opposed to Dunstan and the monks, was engaged with the queen-dowager in a plot to assassinate Edward, but that Elfrida impatiently seizing an unlooked-for opportunity, took the bloody execution instantly and wholly upon herself The boy Ethelred, who was not ten years old, had no part in the guilt which gave him a crown, though that crown certainly sate upon him like a curse. It is related of him that he dearly loved his half-brother Edward, and wept his death, for which his virago mother, seizing a large torch at hand, beat him with it until he was almost dead himself. Such, however, was the popular odium that fell both on son and mother, that an attempt was made to exclvide him from the throne by substituting Edgitha, Edgar's natural daughter by the lady he had stolen from the nunnery of Wilton. This Edgitha was herself at the time a professed nun in the same monastery from which her mother had been torn ; and it is said that nothing but her timidity, and the dread inspired by her brother Edward's murder, and her firm refusal to exchange the tranquillity of the cell for the dangers of the throne, prevented Dunstan from causing her to be proclaimed Queen of all England. There was no other prince of the bloud royal, — no other pretender to set up, — so the prelates and thanes, with no small repugnance, were compelled to bestow the crown on the son of the murderess ; and Dunstan, as primate, at the festival of Easter (a.d. 979), put it on his weak head in the old chapel of Kingston, at this time the usual crowning place of the Saxon monarchs. The vehement monk, who was now soured St. Mary's Chapel at Kingston, in wliich Kinjjs Edred, Kclward tlie Martyr, and Ethelred are stated to have been crowned, as it appeared abuat nrty years since, before its destruction by the falling of the church wall, against which it was built. 176 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. by age, and exasperated at the temporary triumph of his enemies, is said to have pronounced a malediction on Ethelred, even in the act of crowning him, and to have given puhhc vent to a prophecy of woe and misery, which some think was well calculated to insure its own fulfilment,- — fur Dunstan already enjoyed among the nation the reputation of heing both a seer and a saint, and the words he dropped could hardly fail of being treasured in the memory of the people, and of depressing th^ir spirits at the approach of danger. Ethelred, moreover, began his reign with an urducky nickname, which it is believed was given him by Dunstan, — he was called " the Unready." His personal and moral qualities were not calculated to overcome a bad prestige, and the unpopular circumstances attending his succession : in him the people lost their warm affection for the blood of Alfred, and by degrees many of them contemplated with indifference, if not with pleasure, the transfer of the crown to a prince of Danish race. This latter feeling more than half explains the events of his reign. During the first part of the minority the infamous Elfrida enjoyed great authority, but, as the king advanced in years, her influence declined, and followed by the execrations of nobles and people (even by those of her own party), she at last retired to expiate her sins, according to the fashion of the times, in build- ing and endowing monasteries. Although the Northmen settled in the Danelagh had so frequently troubled the peace of the kiirg- dom, and had probably at no period renounced the hope of gaining an ascendancy over the Saxons of the island, and placing a king of their own race on the throne of England, the Danes be- yond sea had certainly made no formidable attacks since the time of Althcktane, and of late years had scarcely been heard of. This suspension of hostility on their part is not to be attributed solely to the Avisdom and valour of the intermediate Saxon kings. There were great ])olitical causes connected with the hist(jries of Norway and Den- mark, and France and Normandy, and circum- stances which, by giving the Danes emp,loyment and settlement in other countries, kept them away from England. But now, when unfortunately there was neither wisdom or valour iir the king and council, nor spirit in the people, these extraneous circumstances had changed, and instead of check- ing, they threw the men of the North on our shores. Sweyn, a son of the king of Denmark, had quarrelled with his fatiier, and been banished from his home. Young, brave, and enterprising, he soon collected a host of mariners and adventurers round his standard, with whom he resolved to obtain wealth, if not a home, in our island. His first operations were on a small scale, intended merely to try the state of defence of the island, and were probably not conducted by himself. In the third j'ear of Ethelred's reign (a.d. 981) the Danish raven was seen floating in Southampton water, and that city was plundered, and its inhabit- ants carried into slavery. In the course of a few months Chester and London partook of the fate of Southampton, and attacks were multiplied on dif- ferent points, — in the rrorth, in the south, and in the west, as far as the extremity of Cornwall. These operations were continued for some years, during which Ethelred seems to have been much occupied by quarrels with his bishops and nobles. Alfeie, the Mercian, who had conspired with Elfrida against Edward the Martyr, was dead, and his extensive earldom had fallen to his son Alfric, — a notorious name in these annals. In conse- quence of a conspiracy, real or alleged, this Alfric was banished. The weak king was soon obliged to recall him, but the revengeful nobleman never forgot the past. In the year 991 a more formidable host of the sea-kings ravaged all that part of East Anglia that lay between Ipswich and Maldon, and won a great battle, in which Earl Brithnoth, a Dane by descent, but a Christian, and a friend to the established government, was slain. Ethelred, then, for the first time, had recourse to the fatal expedient of purchasing their forbearance with money. Ten thousand pounds of silver were paid down, and the sea-kings departed for a while, carry- ing with them the head of Earl Brithnoth as a trophy. In the course of the following year the witenagemot adopted a wiser plan of defence. A formidable fleet was collected at London, and well manned and supplied witli arms. But this wise measure was defeated by Alfric the Mercian, who, in his hatred to the king, had opened a correspond- ence with the Danes, and being entrusted with a principal command in the fleet, he went over to them on the eve of a battle with many of his ships. The traitor of course escaped, and Ethelred wreaked his savage vengeance on Elfgar, the son of Alfric, whose eyes he put out. In 993 a Danish host landed in the north, and took Bamborough Castle by storm. Three chiefs of Danish origin, who had been appointed to command the natives, threw down the standard of Ethelred, and ranged them- selves under the raven. All through Northumbria and the rest of the Dairelagh the Danish settlers gradually either joined their still Pagan brethren from the Baltic, or offered them no resistance. In the mean time the fortunes of Sweyn the exile had undergone a change. By the murder of his father he had ascended the throne of Denmark, and, fur- midable himself, he had gained a powerful ally in Olave, king of Norway, a prince of the true Scan- dinavian race, — a son of an old pirate who, in former times, had often pillaged the coast of Eng- land. In 994 the two north kings ravaged all the southern provinces of our island, doing "unspeak- able harm," and meeting nowhere with a valid resistance. It was again agreed to treat, and buy them off with money. Their pretensions of course rose, and this time sixteen thousand j)ounds of silver were exacted and paid. By a clause in the treaty Olave and some chiefs were bound to em- brace the Christian religion. Sweyn had beer, baptized already more than once, and had relapsed Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS : A. D. 449—1066. 177 to idolatry. One of the chiefs boasted that he had been washed twenty times in the water of baptism ; by which we are to understand that the marauder had submitted to what he considered an idle cere- mony whenever it suited his convenience. Olave, the Norwegian king, however, stood at the fount with a better spirit ; his conversion was sincere ; and an oath he there took, never again to molest the Englisli, was honourably kept. During the four following years the Danes continued their de- sultory invasions ; and when (in 998) Ethelred had got ready a strong fleet and army to oppose them, some of his own officers gave the plunderers timely warning, and they retreated unhurt. On their next returning in force (a.d. 1001), Ethelred seems to have had neither fleet nor army in a condition to meet them ; for, after two conflicts by land, they were allowed to ravage the whole kingdom from the Isle of Wight to the Bristol Channel, and then they were stayed not by steel, but by gold. Their price, of course, still rose : this time twenty-four thousand pounds were paid to purchase their de- parture. These large sums were raised by direct taxation upon land ; and the " Dane-geld," as it was called, was an oppressive and most humiliating buiden that became permanent. Nor was this all. The treaties of peace or truce generally allowed bands of the marauders to winter in the island at Southampton or some other town ; and during their stay the English people, whom they had plundered and beggared, were obliged to feed them. Their appetites had not decreased since the days of Guthrun and Hasting. As if the Danes were not enemies enough, Ethelred had engaged in hostilities with Richard II., Duke of Normandy, and had even, at one time, prepared an armament to invade his dominions. The quarrel was made up by the mediation of the Pope ; and then the English king, who was a widower, thought of strengthening his hands by marrying Emma, the Duke of Normandy's sister. 'I he alliance, which laid the first grounds for the pretext of Norman claims on England, afterwards pressed by William the Conqueror, was readily accepted by the Duke Richard, and in tlie spring of 1002 Emma, " the Flower of Normandy," as she was styled, arrived at the court of Ethelred, where she was received with great pomp. The long rejoicings for this marriage were scarcely over when a memorable atrocity suddenly covered the land with blood and horror. This was the sudden massacre of the Danes, perpetrated by the people with whom they were living intermixed as fellow- suT)jects. It is universally asserted that the plot was laid beforehand, — the fatal order given by the king himself; and there is little in Ethelred's general conduct and character to awaken a doubt in his favour. At the same time, be it observed, the people must have been as guilty, as secret, as treacherous, as cruel, as the king ; and must have entered fully into the spirit which dictated the bloody order of which they were to be the execu- tioners. Such being the case, we think they were fully equal to the conception of the plot themselves, and that, from the loose, unguarded manner in which the Danes lived scattered among them, such a mode of disposing of them would naturally sug- gest itself to a very imperfectly civilized people, maddened by the harsh treatment and insults of their invaders. In the simultaneovis massacre of the French invaders all over Sicily in 1282 the same mystery was obsei"ved ; but it is still a matter of doubt whether the " Sicilian vespers " were ordered by John of Procida or sprung spon- taneously from the people. These two cases, Avhich belong alike to the class of the terrible acts of vengeance that signalise a nation's despair, are nearly parallel in their circumstances ; and in England, as afterwards in Sicily, it was the insults offered by the invaders to their women that ex- tinguished the last sentiments of humanity in the hearts of the people. The outrages of the Danish pagans were extreme. According to the old chro- iiiclers, they made the English yeomanry, among whom they were settled, perform the most menial offices for them ; they held their houses as their own, and, eating and drinking of the best, scantly left the real proprietor his fill of the worst : the peasantry were so sorely oppressed that, out of fear and dread, they called them, in every house where they had rule, " Lord Danes." Their wives and daughters were everywhere a prey to their lust, and when the English made resistance or remonstrance, they were killed or beaten, and laughed at. All this description seems to point at soldiers and adventurers, and men recently settled in the land, and not to the converted married Danes, who had been living a long time in different parts of the country (as well as in the Danelagh, where they were too numerous to be touched), who had contracted quiet, orderly habits, and successfully cultivated the friendship of the English. It was resolved, however, to destroy them all at one blow, — the good with the bad, — the innocent infant at the breast with the hardened ruffian, — the neigh- bour of years with the intruder of yesterday. As the story is told, Ethelred sent secretly to all his good burghs, cities, and towns, charging the rulers thereof to rise, all on a fixed day and hour, and, by falling suddenly on the Danes, exterminate them from the land by sword and fire. By whatever means this simultaneous movement was arranged, it certainly took place. On the 13th of November 1002, (the holy festival of St. Brice,) the Danes, dispersed through a great part of England, were attacked by siuprise, and massacred without dis- tinction of quality, age, or sex, by their hosts and neighbours. Gunhilda, the sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, who had embraced Christianity and married an English earl of Danish descent, after being made to witness the execution of her hus- band and child, was barbarously murdered herself. This tale of horror was soon wafted across the ocean, where Sweyn prepared for a deadly revenge. He assembled a fleet more numerous than any that had hitherto invaded England. The Danish war- 178 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL riors considered the cause a national and sacred one ; and in the assembled host there was not a slave, or an emancipated slave, or a single old man, but every combatant w^as a free man, the son of a free man, and in the prime of life.* These choice warriors embarked in lofty ships, every one of which bore the ensign or standard of its separate commander. Some carried at their prow such figures as lions, bulls, dolphins, dragons, or armed men, all made of metal and gaily gilded ; others carried on their topmast-head the figures of large birds, as eagles and ravens, that stretched out their wings and turned with the wind : the sides of the ships were painted with different bright colours, and, larboard and starboard, from stem to stern, shields of burnished steel were suspended in even lines, and glittered in the sun. Gold, silver, and embroidered banners were profusely displayed, and the whole wealth of the pirates of the Baltic was made to contribute to this barbaric pomp. The ship that bore the royal standard of Sweyn wa» moulded in the form of an enormous serpent, the sharp head of which formed the prow, while the lengthening tail coiled over the poop. It was called " The Great Dragon." The first place where the avengers landed was near Exeter, and that im- portant city was presently surrendered to them through the treachery of Ethelred's governor, a Norman nobleman, and one of the train of favourites and dependants that had followed Queen Emma. After plundering and dismantling Exeter, the Danes marched through the country into Wiltshire, committing every excess that a thirst for vengeance and rapine could suggest. In all the towns and villages through which they passed, after gaily eating the repasts the Saxons were forced to prepare for them, they slew their hosts, and, departing, set fire to their houses.f At last an Anglo-Saxon army was brought vip to oppose their destructive pro- gress ; but this force was commanded by another traitor, — by Alfric the Mercian, — who had already betrayed Ethelred, and whose son, in consequence, had been barbarously blinded by the king. We are not informed by what means he had been restored to favour and employment after such ex- ti'eme measures ; but Alfric now took the oppor- tunity offered him for further revenge on the king. He pretended to be seized with a sudden illness, called off his men when they were about to join battle, and permitted Sweyn to retire with his army and his immense booty through Salisbury to the sea-coast. In the following year Norwich was taken, plundered and burnt, and the same fate befell nearly every town in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cam- bridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and Lincolnshire. The Danes then (a.d. 1004) returned to the Baltic, retreating from a famine which their devastations had caused in England. By marrying the Norman princess Emma, Ethel- red had hoped to secure the assistance of her bro- ther, Duke Richard, against the Danes ; but it was • Sax. Chron. t Hen. Huntins. Hist. soon found that the only Normans who crossed the Channel were a set of intriguing, ambitious cour- tiers, hungry for English places and honours ; and by his inconstancy and neglect of his wife, Ethel- red so irritated that princess that she made bitter complaints to her brother, and caused a fresh quarrel between England and Normandy. Duke Richard seized all the native English who chanced to be in his dominions, and, after shamefully kill' ing some, threw the rest into prison. According to Walsingham, and some of the old Norman writers, Ethelred then actually sent a force to invade Nor- mandy, and this force, after effecting a landing near Coutances, was thoroughly defeated. We are in- clined to believe that the expedition was less im- portant than the Norman chronicles represent it, but it shows the impolicy of the Saxon king, and had, no doubt, some effect in weakening an already weak and dispirited nation. In 1006 Sweyn, whose vengeance and rapacity were not yet satisfied, returned, and carried fire and sword over a great part of the kingdom ; and when it was resolved in the great council to buy him off with gold, 36,000/. was the sum demanded. The frequent raising of these large sums utterly ex- hausted the people, v/hose doors were almost con- stantly beset either by the king's tax-gatherers or the Danish marauders. Those few who had, as yet, the good fortune of escaping the pillage of the Danes, could not now escape the exactions of Ethel- red, and, under one form or another, they were sure of being plundered of all they possessed. By an insolent and cruel mockery the royal tax- gatherers were accustomed to demand an additional sum from those who had paid money to the Danes directly, in order to save their persons and their houses from destruction, aftecting to consider such transactions with the enemy as illegal. In 1008 the people were oppressed with a new burden ; but had this been properly apportioned, had the country been less exhausted, and had the measure for which the money was to be applied been carried vigorously and honestly into effect, it seems as if it ought to have saved England from tlie Danes. Every 310 hides of land were charged with the building and equipping of one ship for the defence of the kingdom ; and in addition to this, every nine hides of land were bound to provide one man, armed with a helmet and iron breastplate. It is calcu- lated that, if all the land which still nominally belonged to Ethelred had supplied its proper con- tingent, more than 800 ships, and about 35,000 armed men, would have been provided. The force actually raised is not stated, but, in spite of the exhaustion of the country, it appears to have been large; some of the old writers stating, particularly as to the marine, that there never were so many ships got together in England before. This fleet, however, was soon rendered valueless by dissen- tions and treachery at home. Ethelred, who had always a favourite of some kind, was now tco- verned by Edric, a man of low birth, but elo- quent, clever, and ambitious. He obtained in Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 179 marriage one of the king's daughters, and about the same time one of the highest offices in the state. His family shared, as usual, in his pro- motion. Brihtric, the brother of this powerful favovirite, conspired against Earl Wulfnoth. Wulf- noth fled, and carried twenty of the new ships with liirii, with which he plundered all the southern coast of England, even as if he had been a Danish pirate. Eighty other ships were placed under the command of Brihtric, who pursued the man he had sought to ruin. A storm arose; these eighty vessels were wrecked on the coast, where Wulfnoth succeeded in burning them all ; and then the rest of the king's fleet appear to have dispersed in anarchy and confusion. This story, like so many others of the period, is imperfectly told ; but the annalists agree in stating that the new navy was dissipated or lost ; and that thus perished the last hope of England. As soon as the intelligence of this disaster reached the mouth of the Baltic a large army of Danes, called, from their leader, " Thurkill's host," set sail for England, where, during the three following years, they committed incalcu- lable mischief, and, by the end of that period, had made themselves masters of a large part of the kingdom. They now and then sold short and uncertain truces to the Saxons, but they never evinced an intention of leaving the island, as Sweyn had left it on former occasions, when well loaded with gold. As Ethelred's diffi- culties increased he was surrounded more and more by the basest treachery, and he seems, at last, not to have had a single officer on whom he could depend. During this lamentable period of base- ness and cowardice a noble instance of courage and firmness occurred in the person of a churchman. Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury, defended that city for twenty days, and when a traitor opened its gate to the Danes, and he was made prisoner and loaded with chains, he refused to purchase liberty and life with gold, which he knew must be wrung from the people. Tired out by his resistance, they thought to overcome it by lowering the rate of his ransom ; and they proposed to take a small sum from him, if he would engage to advise the king to pay them a further amount as a largess. " I do not possess so much money as you demand from me," replied the Saxon archbishop, " and I will not ask or take money from any body, nor will I advise my king against the honour of my country." He continued immovable in this resolution, even refusing the means of ransom voluntarily offered by his brother, saying, it would be treason in him to enrich, in any degree, the enemies of England. The Danes, more covetous of money than desirous of his blood, frequently renewed tlieir demands. " You press me in vain," said Alphege ; " I am not the man to provide Christian flesh for Pagan teeth, by robbing my poor countrymen to enrich their enemies." The Danes, at length, lost pa- tience, and one day, when they were assembled at a drunken banquet, they caused him to be dragged into their presence. " Gold, bishop ! give us gold ! gold I" was their cry, as they gathered about him in menacing attitudes. Still unmoved, he looked round that circle of fierce men, who pre- sently broke up in rage and disorder, and running to a heap of bones, horns, and jaw-bones, the re- mains of their gross feast, they threw these things at him, until he fell to the ground half dead. A Danish pirate whom he had previously converted, or, at least, baptized with his own hands, then took his battle-axe and put an end to the agony and life of Archbishop Alphege.* This heroic example had no effect upon king Ethelred, who continued to pay gold as before. After receiving 48,000/. (for still their demands rose), and the formal cession of several counties, Thurkill took the oaths of peace, and became, with many of his chiefs, and a large detachment of his host, the ally and soldier of the weak Saxon mo- narch. It is probable that Earl Thurkill entered the service of Ethelred for the purpose of betraying him, and acted all along in concert with Sweyn j but the Danish king affected to consider the com- pact as treason to himself, and, with a show of jea- lousy tOAvards Thurkill, prepared a fresh expedi- tion, which he gave out was equally directed against Ethelred and his vassal Thurkill. The fact, at all events was, that Sweyn, who had so often swept the land from east to west, from north to south, had now resolved to attempt the perma- nent conquest of our island. He sailed up the Humber with a numerous and splendid fleet, and landed as near as he could to the city of York. As the Danes advanced into the country, they stuck their lances into the soil, or threw them into thecun*ent of the rivers, in sign of their entire domination over England. They marched, escorted by fire and sword, their ordinary satellites.f Nearly all the inhabitants of the Danelagh joined them at once: the menofNorthumbria, Lindesey, and the " Five Burghs," welcomed the banner of Sweyn, and finally all the " Host" north of Watling-street took up arms in his favour.J Even the provinces in the centre of England, where the Danish settlers or troops were far less numerous, prepared them- selves for a quiet surrender. Leaving his fleet to the care of his son Canute, Sweyn conducted the main body of his army to the south, exacting horses and provisions as he marched rapidly along. Ox- ford, Winchester, and other important towns threw open their gates at his approach; but he was obliged to retire from before the walls of London and the determined valour of its citizens, among whom the king had taken refuge. Sweyn then turned to the west, where he was received with open arms. The eolderman of Devonshire and nearly every other thane in that part of the king- dom repaired to his head-quarters at Bath, and did homage to him as their lawful or chosen sovereign. Seeing the whole kingdom falling from him, Ethel- •Vita Alphegi, in Anglia Sacra.— Ingulf.— Chron, Sax,— Eadmes. — Brompton. ■j- Sciiptoi-es Rer. Danio. quoted in Thierry.— Brompton. X Chron. Sax. 180 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. red abandoned London, which soon followed the general example, and submitted to the Danes. This unready king then fled to the Isle of Wight, whence he secretly sent his children with Emma, his Norman Avife, to the court of her brother at Rouen. He was for some short time doubtful where he should lay his own head ; for, after the hostilities and insults which had passed between them, he reasonably doubted the good-will of his brother-in-law. The Duke of Normandy, how- ever, not only received Emma and her children with great kindness, but offered a safe and honour- able asyhnn to Ethelred, which that luckless prince was fain to accept as his only resource. Sweyn was now (about the middle of Janxiary, 1013) acknowledged as " Full King of England ;"" but the power which had been obtained with so much labour, and at the expense of so much blood- shed and wretchedness, remained to the conqueror a very short time. He died suddenly at Gains- borough ; and, only six weeks after the time when he liad been allowed to depart for Normandy, " abandoned, deserted, and betrayed" by all, Ethel- red was invited by the Saxon nobles and prelates to return and take possession of his kingdom, which was pledged to his defence and support — •provided only that ho would govern them better than he had done before. Ethelred, before ven- turing himself, sent over his son Edward, with solemn promises and assurances. Pledges were exchanged for the faithful performance of the new compact between king and people. A sentence of perpetual outlawry was pronounced against every king of Danish name and race ; and, before the end of Lent, Ethelred was restored to those domi- nions which he had already misgoverned thirty- five years. In the mean time, the Danish army in England had proclaimed Canute, the son of Sweyn, as king of the whole land ; and in the northern pro- vinces they and their adherents were in a condi- tion to maintain the election they had made. In- deed, north of Watling-street, the Danes were all powerful ; and Canute, though beset by some diffi- culties, was not of a character to relinquish his hold of the kingdom without a hard struggle. A san- guinary warfare was renewed, and, murdering and bribing, betraying and betrayed, Ethelred was fast losing ground when he died of disease, about three years after his return from Normandy. The law of succession continued as loose as ever ; and, in seasons of extreme difficulty like the present, when so much depended on the personal character and valour of the sovereign, it was alto- gether neglected or despised. Setting aside Ethel- red's legitimate children, the Saxons chose for their king a natural son, Edmund, surnamed Iron- side, who had already given many proofs of cou- rage in the field and wisdom in the council. By general consent, indeed, Edmund was a hero ; but the country was too much worn out and divided, and the treasons that had torn his father's court and camp were too prevalent in his own to permit of his restoring Saxon independence throughout the king- dom. After twice relieving London, when be- sieged by Canute and all his host, and fighting five pitched battles with unvarying valour, but with various success. Ironside proposed tliat he and his rival should decide their claims in a single combat, saying " it was pity so many lives should be lost and perilled for tlieir ambition."* Canute declined the duel, saying, that he, as a man of slender make, would stand no chance with the stalwart Edmund ; and he added, that it would be wiser and better for them both to divide England between them, even as their forefathers had done in other times. This proposal is said to have been received with enthusiastic joy by both armies, and, however the negotiation may have been conducted, and whatever was the precise line of demarcation settled between them, it was certainly agreed that Canute should reign over the north, and Edmund Ironside over tlie south, with a nominal superiority over the Dane's portion. The brave Edmund did not survive the treaty more than two months. His death, which took place on the feast of St. Andrew, was sudden and mysterious. As Canute profited so much by it, as to become sole monarch of Eng- land immediately after, it is generally believed he planned his assassination ; but, judging from the old chroniclers who lived at or near the time, it is not clear who were the contrivers and actual per- petrators of the deed, or whether he was killed at all. There is even a doubt as to the place of his death, whether it was London or Oxford. Silver CotN of Canute, — From a Specimen in the IJiitisli Museum. Canute, a.d. 1017. Although the death of Edmund removed all obstacles, and the south lay prostrate before the Danes, Canute began with a show of law and moderation. A great council of the bishops, " duces," and " optimates," was con- vened at London ; and before them Canute ap- pealed to those Saxons who had been witnesses to the convention and treaty of partition between him- self and Edmvmd, and called upon them to state the terms upon which the compact was concluded. Intimidated by force, or won by promises, and the hopes of conciliating the favour of tlie powerful survivor, who seemed certain to be king, with or without their consent, they all loudly testified that Edmund had never intended to reserve any right of succession to his brothers, the sons of Ethelred, who were absent in Normandy, and that it was his (Edmund's) express wish that Canute should be the guardian of his own children during their infancy. The most imperfect and faint semblance of a right being thus established, the Saxon chiefs took an oath of fidelity to Canute, as king of all • Malmsb. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 106G. 181 England ; and Canute, in return, swore to be just and benevolent, and clasped their hands with his naked hand, in sign of sincerity. A full amnesty was promised ; but the promise had scarcely passed the royal lips ere Canute began to proscribe those whom he had promised to love. The principal of the Saxon chiefs who had formerly opposed him, and the relations of Edmund and Ethelred, were banished or put to death. " He who brings me the head of one of my enemies," said the ferocious Dane, " shall be dearer to me than a brother." The witenagemot, or parliament, which had so recently passed the same sentence against the Danish princes, now excluded all the descendants of Ethelred from the throne. They declared Edwy, a grown up brother of Ironside, an outlaw, and when he was pursued and muidered by Canute, they tacitly acknowledged the justice of that execu- tion. This Edwy bore the curious title of " King of the Churls, or Peasants," concerning the proper meaning of which there have been some disp\ites. We incline to the opinion of a recent writer— that this designation did not imply a real dignity, and that it may be conjectured to have been merely a name given to Edwy on accovuit of his popularity among the peasants * Such a popularity in the Saxon prince would naturally excite the jealousy of the Danes, who, however, sought the destruction of all the race. Edmund and Edward, the two in- fant sons of the deceased king, Edmund Ironside, were seized, and a feeling of shame, mingled jxsr- haps with some fear of the popular odium, pre- venting him from murdering them in England, Canute sent them over sea to his ally and vassal, the king of Sweden, whom he requested to dispose of them in such a manner as should remove his uneasiness on their account. He meant that they should be murdered ; but the Swedish king, moved by the innocence of the little children, instead of executing the horrid commission, sent them to the distant court of the king of Hungary, where they were affectionately and honourably entertained, be- yond the reach of Canute. Of these two orphans Edmund died without issue, but Edward married a daughter of the German emperor, by whom he became father to Edgar Atheling, Christina, and Margaret. lulgar will be frequently mentioned in our subsequent pages. Margaret became the wife of Malcolm, King of Scotland, and through her the rights of the line of Alfred and Cerdic were trans- mitted to Malcolm's progeny, after the Norman conq\iest of England. There were still two princes whose claims to the crown might some day disquiet Canute, but they were out of his reach in Nor- mandy. These were Edward and Alfred, the sons of King Ethelred, by Emma. Their uncle Richard, the Norman duke, at first sent an embassy to the Dane, demanding, on their behalf, the restitution of the kingdom ; but though his power was great, he adopted no measures likely to induce Canute to a surrender or partition of the territories he was • Piil(;rave, Hist. cli. xiii. Wi- heir of no " King of the Cluirls" eitlter befure or after Kdwy. It certainly looks like a nicknamr. actually possessed of; and, very soon after, he entered into close and friendly negotiations with that enemy of his nephews, and even offered him their own mother and his sister in marriage. Ac- cording to some historians, the first overtures to this umiatural marriage, which was followed by most unnatural consequences, proceeded from Canvxte. However this may be, the Dane wooed the widowed "Flower of Normandy;" and the heartless Emma, forgetful of the children she had borne, and only anxious to become again the wife of a king, readily gave her hand to the man who had caused tlie ruin and hastened the death of her husband Ethelred. In this extraordinary transac- tion an old chronicler is at a loss to decide whe- ther the greater share of dishonour falls to Queen Emma or to her brother Duke Richard.* Having soon become the mother of another son, by Canute, this Norman woman neglected and despised her first-born ; and those two princes being detained at a distance from England, became, by degrees, strangers to their own country, forgot its language and its manners, and grew up Normans instead of Saxons. The Danish dynasty of Canute was not destined to take root ; but the circimistancc just alluded to most essentially contributed to place a long line of Norman princes upon the throne of England. Canute was not one that loved blood for the sake of bloodshedding. When he had disposed of all those who gave him fear or umbrage, he stayed his hand, and was praised, like so many other con- querors and tyrants, for his merciful forbearance. The Danish warriors insulted, robbed, and sorely oppressed the Saxons, and he himself wrung from them more " geld" than they had ever paid be- fore ; but by degrees Canute assumed a mild tone towards his new subjects, and partially succeeded in gaining their good-will. They followed him willingly to his foreign wars, of which there was no lack, for, besides that of England, Canute now held, or pretended to, the crowns of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. In, these distant wars the Saxons, who had not been able to delend them- selves, fought most bravely under their own con- queror, for the enslaving of oliler nations. But this is a case of very common occurrence, both in ancient and modern history. Canute's last mili- tary expedition (a.d. 1017-19) was against the Cumbrians and Scots. Duncan, the regulus, or under-king of Cumbria, refused homage and alle- giance to the Dane, on the ground that he was a usurper ; and Malcolm, king of Scotland, equally maintained that the English throne belonged of right to the legitimate heir of King Ethelred, Had the powerful Duke of Normandy seconded these demonstrations in favour of his nephews Canute's crown might have been put in jeopardy ; but the Cumbrians and Scots were left to themselves, and compelled to submit, in the face of a most formi- dable army which the Dane had collected. These constant successes, and the enjoyment of • Malmsb. 182 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. peace which followed them, together with the sobering influence of increasing years, though he was yet in the prime of manhood, softened the conqueror's heart ; and, though he continued to rule despotically, the latter part of his reign was marked with no acts of cruelty, and was probably, on the whole, a happier time than the English had known since the days of Alfred and Athelstane. He was cheerful and accessible to all his subjects, without distinction of race or nation. He took pleasure in old songs and ballads, of which both Danes and Saxons were passionately fond ; he most liberally patronised the scalds, minstrels, and glee-men, the poets and musicians of the time, and occasion- ally wrote verses himself, which were orally circu- lated among the common people, and taken up and sung by them. He could scarcely have hit upon a surer road to popularity. A ballad of his compo- sition continued long after to be a special favourite with the English peasantry. All of it is lost except the first verse, which has been preserved in the Historia Eliensis, or History of Ely. The inte- resting royal fragment is simply this : — Mevie sungen the muneclies binnen Ely, Tha Cnut Ching reu there by, Roweth, cnihtes, nter the land, And here we thes muneches soeng. that is : — Merrily sung the monks within Ely, When Cnute king rowed thereby, — Row, my knights, row near the land, And hear we these monks' son^. The verses are said to have been suggested to him one day as he was rowing on the river Neune, near Ely Minster, by hearing the sweet and solemn music of the monastic choir floating over the waters. * In his days of quiet the devotion of the times had also its full influence on the character of Canute. This son of an apostate Christian showed himself a zealous believer, a friend to the monks, a visitor and collector of relics, a founder of churches and monasteries. His soul was assailed with remorse for the blood he had shed and the other crimes he had committed ; and, in the year 1030, he determined to make a pilgrimage to Rome. He started on his journey to the Holy City with a wallet on his back and a pilgrim's staff in his hand. He visited all the most celebrated churches on the road between the Low Countries and Rome, leaving at every one of them some proof of his liberality. According to a foreign chronicler, all the people on his way had reason to exclaim — " The blessing of God be upon the king of the English !" But no one tells us how dearly this munificence cost the English people. Return- ing from Rome, where he resided a considerable time, in company with other kings (there seems to have been a sort of royal and ecclesiastical con- gress held), he purchased, in the city of Pavia, the arm of St. Augustine, "the Great Doctor." This precious relic, for which he paid a hundred talents • The meaning of the old English "merry," and "merrily," it is to be remembered, was different from tliat wliich we now attach to the words. A " merry" song was merely a sweet or touching melody, and might be plaintive as well as gay. of gold and a hundred talents of silver, he after- wards presented to the church of Coventi-y ; — an act of liberality by which, no doubt, he gained many friends and many prayers. On re-crossing the Alps, Canute did not make his way direct to England, but went to his other kingdom of Denmark, where, it appears, he had still difficulties to settle, and where he remained some months. He, however, despatched the Abbot of Tavistock to England with a long letter of expla- nation, command, and advice, addressed to " Egel- noth the Metropolitan, to Archbishop Alfric, to all Bishops and Chiefs, and to all the nation of the English, both nobles and commoners, greeting." This curious letter, which appears to have been carefully preserved, and which is given entire by writers who lived near the time, begins with explaining the motives of his pilgrimage, and the nature of the sacred omnipotence of the Churcli of Rome. It then continues, — " And be it known to you that, at the solemn festival of Easter, there was held a great assem- blage of illustrious persons ; to wit, — the Pope John, the Emperor Conrad, and the chiefs of all the nations from Mount Garganus to the neigh- bouring sea. They all received me with distinction, and honoured me with rich presents, giving me vases of gold and vessels of silver, and stuff's and garments of great price. I discoursed with the Lord Pope, the Lord Emperor, and the other princes, on the grievances of my people, English as well as Danes. I endeavoured to obtain for my people justice and security in their journeys to Rome ; and, above all, that they might not hence- forth be delayed on the road by the shutting up of the mountain passes, the erecting of barriers, and the exaction of heavy tolls. My demands were granted both by the Emperor and King Rudolf, who are masters of most of the passes ; and it was enacted that all my men, as well merchants as pilgrims, should go to Rome and return in full security, without being detained at the barriers, or forced to pay unlawful tolls. I also complained to the Lord Pope that such enormous sums had been extorted up to this day from my archbishops, when, according to custom, they Went to the apostolic see to obtain the pallium ; and a decree was forth- with made that this grievance likewise should cease. Wherefore I return sincere thanks to God that I have successfully done all that I intended to do, and have fully satisfied all my Avishes. And now, therefore, be it known to you all that I have dedicated my life to God, to govern my kingdoms with justice, and to observe the right in all things. If, in the time that is passed, and in the violence and carelessness of youth, I have violated justice, it is my intention, by the help of God, to make full compensation. Therefore I beg and command those unto whom I have entrusted the government, as they wish to preserve my good will, and save their own souls, to do no injustice either to rich or poor. Let those who are noble, and those who are not, equally obtain their rights, according to the Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 183 laws, from which no deviation shall be allowed, either from fear of me, or through favour to the powerful, or for the purpose of supplying my trea- sury. / ivant no money raised by injustice" The last clause of this remarkable and charac- teristic epistle had reference to the clergy. " I entreat and order you all, the bishops, sheriffs, and officers of my kingdom of England, by the faith which you owe to God and to me, so to take mea- sures that before my return among you all our debts to the church be paid up ; to wit, the plough alms, the tithes on cattle of the present year, the Peter-pence due by each house in all towns and villages, the tithes of fruit in the middle of August, and the kirk-shot at the feast of St. Martin to the parish church. And if, at my return, these dues are not wholly discharged, I will punish the delin- quents according to the rigour of the laws, and without any grace. So fare ye well." * It does not clearly appear whether the old writers refer the following often-repeated incident to a period preceding or one subsequent to this • Ingulf.— Malmsb. Florent. Wigorn. The substance of the letter is also found in Torfaei Hist, Norveg. and in Ditmari Script. Rer. Danicar. Roman pilgrimage. When at the height of his power, and when all things seemed to bend to his lordly will (so goes the story), Canute, disgusted one day with the extravagant flatteries of his cour- tiers, determined to read them a practical lesson. He caused his throne to be placed on the verge of the sands on the sea-shore as the tide was rolling in with its resistless might, and, seating himself, he addressed the ocean, and said, — " Ocean ! the land on which I sit is mine, and thou art a part of my dominion — therefore rise not — obey my com- mands, nor presume to wet the edge of my robe." ^e sate for some time as if expecting obedience, but the sea rolled on in its immutable course ; suc- ceeding waves broke nearer and nearer to his feet, till at length the skirts of his garment and his legs were bathed by the waters. Then, turning to his courtiers and captains, Canute said, — " Confess ye now how frivolous and vain is the might of an earthly king compared to that Great Power who rules the elements, and can say unto the ocean, ' Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.' " The chroniclers conclude the apologue by adding that he immediately took off his crown, and depositing it in the cathedral of Winchester, never wore it again. Canute Reproving his Flattereks.— Smirke. 184 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. This great Banish sovereign died in a.d. 1035, at Shaftesbury, about three years after his return from Rome, and was buried at Winchester. The churclies and abbeys lie erected have long since disappeared, or their fragments have been imbedded in later edifices erected on their sites; but the great public work called the King's Delf, a cause- way connecting Peterborough and Ramsey, and carried through the marshes by Canute's command, is still serviceable. On his demise there was the usual difficulty and contention respecting the succession. Canute left but one legitimate son, Hardicanute, whom he had by Ethelred's widow, the Lady Emma of Nor- mandy. He had two illegitimate sons, Sweyn and Harold. In royal families bastardy was none, or a very slight objection in those days ; but, according to the contemporary writers, it was the prevalent belief, or popular scandal, that these two young men were not the children of Canute, even ille- gitimately, but were imposed upon him as such by his acknowledged concubine Alfgiva, daughter of the eolderman of Southampton, who, according to this gossip, knew full well that Sweyn was the son of a priest by another woman, and Harold the offspring of a cobbler and his wife. Whoever were their fiithers and mothers, it is certain that Canute intended that his dominions should be divided among the three young men, and this without any apparent prejudice in favour of legitimacy; for Harold, and not Hardicanute (the lawful son), was to have England, v/hich was esteemed by far the best portion. Denmark was to fall to Hardicanute, and Norway to Sweyn. Both these princes were in the north of Europe, and apparently in possession of power there, when Canute died. The powerful Earl Godwin, and the Saxons of the south gene- rally, wished rather to choose for king of England either one of the sons of Ethelred, who were still in Normandy, or Hardicanute, the son of Emma, who was at least connected with the old Saxon line. But Earl Leofric of Mercia, with the thanes north of the Thames, and all the Danes, supported the claims of the illegitimate Harold ; and when the influential city of London took this side, the cause of Hardicanute seemed almost hopeless. But still all the men of the south and the great Earl Godwin adhered to the latter, and a civil war was imminent (to escape the horrors of which many families had already fled to the morasses and forests), when it was wisely determined to effect a compromise by means of the witenagemot. This assembly met at Oxford, and there decided that Harold should have all the provinces north of the Thames, with London for his capital, while all the country south of that river should remain to his real or fictitious half-brother Hardicanute. Hardicanute, showing no anxiety for his do- minions in England, lingered in Denmark, where the habits of the Scandinavian chiefs, and their hard drinking, were to his taste ; but his mother, Emma, and Earl Godwin governed in the south on his behalf, and held a court at Winchester. Ha- rold, however, who saw his superiority over his absent half-brother, took his measures for attaching the provinces of the south to his dominions ; and two fruitless invasions from Normandy only tended to in- crease his power and facilitate that aggrandizement. Soon after the news of Carnite's death reached Normandy, Edward, the eldest of the surviving sons of Ethelred by Emma, and who eventually became king of England under the title of Edward the Con- fessor, made sail for England with a few ships, and landed at Southampton in the intention of claiming the crown. He threw himself in the midst of his mother's retainers, and was within a few miles of her residence at Winchester. But Emma had no affection for her children by Ethelred ; she was at the moment making every exertion to secure the English throne for her son by Canute, and, instead of aiding Edward, she set the whole country in hostile array against him. He escaped with some difficulty from a formidable force, and fled back to Normandy, determined, it is said, never again to touch the soil of his fathers. The second invasion from Normandy was at- tended with more tragical results, and part of the history of it is enveloped in an impeneti-able mystery. An affectionate letter,* purporting to be written by the queen. mother, Emma, was conveyed to her sons Edward and Alfred, reproaching them with their apathy, and urging that one of them, at least, should return to England and assert his right against the tyrant Harold. This letter is pro- nounced a forgery by the old writer who preserves it ; but those who are disposed to take the darkest view of Emma's character may object, that this writer was a paid encomiast of that queen's (and paid by her living self), and therefore not likely to confess her guilty of being a participator in her own son's murder, even if such were the fact. The same authority, indeed, even praises her for her ill- assorted, shameful marriage with Canute, which undeniably alienated her from her children by the former union. For ourselves, although she did not escape the strong suspicion of her contemporaries any more than Earl Godwin, who was then in close alliance with her, we rather incline to the belief that the letter was forged by the order of Harold ; though, again, there is a possibility that it may have been actually the product of the queen, who may have meant no harm to her son, and that the harm he suffered may have fallen upon him through Godwin, on that chief's seeing how he came at- tended. However this may be, Alfred, the younger of the two brothers, accepted the invitation. The instructions of Emma's letter were to come without any armament ;t but he raised a considerable force (milites nonparvi numeri)l i" Normandy and Bou- logne. When he appeared off Sandwich, there was a far superior force there, which rendered his landing hopeless. He therefore bore round the • Encom. Emm. t Hogo unus vostrum ad me velociter et private veniat. Enc. Emin. X Uuill. Gumeticensis. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— lOSG. 185 North Foreland, and disembarked " opposite to Canterbury," probably about Heme Bay, between the Triculvers and the Isle of Sheppey. Having advanced some distance up the country without any opposition, he was met by Earl Godwin, who is said to have sworn faith to him, and to have under- taken to conduct him to his mother Emma. Avoid- ing London, where the party of Harold was pre- dominant, they marched to Guildford, where Godwin billeted the strangers, in small parties of tens and scores in different houses of the town. There was plenty of meat and drink prepared in every lodging ; and Earl Godwin, taking his leave for the night, promised his dutiful attendance on Alfred for the following morning. Tired with the day's journey, and filled with meat and wine, the separated company went to bed, suspecting no wrong ; but in the dead of night, when disarmed and buried in sleep, they were suddenly set upon by King Harold's forces, who seized and bound them all with chains and gives. On the following morning they were ranged in a line before the exe- cutioners. There are said to have been 600 victims, and, with the exception of every tenth man, they were all barbarously tortured and massacred. Prince Alfred was reserved for a still more cruel fate. He was hurried away to London, where, it should seem, Harold personally insulted his mis- fortunes ; and from London he was sent to the Isle of Ely, in the heart of the country of the Danes. He made the sad journey mounted on a wretched horse, naked, and with his feet tied beneath the animal's belly. At Ely he was arraigned before a mock court of Danish miscreants, as a disturber of the country's peace, and was condemned to lose his eyes. His eyes were instantly torn out by main force, and he died a few days after in exquisite anguish. Some believe that Earl Godwin was guilty of betraying, or at least deserting, the prince after he had landed in England, without having premeditated treachery in inviting him over ; and they say his change of sentiment took place the instant he saw that AliVed, instead of coming alone to throw himself on the affections of the Saxon people, had surrounded himself with a host of ambitious foreigners, all eager to share in the wealth and honours of the land. Henry of Hunt- ingdon, a writer of the twelfth century, sup- ports this not irrational view of the case, and says that Godwin told his Saxon followers that -•Mfred came escorted by too many Normans, — that he had promised these Normans rich pos- sessions in England,— and that it would be an act of imprudence in them, the Saxons, to per- mit this race of foreigners, known through the world for their audacity and cvmning, to gain a footing in England. The whole life of the great Earl abounds in sudden resolutions and changes ; nor did he ever hesitate at bloodshed ; but without going into a discussion which would fill many pages, and leave us in uncertainty at last, we will quit this horrid tragedy, of the truth of which there is no reason to doubt, by confessing that the motives of the parties concerned, and the share of guilt which each had in it, cannot be established from the accounts of the old chroniclers, who hold very different lang-uage, and contradict each other. Shortly after the murder of Alfred, Emma was either sent out of England 1)y Harold, or retired a voluntary exile. It is to be remarked that she did not fix her residence in Normandy, where her son Edward, brother of Alfred, was living, but Avent to the court of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders. Harold had now little difficulty in getting him- self proclaimed " full king " over all the island. The election, indeed, was not sanctioned by legis- lative aiithority ; but this authority, always fluc- tuating and uncertain, was at present almost worthless. A more important opposition was that offered by the church, in whose ranks the Saxons were far more numerous than the Danes, or priests of Danish descent ; and in all these contentions the two hostile races must be considered, and not merely the quarrels or ambition of the rival princes. The question at issue was, whether the Danes or the Saxons should have the upper land. Ethel- noth, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was a Saxon, refused to perform the ceremonies of the coronation. Taking the crown and sceptre, which it appears had been entrusted to his charge by Canute, he laid them on the altar, and said, " Ha- rold ! I will neither give them to thee, nor prevent thee from taking the ensigns of royalty ; but I will not bless thee, nor shall any bishop consecrate thee on the throne." It is said that, im this, like a modern conqueror, the Dane put the crown on his head with his own hands. According to some accounts he subsequently won over the Archbishop, and was solemnly crowned. Other authorities, however, assert that he was never crowned at all, — that, out of spite to the Archbishop, he showed an open contempt for the Christian religion, absenting himself from all places of worship, and uncoupling his hounds, or calling for meat and wine at the hours when the faithful were summoned to mass and prayer. His chief anmsement was hunting ; and, from the fleetness with which he could follow the game on foot, he acquired the name of " Ha- rold Harefoot." Little more is known about him, except that he died after a short reign of four years, in A.D. 1040, and was buried at Westminster. Hardicanute, his half-brother, was at Bruges, and on the point of invading England, when Harold died. After long delays in Denmark, he listened to the urgent calls of his exiled mother, the still stirring and ambitious Emma; and, leaving a greater force ready at the mouth of the Baltic, he sailed to Flanders with nine ships to consult his parent. He had been but a short time at Bruges when a deputation of English and Danish thanes arrived there to invite him to ascend the most brilliant of his father's thrones in peace. The two great factions in England had come to this agreement, but, according to the chroniclers, they were soon made to repent of it by the exactions and rapacity of Hardicanute. 186 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. HBooK II. Relying more on the Danes, among wliom he had lived so long, than on the English, and being averse to part with the companions of his revels and drinking-bouts, he brought with him a great number of Danish chiefs and courtiers, and re- tained an expensive Danish army and navy. This obliged him to have frequent recourse to " Dane- gelds," the arbitrary levying of which by his " Huscarles," or household troops, who were all Danes, caused frequent insurrections or commo- tions. The people of Worcester resisted the Hus- carles with arms in their hands, and slew Feader and Turstane, two of the king's collectors. In revenge for this contempt, that city was burnt to the ground, a great part of the surrounding country laid desolate, and the goods of the citizens put to the spoil " by such power of lords and men-of-war as the king sent against them." It should appear that not even the church was exempted from these oppressive levies of Dane-geld, for a monkish writer complains that the clergy were forced to sell the very chalices from the altar in order to pay their assessments. On his first arriving in England, Hardicanute showed his horror of Prince Alfred's murder, and his revenge for the injury done by Harold to him- self and his relatives, in a truly barbarous manner. By his order, the body of Harold was dug up from the grave ; its head was struck off, and then both body and head were thrown into the Thames. To increase the dramatic interest of the story, some of the old writers, who maintain that the great earl had murdered Alfred to serve Harold, say that Godwin was obliged to assist at the disinterment and decapitation of the corpse, the mutilated re- mains of which were soon after drawn out of the river by some Danish fishermen, who secretly in- terred them in the churchyard of St. Clement Danes, " without Temble-bar at London." Earl Godwin, indeed, a very short time after, was for- mally accused of Alfred's murder ; but he cleared himself, in law, by his own oath, and the oaths of many of his peers ; and a rich and splendid pre- sent is generally supposed to have set the question at rest between him and Hardicanute, though it failed to acquit him in popular opinion. This present was a ship of the first class, covered with gilded metal, and bearing a figure-head in solid gold : the crew, which formed an intrinsic part of the gift, were four score picked warriors, and each warrior was furnished with dress and appoint- ments of the most costly description — a gilded hel- met was on his head, a triple hauberk on his body, a sword with a hilt of gold hung by his side, a Danish battle-axe, damasked with silver, was on his shoulder, a gold- studded shield on his left arm, and in his right hand a gilded ategar* During the remainder of Hardicanute's short reign. Earl Godwin, and Emma the queen-mother, who were again in friendly alliance, divided nearly • The same scythe- shaped weapon as the Moorish " assagay," the Turkish " yataghan,'' &c. It was a common weapon with the Dalies, ami is still so in the Bast. all the authority of government between them, leaving the king to the tranquil enjoyment of the things he most prized in life — his banquets, whicli were spread four times a day, and his carousals at night. From many incidental passages in the old writers, we should conclude that the Saxons them- selves were sufficiently addicted to drinking and the pleasures of the table, and required no in- structors in those particvilars ; yet it is pretty ge- nerally stated that hard drinking became fashion- able under the Danes j and more than one chro- nicler laments that Englishmen learned from the example of Hardicanute " their excessive gour- mandizing and unmeasurable filling of their bellies with meats and drinks." This king's death was in keeping with the tenor of his life. When he had reigned two years all but ten days, he took part, with his usual zest, in the marriage feast of one of his Danish thanes, which was held at Lambeth, or, more probably, at Clapham.* At a late hour of the night, as he stood up to pledge that jovial company, he suddenly fell down speechless with the wine-cup in his hand : he was removed to an inner chamber, but he spoke no more ; and thus the last Danish king in England died drunk. He was buried in the church of Winchester, near his father Canute. Silver Cotits of Edwaed the Confessor.— From Specimens in the British Museum. Edward the Confessor. Hardicanute was scarcely in his grave when his half-brother Ed- ward, who was many years his senior, ascended the throne (a.d. 1042) with no opposition, except such as he found from his own fears and scruples, which, had he been left to himself, would probably have in- duced him to prefer a monastery or some other quiet retirement in Normandy. During his very brief reign, Hardicanute had recalled the exile to Eng- land, had received him with honour and affection, granted him a handsome allowance, and even pro- posed, it is said, to associate him in his govern- ment. Edward was, therefore, at hand, and in a favourable position at the moment of crisis ; nor, according to the modern laws of hereditary suc- cession, could any one have established so good a right ; for his half-nephew, Edward, who was still far away in Hungary, v/as only illegitimately de- scended from the royal line of Cerdic and Alfred, his father, Edmund Ironside, though older than Ed- ward, being a natural son of their common father Ethelred. But, in truth, rules of succession had little to do with the settlement of the crown, which • The name of the bride's father, in whose house the feast is supposed to have been held, was Osgod Clapa ; and Clapa-ham, the hame or home of Clapa, is taken as the etymology of our suburban village.— Pa/yrODe, Hiftch. xiii. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY THANSACTIONS : A.D. 449— 106G. 187 was effected by a variety of other and more poten^ agencies. The connexion between the Danish and English crowns was evidently breaking off ; there was a prospect that the two parties in England would soon be left to decide their contest without any intervention from Denmark; for some time the Saxon party had been gaining ground, and, before Hardicanute's death, formidable associa- tions had been made, and more than one success- ful battle fought against the Danes. On their side, the Danes, having no descendant of the great Canute around whom to rally, became less vehement for the expulsion of the Saxon line, while many of them settled in the south of the island were won over by the reputed virtue and sanctity of Edward. If we may judge by the uncertain light of some of the chronicles, many leading Danes quitted England on Hardi- canute's decease ; and it seems quite certain that when the nobles and prelates of the Saxons (were there not Danes among these ?) assembled in Lon- don, with the resolution of electing Edward, they encountered no opposition from any Danish fac- tion. But the great Earl Godwin, the still sus- pected murderer of the new king's brother, Alfred, had by far the greatest share in Edward's eleva- tion. This veteran politician, of an age considered barbarous, and of a race (the Saxon) generally noted rather for stupidity and dulness, than for acuteness and adroitness, trimmed his sails accord- ing to the winds that predominated, with a degree of skill and remorselessness which would stand a comparison with the manoeuvres of the most cele- brated political intriguers of the most modem and civilized times. In all the struggles that had taken place since the death of Canute he had changed sides with astonishing facility and rapidity, — going back more than once to the party he had deserted, then changing again, and always causing the fac- tion he embraced to triumph just so long as he ad- hered to it, and no longer. Changes, ruinous to others, only brought him an accession of strength. At the death of Hardicanute, he was earl of all Wessex and Kent ; and by his alliances and in- trigues, he controlled nearly the whole of the south- ern and more Saxon part of England. His abili- ties were proved by the station he had attained ; for he had begun life as a cow-herd. He was a fluent speaker ; but his eloquence, no doubt, owed much of its faculty of conveying conviction to the power or material means he had always at hand to enforce his arguments. When he rose in the assembly of thanes and bishops, and gave it as his opinion that Edward the Atheling, the only sur- viving son of Ethelred, should be their king, there were but very few dissentient voices ; and the earl carefully marked the weak minority, who seem all to have been Saxons, and drove them into exile shortly after. It is pretty generally stated, that his relation, "William, Duke of Nor- mandy (afterwards the Conqueror), materially aided Edward by his influence, having firmly announced to the Saxons, that if they failed in their duty to the sons of Emma, they should feel the weight of his vengeance ; but we more than doubt the authen- ticity of this fact, from the simple circumstances of Duke William's being only fifteen years old at the time, and his states being in most lamentable confusion and anarchy, pressed from without by the French king, and troubled within by factious nobles, who all wished to take advantage of his youth and inexperience. The case, perhaps, is not very rare, but it must always be a painful and perplexing one. Edward hated the man who was serving him ; and while Godwin was placing him on the throne, he could not detach his eyes from the bloody grave to which, in his conviction, the earl had sent his brother Alfred. Godwin was perfectly well aware of these feelings, and, like a practised politician, before he stirred in Edward' s cause, and when the fate of that prince, even to his life or death, was in his hands, he made such stipulations as were best cal- culated to secure him against their effects. He obtained an extension of territories, honours, and commands for himself and his sons — a solemn assurance that the past was forgiven, and, as a pledge for future affection and family union, he made Edward consent to marry his daughter. The fair Editha, the daughter of the fortunate earl, became queen of England ; but the heart was not to be controlled, and Edward was never a husband to her. Yet, from contemporary ac- counts, Editha was deserving of love, and possessed of such a union of good qualities as ought to have removed the deep-rooted antipathies of the king to herself and her race. Her person was beautiful ; her manners graceful ; her disposition cheerful, meek, pious, and generous, without a taint of her father's or brothers' pride and arrogance. Her mental accomplishments far surpassed the standard of that age ; she was fond of reading, and had read many books. Iiigulphus, the monk of Croy- land, who was her contemporary and personal ac- quaintance, speaks of her with a homely and subdued enthusiasm that is singularly touching. He says she sprung from Godwin as the rose springs from the thoni. " I have very often seen her," he con- tinues, " in my boyhood, when I used to go to visit my father, who was employed about the court. Often did I meet her as I came from school, and then she questioned me about my studies and my verses ; and, willingly passing from grammar to logic, she would catch me in the subtleties of argument. She always gave me two or three pieces of money, which were counted to me by her hand-maiden, and then sent me to the royal larder to refresh myself." If Edward neglected, and afterwards persecuted his wife, he behaved in a still harsher and more sum- • mary manner to his mother Emma, who, though she has few claims on our sympathy, was, in spite of all her faults, entitled to some consideration from him. But he could not forgive past injuries — he coul(3 not forget, that, while she lavished her affections and ill-gotten treasures on her children by Canute, 188 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. she had left him and his brother to languish in poverty in Normandy, where they were forced to eat the bitter bread of other people ; and he seems never to have relieved her from the horrid suspicion of having had part in Alfred's murder. These feelings were probably exasperated by her refusing to advance him money at a moment of need, just before, or at the date of his coronation. Shortly after his coronation he held a council at Glouces- ter, whence, accompanied by Earls Godwin, Leo- fric, and Siward, he hurried to Winchester, where Emma had again established a sort of court, seized iier treasures, and all the cattle, the corn, and the forage on the lands which she possessed as a dower, and behaved otherwise to her with great harshness. Some say she was committed to close custody in the abbey of Wearwell ; but, according to the more generally received account, she was permitted to retain her lands, and to reside at large at Winchester, where, it appears, she died in 1052, the tenth year of Edward's reign. We omit the story of her alleged amours with Alwin. bishop of Winchester, and her exculpating herself by walking unscathed with naked feet over nine red- hot plough-shares, as rather a fabulous legend, than belonging to real history. In the second year of Edward's reign (a.d. 1043), a faint demonstration to re-establish the Scandinavian supremacy in England was made by Magnus, king of Norway and Denmark ; but the Saxons assembled a great fleet at Sandwich ; the Danes in the land remained quiet, and, his last hopes expiring, Magnus was soon induced to de- clare that he thought it " right and most conve- nient" that he should let Edward enjoy his crown, and content himself with the kingdoms which God had given him. But though undisturbed by foreign invasions or the internal wars of a com- petitor for the crown, Edward was little more than a king in name. This abject condition arose in part, but certainly not wholly, from his easy, pa- cific disposition ; for he not un frequently showed himself capable of energy, and firm and sudden decisions ; and although supei'stitious and monk- ridden, he was, when roused, neither deficient in talent nor in moral courage. A wider and deeper spring, that sapped the royal authority, was the enor- mous power Godwin and other earls had possessed themselves of before his accession ; and this power, be it remembered, he himself was obliged to augment before he could put his foot on the lowest step of the throne. When he had kept liis promises with the " Great Earl" — and he coulcl not possibly evade them — what with the territories and commands of Godwin, and of his six sons, Harold, Sweyn, Wulnoth, Tostig, Gurth, and Le- ofwine, the whole of the south of England, from Lincolnshire to the end of Cornwall, was in the hands of one family. Nor had Edward's autho- rity a better basis elsewhere, for the whole of the north was unequally divided between Leofric and the greater Earl Siward, whose dominions extended from the H umber to the Scottish border. These earls possessed all that was valuable in sovereignty within the territories they held. They appointed their own judges, received fines, and levied what troops they chose. The chief security of the king lay in the clashing interests and jealousies of these mighty vassals ; and, notwithstanding the remark of a great writer,* that this policy of balancing opposite parties required a more steady hand to manage it than that of Edward, it appears to us that he for some time acquitted himself skilfully in this particular. As the king endeared himself to his people by reducing taxation, and removing the odious Dane-geld altogether, — by reviving the old Saxon laws, and administering them with justice and promptitude ; — as he gained their reverence by his mild virtues, and still more by his ascetic devotion, which eventually caused his canonization, he might have been enabled to curb the family of Godwin and the rest, and raise his depressed throne by hieans of the popular will and affection ; but, unfortunately, there were cir- cumstances interwoven which neutralized Ed- ward's advantages, and gave the favourable colour of nationality and patriotism to the cause of Godwin, whenever he chose to quarrel with the king. It was perfectly natural, and it would have been as excusable as natural, if the imprudence of a king ever admitted of an excuse, that Edward should have an affection for the Normans, among whom the best years of his life had been passed, and who gave him food and shelter when abandoned by all the rest of the world. He was only thirteen years old when he was first sent into Normandy ; he was somewhat past forty when he ascended the English throne ; so that, for twenty-seven years, commencing with a period when the young mind is not formed, but ductile and most susceptible of impressions, he had been accustomed to foreign manners and habits, and to convey all his thoughts and feelings through the medium of a foreign lan- guage. He was accused of a predilection for the French, or " Romance," which by this time had superseded their Scandinavian dialect, and became the vernacular language of the Normans ; but it is more than probable he had forgotten his Saxon. It is not at the mature age of forty that a man can shake off all his previous tastes, habits, and con- nexions, and form new ones. Thus the king, as a matter of course, preferred the society of the Nor- mans to that of his own subjects ; and, whatever may have been the relative civilization of the two kindred people half a century before, it is quite certain that the Danish wars, from the time of Ethelred downwards, had caused the Saxons to retrograde, while it is probable the Normans had made considerable advances in refinement in the same interval. Relying on Edward's gratitude and friendship, several Normans came over with him when he was invited to England by Llardi- canute : this number was augmented after his accession to the throne ; and as the king provided for them all, or gave them constant entertainment • Hume, Hist. Chap I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 189 at his court, fresh adventurers continued to cross the Channel from time to time. It would appear it was chiefly in the church that Edward provided for his foreign favourites. Robert, a Norman, and, like most of his race, a personal enemy to Earl Godwin, was promoted to be Archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England ; Ulf and William, two other Normans, were made bishops of Dorchester and London ; and crosiers and ab- bots' staffs were liberally distributed to the king's exotic chaplains and house-clerks, who are said to have closed all the avenues of access to his person and favour against the English-born. Those Saxon nobles who yet hoped to prosper at court learned to speak French, and imitated the dress, fashions, and manner of living of the Normans. Edward adopted, in all documents and charters, tlie hand-writing of the Normans, which he tliought handsomer than that of the English : -he introduced the use of the " great seal," which he appended to his parchments, in addition to the simple mark of the cross, which had been vised by the Anglo-Saxon kings ; and as his chancellor, secretaries of state, and legal advisers were all foreigners, and, no doubt, like the natives of France of all ages, singularly neglectful of the tongue of the people among whom they were settled, the English lawyers were obliged to study French, and to employ a foreign language in their deeds and papers.* Even in those rude ages fashion had her influence and her votaries. The study of the French language, to the neglect of the Saxon, t became very general, and tlie rich, the young, and the gay of both sexes were not satisfied unless their tunics, their chausses, their streamers, and mufflers were cut after the latest Norman pattern. Not one of these things was trifling in its influence — vmited, their effect must have been most important; and it seems to us that historians in general have not svifficiently borne them in mind as a prelude to the great drama of the Norman conquest. All this, however, was distasteful to the great body of the Saxon people, and highly irritating to Earl Godwin, who is said to have exacted an express and solemn promise from the king not to inundate the land with Normans, ere he consented to raise him to the throne. The earl could scarcely take up a more popular ground ; and he made his more private wrongs, — the king's treatment of his daughter, and disinclination to the society of him- self and his sons, — all close and revolve roimd this centre. Even personally the sympathy of the people went with him. " Is it astonishing," they said, " that the author and supporter of Edward's reign should be wroth to see neiv men, of a foreign nation, preferred to himself?" J In 1044 a crime committed by a member of his family somewhat clouded Godwin's popularity. Sweyn, the earl's second son, and a married man, • Ingulf. T AccoriUn? to Ingulf, Frencli came to bo considered as the only lanKiiiitre worthy of a gentleman, t Malmsb. violated an abbess, and was exiled by the king ; for this,, of all others, was the crime Edward was least likely to overlook, xifter keeping the seas for some time as a pirate, SAveyn returned to Eng- land on the promise of a royal pardon. Some delay occurred in passing this act of grace ; and it is said that Beorn, his cousin, and even Harold, the brother of Sweyn, pleaded strongly against him at court. The fury of the outlaw knew no bounds, but pretending to be reconciled with his cousin Beorn, he won his confidence, got possession of his person, and then caused him to be murdered. In spite of this accumulated guilt Edward was fain to grant a pardon to the son of the powerful earl, and Sweyn, though he had rendered himself odious, and injured the popularity of his family, was restored to his government. But in 1051 an event occurred which exaspe- rated the whole nation against the Normans, and gave Godwin the opportunity of recovering all his reputation and influence with the Saxon people. Among the many foreigners that came over to visit the king was Eustace, Count of Boulogne, who had married the Lady Goda, a daughter of Ethelred, and sister to Edward. This Eustace was a prince of considerable power, and more pretension. He governed hereditarily, vuider the supremacy of the French crown, the city of Bou- logne and the contiguous territory on the shores of the Channel ; and as a sign of his dignity as chief of a maritime country, when he armed for war he attached two long aigrettes, made of whale- bone, to his helmet. This loving brother-in-law, with rather a numerous retinue of warriors and men-at-arms, was hospitably entertained at the court of Edward, where he saw Frenchmen and Normans, and everything that was French and foreign, so completely in the ascendant, that he was led to despise the Saxons as a people already conquered. On his return homewards Eustace slept one night at Canterbury. The next morning he continued his route for Dover, and when he was within a mile of that town he ordered a halt, left his travelling palfrey, and mounted his war- horse, which a page led in his right hand. He also put on his coat of mail : all his people did the same; and in this warlike harness they entered Dover. The foreigners marched insolently through the town, choosing the best houses in which to pass the night, and taking free quarters on the citizens without asking permission, which was contrary to the laws and customs of the Saxons. One of the townsmen boldly repelled from his threshold a retainer who pretended to take up his quarters in his house. The stranger drew his sword, and wounded the Englishman, — the Eng- lishman armed in haste, and he, or one of his house, slew the Frenchman. At this intelligence Count Eustace and all his troop mounted on horse- back, and, surrounding the house of the English- man, some of them forced their way in, and mur- dered him on his own hearth-stone. This done, they galloped through the streets with their naked 190 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. swords in their hands, striking men and women, and crushing several children under their horses' hoofs. This outrage roused the spirit of the burghers, who armed themselves with such weapons as they had, and met the mailed war- riors in a mass. -After a fierce conflict, in which nineteen of the foreigners were slain and many more wounded, Eustace, with the rest, being unable to reach the port and embark, retreated out of Dover, and then galloped with loose rein towards Gloucester to lay his complaints before the king. Edward, who was, as usual, surrounded by his Norman favovirites, gave his peace to Eustace and his companions, and believing, on the simple assertion of his brother-in-law, that the inhabitants of Dover were in the wrong, and had begun the affray, he sent immediately to Earl Godwin, in whose government the city lay. " Set out forth- with," said the king's order,* " go and chastise with a military execution those who attack my relations with the sword, and trouble the peace of the country." " It ill becomes you," replied Godwin, "to condemn, without a hearing, the men whom it is your duty to protect." f The cir- cumstances of the fight at Dover were now known all over the country : the assault evidently had begun by a Frenchman's daring to violate the sanctity of an Englishman's house, and, right or wrong, the Saxon people would naturally espouse the cause of their countrymen. Instead, therefore, of chastising the burghers, the Earl sided with them. Before proceeding to extremities Godwin proposed that, instead of exercising that indiscri- minate vengeance on all the inhabitants, which was implied by a military execution, the magis- trates of Dover should be cited in a legal manner to appear before the king and the royal judges, to give an account of their conduct. It should seem that, transported by the indignation of his brother- in-law the Earl Eustace, and confounded by the clamours of his Norman favourites, Edward would not listen to this just and reasonable proposition, but summoned Godwin to appear before his foreign court at Gloucester ; and on his hesitating to put himself in so much jeopardy, threatened him and his family with banishment and confis- cation. Then the great earl armed, and in so doing, though some of the chroniclers assert it was only to redress the popular grievances, and to make fin appeal to the English against the courtiers from beyond sea, and that nothing was farther from his thoughts than to off^er insult or violence to the king of his own creation, we are far from being convinced of the entire purity of his motives or the moderation of his objects. Godwin, who ruled the country south of the Thames, from one end to the other, gathered his forces together, and was joined by a large body of the people, who voluntarily took up arms. Harold, the eldest of his sons, collected many men all along the eastern coast between the Thames and the city of Boston ; and Sweyn, his second son, • Chroa. Sax. t Malmsb. whose guilt was forgotten in the popular excite- ment, arrayed his soldiers, and formed a patriotic association among the Saxons who dwelt on the banks of the Severn and along the frontiers of Wales. These three columns soon concentrated near Gloucester, then the royal residence; and, with means adequate to enforce his wish, Godwin de- manded that the Count Eustace, his companions, and many other Normans and Frenchmen, should be given up to the justice of the nation. Edward, knowing he was AvhoUy at the mercy of his irri- tated father-in-law, was still firm. To gain time he opened a negotiation ; and so much was he still esteemed by the people, that Godwin was obliged to save appearances, and to grant him that delay which, for a while, wholly overcast the earl's for- tunes. Edward had secured the good-will of Godwin's great rivals, — Siward, Earl of Northum- bria, and Leofric, Earl of Mercia : to these chiefs he now applied for protection, summoning to his aid at the same time Ranulf or Ralph, a Norman knight, whom he had made Earl of Worcester- shire. When these forces united and marched to the king's rescue, they were equal or superior in number to those of Godwin, who had thus lost his moment. The people, however, had improved in wisdom ; and on the two armies coming in front of each other, it was presently seen, by their re- spective leaders, that old animosities had in a great measure died away, — that the Anglo-Danes from the north were by no means anxious to engage their brethren of the south for the cause of Normans, and men equally alien to them both, — and that the Saxons of the south were averse to shedding the blood of the Anglo-Danes of the north. The whispers of individual ambition, — • the mutterings of mutual revenge, — the aspirations of the great, were mute, for once, at the loud and universal voice of the people. An armistice was concluded between the king and Godwin, and it was agreed to refer all diff"erences to an assembly of the legislature, to be held at London in the following autumn. Hostages and oaths were ex- changed — both king and earl swearing " God's peace and full friendship" for one another. Ed- ward employed the interval between the armistice and the meeting of the witenagemot in pub- lishing a ban for the levying of a royal army all over the kingdom, in engaging troops both foreign and domestic, and in strengthening him- self by all the means he could command. In the same time the forces of Harold, which con- sisted in chief part of burghers and yeomen, who had armed under the first excitement of a popular quarrel, and who had neither pay nor quarters in the field, dwindled rapidly away. According to the Saxon Chronicle, the king's army, which was cantoned within and about London, soon became the most numerous that had been seen in this reign. The chief, and many of the subordinate commands in it, were given to Norman favourites, who thirsted for the blood of Earl Godwin. At the appointed time the earl and his sons were sum- Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 44.9—1066. 191 moned to appear before the witenagemot without any military escort whatsoever ; and that, too, in the midst of a most formidable army and of deadly enemies, who would not have spared their persons, even if the king and the legislative assembly had been that way inclined. Godwin, who before now had frequently both suffered and practised treachery, refused to attend the assembly unless proper securities were given that he and his sons should go thither and depart thence in safety. This reasonable demand was repeated, and twice refused; and then Edward and the great council pronounced a sentence of banishment, decreeing that the earl and all his family should quit the land for ever within five days. There was no appeal ; and Godwin and his sons, who it appears had marched to Southwark, on finding that even the small force they had brought with them was thinned by hourly desertion, fled by night for their lives. The sudden fall of this great family con- founded and stupified the popular mind. " Won- derful would it have been thought," says the Saxon Chronicle, " if any one had said before that matters would come to such a pass." Before the expiration of the five days' grace a troop of horse- men were sent to pursue and seize the earl and his family; but these soldiers were wholly or chiefly Saxons, and either could not, or would not overtake them. Godwin, with his wife and his three sons, Sweyn, Tostig, and Garth, and a ship well stored with money and treasures, embarked on the east coast, and sailed to Flanders, where he was well received by Earl Baldwin : Harold and his brother Leofwin fled westward, and embarking at Bristol, crossed the sea to Ireland. Their property, their broad lands, and houses, with everything upon them and within them were confiscated, — their governments and honours dis- tributed, in part, among foreigners, and scarcely a trace was left in the country of the warlike earl or his bold sons. But a fair daughter of that house remained, — Editha was still queen of England, — and on her Edward determined to pour out the last vial of his wrath, and complete his vengeance on the obnoxious race that had given him the throne. He seized her dower, — he took from her her jewels and her money, " even to the uttermost farthing," — and allowing her only the attendance of one maiden, he closely confined his virgin wife in the monastery of Wherwell, of which one of his sisters was Lady AWoess, — and in this cheerless captivity she, in the language of one of the old chroniclers, " in tears and prayers expected the day of her release and comfort." Although the whole of his thoroughly unnatural conduct to his beautiful and amiable wife is made matter of monkish laudation and jubilee, this vin- dictiveness does not savour of sanctity ; and if he made use of the excuse for " his unprincely and unspouse-like usage," which some have attributed to him, — namely, " that it suited not that Editha should live in comfort when her parents and her brethren were banished the realm," we must have a poor opinion of his notion of the moral fitness of things — at least as far as his queen was con- cerned Released from the awe and timidity he had always felt in Earl Godwin's presence, the king now put no restraint on his affection for the Nor- mans, who flocked over in greater shoals than ever to make their fortunes in England. A few months after Godwin's exile he expressed his anxious desire to have William Duke of Normandy for his guest ; and that ambitious and most crafty prince, who already began to entertain projects on Eng- land, readily accepted the invitation, and came over with a numerous retinue in the fixed purpose of turning the visit to the best account, by per- sonally informing himself of the strength and con- dition of the country, and by influencing the councils of the king, who had no children to suc- ceed him, and was said to be labouring under a vow of perpetual chastity, even as if he had been a cloistered monk. William was the natural son of Robert, Duke of Normandy, the younger brother of Duke Richard III., and the son of Duke Richard II., who was brother to Queen Epima, the mother of King Edward and of the nmrdered Alfred, by Ethelred, as also of the preceding kings Harold and Hardicanute, by her second husband, Canute the Great. On the mother's side William's descent was suificiently obscure. One day as the Duke Robert was returning from the chase he met a fair girl, who, with companions of her own age, was washing clothes in a brook. Struck by her surpassing beauty, he sent one of his discreetest knights to make proposals to her family. Such a mode of proceeding is startling enough in our Says ; but in that age of barbarism and the license of power, the wonder is he did not seize the lowly maiden by force, without treaty or negotiation. Tlie father of the maiden, who was a currier or tanner of the town of Falaise, at first received the proposals of Robert's love-ambassador with indignation; but, on second thoughts, he went to consult one of his brothers, a hermit in a neighbouring forest, and a man enjoying a great religious reputation ; and this religious man gave it as his opinion that one ought, in all things, to conform to the will of the powerful man. The name of the maid of Falaise was Arlete, Harlotta, or Herleva, for she is indiscriminately called by these different appellations, which all seem to come from the old Norman or Danish compound Her- leve^ '* The much loved." And the Duke con- tinued to love her dearly, and he brought up the boy William he had by her with as much care and honour as if he had been the son of a lawful spouse. Although — or perhaps it will be more correct to say — because their conversion was of a comparatively recent date, no people in Europe surpassed the Normans in their devotion, or their passion for distant pilgrimages. When William was only seven years old his father, Duke Robert, resolved to go to Jerusalem, as a pilgrim, to obtain 192 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. the remission of his sins. As he had governed his states wisely, his people heard of his intention with alarm and regret; but his worldly advantage could not be put in the balance against his spiritual welfare. The Norman chiefs, still anxious to retain him among them, represented that it would be a bad thing for them to be left without a head. The native chroniclers put the following naif reply into the mouth of Duke Robert : " By my faith, Sirs, I will not leave you without a seigneur. I have a little bastard, who will grow big, if it pleases God ! Choose him from this moment, and, before you all, I will put him in possession of this Duchy as my successor." The Normans did what the Duke Robert proposed, " because," says the chronicle, " it suited them so to do." According to the feudal practice, they, one by one, placed their hands within his hands, and swore fidelity to the child. Robert had a presentiment that he should not return ; and he never did : he died about a year after (a.d. 1034) on his road home. He had scarcely donned his pilgrim's weeds and de- parted from Normandy, when several of the chiefs, and above all the relations of the old Duke, protested against the election of William, alleging that a bastard was not worthy of commanding the children of the Scandinavians. A civil war ensued, in which the party of William was decidedly vic- torious. As the boy advanced in years, he showed an indomitable spirit and a wonderful aptitude in learning those knightly and warlike exercises which then constituted the principal part of education. This endeared him to his partisans ; and the im- portant day on which he first put on armour, and mounted his battle-steed without the aid of stirrup, was held as a festal day in Normandy. Occasions were»not wanting for the practice of war and battles, but were, on the contrary, frequently presented both by his own turbulent subjects and his ambitious neighbours. From his tender youth upwards, William was habituated to warfare and bloodshed, and to the exercise of policy and craft, by which he often succeeded when force and arms failed. His contemporaries tell us that he was passionately fond of fine horses, and caused them to be brought to him from Gascony, Auvergne, and Spain, preferring above all those steeds which bore proper names by which their genealogy was dis- tinguished. His disposition was revengeful and pitiless in the extreme. At an after period of life, when he had imposed respect or dread upon the world, he scorned the distinctions between legi- timate and illegitimate birth, and more than once bravingly put " We, William the Bastard " to his charters and declarations ;* but at the com- mencement of his career he was exceedingly sus- ceptible and sore on this point, and often took san- guinary vengeance on those who scoffed at the stain of his birth. One day while he was be- leaguering the town of Alcncon, the besieged took it into their heads to cry out from the top of their * In one of liis English charters, preserved in Ilickes, he styles himself, with loss truth, " Kex Ilereditarius.' walls, "The hide! the hide! — have at the hide!" and to shake and beat pieces of tanned leather, in allusion to the humble calling of William's mater- nal grandfather. As soon as the bastard heard this, he caused the feet and hands of all the Alencon prisoners in his power to be cut off, and then thrown by his slingers within the walls of the town. The fame of William's doings had long pre- ceded him to this island, where they created very different emotions, according to men's dispositions and interests. But when he arrived himself in England, with a nvimerous and splendid train, it is said that the Duke of Normandy might have doubted, from the evidence of his senses, whether he had quitted his own country. Normans com- manded the Saxon fleet he met at Dover, Normans garrisoned the castle and a fortress on a hill at Canterbury ; and as he advanced on the journey, Norman knights, bishops, abbots, and burgesses met him at every relay to bid him welcome. At the court of Edward, in the midst of Norman clerks, priests, and nobles, who looked up to him as their " natural lord," he was more a king than the king himself; and every day he spent in Eng- land must have conveyed additional conviction of the extent of Norman influence, and of the weak- ness and disorganization of the country. It is recorded by the old writers, that king Edward gave a most affectionate welcome to his good cousin Duke William, — that he lived lovingly with him while he was here, — and that, at his de- parture, he gave him a most royal gift of arms, horses, hounds, and hawks.* But what passed in the private and confidential intercourse of the two princes, these writers knew not, and attempted not to divine ;t and the only evident fact is, that, after William's visit, the Normans in England carried their assumption of superiority still higher than before. But preparations were in progress for the inter- rupting of this domination. Ever since his flight into Flanders, Godwin had been actively engaged in devising means for his triumphant return, and in corresponding with and keeping up the spirits of the Saxon party at home. In the following summer (a.d. 1052) the great earl having well employed the monej and treasure he took with him, got together a number of ship-s, and, eluding the vigilance of the royal fleet, which was com- manded by two Normans, his personal and deadly enemies, he fell upon our southern coast, where many Saxons gave him a hearty welcome. He had previously won over the Saxon garrison and the mariners of Hastings, and he now sent secret emissaries all over the country, at whose repre- sentations hosts of people took up arms, binding themselves by oath to the cause of the exiled chief, and " promising, all ivith one voice " says Roger • Maistre Wace, Roman du Ron. f Ingulf intimates, that at this visit Willfam did not introduce the suhject of his succession to the English throne, being well content to let things take their natural course, which could hardly run counter to his ambitious hopes. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 449— lOGG. 193 of HovcLlen, " to live or die with Godwin." Sail- ing along the Sussex coast to the Isle of Wight, he was met there by his sons Harold and Leufwiu, who had brought over a considerable force in men and ships from Ireland. From the Isle of Wight the Saxon chiefs sailed to Sandwich, where they landed part of their forces without opposition, and then, with the rest, boldly doubled the North Foreland, and sailed up the Thames towards Lon- don. As they advanced, the popularity of their cause was manifestly displayed ; the Saxon and Anglo-Danish troops of the king and all the royal ships they met went over to them ; the burghers and peasants hastened to supply them with provi- sions, and to join the cry against the Normans. In this easy and triumphant manner did the e;dles reach the suburb of Southwark, where they an- chored, and landed without being obliged to draw a sword or pull a single bow. Their presence threw everything into confusion, and the court party soon saw that the citizens of London were as well affected to Godwin as the rest of the people had shown themselves. The carl sent a respectful message to the king, requesting for himself and family the revision of the irregular sentence of exile, the restoration of their former territories, honours, and employments, — promising, on these conditions, a dutiful and entire submission. Though he must have known the critical state of his affairs, Edward was firm or obstinate, and sternly refused the conditions. Godwin despatched other messen- gers, but they returned with an equally positive refusal ; and then the old earl had the greatest difficulty in restraining his irritated partisans. But the game was in his hand, and his moderation and aversion to the spilling of kindred blood greatly strengthened his party. On the opposite side of the river a royal fleet of fifty sail was moored, and a considerable army was drawn up on the bank ; but it was soon found there was no relying either on the mariners or the soldiers, who, for the most part, if not won over to the cause of Godwin, were averse to civil war. Still, while most of his party were trembling around him, and not a few seeking safety in flight or concealment, the king remained inflexible, and, to all appearance, devoid of fear. The boldest of his Norman favourites, who foresaw that peace between the Saxons would be their ruin, ventured to press him to give the signal for attack ; but the now openly expressed sentiments of the royal troops, and the arguments of the priest Sti- gand and of many of the Saxon nobles, finally in- duced Edward to yield, and give his reluctant con- sent to the opening of negotiations with his detested father-in-law. At the first report of this prospect of a speedy reconciliation, there was a hurried gathering together of property or spoils, and a shoeing and saddling of horses for flight. No Norman or Frenchman of any consequence thought his life safe. Robert, the archbishop of Canterbury, and William, bishop of London, having armed tiieir retainers, took horse and fought their way sword in hand through the city, where many Eng- VOL. I. lish were killed or wounded. They escaped through the eastern gate of London, and galloped with headlong speed to Ness, in Essex. So great was the danger or the panic of these two prelates, that they threw themselves into an ill-conditioned small open fishing-boat ; and thus, with great suffering, and at an imminent hazard, crossed the Channel to France. The rest of the foreign fa- vourites fled in all directions, some taking refuge in the castles or fortresses commanded by their countrymen, and others making for the shores of the British Channel, where they lay concealed until favourable opportunities offered for passing over to the Continent. In the mean time the witenagemot was sum- moned ; and when Godwin, in plenitude of might, appeared before it, after having visited the hum- bled king, the " earls" and " all the best men of the land" agreed in the proposition, tliat the Nor- mans were guilty of the late dissensions, and God- win and his sons innocent of the crimes of which they had been accused. With the exception of four or five obscure men, a sentence of outlawry was hurled against all the Normans and French ; and, after he had given hostages to Edward, God- win and his sons, with the exception only of Sweyn, received full restitution ; and, as a completion of his triumph, his daughter Editha was removed from her monastic prison to court, and restored to all her honours as queen. The hostages granted were Wilnot, the youngest son, and Haco, a grandson of Godwin. Edward had no sooner got them into his hands, than, for safer custody, he sent them over to his cousin William of Nor- mandy ; and from this circumstance there arose a curious episode or linder-act in the treacherous and sanguinary drama. The exclusion of Sweyn from pardon, and a nominal restoration to the king's friendship, did not arise from the active part he had taken in the Norman quarrel, but was based in his old crimes, and more particularly the treacher- ous murder of his cousin Beorn. It seems that his family acquiesced in the justice of his sentence of banishment, and that Sweyn himself, now humble and penitent, submitted without a struggle. He threw aside his costly mantle and his chains of gold, his armour, his sword, and all that marked the noble and the warrior ; he assumed the lowly garb of a pilgrim, and, setting out from Flanders^ walked barefoot to Jerusalem — that gi-eat pool of moral purification, which, according to the notion of the times, could wash out the stains of all guilt. He reached the holy city in safety — he wept and prayed at all the holiest places there, — but, return- ing through Asia Minor, he died in the province of Lycia. Godwin did not long survive the re-establish- ment of Saxon supremacy, and his complete vic- tory over the king. According to Henry of Hun- tingdon and other chroniclers, a very short time after their feigned reconciliation, as Godwin sat at table with the king at Windsor, Edward again reproached the earl with his brother Alfred's mur- 194 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. der. " Oh, king '" (Godwin is made to say) ' ' whence comes it that, at the least remembrance of your brother, you show me a bad countenance .'' If I have contributed even indirectly to his cruel fate, may the God of heaven cause this morsel of bread to choke me!" He put the bread to his mouth, and of course, according to this story, was choked, and died instantly. But it appears, from better authority, that Godwin's death was by no -means so sudden and dramatic ; that though he fell speechless from the king's table on Easter Monday (most probably from apoplexy), he was taken up and carried into an inner chamber by his two sons Tostig and Gurth, and did not die till the following Thursday. Harold, the eldest, the handsomest, the most accomplished, and in every respect the best of all the sons of Godwin, suc- ceeded to his father's territories and commands, and to even more than Godwin's authority in the nation ; for, while the people equally considered him as the great champion of the Saxon cause, he was far less obnoxious than his father to the king ; and, whereas his father's iron frame was sinking under the weight of years, he was in the prime and vigour of life. The spirit of Edward, more- over, was subdued by misfortune, the fast-coming infirmities of age, and a still increasing devotion, that taught him all worldly dominion was a bauble not worth contending for. He was also conci- liated by the permission to retain some of his foreign bishops, abbots, and clerks, and to recall a few other favourites from Normandy. The extent of Harold's power v/as soon made manifest. On succeeding to Godwin's earldom, he had vacated his own command of East Anglia, which was bestowed by the court on Algar, the son of Earl Leofric, the hereditary enemy of the house of Godwin, who had held it during Harold's disgrace and exile. As soon as he felt confident of his strength, Harold caused Algar to be expelled his government and banished the land, upon an accusation of treason; and, however unjust the sentence may have been, it appears to have been passed wdth the sanction and concurrence of the witenagemot. Algar, who had married a Welsh princess, the daughter of King Griffith, fled into Wales, Avhence, relying on the power and influ- ence possessed by his father, the Earl Leofric, and by his other family connexions and allies, he shortly after issued with a considerable force, and fell upon the county and city of Hereford, in which latter place he did much harm, burning the minster and slaying seven canons, besides a multitude of laymen. Rulf, or Radulf, the earl of Hereford, who was a Norman, and a nephew of the king's, made but a feeble resistance ; and, it is said, he destroyed the efficiency of the Saxon troops, by making them fight the Welsh on horse- hack, " against the custom of their country." Harold soon hastened to the scene of action, and advancing from Gloucester with a well-appointed army, defeated Algar, and followed him in his retreat through the mountain defiles and across the moors and morasses of Wales. Algar, how- ever, still showed himself so powerful, that Ha- rold was obliged to treat with him. By these negotiations, he was restored to his former pos- sessions and honours ; and when, very shortly after, his father Leofric died, Algar was allowed to take possession of his vast earldoms. The king seems to have wished that Algar should have been a counterpoise to Harold, as Leofric had once been to Godwin ; but both in council and camp Harold carried everything before him, and his jealousy being again excited, he again drove Algar into banishment. Algar, indeed, was no mean rival. Both in boldness of character and in the nature of his adventures, he bore some resemblance to Ha- rold. This time he fled into Ireland, whence he soon returned with a small fleet and an army, chiefly raised among the Northmen who had settled on the Irish coasts, and who thence made repeated attacks upon England. With this force, and the assistance of the Welsh under his father-in- law King Griffith, he recovered his earldoms by force of arms, and held them in defiance of the decrees of the king, who, whatever were his secret wishes, was obliged openly to denounce these pro- ceedings as illegal and treasonable. After enjoy- ing this triumph little more than a year, Algar died (a.d. 1059), and left two sons, Morcar and Edwin, Avho divided between them part of his terri- tories and commands. While these events were in progress, other cir- cumstances had occurred in the north of England which materially augmented the power of Harold. Siward, the great Earl of Northumbria, another of Godwin's most formidable rivals, had died, after an expedition into Scotland ; and as his elder son Osberne had been slain, and his younger son Waltheof was too young to succeed to his father's government, the extensive northern earldom was given to Tostig, the brother of Harold. Siward, as will be presently related more at length, had proceeded to Scotland to assist in seating his rela- tion Prince Malcolm, the son of the late King Duncan, upon the throne of that country, which had been usurped by Duncan's murderer, Macbeth. It was in this enterprise, and before it was crowned with final success, that, as has just been mentioned, Osberne, the pride of his father's heart, was slain. He appears to have fallen in the first battle fought with Macbeth (a.d. 1054) near the hill of Dunsi- nan. Checking his natural emotions, the old earl asked how the young man had fallen ; and being told that he had received all his wounds in front, like a brave man, he said he was satisfied, and wished no better death for himself. He did not, however, die in battle, nor would he die in his bed, — a death he held to be dishonourable. Soon after his return from Scotland he Avas attacked by a fatal disorder. As he felt his end approaching he said to his attendants, " Lift me up, that I may die on my legs, like a soldier, and not crouching, like a cow ! Dress me with my coat of mail, — cover my head with my helmet — put my shield Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 1.95 on my left arm, and my battle-axe in my right hand, that I may die under arms! "* Siward, who was a Dane, either by birth or near descent, was much beloved by the Northum- brians, who were themselves chiefly of Danish extraction. They called him Sigivard-Digr, or Siward the Strong; and many years after his death they showed, with pride, a rock of solid granite which they pretended he had split in two with a single blow of his battle-axe. To his irre- gular successor, Tostig, the brother of Harold, they showed a strong dislike from the first, and this aversion was subsequently increased by acts of tyranny on the part of the new earl. In another direction the popularity of Harold was increased by a most successful campaign against the Welsh, who had inflamed the hatred of the Saxon people by their recent forays and cruel murders. Their great leader, King Griffith, had been weakened and exposed by the death of his son-in-law, and Harold's rival, the Earl Algar, in 1059 ; and after some minor operations, in one of which Rees, the brother of Griffith, was taken prisoner and put to death, by the order of King Edward, as a robber and murderer, Harold was commissioned, in 1063, to carry extreme measures into effect against the ever- turbulent Welsh. The great earl displayed his usual ability, bravery, and activity, and by skilfully combined movements, in which his brother Tostig and the Northumbrians acted in concert with him, by employing the fleet along the coast, by accoutring his troops with light helmets, targets, and breast-pieces made of leather (instead of their usual heavy armour), in order that they might be the better able to follow the fleet-footed Welsh, he gained a succession of victories, and finally reduced the mountaineers to such despair that they decapitated their king, Griffith, and sent his bleeding head to Harold, as a peace-offering and token of submission. The two half-brothers of Griffith swore fealty and gave hostages to King Edward and Harold. They also engaged to pay the ancient tribute; and a law was passed that every Welshman found in arms to the east of Offa's dyke should lose his right hand. From this memorable expedition, the good eff'ects of which were felt in England, through the tranquillity of the Welsh, for many years after, Harold returned in a sort of Roman triumph to the mild and peace- able Edward, to whom he presented the ghastly head of Griffith, together with the rostrum or beak of that king's chief war-ship. The king's devotion still kept increasing with his years, and now, forgetful of his bodily infir- mities, which in all probability would have caused his death on the road, and indifferent to the tem- poral good of his people, he expressed his inten- tion of going in pilgrimage to Rome, asserting that he was bound thereto by a solemn vow. The Witan objected that, as he had no children, his absence and death would expose the nation to the dangers of a disputed succession; and then the * II en. Hunt. — Higden. king for the first time turned his thoughts to his nephew and namesake Edward, the son of his half-brother, Edmund Ironside. The long neglect of this prince of the old race of Cerdic and Alfred, which, counting from the time of King Edward's accession, had extended over a period of more than twenty years, shows but slight aff"ection for that Saxon family ; and, as the king had never expected any children of his own to succeed him, it seems to confirm the statement of those old writers who say he had all along intended to bequeath his crown to his cousin William of Nor- mandy. But at this moment Norman interest and influence, though not dried up, were at a low ebb : be his wishes what they might, Edward durst not propose the succession of William, and being pressed by the Witan, and his own eager desire of travelling to Rome, he sent an embassy to the German emperor Henry III., whose relative the 3'^oung prince had married, requesting he might be restored to the wishes of the English nation. Edward the Atheling, or Edward the Outlaw, as he is more commonly called, obeyed the sum- mons with alacrity, and soon arrived in London with his wife Agatha and his three young children — Edgar, Margaret, and Christina. The race of their old kings was still dear to them ; Edmund Ironside was a national hero inferior only to the great Alfred ; his gallantry, his bravery, his victo- ries over the Danes, were sung in popvilar songs, and still formed the subject of daily conversation among the Saxon people, who therefore received his son and grandchildren with the most hearty welcome and enthusiastic joy. But though King Edward had invited over his nephew with the pro- fessed intention of proclaiming him his heir to the crown, that prince was never admitted into his presence. This circumstance could not fail of creating great disgust ; but this and all other sen- timents in the popular mind were speedily absorbed by the deep and universal grief and despondence caused by Prince Edward's death, who expired in London shortly after his arrival in that city, and was buried in the cathedral of St. Paul's. This sudden catastrophe, and the voluntary or con- strained coyness of the king towards his nephew, have awakened- horrid suspicions of foul play. The more generally received opinion seems to be that the prince was kept at a distance by the machrfiations and contrivances of the jealous Harold, and that that earl caused him to be poisoned, in order to remove what he considered the greatest obstacle to his own future plans. In justice, however, the memory of Harold ought not to be loaded with a crime which, possibly, after all, was never committed ; for the prince might very well have died a natural death, although his demise tallied with the views and interests of Harold. His long neglect of him proved that the king had no affection for his nephew, whom he had re- called at last by compulsion of the nation. The animosities borne by sovereigns against those who are to succeed them, even when their Bucccssora 196 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. are their own children, have prevailed in all ages. These causes would suflSciently account for Prince Edward's not being readily received by his uncle, who, moreover, in many circumstances of his life, showed himself a moody, wayward man, Avanting "the natural touch." There is no proof, nor shadow of proof, that Harold circumvented and then destroyed the prince. It is merely presumed that, because the earl gained most by his death, he caused him to be killed. But William of Nor- mandy gained as much as Harold by the removal of the prince, and was, at the very least, as capable of extreme and treacherous measures. During his visit in England the king may have promised the duke that he would never receive his nephew Edward; and, while this circumstance would of itself account for the king's shyness, the coming of the prince would excite the jealousy and alarm of William, who had emissaries in the land, and friends and partisans about the court. Supposing, therefore. Prince Edward to have been murdered (and there is no proof that he was), the crime was as likely to have been committed by the orders of the duke as by those of the earl. The demise of Edward the Outlaw certainly cut off the national hope of a continuance of the old Saxon dynasty ; for, though he left a son, called Edgar the Atheling, that prince was very young, feeble in body, and in intellect not far removed from idiotcy. The latter circumstance forbade all exer- tion in his favour ; but, had he been the most pro- mising of youths, it is very doubtful whether a minor would not have been crushed by one or other of two such bold and skilful competitors as William and Harold. As matters stood, the king, whose journey to Rome could be no more talked of, turned his eyes to Normandy, while many of the Saxons began to look up to Harold, the brother of the queen, as the best and most national succes- sor to the throne. Here we again reach a point in our annals that, like so many others, is involved in mystery and the most perplexing contradictions. According to some writers, Edward now for the first time made a will, bequeathing the crown to his cousin ; ac- cording to others he had made this will long before, when the recall of Prince Edward was not thought of, and had privately communicated the nature of his testament to Duke William, through the medium of Robert, the Norman xVrchbishop of Canterbury. On one side it is stated that Harold was, to the last, kept in the dark as to these pro- ceedings ; on another, it is as confidently asserted that, in 1065, about a year before the king's death, Harold himself was the messenger appointed to convey to William the intelligence of the will, which (according to this version of the story) was now first executed. Harold takino Lfav£ of Edward on his Departure tor Normandy. From the liaycux Tapestry.* • The Hayeux Tapestry is a roll of linen 20 inches broa<l, anJ 214 feet in longtli, on which is worked with woollen thrcail, of dilToront colours, a representation, in seventy-two distinct compartments, of the whole liistory of the Norman conquest of England, from the (lejiarturo of Harold for Normandy to the rout of the Saxons at the battle of Hastings. It embraces all the incidents of H^irold's stay in Nortnandy, and has preserved some that have not been noticed by any of the chroniclers. Every compartment has a superscription in Latin, indicating its subject; a specimen of these titles is given in one of the cuts below. The Bayeux tapestry is said by tradition to have been the work of the Conqueror's queen, Matilda, and to have been presented by her to the cathedral of liayenx, of which her husband's half-brother, Odo, one of those who rendered the most efiective service in the invasion of England, was bishop ; and the delineations, which correspond in the minutest points with what we know of the manners of that age, afford the strongest evidence that it is of this antiquity. It was preserved in the cathedral of Bayeux till 1803, having been wont to be exhibited for some days in every year to the people, in tlie nave of the church, round which it exactly went. It is n«w in the hotel of the prefecture of that city, where it is kept coiled roimd a roller, from which it is unwound upon a table for inspection. An engraving of the whole, in sixteen plates, coloured like the original, and one- fourth of the oriijinal size, was published by the .Society of Antiquaries, in the sixth vol. of the ' Vetusta Monumeuta.' The cuts we have yiven are reducei from these i)late». Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 197 That Harold went to Normandy at this time is certain, but it is said that his sole object in going was to obtain the release of his brother Wulnot and his nephew Haco, the two hostages for the Godwin family, whom Edward had committed to the custody of Duke William, but who the king was now willing should be restored. Another opinion is, that Harold's going at all was wholly accidental. According to the latter version, being one day at his manor of Bosenham, or Bosham, on the Sussex IlABOLn ON HIS JouENEY TO BosHAM. Bayeux Tapestry, Harold entebiko Bosham Church. Bayeux Tapcstiy. coast, he went into a fishing-boat for recreation with but few attendants, and those not very expert mariners, and scarcely was he launched into the deep when a violent storm suddenly arose, and drove the ill-managed boat upon the opposite coast of France ; but whether he went by accident or design, or whatever were the motives of the voyage, the following facts seem to be pretty generally admitted. Harold was wrecked or stranded near the mouth of the river Somme, in the territory of Guy, Count of Ponthieu, who, according to a barbarous practice not uncommon, and held as good law in the middle ages, seized the wreck as his right, and made the passengers his prisoners until they should pay a heavy ransom lor their release. From the castle of Belram, now Beaurain, near Montreuil, where the earl and his retinue were shut up, alter they had been despoiled of the best part of their baggage, Harold made his condition known to Duice William, and entreated his good offices. The duke could not be blind to the advan- tages that might be derived from this accident, and he instantly and earnestly demanded that Harold should be released and sent to his court. Careful of his money, William at first em- 198 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. H AHOLD COMING TO Anchob ON THE CoAST o» NoRMANDT. Bayeiix Tapestry, ployed threats, without talking of ransom. The Count of Ponthiexi, who knew the rank of his captive, was deaf to these menaces, and only yielded on the offer of a large sum of money from the duke, and a fine estate on the river D'Eaune. Harold then went to Rouen -, and the bastard of Nor- mandy had the gratification of having in his court, and in his power, and bound to him by this recent obligation, the son of the great enemy of the Nor- mans, — one of the chiefs of the league that had ba- nished from Englandtheforeign courtiers,the friends and relations of William, those on whom his hopes rested, the intriguers in his favour for the royalty of that kingdom. Although received with much mag- nificence, and treated with great respect, and even a semblance of affection, Harold soon perceived he was in a more dangerous prison at Rouen than he had been in the castle of Belram. His aspirations IIabold's Appeahance at thk Court of Duke William. Bayeux Tapestry. to the English crown could be no secret to himself, and his inward conscience would make him believe they were well known to William, who could not be ignorant of his past life and present power in the island. If he was indeed uninformed as yet as to William's intentions, that happy ignorance was soon removed, and the whole peril of his pre- sent situation placed full before him by the duke, who said to him one day, as they were riding side by side, — " When Edward and I lived together, like brothers, under the same roof, he promised me that, if ever he became king of England, he would make me his successor. Harold ! I would, right well, that you helped me in the fulfilment of this promise ; and be assured that if I obtain the kingdom by your aid, whatever yoii choose to ask shall be granted on the instant." The liberty and life of the earl were in the hands of the proposer, and so Harold promised to do what he could. William was not to be satisfied with vague pro- Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1060. 199 mises. " Since you consent to serve me," he conti- nued, " you must engage to fortify Dover Castle, to dig a well of good water there, and to give it up to my men-at-arms : you must also give me your sister, that I may marry her to one of my chiefs ; and you, yourself, must marry my daughter Adele. More- over, I wish you, at your departure, to leave me, in pledge of your promises, one of the hostages whose liberty you now reclaim : he will stay vmder my guard, and I will restore him to you in England when I arrive there as king." Harold felt that to refuse or object would be not only to expose himself, but his brother and nephew also, to ruin j and the champion of the Saxon cause, hiding his heart's abhorrence, pledged himself verbally to deliver the principal fortress of his country to the Normans, and to fulfil all the other engagements, which were as much forced upon him as though William had held the knife to his defenceless throat. But the ambitious, crafty, and suspicious Norman was not yet satisfied. In the town of Avranches, or, according to other authorities, in the town of Bayeux, William sum- moned a grand council of the barons and headmen of Normandy to be witnesses to the oaths he should exact from the English earl. The sanctity of an oath was so frequently disregarded in these devout ages, that men had begun to consider it not enough to swear by the majesty of heaven, and the hopes of eternal salvation, and had invented sundry plans, such as swearing upon the host or conse- crated wafer, and upon the relics of saints and martyrs, which, in their dull conception, were things far more awful and binding. But William determined to gain this additional guarantee by a trick. On the eve of the day fixed for the assem- bly, he caused all the bones and relics of saints preserved in all the chvirches and monasteries in the country to be collected and deposited in a large tub, which was placed in the council-cham- ber, and covered and concealed under a cloth of gold. At the appointed meeting, • when William was seated on his chair of state, with a rich sword in his hand, a golden diadem on his head, and all his Norman chieftains round about him, the missal was brought in, and being opened at the evangelists, was laid upon the cloth of gold which covered the tub, and gave it the appearance of a rich table or altar. Then Duke William rose and said, " Earl Harold, I require you, before this noble assembly, to confirm, by oath, the promises you have made me — to wit, to assist me in obtaining the kingdom of England, after king Edward's death, to marry my daughter Adele, and to send me your sister, that I may give her in marriage to one of mine." Hauold's Oath to William. Bayeux Tapestry, Harold, who, It is said, was thus publicly taken by surjirise, durst not retract ; he stepped forward with a troubled and confused air, laid his hand upon the book, and swore. As soon as the oath was taken, at a signal from the* duke, the missal was removed, the cloth of gold was taken off", and the large tub was discovered filled to the very brim with dead men's bones and dried up bodies of saints, over which the son of Godwin had sworn without knowing it. According to the Norman chroniclers, Harold shuddered at the sight.* Having, in his apprehension, thus made surety doubly sure, William loaded Harold Avith pre- sents, and permitted him to depart. Liberty was restored to young Haco, who returned to England • Mi'tn. (le I'Acad. des Inscriptions — Roman du Rou — Eadmer. — Guilielmus Pictaviensis, or William of Poitou. William of Poitou received the particulars from persons who were present at this extra- ordinary scene. 200 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL illiti_ Harold's Interview with Kino Edward on his Return from Normandy. Bayeux Tapestrj', with his uncle, but the politic duke retained the other hostage, Wuhiot, as a further security for the faith of his brother the earl. Harold had scarcely set foot in England when he was called to the field by circumstances which, for the present, gave him an opportunity of show- ing his justice and impartiality or his wise policy, but which soon afterwards tended to complicate the difficulties of his situation. His brother Tostig, who had been entrusted with the government of Northumbria on good Siward's death, behaved with so much rapacity, tyranny, and cruelty, as to provoke a general rising against his authority and person. The insurgents — the hardiest and most warlike men of the land — marched upon York, where their obnoxious governor resided. Tostig fled like a coward ; his treasury and armoury were pillaged, and tv/o hundred of his body-guard, the tools of his tyranny, were massacred in cold blood on the banks of the Ouse. Tlie Northumbrians, then, despising the weak authority of the king, determiiied to choose an earl for themselves ; and their choice fell oil Morcar, one of the sons of Earl Algar, the old enemy of Harold and his family. Morcar, whose power and influence were extensive in Liifcoln, Nottingham, and Derbyshire, readily accepted the authority offered him, and, gathering together an armed host, and securing the services of a body of Welsh auxiliaries, he not only took possession of the great northern earldom, but ad- vanced to Northampton, with an evident intention of extending his power towards the south of England. But here he was met by the active and intrepid Harold, who had never yet returned vanqviished from a field of battle. Before drawing the sword against his own countrymen, the son of Godwin proposed a conference. This was accepted by the Northumbrians, who, at the meeting, exposed the wrongs they had suffered from Tostig, and the mo- tives of their insurrection. Harold endeavoured to palliate the faults of his brother, and promised, in his name, better conduct for the future, if they would receive him back as their earl lawfully ap- pointed by the king. But the Northumbrians unanimously protested against any reconciliation with the chief who had tyrannised over them. " We were born free men," said they, " and were brought up in freedom ; a proud chief is to us unbearable — for we have learned from our ances- tors to live free, or die." The crimes of Tostig were proved, and Harold, giving up his brother's cause as lost, agreed to the demands of the Northumbrians, that the appoint- ment of Morcar as earl should be confirmed. A truce being concluded, he hastened to obtain the consent of the king, which was little more than a matter of form, and granted immediately. The Nortlmmbrians then withdrew with their new earl, Morcar, from Northampton; but during Harold's short absence at court, to complete the treaty of pacification, and at their departure, they plundered and burned the neighbouring towns and villages, and carried oft' some hundreds of the inhabitants, whom they kept for the sake of ransom. The English pulse beats high at the tone of the North- umbrians' protest; but in these barbarous times the heart cannot fully enlist itself in favour of any one cause, or party, or set of men. As for the expelled Tostig, lie fled to Bruges, the court of Baldwin, earl of Flanders, whose daughter he had mamed, and, burning v/ith rage and revenge, and considering himself betrayed or unjustly aban- doned by his brother Harold, he opened a corre- spondence, and sought friendship and support, with William of Normandy. The childless and now childish Edward was dying. A recent historian* suggests that Harold's moderation in the affair of the Northumbrian insurrection may be partly attributed to a prudent regard for his own interests, which, at this moment of crisis, required his immediate presence in Lon- • Dr. Linijaiil. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— lOGG. 201 don, that he might look after the succession to the crown. There may be some grounds for this sup- position, which, however, must add to his reputa- tion for wisdom, policy, and command of temper, however they may detract from his impartiality and abstract love of justice. An inferior statesman would have involved the country in a civil war, at a moment when, of all others, it was most essen- tial to him and the nation that it should be tran- quil and united. Harold arrived in London on the last day of November ; the king grew worse and worse ; and in the first days of January it was evident that the hand of death was upon him. The veil of mystery The Sickness and Death or Edwav.d toe Coktessoh. Bayeux Tapestry. and doubt again thickens round the royal death- bed. The writers who go upon the authority of those who were in the interest of the Norman, positively affirm that Edward repeated the clauses of his will, and named William his successor; and that when Harold and his kinsmen forced their way into his chamber to obtain a different decision, he said to them with his dying voice, " Ye know right well, my lords, that I have bequeathed my kingdom to the duke of Normandy ; and are there not those here, who have plighted oaths to secure William's succession?" On the other side, it is maintained, with equal confidence, that he named Harold his successor, and told the chiefs and churchmen that no one was so worthy of the crown as the great son of Godwin. The Norman Duke, whose best right ([(good or right can be in it) was the sword of conquest, always insisted on the intentions and last will of Edward. But, although the will of a popular king was occasionally allowed much weight in the de- cision, it was not imperative or binding to the Saxon people without the consent and concurrence of the Witenagemot, — the parliament or great council of the nation, — to which source of right the Norman, very naturally, never thought of applying. The English crown was in great measure an elective crown. This fact is sufficiently proved by the irregularity in the succession, which is not rc- concileable with any laws of heirship and primoge- niture, for we frequently see the brother of a de- ceased king preferred to all the sons of thntking, or a younger son put over the head of tlie eldest. As the royal race ended in Edward, or only survived in an imbecile boy, it became imperative to look elsewhere for a successor, and upon whom could the eyes of the nation so naturally fall as upon the experienced, skilful, and brave Harold, the defender of the Saxon cause, and the near relation by marriage of their last king? Harold, therefore, derived his authority from what ought always to be considered its most legitimate source, and which was actually acknowledged to be so in the age and country in which he lived. William, a foreigner of an ob- noxious race, rested his claim on Edward's dying declaration, and on a will that the king had no facvdty to make or enforce without the consent and ratification of the states of the kingdom; and, strange to say, this will, which was held by some to give a plausible, or even a just title (which it did not), ivas never produced, whence people con- cluded it had never existed. If a signed and sealed will would have been little, the dying de- claration, subject to all sorts of misinterpretation, ought to be considered as nothing. The pro- babilities however are, that Edward, bound by old promises and affections, and moved by old ani- mosities, really ivished to appoint the Duke and exclude the Earl, — that in the presence of his wife and her family he had not courage to insist on this wish, and that, when worn out by importunities, he faintly declared, as is reported, that the Englisli 202 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. -A DDDDGQDD, i A A fk }\ HV Funeral of Edwabd the Confessor at Westminster Abbey. Bayeux Tapestry. Keuains of the Sbbine uf Edward the Comf essoBi Weszuinsteb Asust. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 203 nation might name Harold or whomsoever they liked best for their king. He probably knew better than any man the resolute character of both com- petitors, and may therefore have trembled at the prospect of the war and misery about to befal his people, to whom, in spite of his weaknesses and foreign prejudices, he was sincerely attached. The chroniclers agree in stating that he was visited by frightful visions, — that he repeated the most me- nacing passages of the Bible, which came to his memory involuntarily, and in a confused manner, — and that the day before his death he pronounced a fearful prophecy of woe and judgment to the Saxon people. At these words there was " dole and sorrow enough;" but Stigand, the Archbishop of Canterbury, could not refrain from laughing at the general alarm, and said the old man was only dreaming and raving as sick old men are wont to do. During these his last days, however, the anxious mind of the king was in good part absorbed by the care for his own sepulture, and his earnest wish that Westminster Abbey, which he had rebuilt from the foundation, should be completed and con- secrated before he departed this life. The works, to which he had devoted a tenth part of his re- venue, were pressed, — they were finished ; but on the Festival of the Innocents, the day fixed for the consecration, he could not leave his chamber ; and the grand ceremony was performed in presence of Queen Editha, who represented her dying hus- band, and of a great concourse of nobles and priests who had been bidden in unusual numbers to the Christmas festival, that they might partake in this solemn celebration. He expired on the 5th of January, 1066 ; and, on the very next day, the Festival of the Epiphany, all that remained of the last Saxon king of the race of Cerdic and Alfred was interred with great pomp and solemnity, within the walls of the sacred edifice he had just lived time enough to complete. He was in his sixty-fifth or sixty-sixth year, and had leigned over England nearly twenty-four years. In the character of Edward the Confessor there were many amiable and excellent traits. In an age when war was considered the fittest and noblest occupation for a king, he was a sincere and con- sistent lover of peace. He was an enemy to all violence, force, and oppression, and studied, not unsuccessfully, to relieve the body of the people from the heavy hand of power, and to establish the mild empire of the law. The body of laws he compiled, and which were so fondly remembered in after times, when the Saxons were ground to the dust by Norman tyranny, were selected from the codes or collections of his predecessors Ethelbert, Ina, and Alfred, few or none of them originating in himself, although the gratitude of the nation long continued to attribute them all to him. He felt keenly for the privations and misfortunes of the people; he was averse to burdening them with taxes; and his own economy, together with the comparatively peaceful state in which the kingdom was kept under him, enabled him to lighten the load which had oppressed them during several pre- ceding reigns. It is said he could never look on a heap of gold and silver in his treasury without making melancholy reflections as to the manner in which it must have been wrung from the people. On one occasion, when he was led by his courtiers to contemplate, as a pleasurable sight, the money that had just been collected by a tax, his imagina- tion was so affected by the prodigious mass, that (says Ingulf) he fancied he saw the Devil leaping exultingly about it, and ordered it to be imme- diately restored to his poor subjects who had been forced to contribute it. Later historians laugh at this hallucination ; but it would have been well for the people if many of the later kings had partaken of Edward's squeamishness of conscience, or even of his superstition, in this respect. iMPEESSIONS PKOM THE GbEAT SbAL OP EDWAUD THE CoNFESSOB, Engraved from Original Casts. 204 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Superstition, a boundless credulity, and an ascetic and unmanly devotion were, however, the foibles and vices of Edward's character, and though they obtained him canonization from a thankful church, they certainly narrowed the limits of his usefulness in this world, unfitted him, in some essential respects, for the task of government, and en- tailed a legacy of misery on the Anglo-Saxon nation. The Crown offered to Harold by the People. Hayeux Tapestry. Harold was proclaimed king in a vast assembly of the chiefs and noliles, and of the citizens of London, almost as soon as the body of Edward was deposited in the tomb ; and the same even- ing witnessed his solemn coronation, only a few hours intervening between the two ceremonies. The common account is, that Stigand, the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, who, in right of his office, should have crowned the king, having quar- relled with the court of Rome, and then lying under a sentence of suspension, the ecclesiastic next in dignity, Aldrcd, Archbishop of York, officiated in his stead ; other authorities affirm that Harold crowned himself, or put the crown on his head with his own hands ; but both William of Poictiers, a contemporary writer, and Ordericus Vitalis, who lived in the next century, assert that the act was performed by Stigand. This ac- (JoBONATiON OF Habolu. i;iiypux Tapcstiy. ClIAP. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 205 count seems to be confirmed by the representation of the ceremony on the Bayeux tapestry, where Harold appears seated on the throne, with Stigand standing on his left. In this moment of excite- ment the strong mind of the Saxon, though not destitute of superstition, may have risen superior to the terrors of the dead men's bones, and the oaths that had been extorted from him most foully and by force in Normandy ; but the circumstances, no doubt, made an unfavourable impression on the minds of most of such of his countrymen as were acquainted with them. Still all the southern counties of England hailed his accession with joy, nor was he wanting to himself in exertions to increase his well-established popularity. " He studied by all means which way to win the people's favour, and omitted no occasion whereby he might show any token of bounteous liberality, gentleness, and courteous behaviour towards them. The grievous customs also and taxes, which his prede- cessors had raised, he either abolished or dimi- nished; the ordinary wages of his servants and men of war he increased, and further showed him- self very well bent to all virtue and goodness."* A writer who lived near the time, adds, that from the moment of his accession he showed himself pious, humble, and affable ; and that he spared himself no fatigue, either by land or by sea, for the defence of his country.t The court was effectually cleared of the unpo- pular foreign favomites ; but their property v/as respected, they were left in the enjoyment of their civil rights, and not a few retained their employ- ments. Some of these Normans were the first to announce the death of Edward, and the coronation of Harold, to Duke William. At the moment when he received this great news he was in his hunting grounds near Rouen, holding a bow in his hand with some new arrows that he was trying. On a sudden he was observed to be very pensive ; and giving his bow to one of his people, he threw himself into a skiff, crossed the river Seine, and then hurried on to his palace of Rouen without saying a word to any one. He stopped in the great hall, and strode up and down that apart- ment ; now sitting down, now rising, changing his seat and his posture, as if unable to find rest in any. None of his attendants durst approach, he looked so fierce and agitated : they all kept them- selves at a distance, staring at each other in silence. An officer of rank, and one who enjoyed the inti- mate confidence of the duke, having arrived at the palace, was immediately surrounded by the at- tendants, all eager to know from him why their prince was so sore troubled. " I know nothing certain," said the officer, "but we shall soon be well informed ;" and then advancing alone to William, he thus addressed him : — " My Lord, where is the use of hiding your news from us ? — what will you gain by so doing? It is a common rumour in the town that the king of England is ' Holin'.'slicd, t Roger of Iloveileu. dead, and that Harold has seized the kingdom, belying his faith towards you." "They speak the truth," replied the duke ; " my spite comes from the death of Edward, and the wrong that Harold has done me." " Well, sire," continued the courtier, " be not wroth at what can be mended. For the death of Edward there is no help, but there is one for the wrongs of Harold : justice is on your side, and you have good soldiers ; undertake boldly, — a thing well begun is half done." * Recovering from his reverie, William agreed that ambassadors should be immediately sent to England. When these envoys appeared before Harold, they said, " William, Duke of the Normans, reminds thee of the oath thou hast sworn him with thy mouth and with thy hand on good and holy relics." " It is true," replied the Saxon king, " that I made an oath to William, but I made it under the influence of force : I promised what did not belong to me, and engaged to do what I never could do ; for my royalty does not belong to me, nor can I dispose of it without the consent of my country. In the like manner I carmot, without the consent of my coun- try, espouse a foreign wife. As for my sister, whom the duke claims in order that he may marry her to one of his chiefs, she has been dead some time, — ■v^ill he that I send him her corpse ?" A second embassy terminated in mutual reproaches ; and then William, swearing that, in the course of the year, he would come to exact all that was due to him, and pursue the perjured Harold even imto the places where he believed his footing the most sure and firm, pressed those preparations for war which he had begun almost as soon as he learned the course events had taken in England. On the continent the opinion of most men was in favour of William, and Harold was regarded in the light of a sacrilegious oath-breaker, with whom no terms were to be kept. The habitual love of war, and the hopes of obtaining copious plunder, and rich settlements in England, were not without their effect. In the cabinet council which the duke assembled there was not one dissentient voice — all the greatNorman lords were of opinion that the island ought to be invaded ; and knowing the magnitude of the enterprise, they engaged to serve him with their bqdy and goods, even to the selling or mort- gaging their inheritance. "But this is not all," said they : " you must ask the aid, and also the advice, of the Norman people ; for it is V ut right that those who pay the expense should be sum- moned to consent to it." William then convoked the great parliament or assembly of men of all conditions — warriors, priests, merchants, farmers, and others, at Lillebonne, where he explained his project, and solicited their assistance. After hearing the duke's discourse the members retired, in order that they might deliberate more freely out of the reach of any influence. The Normans were as yet a comparatively free people, and the debate which ensued was loud and stormy. Rising from • Thierry, Hist, de ta C(,nqnCte de rAnglftene.—Clironiciuo de Norraandie. 206 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. their seats, the disputants formed themselves into separate groups, and spoke and gesticulated with much violence. The great plea of those opposed to the enterprise was, that their sovereign had no right to command any of his vassals to cross the seas on military service. In the midst of this dis- order William Fitz-Osbom, the grand seneschal of Normandy, raised his voice, and said, " Why do you dispute in this sort ? William is your lord ; he has need of you ; your duty would be to make him the offer of your services, without waiting for his asking them. If you fail him at this crisis, and he obtain his ends without you, by the living God he will remember it against you. Shew, then, that you love him, and act now with a good will." " No doubt," cried the opposition, " he is our lord ; but is it not enough for us to pay him his rents? We owe him no aid in his going beyond sea ; he has already overburdened us by his wars, and now, if he fails in this new enterprise, our country will be entirely ruined." After a long dispute it was agreed that the seneschal Fitz-Osbom, who was acquainted with the property and means of all of them, should be the person deputed to excuse the assembly for the smallness of its offers. The members all returned to the presence of the duke, when the seneschal, hurried on by his own ardent zeal, delivered a message very different from that which had been agreed upon, declaring nothing less than that each feudatory was ready to serve him beyond sea, — that he who hitherto had furnished only two horse-soldiers would now provide four, — and that in all things his Norman vassals would render double the service to which they were bound by their tenures. At this unexpected dis- course a long shout of rage and disapprobation shook the hall. " No ! no ! " cried the members, " we never charged you with such an answer, — we did not say that, — that will never be. If the duke is pressed in his own country we will serve him, as it is due to him we should, but we are not bound to assist him in conquering the country of other men. Besides, if we do him double service once, and if we follow him once beyond sea, he will hold it as his right and a precedent for the future, — he would thus exact it from our chil- dren ! This must not be ! — this shall never be ! " The assembly then broke up in a general tumult. William was exasperated, for he never brooked an opposition to his decided will ; but he was not disheartened, and was sufficiently master of his passion to have recourse to cajolery and artifice. He summoned the members of the assembly into his presence one by one, beginning with the richest and most influential ; and, charming them with his condescension, and dazzling them with the certain prospect of gain and glory, he proceeded to assure them that whatever they did now should be con- sidered as voluntary and gratuitous, and should in no sense be held as a right or established as a pre- cedent for future times ; and he offered to give them security for this by letters sealed with his great seal. The opposition of the mass was thus overcome in detail ; and every person, when he himself was once engaged, endeavoured to bring over others. Some subscribed for ships, others to furnish men-at-arms, others engaged to march in person : the priests gave their gold and silver, the merchants their stuffs, and the farmers their corn and provender. A clerk stood near the duke with a large book open before him, and as the vassals made their promises he wrote them all down in his register. The ambitious William looked far beyond the confines of Normandy for soldiers of fortune to assist him in his enterprise. He had his ban of war published in all the neighbouring coun- tries : he offered good pay to every tall, robust man who would serve him with the lance, the sword, or the cross-bow. A multitude flocked to liim from all parts, — from far and near, — from the north and the south. They came from Maine and Anjou ; from Poitou and Bretagne ; from the country of the French king and from Flanders ; from Aquitaine and from Burgundy ; from Piedmont beyond the Alps and from the banks of the Rhine. Adven- turers by profession, the idle, the dissipated, the profligate, the enfans perdus of Europe, hurried at the summons.* Of these, some were knights and chiefs in war, others simple foot-soldiers; some demanded regular pay in money ; others merely their passage across the Channel, and all the booty they might make. Some demanded territory in England — a domain, a castle, a town ; while others, again, simply wished to secure some rich Saxon lady in marriage. All the wild wishes, all the pretensions of human avarice, were wakened into activity. " William," says the Norman chronicle, " repulsed no one, but promised and pleased all as much as he could." He even sold, beforehand, a bishopric in England to a certain Remi of Fescamp (afterwards canonized as St. Remigius), for a ship and twenty men-at-arms. When the pope's bull arrived, justifying the expedition, and with it the consecrated banner that was to float over it, the matrons of Normandy sent their sons to enrol themselves for the health of their souls ; and the national eagerness for war was increased twofold. Three churchmen, the celebrated Lanfranc, Robert of Jumieges, archbishop of Can- terbury, who had been expelled by Earl Godwin and his sons, and a deacon of Lisieux, had been sent on an embassy to Rome, where they iirged the cause of William with entire success, and obtained from Alexander III. a holy licence to invade Eng- land; on the condition, however, that the Norman duke, when he had conquered our island, should hold it as a fief of the church. This measure was not carried through the consistory without oppo- sition. The man who combated most warmly in its favour was the fiery Hildebrand, then archdeacon of the church of Rome, and afterwards the cele- brated Pope Gregory VII. In after years, Avhen William could mock the power he now courted, and quarrelled with the pope, this Gregory re- • Thierry.— Chron. do Normandie. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 207 minded him of these services in a vehement epistle. " Thou art not ignorant," wrote the pontiff, " of the pains I took in by-gone times for the success of thy enterprise, and that, above all, I suffered on thy account infamy and reproaches from some of my colleagues. They murmured to see me display so much warmth and zeal for the cause of such an homicide ; but Grod knows my intention was good : I believed thee the friend of holy church, and I hoped that, by the grace of Heaven, thy bounty to the church would increase with thy power." The most valid reasons William or his ambassadors could present to the pope were the will of King Edward the Confessor, which was never produced, the perjury and sacrilege of Harold, the forcible expulsion from England of the Norman prelates, and the old massacre of the Danes on St. Brice's day by King Ethelred. But if there Avas any want of plausibility in the argumentative statement of his case, William, as already intimated, was most liberal and convincing in his promises to the pope, to whom, among other things, he offered an aimual tribute, to be levied in England after the fashion set by Canute. A pontifical diploma signed with the cross, and sealed, according to the Roman usage, with a seal in lead of a round form* was sent to the Norman Duke, and, in order to give him still more confi- dence and security in his invasion, a consecrated banner, and, a ring of great price, containing one of the hairs of St. Peter, were added to the bull. William repaired in person to St. Germain, in order to solicit the aid of Philip I., king of the French. This sovereign, though tempted by flattering promises, thought fit to refuse any direct assistance; but he permitted (what he probably could not prevent) that many hundreds of his sub- jects should join the expedition. William's father- in-law, Baldwin of Flanders, gave some assistance in men, ships, and stores ; and the other continental princes, pretty generally, encouraged William, in the politic hope, that a formidable neighbour might be kept at a distance for the rest of his life if the expedition succeeded, or so weakened as to be no longer formidable, if it failed. But there was one state, whose history in old times had been singularly mixed and interwoven with that of Britain, which might have proved an impediment. Armorica, now called Bretagne, or Brittany, had become a sort of fief to Normandy ; but Conan, the reigning chief or duke of the Bretons, sent a mes- sage to William, requiring that, since he was going to be king of England, he should deliver up his Norman duchy to the legitimate descendants of William oivino Oeoers tor thk Invasion. Bayeux Tapestry. Rollo the Ganger,t from whom the Breton said he issued by the female line, Conan did not long survive this indiscreet demand; and his sudden death, by poison, was generally, and above all in Brittany, imputed to William the Bastard. Eudes, or Eudo, the successor of Conan, raised no preten- sions, but voluntarily yielding to the influence of William, sent him two of his sons (which he was not bound to do) to serve him in his wars against the English. These two young Bretons, named Brian and Allan,t came to the rendezvous accom- • Called in Lalin " bulla ;" hence the common name " bull"' for the pope's letters, &c. + The founder of the Duchy of Normandy. i This Allan is supposed by some to have been the original stock of the royal house of Stuart. panied by a troop of men of their own country, who gave them the title of Mac Tiems (the sons of the chief), while the Normans styled them Counts. Other rich Bretons, as Robert de Vitry, Bertrand de Dinan, and Raoul de Gael, flocked to William's standard, to offer their services as volunteers or as soldiers of fortune. From early spring all through the summer months the most active preparations had been car- ried on in all the sea-ports of Normandy. Work- men of all classes were employed in building and equipping ships; smiths and armourers forged lances and made coats of mail ; and porters passed incessantly to and fro carrying the arms from the workshops to the ships. These notes of pre- 208 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Normans pbepap.inc Arks and Mimtabv Implements fob tue Invasion, IJayoux Tapestry. paration soon sounded across the channel, where Harold became anxious to ascertain the amount and nature of the forces which William had raised. Concealment would have been difficult, and was not considered needful, the Duke probably hoping to astound his rival with the magnitude and com- pleteness of his preparations. At least there is an old story, that a detected spy from England was permitted to see what he chose, and dismissed without hurt, with this message from William — " That Harold need not trouble himself to ascer- tain the Norman strength, which he should see, and feel too, before the year was at an end." The first storm of war that burst upon England did not, however, proceed from Normandy, and, but for his own unnatural brother, Harold might possibly have derided the proud threat of William. It will be remembered how this brother, Tostig, ex- pelled from Northumbria, fled with treacherous intentions to the court of the Earl of Flanders, and opened communications with the Duke of Nor- mandy. Soon after Harold's coronation Tostig repaired in person to Rouen, where he boasted to William that he had more credit and real power in England than his brother, and promised him the sure possession of that country if he would only unite with him for its conquest. William was no doubt too well informed to credit this assertion ; but he saw the advantage which might be derived from this fraternal hate, and gave Tostig a few ships, with which that miscreant ravaged the Isle of Wight and the country about Sandwich. Retreat- ing before the naval force of his brother, Tostig then went to the coast of Lincolnshire, where he did great harm. He next sailed up the Humber, but was presently driven thence by the advance of Morcar, earl of Northumbria, and his brother Edwin, which two powerful chiefs were now living in friendship with Harold, who had espoused their sister Algitha, and made her queen of England. From the Humber Tostig fled with only twelve small vessels to the north of Scotland, whence, for- getful of his alliance with the Norman duke, he sailed to the Baltic to invite Sweyn the king of Denmark to the conquest of our island. Sweyn wisely declined the dangerous invitation, and then, caring little what rival he raised to his brother, he went to Norway and pressed Harold Hardrada, the king of that country, to invade England. Har- drada, who was powerful, warlike, and ambitious, could not resist the temptation, and early in autumn he set sail with a formidable fleet, consisting of two hundred war-ships, and three hundred store- ships and vessels of smaller size. Having touched at tlie Orkneys, where he left his queen, and pro- cured a large reinforcement of pirates and adven- turers, Hardrada made fur England and sailed up the Tyne, taking and plundering several towns. He then continued his course southwards, and, being joined by Tostig, sailed up the Humber and the Ouse. The Norwegian king and the Saxon traitor landed their united forces at Riccall, or Richale, not far from the city of York. Not- withstanding his former infamous conduct, Tostig had still some friends and retainers in that country : these now rallied round his standard, and many others were won over or reduced to an unpatriotic neutrality by the imposing display of force on the part of the invaders. The earls Morcar and Edwin, true to Harold and their trust, marched boldly out from York ; but they were defeated after a despe- rate conflict, and compelled to fly. The citizens of York then opened their gates to the Norwegian conqueror, who made himself the more formidable to Harold by the wisdom and moderation of his conduct. Through all the summer months the last of the Saxon monarchs had been busily engaged watching the southern coasts, w^here he expected William to land ; but now, giving up for the moment every thought of the Normans, he united nearly all his forces and marched most rapidly to the north, to face his brother and the king of Norway. This march was so skilfully managed that the invaders had no notion of the advance, and they were taken by surprise when Harold burst upon them like a thunder-bolt in the neighbourhood of York a very few days after their landing. Hardrada drew up Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 449— 106G. 209 his forces as best he could at Stamford Bridge : as he rode round them his horse stumbled, and he fell to the groiuid ; but he presently sprang up inihurt, and, in order to stop a contrary augury, exclaimed, that this was a good omen. Harold saw what had happened, and inquired who that Norwegian chief was in the sky-blue mantle and with the splendid helmet. He was told that it was the king of Nor- way ; upon which he added, " He is a large and strong person, but I augur that fortune has forsaken him." Before joining battle, Harold detached twenty mail-clad horsemen to parley with that wing of the enemy where the standard of Tostig was seen ; and one of these warriors asked if Earl Tostig was there. Tostig answered for himself and said, " You know he is here !" The horse- man then, in the name of his brotlter King Harold, offered him peace and the whole of Northumbria; or, if that were too little, the third part of the realm of England. " And what territory would Harold give in compensation to my ally Hardrada, king of Norway?" The horseman replied, " Seven feet of English ground for a grave ; or a little more, seeing that Hardrada is taller than most men." — " Ride back, ride back," cried Tostig, " and bid King Harold make ready for the fight I When the Northmen tell the story of this day they shall never say that Earl Tostig forsook King Hardrada the son of Sigurd. He and I have one mind and one resolve, and that is either to die in battle or to possess all England." Soon after, the action com- menced : it was long, fierce, and bloody ; but the victory was decisive, and in favour of Harold. Hardrada fell with nearly every one of his chiefs, and the greater part of the Norwegians perished. Tostig, the cause of the war, was slain soon after Hardrada. Even the Norwegian fleet fell into the hands of the conqueror, who had the generosity to permit Olave, the son of Hardrada, to depart with all the survivors in twenty-four ships, after th.ut prince had sworn that he would for ever maintain faith and friendship to England. Only three days after this signal victory the Normans landed in the south. Harold received this news as he was sitting joyfully at table in the good city of York ; but, taking his measures with his usual rapidity, he instantly began liis march towards London. Upon his way his force?, which had suffered tremendously in the battle against the Norwegians, were weakened by discontents and desertion ; and not a few men were left behind by the velocity of his march, from the effects of their wounds and from sheer fatigue. In number, spirit, discipline, appointment, and in all other essentials, the enemies he had now to encounter were most formidable. They have well been called " the most remarkable and formidable armament which the western nations had seen, since some degree of regularity and order had been introduced into their civil and military arrangements."* By the middle of August the whole of William's fleet, with the land-troops on board, had assembled at the mouth of the Dive, a small river which falls into the sea between the Seine and the Orne. The total number of vessels amormted to about 3000, of which 600 or 100 were of a superior order. During a whole month the winds were contrary, and kept the Norman fleet in that port. Then a breeze sprang up from the south, and carried the ships as far as St, Valery, near Dieppe ; but there the weather changed ; a storm set in, and they were obliged to cast anchor and wait for several days. During this delay some of the ships were wrecked and their crews drowricd on the coast. In the forced idleness to which the soldiers were condemned, they passed their time in • Sir J. Mackintosh, Hist. Eng. A Ship of the Fleet of Duke Wilijam Transporting Taoors von the Invasion of England. Bayeux Tapestry. VOL. I. N 210 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. talking, and in making melancholy reflections on the danger of tlie voyage and the difficulties of the whole enterprise, — so much had. their uncomfort- able situation abated their spirit. They began to murmur, that though there had been as yet no battle, many men had perished ; and they calculated and exaggerated the number of dead bodies which the sea had thrown upon the sands. In consequence of all this not a few of the discouraged adventurers broke their engagements, and withdrew from the army; and the rest were inclined to believe that Providence had declared against the war. To check these feelings, which might have proved fatal to his projects, William caused the bodies of the shipwrecked to be privately buried as soon as, they were found, and increased their rations both of food and strong drink. But their inactivity still brought back the same sad and discouraging ideas. " He is mad !" murmured the soldiers ; " that man is very mad who seeks to take possession of another's country ! God is offended at such designs, and this lie shows now by refusing us a fair wind." The Duke then had recourse to something more potent than bread and wine. He caused the body of St. Valery, the patron of that place, where a town had grown up around his cell, to be taken from his shrine, and carried in procession through the camp, the knights, soldiers, camp-followers, and sailors all devoutly kneeling as it passed, and pray- ing for the saint's intercession. In the course of the ensuing night the weather changed, and the wind blew fair from the Norman to the English coast. The troops repaired to their several ships, and, at an early hour the next morning, the whole fleet set sail. William led the van in a vessel which had been presented to him for the occasion by his wife Matilda, and which was distinguished by its splendid decorations in the day, and in the darkness of night by a brilliant light at its mast's head. The vanes of the ship were gilded, — its sails were of different bright colours, — the three lions, the arms of Normandy, were painted in several places, — and its sculptured figure-head was a child with a drawn bow, the arrow ready to fly against the hostile land. The consecrated banner sent from Rome by the Pope floated at the main-top-mast, and the invader had put a cross upon his flag, in testimony of the holiness of his undertaking. This ship sailed faster than all the rest, and, in his impatience, William neglected to order the taking in of sail to lessen its speed. In the course of the night he left the whole fleet far astern. Early in tlie morning he ordered a sailor to the mast-head to see if the other ships were coming vip. " I can see nothing bftt the sea and sky," said the mariner; and then they lay-to. To keep the crew in good heart, William ordered them a sumptuous breakfast, with wines strongly spiced. The sailor was again sent aloft, and this time he said he could make out four vessels in the distance : but mounting a third time shortly after, he shouted, '■ Now I see a forest of masts and sails!" A few hours after this the united Norman fleet came to anchor on the Sussex coast without meeting with any resistance; for Harold's ships, which so long had cruised on that coast, had been called elsewhere, or had returned into port through want of pay and provisions.* It was on the 28th of September, 1066, that the Nor- mans landed unopposed at a place called Bulver- hithe, between Pevensey and Hastings. The archers landed first : they wore short dresses, and their hair was shaved off: then the horsemen landed, wearing iron casques and tunics and chausses (or defences for the thighs) of mail, being armed with long and strong lances and straight double-edged svv^ords. After them descended the workmen of the army, pioneers, carpenters, and smiths, who carried on shore, piece by piece, three wooden castles, which had been cut and prepared before- hand in Normandy. The Duke was the last man to' land ; and as his foot touched the sand, he made a false step, and fell upon his face. A murmur instantly succeeded this trifling mishap, and the soldiery cried out, " God keep us ! but here is a bad sign !" In those days the Conqueror's pre- sence of mind never forsook him, and, leaping gaily to his feet, and showing them his hand full of English earth or sand, he exclaimed, " What now ? What astonishes you ? I have taken seisin of this land with my hands, and by the splendour of God as far as it extends it is mine, — it is yours !" From the landing-place tlie army marched to Hastings, near to which town he traced a fortified camp, and set up two of the wooden castles or towers that he had brought with him from Nor- mandy, and there placed his provisions. De- Oedees given for the Erectiox op a Fortified Camp at Hastinus. Bayeux Tapestry. tached corps of Normans then overran all the neiglibouring country, pillaging and burning the • Tlueny.— Southey's Naval Hist, of Eng.— Clirou. Ac Normand. — Giiil. Pictav. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 211 houses. The English fled from their abodes, con- cealed their goods and their cattle, and repaired in crowds to their churches, which they helieved the surest asylum against their enemies, who, after all, were Christians like themselves. But the Normans cared little for the sanctity of English churches, and respected no asylum. William personally sur- veyed all the neighbouring country, and occupied the old Roman castle of Pevensey with a strong detachment. It should appear that he was pre- sently welcomed into England by several fo- reigners, the remnant of the old Norman court party which had heen to predominant in the davs of the late king. One Robert, a Norman thane who was settled in the neighbourhood of Hastings, is particularly mentioned as giving him advice im- mediately after his landing. It is probable that the disembarking the army, horse and foot, and the landing of the provisions and military stores, would occupy two or three days ; but sixteen days elapsed between their arrival and the battle, and in all that time William made no advance into the country, hut lingered within a few miles of the coast where he had landed. Cooking axu Feasting of the Noeman'S at HAsxixog, Bayeux Tapestry. On reaching London, where he appears to have been well received by the people, Harold manned 700 vessels, and sent them round to hinder Wil- liam's escape — for he made no douht of vanquish- ing the Nomians, even as he had so recently van- quished the Norwegians. Reinforcements of troops came in from all quarters except from the north ; and another of his Norman spies and advisers, who was residing in the capital, informed the Duke tliere were grounds for apprehending that in a few days the Saxon army would be swelled to 100,000 men. But Harold was irritated by the ravages committed in the country by the invaders ; he was impatient to meet them, and hoping to profit a second time by a sudden and unexpected attack, he mjirched off for the Sussex coast by night, only six days after his arrival in London, and with f )rces inferior in numbers to those of William. The camp of William Wis well guarded, and, to pre- vent all surprise, he had thrown out advanced posts to a considerable distance. These post?, composed of good cavalry, fell back as the Saxons approached, and told William that Harold was rushing on with the speed and fury of a madman. On his side Harold despatched some spies, who spoke the French language, to ascertain the position and state of preparation of the Normans. Both these the returning spies reported to be formidable, and they added, with astonishment, that there were more priests in William's camp than there were soldiers in the English army. These men had mistaken for priests all the Norman soldiers that had short hair and shaven upper lips ; for it was then the fashion of the English to let both their hair and their mustaches grow long. Harold smiled at their mistake, and said, " Those whom you have found in such great numbers are not priests, but brave men of war, who will soon show us what they are worth." He then halted his army at Senlac, since called Battle, and changing his plan, surrounded his camp with ditches and palisades, and waited the attack of his rival in that well- chosen position. One whole day was passed in fruitless negotiations, the nature of which is differ- ently reported by the old chroniclers. According to William of Poictiers, who was chaplain to the Conqueror, and had the best means of information, and the writer or writers of the Chronicle of Nor- mandy, a monk named Hugh Maigrot was de- spatched to demand from Harold, in the name of William, that he would do one of three things — resign his crown in favour of the Norman ; submit to the arbitration of the pope ; or decide the quarrel by single combat. Harold sent a refusal to each of these proposals, upon which William charged the monk with this last message : " Go, and tell Harold, that if he will keep his old bargain with me, I will leave him all the country beyond the river Humljer, and will give his brother Gurth all the lands of his father. Earl Godwin : but if he obstinately refuse what I offer him, thou wilt tell him, before all his people, that he is perjured, and a liar ; that lie and all those who shall support him are excommunicated by the pope, and that I carry a bull to that effect." The Norman Chronicle says that the monk Hugh pronounced this message in a solemn tone, and at the Avord '.c^xcommunication,' the English chiefs gazed upon one another in great dismay ; but that, nevertheless, they all resolved to fight to the last, well knowing that the Norman had 212 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Hastings fkom the Faibuoht Downs. promised their lands to his nobles, his captains, and his knights, who had already done homage for them. The Normans quitted Hastings, and occupied an eminence opposite to the English, plainly showing that they intended to give battle on the morrow. Several reasons had been pressed upon Harold by his followers, and were now repeated, why he should decline the combat, or absent himself from its perilous chances. It was urged, that the despe- rate situation of the duke of Normandy forced him to bring matters to a speedy decision, and put his whole fortune on the issue of a battle, for his pro- visions were already exhausted, and his supplies from beyond sea would be rendered precarious both by the storms of tlie coming winter and the opera- tions of the English fleet, which had already block- aded all the ships William kept with him in the ports of Pevensey and Hastings; but that he, the king of England, in liis own country, and well pro- vided with provisions, might bide his own time, and harass with skirmishes a decreasing enemy, who would be exposed to all the discomforts of an inclement season and deep miry roads ; that if a general action were now avoided, the whole mass of the English people, made sensible of the danger that threatened their property, their honour, and their liberties, wovdd reinforce his army from all quarters, and by degrees render it invincible. As he turned a deaf ear to all these arguments, his brother Gurth, who was greatly attached to him, and a man of bravery and good counsel, endea- voured to persuade him not to be present at the action, but to set out for London, and bring \ip the levies, while his best friends should sustain the attack of the Normans. " Oh! Harold," said the young man, *' thou canst not deny, that either by force or free-will, thou hast made Duke William an oath xipon the body of saints ; why, then, adven- ture thyself in the dangers of the combat with a perjury against thee? To us, who have sworn nothing, this war is proper and just, for we defend our country. Leave us, then, alone to fight this battle — thou wilt succour us if we are forced to retreat, and if we die thou wilt avenge us." To this touching appeal Harold answered, that his duty forbade him to keep at a distance whilst others risked their lives ; and, determined to fight, and full of confidence in the justice of his cause, he waited the moiTOW with his usual courage. The night was cold and clear : it was spent very differ- ently by the hostile armies ; the English feasted and rejoiced, singing, with a great noise, their old na- tional songs, and emptying their hijrn-cups, which were well filled with beer and wine : the Normans having looked to their arms and to their horses, listened to their priests and monks, who prayed and sung litanies ; and, that over, the soldiers confessed themselves, and took the sacrament by thousands at a time. The day of trial — Saturday, the 14th of October — was come. As day dawned, Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, a half-brother of Duke WilUam, celebrated mass, and gave his benediction to the troops, being armed the \\hile in a coat of mail, which he wore under his episcopal rochet : and when the mass and the blessing were over, he mounted a war- Chap. I.J CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1000. 213 horse, which the old chroniclers, with their inter- esting minuteness of detail, tell us was large and white, took a lance in his liruid, and marshalled his brigade of cavalry. The whole army was divided into three columns of attack ; the third column, composed of native Normans, and in- cluding many great lords and the choicest of the knights, being headed by the duke in person. William rode a fine Spanisih horse, which a rich Norman had brought him on his retinn from a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. lago of Galicia : lie wore suspended round his neck some of those revered relics upon which Harold had sworn, and the standard blessed by the pope was carried at his side by one Tonstain, surnamed " the White," or " the Fair,"* who accepted the honovu'able but danr gerous office, after two Norman barons had de- clined it. Just before giving the word to advance, he briefly addressed his collected host — "Make up your minds to fight valiantly and slay your ene- mies. A great booty is before us; — for if we con- quer we shall all be rich; what I gain, you will gain ; if I take this land, you will have it in lots among you. Know ye, however, that I am not come hither solely to take what is my due, but also to avenge our whole nation, for the felonies, per- juries, and treachery of these English. They massacred our kinsmen the Danes — men, women, and children, — on the night of St. Brice ; they mur- dered the knights and good men who accompanied Prince Alfred from Normandy, and made my cousin Alfred expire in torture. Before you is the Eon of that Earl Godwin who was charged with these murders. Let us forward, and punish him, with God to our aid !" A gigantic Norman, called Taillefer, who united the different qualities of champion, minstrel, and juggler, spurred his horse to the front of the van, and sung, with a loud voice, the popular ballads which immortalized the valour of Charlemagne, • Thfl readers of Marmion will remember tlic brave bearing of " Stainless Xunstall's banner white," long after in the figlit of Floddcu. and Roland, and all that flower of chivalry that fought in ti;e great fight of Roncesvalles. As lie sang he performed feats with his sword, throwing it into the air with great force with one hand, and catching it again with the other. The Normans repeated the burden of his song, or cried Dicu aide ! Dieu aide ! This accomplished bravo craved permission to strike the first blow : he ran one Englishman through the body, and felled a second to the ground ; but in attacking a third cavalier he was himself mortally wounded. The English, who, in reply to the Dieu aide ! or " God is our help ! " of the Normans, shouted " Christ's rood! — the holy rood !" remained in their position on the ridge of a hill fortified by trenches and palisades; and within these defences they were marshalled after the fashion of the Danes, shield against shield, presenting an impenetrable front to the enemy. According to old privilege the men of Kent were in the first line, and the burgesses of London had the honour of being the body guard, and were drawn up close round the royal standard. At the foot of this banner stood Harold, with his two brothers, Gurth and Leofwin, and a body of the bravest thanes of England. The Normans attacked along the line with their bowmen and crossbowmen, who produced no impression ; and when their cavalry charged, the English, in a com- pact body, received the assailants with L>attle-axes, with which they broke the lances and cut the coats of mail, on which the Normans relied. The Normans, despairing of forcing the English pali- sades and ranks, retired in some disorder to the division where William commanded in person. The duke then threw forward all his archers, and supi^oited them by a charge of cavalry, who shouted, as they couched their lances, " Noire Dame ! Noire Dame ! Dieu aide ! Dieu aide ! " Some of this cavalry brol<e through the English line, but presently they were all driven back to a deep trencii artfully covered over with brushes and grass, where horses and riders fell in pele-mele, and perished in great numbers. According to Dike William addressing his Soldiers on the Field op Hastings. Bayeux Tapestrv. 214 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. some accounts more Normans fell here than in any other part of the field. For a moment there was a general panic : a cry spread that the duke was killed, and at this report a flight commenced. William threw himself before the fugitives, and stopped their passage, threatening them and striking them with his lance ; then, uncovering i)is face and head, he cried, " Here I am ! look at me ! I am still alive, and I will conquer by God's help." In another part of the field the rout was stopped by the fierce Bishop of Bayeux, and the attacks on the English line were renewed and multiplied. From nine in the morning till three in the after- noon the successes were nearly balanced, or, if anything, seemed rather to preponderate on the English side. William had expected the greatest advantage from the charges of his numerous and brilliant cavalry ; but the English foot stood firm (a thing which infantry seldom did in those days under such circumstances), and they were so well defended by their closed shields, that the arrows of the Normans had little effect upon them. The duke then ordered his bowmen to alter the direction of their shafts, and, instead of shooting point-blank, to direct their arrows upward, so that the points should come down like hail from above upon the heads of the enemy. The manoeuvre took efTect, and many of the English were wounded, most of them in the face ; but still they stood firm, and the Normans, almost disheartened, had recourse to a stratagem. William ordered a thousand horse to advance, and then turn and fly ; at the view of this pretended rout the English lost their coolness, and leaving their positions, a part of the line gave pur- suit with their battle-axes slung round their necks. At a certain distance a fresh corps of Normans joined the thousand horse, who drew rein and faced about; and then the English, surprised in their disorder, were assailed on every side by lances and swords. Here many hundreds of the English fell ; for, encompassed by horse and foot, they could not retreat, and they would not surrender. The latter Batile of Hastings. word, indeed, is never once used in any of the many old accounts of the battle of Hastings. The Norman writers speak with admiration of the valour of several of Harold's thanes, who fought single-handed against a host of foes, as though each of them thought to save his country by his individual exertions. They have not preserved his name, but they make particular mention of one English thane, armed with a battle-axe, who spread Bayeux Tapestry. dismay among the invaders. The battle-axe appears to have been the arm chiefly used by the English. This ponderous weapon had its advantages and its disadvantages ; wielded by nervous men, it brake in pieces the coats of mail, and cleft the steel casques of the Normans, as no swords could have done ; but from its weight and size it required both hands to wield it, and it was awkward and difficult to manage in close combat. Battle op Hastikos. Bayeux Tapestry. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 106a. 215 The feint flight, which had succeeded so well, was repeated by the Normans in another part of the field, and, owing to the impetuosity of the English, with equal success. But still the main body maintained its position behind its stakes and palisades on the ridge of the hill ; and such was their unshaken courage, that the Normans were obliged to try the same stratagem a third time ; — and a third time the brave but imprudent victims fell into the snare. Then the Norman horse and foot burst iiito the long-defended enclosure, and broke the English line in several points. But even now the English closed again round Harold, who, throughout the day, liad shown the greatest activity and bravery. At this juncture he was struck by an arrow, shot at random, which entered his left eye, and penetrated into his brain. The English tlien gave way, but they retreated no further than their standard, which they still sought to defend. The Normans hemmed them in, making the most desperate efforts to seize the banner. Robert Fitz- Emest had almost grasped it, when a battle-axe laid him low for ever. Twenty Norman knights then undertook the task, and this attempt suc- ceeded, after ten of their number had perished. The standard of England was then lowered, and the consecrated banner, sent from Rome, raised in its stead, in sign of victory. Gurth and Leofwin, the brave brothers of Harold, died at that last rallying point. The combat had lasted nine hours, for it was now six o'clock in the evening, and the sun was setting. After a desperate attempt at rallymg made by the rnen of Kent and the East Angles, which cost the lives of many of the victors, the English troops, broken and dispirited by the loss of their leader, dispersed through the woods which lay in the rear of their position : the enemy followed them by the light of the moon ; but, as they were ignorant of the country, which was in some places intersected by ditches, and as the English turned and made a stand wherever they could, they suffered severely in this pursuit, and soon gave it up. In every clause of their narrative the Norman writers express their admiration of the valour of the foe ; and most of them confess that the great superiority of his forces alone enabled William to obtain the victory. During the san- guinary conflict the fortunate duke had three horses killed under him, and at one moment he was nearly laid prostrate by a blow struck upon his helmet by an English cavalier. The proud band of lords and knights that followed him from the continent was fearfully thinned, as Avas well proved on the morrow, when the muster-roll he had prepared before leaving the port of St. Valery was called over. He lost one-fourth of his army, and he did not gain by the battle of Hastings a fourth part of the kingdom of England; for many an after-field was fought, and his wars for the conquest of the west, the north, and the east, were ])rotracted for seven long years. The conquest effected by the Normans was a slow, and not a sudden one.* "Thus," to use the energetic language of an old writer,t " was tried by the great assize of God's judgment in battle, the right of power between the English and Norman nations ; a battle the most memorable of all others; and howsoever miserably lost, yet most nobly fought on the part of England." Sir J. Mackintosh, Hist. t Daniel. Death op ILuiold. Bayeux Tapestry. In the preceding narrative we have seen the Saxons frequently engaged in wars, and occa- sionally also connected by alliances, with various other nations dwelling around them in the same island. The largest as well as the fairest portion of Britain was conquered and occupied during the period we have been reviewing by these Germanic invaders; but much of it still remained in the possession of the races of other lineage, by whom it had been earlier colonized, or was seized upon by invaders like themselves, but from a diflerent quarter. All the east and south, from the Channel 216 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. to the Tweed, was Saxon ; in the west, along the whole extent of the Saxon dominion, were the alien and generally hostile tribes of Cornwall and Wales ; on the north-west were the independent sovereignties of Cumbria and Strathclyde (if these were really two distinct kingdoms) ; and to tiie east and north of these was the powerful and ex- tensive kingdom of the Picts, originally, it should seem, embracing the whole of the rest of modern Scotland. Behind the Picts, however, in the north-west, a colony of Scots from Ireland, not long after the arrival of the Saxons in the south, founded another new power of foreign origin, destined in like manner in course of time to bear down before it the elder thrones of its own part of the island. The doubtful and confused annals of the several Cornish and Welsh principalities of those times offer nothing to detain the historian. Cornwall appears to have usually formed one kingdom, South Wales another, and North Wales a third. But the subjects of these several states, and also those of Cumbria and Strathclyde, farther to the north, may be regarded as having been in the main one peoi)le. It seems not improbable that they may have been a mixture of the old Celtic Britons who fled before the Saxons, or were the original inhabitants of this strip of country, and of Cimbrians originally from the north of Germany and Denmark, the proper progenitors of the pre- sent Welsh. At what date these Cimbrians first found their way from the east coast of Scotland, where they seem to have earliest settled, to the west coast of England, and there mixed with and established a dominion over the native British oc- cupants, no chronicles have told us. But some ancient relation between the Welsh and the Picts seems to be indicated by the strong evidence of language ; and the close connexion that svibsisted between Wales and the Scottish kingdom of Strath- clyde, down to the extinction of the latter, is esta- blished by abundance of historic testimony. If, in the mixture of the two races, the ascendancy remained with the Celtic Britons anywhere, it was most probably in Cornwall. Everywhere else both the government and the language appear to have become chiefly Cimbrian, the national deno- mination of the Welsh in their vernacular tongue to this day. One of the northern Welsh kingdoms was actually called the kingdom of Cumbria, whence our modern county of Cumberland ; and if the kingdom of Strathclyde was a difterent state from this (which is doubtful), we know at least that in that district of Scotland also, the native land and residence of Merlin and Aneurin, and many other personages famous in Cumbrian song and story, the language, and government, and all things else, were Welsh. At what time the various tribes of the north, often spoken of under the general appellation of the Caledonians, althovigh that name was properly applicable only to the occupants of the woody and mountainous regions of the west and north-west, came to be united. in the single monarchy of the Picts, it is impossible to ascertain. The Picts are first mentioned about the beginning of the fourth century, at which time the name appears to have been understood to comprehend all the northern tribes. Antiquaries are generally agreed that a kingdom under the name of the kingdom of the Picts, which, in ])retension at least, extended over the whole of what is now called Scotland, with the exception of the district of Strathclyde in the south-west, had been established some considerable time before the evacuation of South Britain by the Romans in the middle of the fifth century. Records, the authenticity of which does not admit of any reasonable doubt, make the Pictish sove- reign, when this event took place, to have been Durst, tlie son of Erp, for whom his warlike achievements against the provincialized Britons of the south, and the length of his reign, have ob- tained from the Irish annalists the poetic title of King of a Hundred Years and a Hundred Battles. The Picts, as our preceding pages have already informed the reader, came into collision with the Saxons of Northumberland not long after the esta- blishment of the two kingdoms of Deira and Berni- cia, the princes of the latter of which appear to have claimed as within their boundaries the whole of the territory along the east coast as far as to the Frith of Forth. For some time, accordingly, all this district formed a sort of debateable land, alter- nately subject to the Northumbrian Saxons and to the Picts. The Saxons are believed to have begun to settle in the territory as early as the middle of the fifth century, and probably from this date the population continued to be mainly Saxon ; but after the great battle of Dunnechtan (supposed to be Dunnichen in Angus), fought in 685 between the Pictish king Bridei, the son of Beli, and the Northumbrian Egfrid, it became permanently a part of the Pictish dominions. This is the tract of country which in a later age came to be called by the name of Lcdonia, or Laodonia, still surviving in the Lothians, the modern designation of tlie greater part of it. Lodonia appears to be a Teutonic word, signifving the Marches or Borders. In tlie earliest times of the Pictish monarchy its capital ap]5ears to have stood near the present tov.ii of Inverness. It was here that king Bridei, or Brudc, son of Merlothon, was visited scon after the middle of the sixth century by St. Columba. Afterwards, on the extension of their power towards the south, the kings of the Picts trans- ferred their residence to Forteviot in Perthshire, and here they seem to have fixed themselves so long as the monarchy subsisted. The history of the state, so far as it has been preserved, is made up of little else than a long succession of hosti- lities, sometimes with the Saxons, sometimes with the neighbouring kingdom of Strathclyde, some- times with the Scots from Ireland, who from the commencement of the sixth century continued to encroach upon the territories of the Picts, and the pressure from whom perhaps had some Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 106G. 217 share in inducing the hitter eventually to remove the chief seat of their sovereignty from its ancient position in the heart of the true Caledonia. The meagre narrative is also varied hy some domestic war?, principally arising out of the competition of various claimants for the crown, to which there seems to have been no definitely settled rule of succession. Bede tells us that a preference was usually given to the female line, — that is to say, the brother of the deceased sove- reign by the same mother, or his uncle, who was the son of his grandmother, was preferred to his own son. This practice, which still prevails among many barbarous tribes, was probably con- ceived to be recommended by the double advantage of better securing the purity of the blood royal, and at the same time, of generally providing a man of mature age, instead of a boy or a child, to fill the vacant throne. In the end of the eighth and the beginning of the ninth century the Picts found a new enemy in the northern pirates or sea-kings, the same marauders who in the same age ravaged the neighbouring coasts of England and France, and indeed it may be said generally of all the north-west of Europe. Tlie dissolution of the ancient Pictish royalty, however, and the extinc- tion of the name of the Picts as that of an inde- pendent people, were now at hand. The earliest colony of Irish, or Scots, as they were called, is said to have settled on the west coast of North Britain about the middle of the third century. They were led by Carbry Riada, prince or subregulus of a district called Dalriada in Ulster ; and they were long known by the name of the Dalriadians,from this their native seat. The Dalriadians, however, do not appear to have set up any pretences to an independent sovereignty in the country of their adoption until after the beginning of the sixth century, when their num- bers were greatly augmented by an immigra- tion of their Irish kindred, under the conduct of Lorn, Fergus, and Angus, the three sons of Erck, the then prince of Dalriada. This new colonization seems to have amounted to an actual invasion of North Britain, and the design of its leaders pro- bably was from the first to wrest the country or a part of it from its actual possessors. Very soon after this we find the Picts and Scots meeting each other in arms. A still more decided proof of the growing strength of the latter nation is, in course of time, afforded by a matrimonial alliance between the king of the Dalriadians and the Pictish royal liouse. This connexion took place in the reign of Achaius, who is reckoned the twenty-seventh of the Scottish kings from Fergus, in whose line and in that of the descendants of his elder brother. Lorn, the sovereign power had been all along pre- served. Achaius married Urgusia, the sister of the Pictish kings Constantine and Ungus, who reigned in succession from a. d. 791 to 830. The issue of this marriage, and the successor of Achaius, was Alpin, and his son and successor was Kenneth II., who mounted the throne of his ances- tors in the year 836. Three years after, the Pictish king Uven, the son and successor of Ungus, fell in battle with the Danes. Kenneth, as the near relation of its deceased occupier, immediately claimed the vacant throne : a contest of arms between the two nations appears to have ensued ; but at last, in a.d. 843, Kenneth, having subdued all opposition, was acknowledged king both of the Scots and the Picts. There is no reason to suppose, as is asserted by some of the Scot- tish chroniclers who wrote in a comparatively recent age, that the Pictish people were upon this event either destroyed or driven irom their coun- try ; it is probable enough that the chiefs of the faction that had resisted the claim of Kenneth, and also perhaps many of their followers, may have fled from tlie vengeance of the concpieror, and taken refuge in the Orkney islands and elsewhere ; but the great body of the inhabitants no doubt remained the subjects of the new king. It appears that Kenneth and his immediate successors styled themselves, not kings of Scotland and of Pictavia or Pictland, but kings of the Scots and the Picts ; and the Picts are spoken of as a distinct people for a century after they thus ceased to form an inde- pendent state.* Meanwhile the kingdom of Strathclyde, the ca2)ital of which was Alcluyd, the modern Dum- barton, still subsisted, and withheld a large portion of the present Scotland from the sway of the Dal- riadian prince. There is some appearance of Ken- neth Mac Aljjin having attempted to possess himself of that additional throne by the same combination of policy and force by which he had acquired the dominion of the Picts. After long fighting, he con- cluded a peace with Cu or Caw, the king of Strathclyde, and gave him his daughter in mar- riage. No opportunity, however, was found of turning this arrangement to account in the manner which its projector ])robably contemplated ; and the kingdom of Strathclyde, though distressed and weakened both by the pressure of its powerful neighbour and the frequent predatory and devas- tating attacks of the Danes from beyond seas, con- • Tlie account licro ^'iven is that wliicli is now generally re- ceived ; but it is proper to notice that the wliole story of the conquest of the Picts by Kenneth, and also Kenneth's extrac- tion from the old royal line of the Irisli Scots, have been called in question and denied by Pinkerton in his " Enquiry into the History of Scotland ])receding the reign of Malcolm III.," a work of much learning and acuteiiei-s, and also of great value for the quantity of materials collected in it from previously iinexplored sources, but disfif;ured by many precipitate assertions and a pervading spirit of prejudice and paradox. The author founds his scepticism as to the events mentioned in the text principally upon the silence of certain contemporary authorities. He admits'it to be " clear, however, that tlie opinion that Kenneth vanquished tlie Picts is as old as the eleventh century." (Knquiry, ii. 152, Edit, of 1814.) He conceives it to be more probable that the Picts subdued the Scots, than the Scots the Piets ; b>it on the whole is persuaded that all that really took place was a union on equal terms between the two nations. Then, to account upon this hypothesis for the unquestionable fact that the whole territory fell under the dominion of Kenneth Mao Alpin, he conceives that Kenneth and his father Alpin were not dsscendauts of the old Ualriadic kings at all, but of a new lino of Pictish princes that had been imposed upon the Dalriadians by the Picts about a century before tliis first amalgamation of the one peojile with the other. An assumption so gratuitous as this last, and so directly opposed to tlie uniform testimony of chronicleB and records, it is quite impossible to admit. In our abstract we have principally adhered to the dates and order of events as settled by the latest investigator of this part of our national history, Chalmers, in his Caledonia, i. pp 374 — 4!28. 218 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. I^BOOK II. tinned to maintain a nominal independence till the native government was finally subverted, and the country incorporated with the rest of the Scottish dominions, by the defeat of its last king, Danwal- lon, by Kenneth III., the king of the Scots (the great-great-grandson of Kenneth Mac Alpin), at the battle of Vacornar, in a.d. 973. Even before this event, however, North Britain had begun to be known, after its Irish conquerors, by the name of Scotland. It is so called for the first time in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 934. Meanwhile the united Scottish kingdom founded by Kenneth Mac Alpin continued to consolidate and strengthen itself under the sway of his descend- ants. Kenneth himself, in the remaining part of his reign, had to make good his position by his sword, sometimes in defensive, sometimes in ag- gressive contests, both with the Danes, the Saxons, and his neighbours of Strathclyde ; but he died at last in bed at his capital of Forteviot, a.d. 859. He was succeeded by his brother Donald III., who reigned till a.d.. 863. Constantine II., the son of Kenneth, followed, and, durhig a reign of eighteen years, was engaged in nlmost uninter- rupted warfare with the Danes, who harassed him both from Ireland and from the Continent, and penetrated into the heart of the kingdom by all its maritime inlets, — by the Clyde from the west, and by the Friths of Moray, Tay, and Forth from the east. It is asserted by the old historians that these invaders were first called in by the fugitive or subjugated Picts, a fact which may be taken as some confirmation of the common northern origin of both. The enemy, therefore, with whom Con- stantine had to contend had friends and supporters in the heart of his dominions; and while he endeavoured to repel the foreigners with one hand, he must have had to keep down his own subjects with the other. Nor were the Picts altogether defrauded of their revenge on the son of their con- queror. They and their allies the Danes appear to have wrested from the Scottish king not only the Orkney and Western islands, but also the extensive districts of Caithness, Sutherland, and part of Ross-shire, on the continent of Scotland ; and these acquisitions continued to be governed lor many ages by Norwegian princes entirely indepen- dent of the Scottish crown. The traditionary ac- Sculpturi'd Stone lately duf; up iu the iiucient chapol of Kt. Rei^ulus, at St. Andrew's. This is jjiven as a specimen of many stones of a similar kind which are found in various ))laces along the east coast of Scotland, where the Pietish dominions lay. The present stone has not been before engraved, and is, besides, remarkable as being, we believe, the only specimen of these stones wliich has been found to the south of the Tay. In tlie county of Angus, on the other side of that river, they are very numerous; and they have been found as far north as the county of Sutherhmd. As this range of country constituted the prineipal part of the dominions of thePicts, they have generally been supposed to be monuments of that people. But all sorts of conjectures have been formed respecting them; and both the people by whom, and the age in which they were ei'ected, must be considered as still remaining undiscovered. While scmie antiquaries have been disposed to refer them chiefly to the ninth and the two or tliree following centuries, and to connect them with the events of tlie Danish invasions of those times; others have carried them back to the age in which the famous King Arthur is supposed to have flourished, with whose history and e.\ploits, real or mytholo^dcal, some of them are certainly connected in the popular traditions. Notwithstanding the figure of the cross, which is not uufiequently found on these shores,it must be considered doubtful ifthey are Christian memorials; forthat symbol is undoubtedly more ancient than Christianity. A very remarliable circumstance is, that various oriental figures, the elephant especially, appear in several instances among Iheir decorations. The serpent is also not an unusual figure. Iu one instance only, as far as we are aware, has an inscription in literal, or apparently literal characters, been found — namely, on one of two stones discovered a few years ago at Pitmachie, in Aberdeenshire, and cngr.aved in the last (1814) edition of' Pinkerton's Inquiry into the Early History of Scotland.' "The characters," Mr. Pinkerton observes, " seem to resemble the .\nglo- Saxon, as published by Hickes, especially those on the coins of the kings of Nor- tlminbria of the ninth century. " Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449— 106'6. 219 count, repeated by the later historians, of the termination of Constantine's disastrous reign is, tliat he was killed in a battle with the Danes, or put to death by them immediately after the battle, near Crail, in Fife. A cave in which he was massacred is still shov/n, and called the Devil's Cave. The older writers, however, place his death in a.d. 882, a year after the great battle in Fife. Constantine's immediate successor was his brother Hugh ; but he was dethroned the same year by Grig, the chieftain of the district now forming the shires of Aberdeen and Banff, who, associating with himself on the throne Eocha, or Eth, sou of the king of Strathclyde by a daughter of Kenneth Mac Alpin, is said to have reigned for about twelve years with a more extensive authority than had been enjoyed by any of his predecessors. The monkish chroniclers, indeed, who designate him by the pompous title of Gregory the Great, absurdly make him not only to have held his own with a strong hand, but to have actually reduced to subjection all the neighbouring states, including both the English and the Irish. He appears to have been a favourer of the church, upon which he probably leant for support in the deficiency of his hereditary title. However, he and his partner in the sovereignty were at length dethroned by a Coronation Chair op the Kings of England, kept in Westmin- ster Abbey. Beneath the seat is the " Stone of Destiny," carried off from Scone by Edward I., in 1296. popular insurrection, a.d. 893 ; en which their place was supplied by Donald IV., the son of Con- stantine II. A succession of combats with the Danes, again, one of the most memorable of which was fought at Collin, near Scone, for the possession of the famous Stone of Destiny which Kennetii Mac Alpin had transferred thither irom the original British nestling-place of his antique race in Argyle- shire, form almost the only recorded events of his reign. The northern invaders were beaten at Collin ; but a few years after, in 904, Donald fell in fight near I^orteviot, against another band of them from Ireland. He was succeeded by Con- stantine III., the son of his uncle Hugh. This was the Scottish king who, as related in a pre- ceding page, made an inroad, in 937, into the dominions of the Saxon Athelstane in conjunction with Clave or Anlaf, the Danish chief of Northum- berland, when their united forces were routed in the bloody day of Brunanburgh, and Constantine with difficulty escaped from the slaughter in which his eldest son fell. A few years after this hu- miliating defeat, in a.d. 944, he exchanged his crown for a cowl, and he passed the last eight or nine years of his life as Abbot of the Culdees of St. Andrews. Meanwhile the throne was ascended by Malcolm I., son of Donald IV. The most im- portant event of this reign was the cession by the Saxou king Edmund of the district of Cumbria, which he had recently conquered from its last king Dunmail, to Malcolm, to be held by him on condition of his arming when called upon in the defence either of that or of any other part of the English territory. Cumberland remained an ap- panage of the Scottish crown from this time till 1072, when it was recovered by William the Conqueror. Malcolm I. came to a violent death at the hands of some of his own subjects in 953, and left his sceptre to Indulf, the son of his predecessor Con- stantine III. The reign of Indulf was grievously troubled by repeated attacks of the Northmen ; and he at last lost his life in what the old writers call the Battle of the Bauds, fought in 961, near the Bay of Cullen, in Banfishire, where several bar- rows on a moor still preserve the memory of the defeat of the foreigners. Duff, the son of Mal- colm I., now became king, according to what appears to have been the legal order of succession at this time, when each king for many generations was almost uniformly succeeded not by his own fon, but by the son of his predecessor. But the effects of the natural disposition of the sovereign in possession to retain the sviccession exclusively in his own line now began to show themselves ; and the right of Duff was disputed from the first by Indulf's son Culen, whose partizans, although de- feated in the fair fight of Duncrub, in Perthshire, are asserted to have afterwards opened the way to the throne for their leader by the assassination of his rival. This event took place at Forres in 965. But Culen did not long retain his guiltily acquired power. Disregarding all the duties of his place, 220 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. he abandoned himself to riot and licentiousness, and soon followed up the murder of Duff by an act of atrocious violence, committed on another near relation, the daughter of the king of Strathclyde. The nation of the injured lady took arms against her violator ; and Culen fell in a battle fought with tliem at a place situated to the south of the Forth in A.D. 970. The crown now fell to Kenneth TIT., another son of Malcolm T., and the brother of Duff. The reign of Kenneth III. is one of the most important in the early history of Scotland. He was a prince of remarkable ability, and of a daring and unscrupu- lous character ; he occupied the throne for a suf- ficient length of time to enable him to lay a deep foundation for his schemes of policy, if not to carry them into complete effect ; and he came at a crisis when the old order of things was naturally break- ing up, and the most favourable opportunity was offered to a bold and enterprising genius like his of establishing, or at least originating, a new system. It was one of those conjunctions of circumstances and of an individual mind fitted to take advantage of them, by which most of the great movements in national affairs have been produced. His first effort was to follow out the war with the declining state of Strathclyde until he wound it up, as has been intimated above, with the complete subjuga- tion of that rival kingdom and its incorporation with his hereditary dominions. With the excep- tion, therefore, of the nominal independence, but real vassalage in everything except in name, of the Welsh, the whole of Britain was now divided into the two sovereignties of England and Scotland. The Saxon power of Wessex had swallowed up and absorbed everything else in the south, and in the north every other royalty had in like manner fallen before that of the Celtic princes of Dalriada. Peace and intimate alliance, also, had now taken place of the old enmity between the two mo- narchies ; and an opening must have been made for the passage to Scotland of some rays from the superior civilization of her neighbour, which would naturally be favourable to imitation in the arrange- ments of the government as well as in other matters. It was in this position of affairs that Kenneth proceeded to take measures for getting rid of what we have seen was the most remarkable peculiarity of the Scottish regal constitution, the participation of two distinct lines in the right of succession to the throne, a rule or custom to which, notwithstanding some advantages, there would seem to exist an all-sufficient objection in its very tendency to excite to such attempts as that which Kenneth now made. Kenneth's mode of proceed- ing was characteristically energetic and direct. To put an end in the most effectual manner to the pre- tensions of Malcolm, the son of his brother Duff, he had that prince put to death, although he had been already recognized as Tanist, or next heir to the throne, and had as such been invested, accord- ing to custom, with the lordship of Cumberland. We shall see, however, that this deed of blood was after all perpetrated to no purpose. Another of Kennetli's acts of severity, and perhaps also of cruelty and vengeance, recoiled upon him to his own destruction. After the suppression of a com- motion in the Mearns, he had thought it necessary to signalize the triumph of the royal authority by taking the life of the only son of the chief of the district, either because the young man had been one of the leaders of the vanquished faction, or perhaps because his father had not shown sufficient energy in meeting and putting down their designs. By some means or other, however, Kenneth was some time after induced to trust himself in the hands of Fenella, the mother of his victim, by visiting her in her castle near Fettercairn. Here he was murdered either by her orders, or not im- probably by her own hands, for it is related that she fled the instant the deed was done, although she was soon taken, and suffered the same bloody death she had avenged and inflicted. The reiga of Kenneth was thus terminated a.d. 944. We ought not to omit to notice that it was in the early part of this reign that the Danes were de- feated in the great battle of Luncarty, near Perth, still famous in Scottish story and tradition for what we fear must be designated the fable of the origin of the nobility of the Hays Earls of Errol, from the incident of their ancestor, a husbandman, who chanced to be busy at work in a neighbouring field, having, accompanied by his two sons, armed only wnth their ploughbcams, opposed a chief division of their countrymen when flying from the fight in a moment of panic, and driven them back to victory. The armorial bearing of this ancient family, which exhibits three escutcheons, supported by two pea- sants, carrying each the beam of a plough on his shoulder, is appealed to in proof of the story ; but it is just as likely that the story may have been in- vented to explain the arms. At all events the arms are of much less antiquity than the battle of Luncarty, at the date of which event armorial ensigns were unknown. It is well established that the Hays are a branch of the Norman De Hayas, whose ancestor came over to England with the Conqueror, — that they did not come to Scot- land till more than a hundred years after the battle of Luncarty ,-;-and that they only obtained the lands of Errol from King William the Lion of Scotland, about the middle of the twelfth century. It was not till the middle of the fourteenth century that they Avere ennobled. The throne left vacant by the death of Kenneth appears to have been contested from the first by three competitors. Of these, a son of Culen, under the name of Constantine IV., is regarded as having been first crowned ; but, within a year, he fell fighting against one of his rivals, a son of King Duff, and younger brother of the murdered Prince Malcolm, who immediately assumed the sovereignty as Kenneth IV. The Scottish chroniclers call him Kenneth the Grim. There was still, however, another claimant to the succession of Kenneth III., Malcolm, the son of that king, whcni his iatlier Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 449—1066. 221 had designed to be his heir, and invested as such with the principality of Cumberland after the violent removal of his cousin, the other Malcolm. The two competitors met at last, in a.d. 1003, at Monivaird, when a battle took place, in which Kenneth the Grim lost both the day and his life along with it. The vigorous line of Kenneth III. was now again seated on the throne in the person of Mal- colm II. The earlier part of Malcolm's reign appears to have been consumed in a long succession of fierce contests with the Danes, in the course of which these persevering invaders are said to have been defeated in the several battles of Mortlach in Moray, in the parish church of which place the fckuUs of the slaughtered foreigners were, not many years ago, to be seen built into the wall, — of Aber- lemno, where barrows and sculptured stones are held still to preserve the memory and to point out the scene of the conflict, — of Panbride, where the Danish commander Camus was slain, — and of Cruden, near Forres, where a remarkable obelisk, covered with engraven figures, is supposed, but Tlie sculptured stone, commonly called Sueno's Pillar, at Forres. This stone, wliidi is twenty-five leet in len<,'tli by about four feet in breadth at the base, is the n)ost remarkable of the ancient sculp- tured stones found along the east coast of Scotland. The side here represented is the east side, on which the sculptures are llie most numerous. No satisfactory explanation has been given of the fi-jures; but in this instance the popular name by which the stone is known, would seem to point out its connexion with the Danish in- vasions. Ye', w liat can v.e make of the elephant by which the wliole delineation is surmounted? probably erroneously, to have been erected in com- memoi-aVlon of the Scottish victcrry. It was in 1020, also, in the reign of this king, that a formal cession was obtained i'rom Eadulf, the Danish Earl of Northumberland, of the portion of modern Scotland south of the Forth, then called Lodonia, the possession of which had for a long period been disputed between the Scots and the Saxons, although in the mean time such numbers of the latter had settled in it that its population appears already to have become in the greater part Saxon, and the country itself was often called Saxonia or Saxony. Malcolm II., the ability of whose ad- ministration was long held in respectful remem- brance, died in 1033. This king, unfortunately for the peaceful success of his father's scheme of changing the old rule of succession, left no son ; but, imitating his father's remorseless policy, he had done his utmost to make a similarity even in that respect between himself and the rival branch of the royal stock by having, a short time before his decease, had the only existijig male descendant of Kenneth the Grim, a son of his son Boidhe, put in the most effectual manner out of the way. In these circumstances no oppo- sition appears to have been made in the first in- stance to the accession of Duncan, the grandson of Malcolm II., by his daughter Bethoc or Beatrice, who was married to Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld, — in those days a personage of great eminence in the state. Boidhe, however, besides the son who was murdered, had left a daughter, Gruoch ; and this lady had other wrongs to avenge besides those of the line from which she was sprung. Her first husband, Gilcomcain, marmor or cliief of Moray, having been defeated in an attempt to sup- port the cause of his wife's family by arms against King Malcolm, had been burnt in his castle along with fifty of his friend?, when she herself had to fly for her life, with her infant son Lvdach. She sought shelter in the remoter district of Ross, of which the famous ]\Iacbcth appears to have tlien been the hereditary lord, maintaining probably within his bounds an all but nominal independence of the royal authority, if he and his people indeed even professed to acknowledge the sovereignty of the Scottish king. This part of Scotland, it may be remembered, had been torn scarcely a century be- fore from Constantino II. by the Danes, and Mac- beth himself may possibly have been of Danish lineage. Be this as it may, to him the Lady Gruoch now gave her hand. Slie is the Lady Macbeth, made familiar to us all by the wonderful drama of Shakspeare. It would appear that for some time after the accession of Duncan, Macbeth and his wife had feigned an acquiescence in his title, and had probably even won the confidence of the good and unsuspecting king (the pure-breathed Duncan, as he is designated in Celtic song) by tlieir services or professions. The end of their iilot, however, Avas, tliat Duncan was barbarously as- sassinated in 1039, not as Shakspeare has it, in Macbeth's castle at Inverness, but at a place called 222 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Bothgouanan, near Elgin.* Macbeth immediately mounted the throne, and the accounts of the oldest chroniclers give reason to believe that he filled it both ably and to the general satisfaction of the people. A usurper may be considered to give proof of ability by his successful attempt ; and the original defect of his title will often force him to seek support by the wisdom and beneficence of his government. The partizans of the race of Ken- neth III., however, resisted the new king from the first; for Duncan had left two sons, the elder of whom, Malcolm, fled on his father's assassination to Cumberland, and the younger, Donald, to the Western Isles. One revolt in favour of Malcolm's restoration was headed by his grandfather, the Abbot of Dunkeld • but this and several other similar attempts failed. At length, in 1054, Mac- duff, marmor or chief (improperly called by later writers Thane) of Fife, his patriotism inflamed, it is said, by some personal injuries, called to arms his numerous retainers ; and Siward, the Danish Earl of Nortluimberland, whose sister Duncan had married, having joined him at the head of a for- midable force, tbe two advanced together upon Macbeth. Their first encounter appears to have taken place, as tradition and Shakspeare agree in representing, in the neighbourhood of Dunsinan Hill in Angus, on the summit of which Macbeth probably had a stronghold.t Defeated here, the usurper retreated to the fastnesses of the north, where he appears to have protracted the war for about two years longer. His last place of refuge is supposed to have been a fortress m a solitary valley in the parish of Lunfanan, in Aberdeenshire. In this neighbourhood he was attacked by the forces vmder the command of Macduff and Malcolm, on the 5th of December, 1056, and fell in the fight, struck down, it is said, by the hand of Macduff". His folloAvers, however, did not even yet every- where throw down their arms. They immediately set up as king Lulach, the son of Lady Macbeth, who indeed, as descended from Duff the elder son of Malcolm I. in the same degree in which his rival was descended from Malcolm's younger son, Kenneth III., might be affirmed to have had the better right to the throne of the two. Lulach, however, a fugitive all the while that he was a king, did not long bear the empty title that thus mocked his fortunes. His forces and those of Malcolm met on the 3rd of April, 1057, at Eassie, in Angus ; and that day ended his life, and also broke for ever the power of his faction. In a few days after this (on the 25tli of April, the Festival of St. Mark) Malcolm III. was crowned at Scone. But the history of his reign belongs to the next period. * " The word TioUigouanau means in Gaelic, the Smith's Dwel- ling. It is probable tiiat the assassins lay in ambush, and murdered him at a smith's house in the neifjhbourhood of IClgin.'' — Ilailes's Annals, i. 1. (Edit, of 1819.) + The foundations of an ancient stone building are still tobefound buried in the soil on the top of the hill. Dunsinan is about eiglit miles northeast from Perth ; the hill is of very regulai- shapO; and although more than a thousand feet above tlie level of the sea, it has been supposed to be iu great part artificial. — See Chalmers's Cale- donia, vol. i. It will be convenient, also, before we close the present chapter, to turn for a few moments to the course of events in Ireland, which, although not politically connected with England in the period under reviev/, had already acquired a remarkable celebrity, and begun to maintain a considerable intercourse both with Britain and with continental Europe. Taking up the history of Ireland at the point where we left it in the Introduction, we find the country at the commencement of o\u era sub- jected to the •rule of the Scots, a foreign people, who had wrested the supreme dominion of it from the Tuath de Danans, in the same manner as the latter had displaced their predecessors the Firbolgs, with which last-mentioned occupants the first glim- merings of historic light break through the con- fusion and darkness of the national traditions. The fables of the bards, indeed, make mention of three still earlier races by whom the island Vvas successively colonised, — the Partholans, so called from their leader Partholan, a descendant of Japhet, who arrived four hundred years after the flood ; — the Nemedians, who came from the Euxine three centuries afterwards ; — and the Fomorians, from Africa, who were the immediate predecessors of the Firbolgs. But all that can be gathered from the chaos of wild inventions which forms this first part of the Irish story is, that probably before the arrival of the Firbolgs the country had been peopled by that Celtic race to which the great body of its population still continues to belong. These primitive Celtic colonists, whose blood, whose speech, whose manners and customs remain, in spite of all subsequ,ent foreign infusions, dominant throughout the island to this day, would seem to be the Partholans of the legendary account. The Fomorians, again, who came from Africa, were perhaps the Phenicians or Carthaginians. The Nemedians, the Tuath de Danans, the Firbolgs, and the Scots or Milesians, are affirmed to have all hecn of the same race, which was different from that of the Partholans ; a statement which is most easily explained by supposing that all these subfe- quent bodies of colonists or invaders were of the Gothic or Teutonic stock, and came, as indeed the bardic narrative makes tliem to have done, from the north of continental Europe. It seems, at all events, to be most probable that the Scots were a Gothic people ; Scythse, Scoti, Gotlii, Getse, indeed, appear to be only diflerent forms of the same word.* The Scots are supposed, by the ablest inquirers, not to have made their appearance in Ireland very long before the commencement of our era, if their colonization be not, indeed, a still more recent event ; for we believe no trace of their occupation is to be discovered before the second or third century. From the fourth century down to the eleventh, — that is, during the whole of the period with which we are at present engaged, — Ireland was known by the name of Scotia or Scot- land, and the Irish generally by that of the Scoti * See this matter very ably treated in Finkerton's Dissertation en the Origin and Progress of the Scythians or Goths, Part i. cliap. 1. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 44.9—1086. 223 or Scots; nor till the close of the tenth century were these names ever otherwise applied.* If the Scots of North Britain were spoken of, they were so designated as being considered to be a colony of Irish. The bardic account, however, carries back the arrival of the Scotic colony, under the conduct of Heber and Heremon, the sons of Milesius, to a much more ancient date ; and the modern inquirers wlio have endeavoured to settle the chronology of that version of the story have assigned the event, in the most moderate of their calculations, to the fifth or sixth century before the birth of Christ. Others place it nearly a thousand years earlier. It is related that the two brothers at first divided the island between them, Heber, the elder, taking to himself Leinster and Munster, and Heremon getting Ulster and Connaught; but, in imitation of Romulus and Remus (if we ought not rather to suppose the Irish to' have been the prototype of the classic incident), they afterwards quarrelled, and, Heber having been slain, Heremon became sole sovereign. From him is deduced a regular succession of monarchs of all Ireland down to Kimbaoth, who is reckoned the fifty-seventh in the list, and is said to have reigned about two hundred years before our era. Besides the supreme monarch, it is admitted that there were always four subordinate kings, reigning each over his province; and the history is made up in great part of the wars of these reguli, not only with one another, but frequently also with their common sovereign lord. Tacitus relates that one of the reguli of Ireland, who had been driven from his country by some domestic revolution, came over to Britain to Agricola, who kept him with him under the semblance of friendship, in the hope of some time or other having an opportu- nity of making use of him. It was the opinion of Agricola that Ireland might have been conquered and kept in subjection by a single legion and a few auxiliaries. Tacitus observes, however, that its ports and harbours were better known than those of Britain, through the merchants that re- sorted to them and the extent of their foreign com- merce. f We need not further pursue the obscure and undoubtedly in great part fabulous annals of the country before the introduction of Christianity. It is probable that some knowledge of the Christian religion had penetrated to Ireland before the mission of St. Patrick ; but it was by the labours of that celebrated personage that the general con- version of the people was effected in the early part of the fifth century. The first Christian king of Ireland was Ijcogaire, or Laogaire Mac Neil, whose reign is stated to have extended from a.d. 428 to A.D. 403. The twenty-ninth king, covmting from him, was Donald III., who reigned from a.d. 743 to A.D. 763. It was in his time (in a.d. 748) that • See Oiis completely established, and a'll the autlioiities col- locifii, in Pinkertons Inquiry, Part v. ch.ip. 4. t At;ric, 24, the Danes or Northmen made their first descent upon Ireland. In 815, in the reign of Aodhus V., these invaders obtained a fixed settlement in Ar- magh ; and thirty years afterwards, their leader, Turgesius, or Turges, a Norwegian, was pro- claimed king of all Ireland. At length a general massacre of the foreigners led to the restoration of the line of the native princes. But new bands speedily arrived from the north to avenge their countrymen ; and in a few years all the chief ports and towns throughout the south and along the cast coast were again in their hands. The struggle be- tween the two races for the dominion of the coun- try continued with little intermission and with various fortune for more than a century and a half, although the Danes, too, had embraced Christianity about the year 948. The closing period of the long contest is illustrated by the heroic deeds of the renowned Brien Boroimhe, or Boru, the " Brien the Brave" of song, who was first king of Munster, and afterwards king of all Ireland. He occupied the national throne from 1003 to 1014, in which latter year he fell, sword in hand, at the age of eighty-eight, in the great battle of Clontarf, in which, however, the Danish power received a discomfiture from which it never recovered. Brien, hov/ever, though his merits and talents had raised him to the supreme power, not being of the ancient royal house, is looked upon as little better than a usurper by the Irish historians ; and the true king of this date is reckoned to have been Maelsechlan Mac Domhnaill, more manageably written Melach- lan, or Malachi, whom Brien deposed. Malachi, too, was a great warrior ; — the same patriotic poet who in our own day, and in our Saxon tongue, has celebrated " the glories of Brien the Brave," has also sung, — " Let Erin remember tlio days of old, Ei'e her faithless sons betray'd her. When Malachi wore the collar of gold AVhich lie won from her proud invader;" — and on the death of Brien, Malachi was restored to the throne, which he occupied till 1022. He is reckoned the forty-second Christian king of Ire- land.* The interruption of the regular succession, however, by the elevation of Brien, now brought upon the country the new calamity of a contest among several competitors for the throne ; and the death of Malachi was followed by a season of great confusion and national misery. The game was eventually reduced to a trial of strength between Donchad, the son of Brien, and Donchad's nephew, Turlogh ; and in 1064 Turlogh succeeded in over- powering his uncle ; who, bidding farewell to arms and to ambition, retired across the sea, and ended his days as a monk at Rome. Turlogh, reckoned a usurper by the native annalists, but acknowledged to have ruled the country ably and well, occupied the Irish throne at the epoch of the Norman con- quest of England. • In these dates we have followed the authority of the " Cata- logus Chronologicus Regnm Christianoriim Hiberniic," in O'Cou- uor's " Uerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres," vol, i pp.lXiv., &.C 224 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. CHAPTER II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. Section I. — Saxon Paganism. F the heathenism of the Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, the three tribes of northern Germany that sup- plied the invaders and conquerors of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, if these races had any system of supersti- tion peculiar to them- selves, we can hardly be said to know anything. But there is reason to believe that their mytho- logy was the same Avhich is known to have flou- rished at the same period, or not long after, among their kindred who remained in their ori- ginal seats around the Baltic. The historic tra- ditions of the Saxons as well as of the ancient Danes and Swedes, all ascend to and terminate with Woden, or Odin, the celebrated head of that mythology. This system is preserved to us in the two books of the Edda, the first compiled about A.D. 1057 by Soemund Sig-fusson ; the second about A.n. 1180 by Snorro Sturleson, from such sacred poems of the ancient scalds, or bards of northern paganism, as still survived either in the memory of the people, or in a Avritten form. A more compendious view of the religion of Odin is also given in the singular poem entitled the Vo- luspa, that i?, the Prophecy of Vola, which is certainly more ancient than the second Edda, in which it is often quoted as an authority, and is be- lieved, as well as the first Edda, to be the com- position of Soemond. In describing the religion of the north, therefore, we are not, as in the case of the Druids, left to the vague inferences that may bs drawn from a few notices, probably in many respects mistaken, left to us by Avriters of another creed, of doctrines Avhich their votaries anxiously endeavoured to conceal from the unini- tiated ; but we have the fullest information on all the particulars of the system from the most compe- tent authorities, its believers and professors them- selves. When we attempt, however, to investigate its earliest history, we are encountered by the same difficulties that are found to exist in the case of every similar creed. The source from whence it issued, the period of its first promulgation, and the agents by whom it was planted in the several countries where it flourished, are historical diffi- culties that still remain to be settled. Instead of facts, we are here presented with fables which it is impossible to restore to their original truth; and for the earthly founder of a religion, we have a shadowy form armed with the attributes of divi- nity, and receiving divine honours, after a life of miracles on earth. The most probable account that can be given of the matter appears to be the following : — Sigge, the son of Fridulph, chief of the Asi, a Scythian tribe, originally perhaps from the north of Persia, being oppressed, in common with the other chieftains of the country to the north of the Euxine, by Pompey, at the close of the Mithridatic war, in the century immediately preceding our era, resolved to maintain his liberty by abandoning the land of his fathers. Gathering, therefore, his people together, he led them in safety from the Euxine to the shores of the Baltic. There he found a country far wilder than that he had abandoned, and a scanty population, inferior in arts and arms to his warlike Scythians. The result of superior knowledge was soon exhibited. The houseless fugitive became a conqueror — the martyr to liberty an enslaver of nations. In a short period the subjugation of the surrounding regions attested the power of his arms, while, by his superior intel- ligence, he endeavoured to civilise those tribes which his valour had subdued.* It was natural, under these circumstances, that the son of Fridulph shoidd become a god. A rude and credulous people would easily be per- suaded to deify a mortal who had come thus strangely among them, and wrought so wonderful a revolution in their social condition. The resist- less conqueror was also a poet, a sage, a legislator, and a priest ; and while his powers of persuasion are described as miraculous, he is supposed also to have distinctly claimed a divine commission. Political expediency might suggest to him such a step, to bind more firmly the tribes he had con- ([uered by a common religion. In this manner Sigge, the conqueror and lawgiver of the north, is supposed to have become Odin, its presiding deity. Whether this was the name of the supreme Being whom the northern tril'es had worshipped before his arrival, and which he was afterwards pleased to assume, is luicertain.f His children, who were numerous, were invested by him with the government of the conquered provinces ; and • Mallet's Northern Anticiuitics, chap. iv. + Ibid, ch. \i. Chap. IL] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 44.9—1066. 225 it was natural that they should suhsequently find a place in the same mythology which had originated in the deification of their sire. This was but a new form of the Cretan Jupiter and his offspring. The end of the ambitious Scythian was well fitted to complete and consolidate his fabric of delusion. Finding his death approaching, he inflicted nine wounds in a circle upon his body, and telling his people that he was dejiarting to his native land to become a god, he expired.* In considering the career of this remarkable personage, the imagination naturally turns to the mysterious history of the first Peruvian Inca. But a still closer parallel is to be found between tlie Scythian Odin and the Arabian Mohammed. Both were impostors upon a gigantic scale, and influenced the destinies of a large portion of the human race. Under their aiispices, the tribes of the East and the North were brought together, and inspired for the momentous part they were in due season called upon to act in the drama of the world, wlien they came in their irresistible might to de- stroy, that they might regenerate. The philosophy of history scarcely presents a more interesting subject of conjecture than the probable fate of the civilised world, had the two great superstitions sent forth their myriads simultaneously. What would have been the issue to the human race, had they met upon the great battle-field of the Roman empire, to contend with equal valour and fana- ticism, while the possession of the earth itself was the prize in question? It is proper to mention, however, that the chronology of Odin's emigration has been a sub- ject of much controversy. While Mallet has placed the event as early as the time of Pompey,t others have postponed it till the beginning of the fourth century. It is probable that more than one victorious conqueror, or subtle priest assumed the name of Odin, and that in process of time their several qualities and exploits came all to be attri- buted to the first, just as the achievements of several Greek champions, all assuming the name of Hercules, were bestowed upon a single liero. This supposition will also explain the circumstance of several northern warriors having asserted their descent from Odin at the distance of only four or five generations, at a date so recent as the Saxon invasion of England. | The religious system which the Scythian legis- lator established was, no doubt, amplified in a more advanced age by the united eftbrts of priests and poets, although in every stage it continued to cor- respond with the character of its ferocious votaries. Its breatli is that of a furnace, and its " voice is still for war." A wild grandeur as well as a solemn gloom pervades it, harmonising with the scenery • Mallet's Northern Antiquities, ph. iv. + This opinion is favoured by Snorro Sturleson, the Icelandic historian who flourished in the thirteenth century, and by the mo- dern Torficus. I Anotlier theory, however, is, that Odin never existed, and is merely a mytholo^'ical personage, — the gcxi of war. See this view gnjiported by I'inkerton in his "Dissertation on the Scythians,'' Part ii. chap. 5. VOL. I. of its native home ; and its fantastic array of tales and miracles was well adapted to the understand- ings of a people too ignorant to philosophise, and too indolent to cavil. Occasionally, too, there irradiate from its darkness those emanations of truth which are found in mythologies even tlie most depraved, and which appear to evince by their purity that they are light from heaven. These are most probably the relics of the simple theism of the patriarclial era. Even the Edda, here probably following the original belief of the rude children of the North, before the arrival of the Scythian, describes the supreme Divinity as "The author of everything that exists; the eternal, the ancient, the living and awful Being ; the searcher into concealed things ; the Being who never changes — who lives and governs during the ages; who directs everything that is high and everything that is low." But far different are the attributes of Odin. He is called " The terrible and severe god ; the father of slaughter ; the god that carries desolation and fire; the active and roaring deity ; he who gives victory and revives courage in the conflict; who names those that are to be slain." Such a divinity was more suited to the imaginations of a people Avho continually rushed like eagles to the slaughter. The former could rule alone; and, therefore, by his simple votaries he was contemplated without the inter- vention of a delegate, and worshipped without an image. But the Odin of the subsequent mytho- logy required the aid of associates, and therefore his followers liberally furnished him with depu- ties, for the various operations of heaven and earth. Frigga, or Frca, his wife, was the goddess of love, pleasure, and sensuality. Thor controlled the tempests, Balder was the god of light, Kiord of the waters, Tyr of champions, Brage of orators and poets, and Ileimdal was the janitor of heaven, and the guardian of the rainbow. Eleven gods in all, and as many goddesses, all the children of Odin and Frea, assisted their parents, and were, like them, objects of worship. These, however, would still have formed but a scanty polytheism ; and when fancy assumes the right of creating gods, the limits are only deter- mined by its ov/n activity. An immense array of inferior divinities follovvcd. There were three Fates by whom the career of men was predestined ; and every individual was supposed, besides, to have a Fate attending him, by whom his life was contr(jlled and its end determined. There were also the Valkeries, a species of inferior goddesses, who acted as celestial attendants, and who were also employed by Odin to determine victory and select the warriors who were to perish. And in addition to all these there was the usual corruption of the idea of an all-pervading Providence in the Genii and Spirits, who mingled in every event, and were possessed of supernatural power whether to bless or injure. The necessary concomitant of infernal agents wr.s also appended to the creed. Their personification of the evil principle was o 226 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Lok, sometimes deprecated as a god, and always dreaded as an enemy, whom the deities, in con- sequence of his malignity, had been constrained to shut up in a cavern. He is described in the Edda as beautiful in form, but depraved in character ; " the calumniator of the gods, the grand contriver of deceit and frauds, the reproach of gods and men." The goddess Hela, the wolf Fenris, the great Dragon, the Giants, and the malignant Genii, completed the dark array of their mythology. On the subject of a future state, the religion of the North was particularly explicit ; and a heaven was formed congenial to a people whose chief em- ployment and greatest pleasure was battle. Those who had led a life of heroism or perished bravely in fight, ascended to Valhalla, and the felicity which awaited them there was rapture to the ima- gination of a Dane or a Saxon. The day was spent in furious conflict, amidst the struggle of armies and the cleaving of shields ; but at evening the conflict ceased ; every wound was suddenly healed ; and the contending warriors sat down to the banquet, where they feasted on the exhaustless flesh of the boar Scrimner, and drank huge draughts of mead from the skulls of their enemies. But the wicked, by which term the cowardly and the -slothful were chiefly intimated, were doomed to the miseries of Niflheim.* There Hela dwelt, and exercised her terrible supremacy. Her palace Avas Anguish, her table Famine, her waiters Expec- tation and Delay, the threshold of her door was Precipice, her bed was Leanness, and her look struck terror into every beholder. It is here that a creed generally terminates j but at this point the northern mythology only finds a resting-place for a moment. A fresh flight is commenced, and a new revelation more mysterious and more august than the former is unfolded. That bliss and those punishments are not eternal, but only for a season. After ages have revolved, and when time has arrived at its close, terrible signs in heaven and earth are to announce the coming dissolution ; while the human race, unsus- picious of the danger, shall be involved in universal depravity. And then comes the end. The malig- nant powers, so long constrained, are to burst from their enthralment ; the gods are to perish beneath their fierce assault, or in despair, and by mutual wounds ; even Odin himself expires, while a con- flagration bursts forth, in which Valhalla, and the world, and the place of penal anguish, with all their divine and human inhabitants, are to be consumed and pass away. But from this second chaos a new world is to emerge in its youthful grandeur, with a heaven more glorious than Valhalla, and a hell more fearful than Niflheim ; while over all a God appears pre-eminent and alone, possessed of greater might and nobler attributes than Odin. Then, too, the human race are finally to be tried, when higher virtues than bravery, and heavier guilt than cowardice, are to form the standard of good • Even the god Balder, because he died a natural deathi was con- signed to the dominion of Hela. Edda, Fab. 29. and evil. The righteous shall then be received into Gimle, while the bad shall be doomed to the un- utterable punishments of Nastrande ; and eitlier state shall continue through eternity, under the reign of Him who is eternal. In this strange system it is interesting to mark the existence of two distinct creeds, united, yet not incorporated; the one simple and spiritual, the other extravagant and sensual. In other creeds a complete amalgamation has been accomplished between the first principles of pure religion and the adventitious corruptions of succeeding periods, because, in these, the progress from primeval truth to error has been the gradual work of ages. In that case, though a few of those original prin- ciples are sufiered to remain, which form the common basis of every system of religious belief, yet the fables that gather upon them become gra- dually so identified with the whole, that they can scarcely be recognised or separated from the gene- ral mass. But in the system of Odin there is nothing of this complete intermixture and amalga- mation. Here there is only one system super- induced upon another, while each remains separate and distinct. The coming of the ferocious and popular creed from Scythia resembled the sudden rush of a lava torrent rather than the gradual con- cretion of a fresh soil; and under its hard and gloomy surface we can discover the layer of earth still unmixed that, before the inundation, was the source of beauty and sustenance. The son of Fridulph, though he found in his new home a people far inferior to his own, yet found them possessed of a higher system of religion than was known to his more accomplished countrymen ; and some of its principles he adopted, while the rest he tacitly sanctioned, or left undisturbed, in the propagation of his new creed. It is thus, perhaps, that we are to account for the discourse ascribed to him called the "Havamaal,"* containing a morality not only superior to his general precepts, but even at variance with their tenor ; and thus also in the Edda have the singularly clear traditions of chaos, the creation of man, the deluge, and the restoration of the world, come to be mingled with the wildest fables. Thus, above all, may we solve the other- wise incomprehensible anomaly of the Northern creed, where we recognise so distinctly the exist- ence of two chief deities, the one a warrior-god surrounded by his assistant powers, and doomed to perish, — ^the other a more spiritual and exalted Being, who reigns alone, and shall live for ever ; together with the two-fold standard of good and evil, the double heaven, and the double hell. When truth and error thus come into competition the result may easily be anticipated. The former, severe and uncompromising in its authority, is supplanted by the indulgences of the latter; and the primitive simplicity of its ritual is soon eclipsed by gay fes- tivals and splendid processions. It is for this reason that, among the fierce worshippers of Odin, we can discover no practical results of that patriar- • Mallet's Northern Antiquities, vol. ii. Chap. IL] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 227 chal faith that lay immediately beneath the surface of their own system. Their tempest-breathing god, and his paradise of battles, though these were finally to be consumed, were more attractive than the excellencies of a more spiritual deity, and the eternity of a purer heaven. The rites of the popular worship accorded with the spirit of such a grim theology. In Germany, in Denmark, in Sweden, and Norway, there were temples of colossal size but rugged workmanship, in which Odin* was represented by a gigantic image armed, and crowned, and brandishing a naked sword ; his wife Frea as an hermaphrodite ; Thor wearing a crown of stars, and wielding his terrible mace ; and the other gods and goddesses delineated according to their respective attributes. Songs composed under that wild inspiration which characterised the muse of the north were chanted in their praise ; and, as in other rituals, animals deemed most acceptable to each god were sacrificed, while the blood was sprinkled upon the wor- shippers. But sterner offerings than these were sometimes deemed necessary, when the emergency was urgent, or when an extraordinary boon was asked of heaven. Human victims drenched the altar;* and while crowds of captives and slaves were frequently immolated, for the welfare of the people at large, princes often sacrificed their own children, either to avert a mortal sickness or secure an important victory.! As they believed that the exclusion from Valhalla, which a natural death entailed, could be avoided by the sacrifice of a substitute, every warrior who could procure a slave to put to death with this object, had a motive peculiarly powerful for so horrid a practice. This fearful practice of human sacrifice, which seems to have been common to every ancient creed of super- stition, was merely the climax of the principle that ascended from a handful of fruits and flowers, to offerings the most costly and valued. When a sacrifice was regarded as a price, it was supposed that the magnitude of the gift should correspond with the importance of the petition, and in this view human life was tendered as the highest offering of all. As females among the northern nations were regarded with a veneration elsewhere unknown, and were supposed to be chosen receptacles of divine inspiration, they were therefore considered as well fitted to preside over the worship of the gods. The daughters of princes officiated as priestesses of the national faith, were consulted as the oracles of heaven, and were frequently dreaded as the ministers of its vengeance ; while those who cultivated the favour of the malignant divinities were held to be witches of mightier power and wilder terrors than the classical enchantresses of Thessaly. On the subject of the authority of the priests among the German nations we are less dis- ' Mallet's Northern Antiquities, vol, ii. Diihmar's Chronicles of Merselung, Hook i. t Wormius in Monument. Dan. pp. 25, 26. Saxo Gramraatic, lib. X. The traditions of the North abound in instances of children sacrificed by their parents. tinctly informed. Those of the Saxons were not permitted to mount a horse, or handle a warlike weapon ;* and this prohibition has been supposed to have been a mark of disrespect among a people so devoted to arms ; but probably it originated rather in their ideas of the superior sanctity of the sacer- dotal office than in any intention to degxade it. This view seems to be confirmed by the account of Tacitus, who represents the German priests as also invested with magisterial authority. He informs us that they settled controversies, attended the armies in their expeditions, and not only awarded punishments, but inflicted them with their own hands, while the fierce warriors who received their stripes endured them as inflictions from the hand of heaven. The gloomy regions of the north, and the lives of its inhabitants, alternating between the extremes of activity and repose, had a strong tendency to nurse a superstitious temperament. Among vast forests of perpetual twilight, among mountains rugged with rocks of ice and crested with storms, and the dismal vicissitudes of northern winters, the flitting shadows that traverse the wild scenery become spiritual visitants, while the mysterious sounds of hill and valley are regarded as their supernatural voices. The northern nations were superstitious, not only from the scenery in the midst of which they lived, but from their rehgion, which gave to every object and event a presiding spirit J and it was believed that from these super- natural intelligences might be extorted, not only counsel for the present, but premonition of the future. The direction of the wind, the aspect of the sky, the flight or voice of birds, the entrails of a victim, were all heavenly indications, in which the inquirers took counsel of the gods as to the course of an enterprise, and endeavoured to read its issue. The graves were invoked with vehemence, and the dead entreated to answer. The warrior, frequently scorning gentler methods, and resolving to force a reply, rushed, with his sword brandished, into the storm, that he might subdue its guardian spirit, and compel its reluctant utterance. When the knowledge desired was of high importance, the mode of consultation was proportionally solemn. Men were stabbed or thrown into the water ; and from the manner in which the blood flowed, or the body sank, a satisfactory reply was elicited.t They also placed great reliance upon incantations ; and they had songs by which the elements were con- trolled, and every evil averted, as well as every benefit obtained. The smith, an important per- sonage everywhere in the earliest age of civilization, had a song by which the glowing iron beneath his hammer became a breastplate impenetrable to every earthly weapon, and another by which the sword received a charmed edge that nothing could resist. And when the bark, filled with its armed adven- turers, was ready to rush forth wherever fortune might direct its course, a sure promise of favourable • Bed. ii. ch. 13. \ Mallet's Antiquities, chap, vii. 228 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. winds and a rich harvest of plunder was supposed to be secured, from the chant of some withered beldame sent after it as it left the port. The same superstition that inspired the most transcendent daring could also depress its votaries into childish timidity. Those cheeks would turn pale at the untoward chattering of a bird, which no earthly danger could blanch ; and an adverse fold in the entrails of a sacrifice stayed that projected expedi- tion, of which the danger and the difficulty com- posed the highest charm. Such were the general principles and observances of that religion which appears to have generally pre- vailed among the inhabitants of the North. We iind, however, that they were subject to great modifica- tions, according to the situation and circumstances of the several tribes. They were of a more san- guinary complexion, and clothed with wilder ter- rors, among the reckless followers of the sea-kings, than among those who dwelt on shore ; and amidst the dark recesses of Norway, where the mind brooded over their horrors, unvisited and unrelieved, they were more extravagant than among the less isolated tribes of Germany. Perhaps the Saxon invaders of Britain might be classed with those among whom the religion assumed its least revolting shape, -while the Danes, who afterwards follov/ed in their track, exhibited the worship of Odin in its fiercest and most pernicious aspect. With them the primitive superstition was fearfully amplified by the principles and tales of the Scalds, who clothed it in their songs v/ith horrors of which its first founders had probably no conception. Thus, though both Saxons and Danes worshipped the same gods, and believed in the same future state, yet the former, even while they continued heathens, became peace- ful cultivators of the soil which their swords had won, while the latter did not subside into the same social condition until after they had abandoned their original creed. UuiNs OF THE Monastery of Iona, or 1-coi.umb-ku.i..* Section II. Chkistiakity. When Ilengist and Horsa, and their followers, arrived in Britain, in the middle of the fifth century, still pagans themselves, they found Christianity professed both by the inhabitants of the southern part of the island, the late Roman province, and • This biilliling, it need scarcely be observedi belong also by a portion of the natives of the north, tlie modern Scotland, then known by the name of the Picts. The Christianity of the Soutli Britons, how- ever, there is reason to believe, had, in the ditirac- tions and miseries of the time, both ceased to exert much influence over the lives of its professors, and likewise become mixed with many corruptions of doctrine. Gildas has painted the manners of both to an a^e much more recent than that of Columba. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 229 people and clergy in the darkest colours ; and wliat- ever allowance \v« may make for an apparently atrabilious temper, and a very vehement and decla- matory style, his representations, which are in part adopted by Bede, have all the air of having a foun- dation of truth. In addition to general profligacy of conduct, he charges the British clergy with what he calls infidelity, by which he would seem to imply something beyond mere heresy or unsound- ness of faitli. From the oldest remains of the early Welsh poetry, which belong probably to an age not much later than that of Gildas, it would appear as if the ancient religion of Britain, which had no doubt lingered in the remoter corners of the coun- try, had nov/ shot up again into new life in the upsetting of the whole social system which took place at this crisis ; for these poems are pervaded by a tone of sentiment and expression which betrays a strange intermixture of Christianity and Druidism — the latter, however, of the two combined elements, as was to be expected in such a case, being by far the more prevalent. On the part of the Bards, indeed, whose order enjoyed so important a station in the old pagan hierarchy, the design of restoring Druidism to its former ascendancy seems for a long period to have been systematically and perse- veringly pursued. Throughout the protracted struggle with the Saxons it would appear to have been in the spirit and throvigh the ritual of this Neo-Druidism, and not of Christianity, that the national feeling was chiefly appealed to, and the resistance to the foreigners sustained and directed. In the northern division of the island, Ninian, according to Bede, had converted the Picts to the south of the Grampian range, al)out the year 412. Ninian is called Bishop of Whithern, in Wigton- shire, where he founded a monastery, and died A.D. 432. About the same time the heathenism of Ireland had been swept away, and Christianity established there as the national religion, by the exertions of the celebrated St. Patrick. The year 422 is assigned as the date of the arrival of that illustrious missionary in the country with which his name was destined to be so honourably con- nected for all succeeding ages. About the middle of the sixth century Kentigern, or St. Mungo, ap- peared among the Britons of Strathclyde, and is supposed to have founded the see of Glasgow. But the most distinguished of the missionaries to Cale- donia, during this period, was Columba, venerated as the national saint of Scotland until that honour was conferred upon St. Andrew. He was born at Garten, a village now included in the county of Donegal in Ireland, and landed in Scotland, with twelve companions, in the year 563. Illustrious by his birth, being connected with the royal families of Ireland and of the Scots of North Britain, and possessed of those personal endowments that gain an ascendancy over a rude people, he addressed himself with great advantage to his self-imposed task of converting the heathen Picts to the north of the Grampians. Their king, Brude II., to • Hist. Eccles. lib.iii.c.4. whose court Columba proceeded, was the first who was baptized, and his subjects immediately followed the royal example. Columba then settled in lona, where he founded his celebrated monastery, and established a system of religious discipline which became the model of many other monastic institu- tions. Much controversy has been waged upon the nature of the system of ecclesiastical polity founded by Columba ; one class of writers, at the head of whom is the acute and learned Selden, maintaining it to have been strictly Presbyterian, while others contend that the Culdees, as the clergy generally were called, were subject to episcopal authority. The former is the opinion that has been most generally held, and that seems most conform- able to the expressions of Bede, the earliest autho- rity on the subject.* The small and barren island of lona, after this, soon became illustrious in the labours and triumphs of the Christian church ; and the Culdees, animated with the zeal of their founder, not only devoted their efi"orts to enlighten their own country, but became adventurous mis- sionaries to fields the most dangerous and remote. It is gratifying also to observe that, with all the disputation there has been as to their form of church government, there is a general agreement as to the purity and simplicity both of their doc- trines and of their lives. Even Bede, though in- dignant at their rejection of the authority of the Roman bishop, testifies that " they preached only such works of charity and piety as they could learn from the prophetical, evangelical, and apostolic writings." Of the care with which they were trained to be the guardians of learning and instruc- tors of the people, we may form some idea from the fact that eighteen years of study were frequently required of them before they were ordained, t In the south of Britain, in the first fury of the Saxon invasion, the storm had bvirst wdth equal violence upon tower and temple. Amidst the havoc of an exterminating warfare the churches were destroyed and the ecclesiastics massacred, so that at length the former Christianity of the coun- try was chiefly to be traced by heaps of ashes and tokens of devastation. Yet there is no probability, as we have observed in another place, in the common notion that all the native Britons were swept from the soil which was thus overrun ; and as the great body of the labouring population were in all likelihood allowed to remain as the bondmen of the x;onquerors, we may suppose that such of them as were Christians, and most, if not all of them must have been so, wovdd be permitted to retain their faith in peace. Without a clergy, however, or any apparatus of which a trace can be discovered for the administration among them of the ordinances of religion, for we find no notice of even a single Christian church being anywhere kept up as a place of worship, it is not easy to con- ceive that they would very generally or very long retain their knowledge and profession of the truth. i3ut meanwhile, as their position in the country + Adumnatii. Vit. Sti. ColiimlKc. 230 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. became easier and more secure, the Saxons, natu- rally turning their swords to ploughshares, were themselves gradually losing something of their old ferocity, and acquiring a disposition and habits more favourable for their own conversion to the religion of love and peace. When things were in this state an incident occurred which, simple in itself, led to great results. Gregory, afterwards Pope, and sur- named the Great, passing one day through the streets of Rome, was arrested at the market-place by the sight of some young slaves from Britain, who were publicly exposed for sale. Struck with the bright- ness of their complexions, their fair long hair, and the remarkable beauty of their forms, he eagerly inquired to what country they belonged ; and being told that they were Angles, he said, with a sigh, " They would not be Angles, but Angels, if they were but Christians." Continuing his inquiries, he played in the same whimsical manner upon the name of the district fsom whence they had been brought, and that of the king who reigned over it. But never, perhaps, were puns expressed in a spirit of purer benevolence or attended with more important consequences. Anxious that a people so endowed by nature should no longer be left without a knowledge of divine truth, he resolved, at every [Book II. hazard, to carry the gospel to their shores, and actually set off upon the dangerous pilgrimage. His friends and countrymen, by whom he was enthusiastically beloved, were dismayed at his departure, and prevailed upon the Pope to com- mand his return. When, some years after, how- ever, he succeeded to the Popedom, and found a fitting opportunity, he appointed Augustin, prior of the convent of St. Andrew's at Rome, with forty monks, to proceed on a mission to England. The holy men departed accordingly upon their journey, but when they had reached Aix, in Provence, they were so dismayed by accounts of the ferocity of the Anglo-Saxons, that they refused to proceed, and sent to Gregory to ask permission to return. The benevolent pontiff, in his reply, adjured them by every Christian motive to persevere in their enter- prise ; and, to facilitate its success, he wrote letters in their behalf to the kings and prelates of France. By these they were received with kindness, and supplied with interpreters, the language of the Franks and Saxons being nearly the same ;* and in the year 597 they landed in the Isle of Thanet. Augustin immediately despatched one of his companions to the court of Ethelbert, the king of * Gregor. Epist, iv. 57. GnEGOKY AND THE Anqles.— Silli'letoa. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 231 Kent, announcing the purpose of his coming, and entreating the countenance and protection of the king. No selection of place could have been more happy for the commencement of the good work. Ethelbert held the important rank of Bretwalda, and his authority extended to the shores of the Humber.* His queen, Bertha, as we have al- ready mentioned,t was a Christian princess ; and having stipulated at her marriage for the liberty of professing her own religion, she had several French priests in her train, and a bishop of the name of Liudhard, by whom the rites of the Christian faith were performed in a ruined chvirch that had been * Bed. i. 25. + Sec ante, p. 145. repaired for her use, without the walls of Canter- bury.* The king was thus not only in some mea- sure acquainted with the religion of the strangers, and perhaps inclined in its favour, but possessed of power to protect them in teaching it ; while in the queen they could avajl themselves of an assured and influential friend. On the other hand, the opposition of the Pagan priesthood was feeble and momentary. They advised the king to meet the strangers, not under a roof, but in the open air, as he would there be safe from their magical con- trivances — an idea perhaps suggested by those miraculous powers which Christian missionaries, at this period, were but too ready to claim. This • Bed. i. 25, 26. AuoirsTiN PbeacHiNQ uefoue Ethei.best. — i resham. 23: HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. precaution Ethelbert adopted. Augustin and his companions advanced to the important interview in solemn procession ; a silver crucifix, and a banner on which v/as painted a picture of the Redeemer, were borne before him, while the attendant monks made the air resound with their melodious an- them.s, which they sang in alternate choirs. After this impressive commencement, Augustine, through the medium of an interpreter, gave the king a sum- mary delineation of the nature of the Christian faith ; and after describing the triumphs it had achieved, and the blessings it had conferred upon the nations among whom it was established, he implored him to receive this beneficent religion, and allow it to be taught to his subjects. The reply of Ethelbert was cautious, but encouraging. He said that he had no intention to forsake the gods of his fathers for a new and uncertain worship ; but since the purposes of the strangers were good, and their promises inviting, they should be suffered to ■instruct his people, while he would secure them from interruption, and maintain them at his own expense. On receiving this favourable answer, the monks joyfully directed their procession towards the neighbouring city of Canterbury ; and as they entered within its walls, they chanted these words of solemn iatercession : " We beseech thee, O Lord, of thy mercy, let thy wrath and anger be turned away from this city, and from thy holy place; for we have sinned. Hallelujah!"* They now began to preach among the Saxons of Kent, — the purity of their lives and the simplicity of their manners forming powerful arguments in favour of their doctrines. The idolaters were compelled to venerate a faith so illustrated, and converts began to crown the labours of the mission- aries. At last Ethelbert himself, persuaded by their reasoning, and probably induced by the en- treaties of his queen, consented to be baptized. This important event happened on the day of Pen- teco?t ; and on the ensuing Christmas ten thousand of the people followed the royal example. The joy of Gregory, when he heard these tidings, was so great, that he conferred the primacy of the whole island upon tlie capital of Kent, and sent the pall to Augustin, who had already been conse- crated archbishop of Canterbury by the prelate of Aries, to whom he had repaired for that purpose. f As emergencies arose in this sudden success which Augustin had not foreseen, he sent to the pope a series of questions for solution, some of which appear sufficiently strange in the present day.^ He asks, among other things, if a pregnant woman may be baptized ? — what interval of time should elapse, after her confinement, before she could be admitted into the church ? — and also, lest an infant should die, after how many days it might be baptized ? These queries, which were gravely propounded, were as gravely answered. But a more important difficulty presented itself respecting the abjlitiou of heathen festivals and ceremonies, to • Bed. 1. 25. t Ibid. i. 27. t Ibid. i. 27-29. whose allurements the simple converts were still fondly attached. It was feared that their entire abrogation would be too violent a change in the rude habits of the people, and might provoke a relapse into idolatry. By the advice of Gregory, Augustin, instead of destroying the heathen temples, consecrated them as Christian churches ; and while the festivals were suffered to remain, they were held in honour of the saints — the same number of animals as before being still eaten, and sober, religious joy assuming the place of outrageous conviviality. From the facility with which the Christian faith had thus been established in Kent, Augustin hoped for a similar conversion of the whole island. But though Gregory had sent him additional aids, his resources for this great work were still inade- quate. In this emergency he resolved to endeavour to secure the assistance of the Welsh ecclesiastics. Unfortunately, however, these heads of the more ancient British church were indignant at tlie me- tropolitan authority which the Roman missionary as- sumed in virtue of his papal appointment, and the subserviency he demanded to the bishop of Rome, whose claim to universal supremacy in the church they covdd not comprehend. With this might be connected a lurking feeling of envy at the success of Augustin among the Saxons, and of shame at the rebuke it administered to their own supineness. There were other grounds of difference also between the native British and the Italian priests, the chief of which was regarding the proper period for the celebration of Easter.* This state of matters made co-operation between the parties hopeless. At the first meeting, which was attended by only a small number of the Welsh clergy, nothing was concluded. It was agreed, however, that another meeting should take place, at which the native priests promised to assemble in greater force. During the interval, they consulted a hermit, one of their countrymen, famed for his sanctity and wisdom, respecting the claims of Augustin, and received this sententious * As tiiis matter lias been generally misunderstood and misstated, it may be well to quote the follow ing correct explanation: "Tlie diflereuce between tlie Roman a'ld Eastern cliurch concerning Easter, which began about the year 200, lay in this. The churches of Asia observed this feast on the fourteenth moon, upon whatsoever day of the week it fell out, being the day on which tlie Jews offered their Paschal lamb. Tlie churcii of Rome celebrated it on the Sun- day following that day, if it chanced not to fall on Sunday ; but did not, as the Eastern churches had, fiom perpetual practice and tra- dition, ever done, celebrate Easter on a week day. Thus the differ- ence between the Roman and Eastern church only consisted in six dai/s at most ; and the only question was, whether Easter was to be celebrated on the week (lav on wliich it fell, or on the Sunday fol- lowing At the Council of Nice a.d. 325, Asia was forced to follow tlie European mode; and iVom that time till o32, all the world kept Easter alike. Very different «as the dispute between the Roman church and those of Britain ami Ireland, concerning Easter. It be- gan in the sixth century upon this ground. In 532, Dionysius Exi- gnin, a Roman priest, introduced a great -variation into the mode of computing Easter, of which the technical terms would neither in- struct nor entertain the reader. Suffice it to say, that his rule, adopted by the Roman church, threw the celebration of Easter a whole month further back than before. But Britain and Ireland v.'ere as obstinate for their old Easter as they were lately for the old style ; and thus kept Easter a whole month before the Roman church. Cuminius, who lived at the time, specially mentions this difference of a month (Usser. Sylloge, p. 34) ; and the dispute be- tween the Roman and the British and Irish churches was not knowu till Augustin the monk was sent to convert the Sa.xons, in 597." — Pinhcrturi s Inquirij into the Early lliftury of Scutland, ii. 265, (Edit, of 1814). Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 233 advice : " If the stranger be a man of God, follow him." " But how," said they, " shall we know- that he is a man of God?" " By his humility," replied the anchorite. As this reply was still vague, he furnished them with the following cri- terion, by which the humility of Augustin miglit be tested. " When you repair," he said, " to the appointed conference, observe the manner in which he receives you. If he rise at your approach, be sure that he is the leader whom God has appointed you to follow ; but if he receive you seated, reject him for his pride." Furnished with this index, the synod, consisting of seven bishops, and the abbot of Bangor, repaired to the conference ; but Augus- tin did not rise at their approach. This instance, whether of arrogance or oversight, set the seal upon his rejection. He limited his demands to three particulars, which were, that they should agree with the Roman clmrch in the time of keeping Easter ; that they should use the same ceremonies in the sacrament of baptism ; and unite their efforts with his in the conversion of the Saxons. But to these proposals they returned an abrupt and un- qualified negative. The indignation of Augustin now burst forth. Assuming the tone of a prophet, he declared to them, that since they refused their aid in converting the Saxons, by the swords of the Saxons tliey should perish. It has been insinu- ated by Jefl'rey of Monmouth, and the imputation has been re-echoed by successive historians, that the archbishop, by his intrigues, procured the fatal accomplishment of his prophecy, in the slaughter some time after of the monks of Bangor by the Northumljrian king Edilfrid. But that appears to have been a sudden and accidental, not a premedi- tated act of devastation, and it did not occur till some years after the death of Augustin. Notwithstanding the failure of this negotiation with the Welsh church, the commencement of Christianity among the Saxons had been too pros- perous for the progress of the faith to be now per- manently checked. In the converted Bretwalda himself it found a zealous aud efficient advocate. Sebert, king of Essex, his nephew, moved by the example and arguments of Ethelbert, al)jured his idols, and received the rite of baptism : this event happened in the year 604. Numbers of the people having as usual immediately followed the example of their king, a Christian church was erected in London, Sebert's capital, upon the rising ground formerly the site of the Roman temple of Diana. This church was dedicated to St. Paul ; and each successive building, upon the same site, has re- tained the name to the present day. A second royal convert rewarded the zeal of the Bretwalda, in the person of Redwald, the king of East Anglia. We have already related the compromise he made between his own convictions and the opposition of his queen and nobility, by setting up a Christian altar and an idol in the same temple, and leaving his people to judge for themselves between the rival religions.* This strange and perilous expe- • See ante, p. 115. riment is said to have been attended with full suc- cess. The contrast was so striking, that the ancient faith was gradually forsaken, and East Anglia Avas numbered among the Christian kingdoms of Eng- land. In this same year (604) Augustin died, after having thus seen the gospel firmly established in the kingdoms of Kent and Essex. The early historians of the English church have adorned him with every apostolic virtue, and the honour of canonization has been awarded to him by the grati- tude of the Roman pontiffs. At this distant period it is difficult to form a proper estimate of his cha- racter ; but we may venture to affirm, that while he felt the paramount importance of Christianity, and laboured devotedly for its extension, he showed himself, in many instances, but little scrupulous as to the means by which he sought to accomplish so desirable an end. Such, indeed, was too generally the conduct of the saints and missionaries of that period. While they compassed sea and land with ail the zeal of the apostolic ages, they never lost sight of Rome and its spiritual supremacy. Augus- tin consecrated Justus bishop of Rochester, and Mellitus bishop of the East Saxons, and appointed his faithful follower Laurentius to be his successor in the see of Canterbury. Laurentius had to contend with still more serious difficulties than those which had impeded tlie efforts of Augustin ; and the faith, so lately planted among the Anglo - Saxons, was soon doomed to sustain a violent shock. Sebert, the protector of the Christian church in the kingdom of Essex, died ; and his three sons endeavoured to re-establish the ancient superstition. In con- sequence of the violent measures which fol- lowed, Mellitus Avas banished, and obliged to flee for shelter to his friend Justus. Here, however, he found the church in a condition equally perilous. It has been already related * how Eadbald, the son and successor of Ethelbert, had married the joutli- ful widow of his father, and in consequence of the remonstrances of the ecclesiastics, had become hostile both to their persons and their religion. In this gloomy posture of affairs Laurentius, Mellitus, and Justxis, hastily concluded that their cause was hopeless : the two latter retreated with precipitancy to Gaul, and Laurentius himt elf prepared to follow them. In such an emergency, which threatened the extinction of Christianity in England, it seemed as if nothing short of a miracle could have saved it ; and, if we may believe the early writers, a miracle was vouchsafed. On the niglit previous to his intended departure, Laurentius passed the night in the church dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. At midniglit the prince of the Apostles appeared to him ; and after reproaching him for his lack of zeal in thus abandoning his spiritual charge, he bestowed a severe flagellation upon the trembling archbishop. On the next morning, when Lau- rentius repaired to the palace, he threw off his cloak, and displayed before the king his back and • Sou ante, j). 145. 234 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. shoulders, bloody and waled. Eadbald, dismayed at the spectacle, and apprehending a worse visita- tion for himself, made haste to repair the con- sequences of his apostacy. He cursed the idolatry into which he had relapsed, and dissolved the un- natural union in which it had originated. In con- sequence of his repentance, Mellitus and Justus were recalled, and the cause of Christianity was restored with fresh lustre. Such is the tale which Bede has delivered, and which he would have thought it impiety to question. We may venture, without any breach either of faith or charity, to regard the flagellation of Laurentius as one of those well-intended stratagems, or pious frauds, which abound in the proceedings of persons of that age, pursuing evidently the worthiest ends and actuated by the highest and purest motives. The most important event in the history of the Saxon church, after the conversion of Ethelbert, is that of Edwin, by which Christianity was intro- duced into the powerful kingdom of Northumber- land. Here, too, we are encountered by miracles, which indeed make up so much of the story as given by the original authorities, that it is impossible now to separate what is fact from what is fiction. We must repeat the legend, therefore, as Bede has recorded it. Edwin had passed the greater part of his youth as a fugitive and an exile, continually exposed to the machinations of his relentless enemy Edilfrid, who then occupied the Northumbrian throne. Driven from the protection of Cadwallon, the king of North Wales, he wandered from court to court, until at last he seemed to have found a permanent shelter with King Redwald in East Anglia. But his haunt was discovered by Edil- frid, who thereupon immediately sent to Redwald demanding that Edwin should be given up. As the power of Edilfrid was terrible throughout the Heptarchy, the heart of Redwald failed, and he resolved to secure his safety at the expense of hospitality, justice, and religion. A faithful friend advertised Edwin of the deliberation within the palace, and exhorted immediate flight, offering, withal, to conduct him to a place of safety ; but the spirit of the noble exile, that had contended so long against misfortune, was weary of the struggle. He declared that he would fly no further; and that it was better to perish by the treachery of his host, and the cruelty of his enemy, than continue the life of disquietude which he had hitherto led. In this gloomy spirit of resignation he sat down near the gate of the palace, prepared for whatever might await him. In the mean time, while his friend left him to gain further intelligence of the deliberation, and Edwin remained thoughtful and alone, revolving the bitterness of his fate, amidst the gloom of the approaching midnight, a stranger (continues the story) advanced, and demanded wherefore he sat there, and awake, at an hour when other men were asleep ? Edwin, raising his head, abruptly asked, in turn, bow it could concern his questioner whe- ther he passed the night under shelter or in the open air ? The stranger then told him that he knew well the nature of his present condition, and the causes of his disquietude. " Now tell me," he said, " what thou wouldst give to him, whoever he might be, who should deliver thee from these calamities, and so persuade Redwald that neither he nor his enemies should do thee hurt?" Edwin, encouraged by the prospect, replied that he would show all the gratitude in his power to him who should render him such a benefit. " And what wouldst thou give," again demanded the mysterious stranger, " if he should truly promise thee the destruction of thy enemies, and the possession of a kingdom, so that thou shouldst surpass not only all thy predecessors, but all the kings of England who have gone before thee ?" To which Edwin replied, that to him who should render him such favours, he would answer by corresponding actions. A third time the strange visitant propovmded a pro- phetic question : " If he who procured such bless- ings should truly foretell to thee what is to come, and give thee, for the security of thy life and fortunes, such counsels as none of thy fathers and kindred ever heard, wouldst thou follow them? and dost thou promise to receive his salutary direc- tions .P" Edwin joyfully declared that he who con- ferred upon him such distinguished benefits should from thenceforth be his guide. The stranger then placed his .right hand tipon the head of Edwin : " When this sign," he said, " shall come upon thee, remember this time, and our conversation, and the promises thou hast made." When he had uttered these words he suddenly disappeared ; so that Edwin perceived he had been talking, not with a man, but a spirit. His friend who had lately left him now returned from the palace with joyful intelligence. The timid Redwald had been awakened to shame, and roused to courage, by the remonstrances of his high-spirited consort, so that he determined rather to brave the vengeance of Edilfrid than incur the reproach of treachery, and had dismissed the ambassadors with- a bold refusal of their demands. Aware of the position in which he had placed himself, he lost no time in mustering his army, and marching against Edilfrid. The victory which follov»ed, and the death of Edilfrid, placed Edwin on the throne of Northumbria. The perse- cuted wanderer thus suddenly raised to an eminent station among the kings of the Heptarchy, evinced the excellence of the lessons of adversity by the prudence and prosperity of his government. After a reign of nine years he sought in marriage Ethel- berga, the daughter of the late Ethelbert of Kent. But the princess was a Christian, and Eadbald, her brother, was averse to her imion with an ido- later. This difficulty was removed by the agree- ment of Edwin that she should be allowed the free profession of her religion ; and he even promised to embrace the same faith himself, if, on exa- mination, he should find it worthy of adoption. The queen was accompanied to Northumbria by Pauhnus, one of the last of the missionaries whom Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 235 Gregory had sent to Augustin ; and as, by rather a rare chance, the prudence of this ecclesiastic was equal to his zeal, he forbore to press the subject of Christianity prematurely upon the mind of Edwin, but left the matter to time and opportunity. On the other hand, the king still adhered to his idolatry, and seemed to have forgotten both the vision and his marriage agreement. At length a narrow escape wliich he made from the dagger of an assassin happening at the same time with the birth of a daughter, ap])eared to Paulinus to afford a fit occasion for remonstrance, and in such a suscep- tible moment the heart of the king was touched. He allowed the infant to be baptized ; and he pro- mised that, should he return victorious from an expedition on which he was about to set out against the king of Wessex, he would himself submit to the same ceremony. He was successful ; but still he hesitated. A thoughtfulness and caution, un- usual among the royal converts of the Heptarchy, retained him in painful suspense,* to the great regret of the Pope, his consort, and Paulinus. At length Paulinus one day entered the apartment while Edwin was absorbed in thought, and, laying his right hand upon the head of the king, he solemnly said, " Dost thou remember this sign, and the engagement it betokened?" In an instant the king fell down at the feet of Paulinus, who, immediately raising him up, reminded him that all which had been promised by the heavenly stranger was now fulfilled. The result was Edwin's instant determination to fulfil also his own part of the engagement. Such is the story. How far it is a mere fiction, or how far the facts related were the result of contrivance or of chance, it is now impossible to determine. It comes down to us, as has been observed, on the authority of Bede, who was incapable of inventing it, but whose credulity was equal to any demands of that superstitious age. Bede was born within half a century of the date (a.d. 627) assigned to the conversion of Edwin. Before he was actually baptized, however, Edwin called an assembly of his nobles, that they might discuss the claims of the new faith and the old ; and, having announced his sentiments, he desired each member to deliver his opinion upon the sub- ject. Coifi, the high-priest, was the first to speak, and, to the surprise of the whole assembly, he declared that the gods whom they had hitherto worshipped were utterly useless. None, he pro- ceeded, had served them with greater zeal than himself, and yet others had prospered in the world far more than he had done ; he was, therefore, quite ready at least to give a trial to the new religion. One of the nobles followed in a wiser and purer spirit. Comparing the present life of man, whose beginning and end is in darkness, to a swallow entering a banqueting-hall to find refuge from the storm without, flitting for a moment through the warm and cheerful apartment, • " Sed et ipse cum esset vir natura sagacissimus, saepe diu solus residens, ore quidem tacito, sed in intimis cordis multa secuin conloquens, quid sibi esset faciendum, quae religio servanda, trac- tabat" Bed.ii.9. and then passing out again into the gloom, he proposed that if Christianity should be found to lighten this obscurity, and explain whence we came and whither we departed, it should imme- diately be adopted. Coifi, upon this, moved that Paulinus should be called in to explain to them the nature of Christianity ,which was immediately done ; and so cogent were the arguments of the missionary, that the impatient Coifi declared there was no longer room for hesitation. He proposed that the national idols should be immediately overturned ; and, as he had hitherto been the chief of their worshippers, he offered to be now the first to dese- crate them. He therefore threw aside his priestly garments, called for arms, which the Saxon priests were forbidden to wield, and for a horse, which they were not permitted to mount, and thus ac- coutred he galloped forth before the amazed multi- tudes, who thought he had become frantic. Ad- vancing to a temple in the neighbourhood, where the chief idol stood, he hurled his lance within the sacred enclosure, by which act the building was profaned. No lightning descended, no earthquake shook the ground ; and the crowd, encouraged by the impunity of the daring apostate, proceeded to second his efforts. The temple and its surround- ing enclosures were levelled with the ground. This event happened at a village still called God- mundham, which means the home or hamlet of the enclosure of the god.* The conversion of the king was followed by that of multitudes of his subjects ; so that Paulinus, who was afterwards consecrated Archbishop of York, is said to have baptized twelve thousand converts in one day in the river Swale. During the short remainder of his reign Edwin continued to second the efforts of the archbishop in ad- vancing the cause of religion among his subjects. Being offered the crown of East Anglia, on the death of his benefactor Redwald, he refused it in behalf of Eorpwald, the son of Redwald, whom he persuaded to embrace Christianity. He now, however, succeeded to the supreme dignity of Bretwalda, which he retained till he fell, while yet in the vigour of his days, in battle against the terrible Penda, in the year 634. In consequence of this calamitous event the cause of Christianity in Northumberland was arrested in the midst of its triumphs ; and such was the general apostacy of the people, that Paulinus was obliged to abandon his see, and retire into Kent. This general apostacy, hov/ever, was counteracted on the accession of Oswald. Having spent his youth in lona, to which northern sanctuary he had repaired for shelter, aiid having been taught Christianity among that primitive community of Culdees, he naturally sent thither for spiritual instructors to his people when he was established upon the throne. Corman, a monk, was accord» ingly sent from the monastery of lona to Northum- berland, but, disheartened by the difficulties of his office, he quickly returned. While he was descant-. • Hed. li. 12, 13. 236 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. ing to the assembled chapter of his order on the barbarous dispositions and gross intellect of the Northumbrians, and vindicating, on that score, his abandonment of his task, a voice of rebuke was heard from amidst the throng, — "Brother, you seem to have forgotten the apostolic injunction, that little children should be fed with milk, that they might afterwards be fitted for stronger food ! " * Every eye was turned upon the speaker, who was Aidan, a monk of the order ; and he was imme- diately appointed to the mission, and sent to the court of Oswald. The learning and piety of the ardent Culdee vindicated the choice of his brethren. He addressed himself with zeal and patience to reclaim the apostate Northumbrians ; and in these labours he was well seconded by the king, who in- terpreted his sermons to the people. Aidan, in the year 635, fixed his seat, and founded a mo- nastery upon the bleak island of Lindisfarne, directed perhaps in his choice by its resemblance to his beloved lona; and there his religious com- munity flourished for more th&n two centuries, until it fell beneath the fury of the Danes. Oswald, • Bed. iii 5. who as well as Aidan has been honoured with the title of saint, was solicitous for the conversion not only of his own people, but of those of the other states of the Heptarchy ; and, having repaired to the court of Wessex, to demand the daughter of King Cynegils in marriage, he prevailed upon both the king and the royal bride to embrage the Christian faith. Berinus, a missionary, sent from Rome to the court of Wessex, was thus enabled to preach successfully to the West Saxons, and an episcopal see was founded at Dorchester, of wliich he was consecrated bishop.* The introduction of the gospel into the powerful kingdom of Mercia was the next event by which its progress was distinguished ; and, as in several preceding cases, it was the consequence of a royal marriage. Peada, the son of the terrible Penda, in whom the Christianity of England had hitherto found its deadliest enemy, solicited, while his father was yet alive, the hand of Alchfleda, the daughter of Oswy, king of Northumberland ; bvit the princess refused to be united to an unbelieving husband. The prince, in consequence, abjured • Bed. iii. c. 6. CoNsECKATioN 01 A Saxon CauRcii. X^ioin the Cuttoui.iu MS. of Caediii.n's Metrical Paraphrase of parts of Scripture. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 237 his idols, and became a Christian ; and on his re- turn to Mercia, he brought with him four mission- aries, who were successful in converting many of his father's subjects. The aged monarch, though he refused to be himself baptized, tolerated the labours of the Christian priests ; and he even re- quired consistency of conduct in those of his court who professed the Christian faith.* The small kingdom of Sussex was now the only state of the Heptarchy the subjects of which still remained idolaters ; but they, too, were converted about the close of this century, by tlie exertions of Wilfrid, bishop of York, who found shelter among the South Saxons when driven from his see, and is said to have obtained a great influence over them by instructing tliem, among other things, in the art of fishing. Thus, in less than ninety years from the arrival of Augustin, Christianity was established over the whole of England. The conversion of a great country, inhabited by different tribes, and divided into several kingdoms, often at w^r with each other, was thus accom- plished with a rapidity and facility resembling more the miraculous triumphs of the apostolic age, than the progress of Christianity in after times. It is evident, from the view already given of the northern mythology, that it was only fitted for pre- datory savages. Its element was carnage, its morality a code of strife, and its rewards plunder • Bed. iii. 21. and revenge ; and however, therefore, such a fero- cious system might have suited the Saxons when they were wont to rush from the gloom of the forest into the storms of the ocean, it lost much of its influence when they sat down quietly in a con- quered kingdom, to enjoy their spoils. Nay, the Saxons, thus situated, may have begun to regard even with a jealous eye a religion that might ani- mate, in turn, a more adventurous people than themselves to land upon their shores, and bereave them of the fruits of their victories. All the local attachments also which endear a national faith to a people were completely broken, when tlie roving Saxons became stationary cultivators of the soil. The sanguinary sacrifices, the wild rites, and turbu- lent festivals of the system of Odin, could only flourish in their native north, and amidst its hurri- canes and storms, and must have drooped, when transplanted into the " gay greenwood" and tran- quil atmosphere of England. While the con- querors of Britain were thus loosely held by a religion unsuitable to their new condition, and whose chief attractions were left behind, the Chris- tian faith was brought to their shores. Their peculiar wants, and the general circumstances of the time, were equally favourable to its accept- ance. It was fitted for the settled occupants of a land, because it was a religion of love, and peace, and order ; and it was the established faith of that civilized world around them in which it was now A CHaisriAN MtssioK.vav Pheachixo to the BBtrisu I'\o.vxs.— Mortimer. 238 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. necessary for them to become naturalized. Fully admitting, therefore, the piety and sincerity of the first royal converts of the Heptarchy, we may still be inchned to conjecture that they were in some degree also favourably disposed towards the new faith by their conviction of the advantages they would derive from its adoption, in forwarding the civilization of their kingdoms, and their adoption into the family of Europe. Further, the importers of Christianity into Eng- land were not a handful of obscure adventurers. They came from Rome, still a mighty name, and regarded as the metropolis of all that was intellec- tual and venerable ; and they came recommended by kings and prelates. Their arrival was, there- fore, a great national embassy. Thus highly accredited, the Roman ecclesiastics were certain, not only of a safe reception, but also of a patient hearing. Their principal task which remained, therefore, and for which they were well qualified, was to show the superiority of knowledge over ignorance, and of a true religion over one that was false. It was then that their intrepidity, their lofty ambition, and persuasive powers, combined with purity of character and religious zeal, gave them their due superiority, and produced the natural results. The missionaries wisely addressed themselves, in the first instance, to the kings of the Heptarchy ; and these having readily embraced a religion so at- tractive as Christianity, and so advantageous for their political circumstances, their subjects were naturally eager to follow the example. Each royal convert was earnest to secure the conversion of his allies, and frequently accomplished, by a friendly visit, or a political convention, the religious change of a whole kingdom. It has often been observed, that wherever the Christian faith has entered, it has found its most zealous advocates among the female sex, to whom in particular it recommends itself, not only by its intrinsic excellence, but by the equality to which it raises them with the other sex. This was remarkably exemplified among the Anglo- Saxons. The women here, possessing an influence in society unknown to the most refined nations of antiquity, were enabled powerfully to promote the extension of the faith ; and while the princesses refused to espouse idolatrous kings, unless they consented to be baptized, we can well imagine that, in numberless instances, among persons of inferior rank, the " unbelieving husband was converted by the Ijelieving wife." Nor was the influence of the Saxon females impaired by the adoption of Christianity. A prioress might preside over a meeting of ecclesiastics, and legislate for the go- vernment of the church ; and might take prece- dence in rank of all tlie assembled presbyters, as was the case in the council of Becanceld, convoked in the year 694. A variety of powerful causes were thus com- bined inbehalf of Christianity, and their effect was exhibited in its rapid and cordial adoption. It is also worthy of remark, that all was accomplished without violence on either side. No convert seems to Ijave been compelled ; no preacher was required to seal his testimony by martyrdom. The fervent proselytising zeal of missionaries and kings was met by the spontaneous assent of the people, and the conversion of the land was accomplished with a peacefulness to which it would be difficult to find a parallel. When Christianity thus became the religion of Saxon Britain, its rude inhabitants were prepared for the further blessings of learning and civiliza- tion, and these were now introduced in the train of Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was con- secrated to the primacy by Pope Vitalian in 668, Like St. Paul, he was a native of Tarsus in Cilicia, and eminent for his extensive learning. Though already sixty-six years old, yet such was the energy of his character, that a life of usefulness Avas still expected from him ; and these hopes were not dis- appointed, for he governed the English church for twenty-two years. He brought with him a valuable library of Latin and Greek authors, among which were the works of Homer, and established schools of learning to which the clergy and laity repaired. The consequence was, according to Bede, that soon after this many English priests were as conversant with the Latin and Greek languages as with their native tongue.* Scarcely, however, was the national faith thus settled, when controversies arose in the bosom of the infant church on certain points of ceremonial practice, the triviality of which, of course, did not prevent them from being agitated with as much heat and obstinacy as if they had involved the most essential principles of morality or reli- gion. One of the subjects of dispute was the same difference as to the mode of computing Easter that had already prevented the union of the English and Welsh churches; it now in like manner threatened to divide the two kingdoms of Mercia and Northumberland, which, as already related, had been converted by Scottish missionaries, from the other states of the Heptarchy, which had re- ceived their instructors from Rome and France. To this was added the difference between the Romish and Scottish churches, upon the form of the ecclesiastical tonsure. While the priests of the former wore the hair round the temples in imitation of a crown of thorns, they were horror-struck at the latter, who, according to the custom of the Eastern church, shaved it from their foreheads into the form of a crescent, for which they were reproached with bearing the emblem of Simon Magus.f A council had been summoned with the view of ac- commodating these dissensions by Oswy, king of Northumberland, in the year 664 j but the only result of this attempt was to increase the animosity of the two factions, the clergy of the Scottish per- suasion, in fact, retiring from the assembly in dis- * Bed.iv.S. + Theodore wlio, when he was called to the primacy, wore the eastern tonsure, was obliged to wait lour months, that his hair might grow bo as to be shaven according to the orthodox fashion. Bed. iv. I. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 239 gust.* The zeal aud prudence of Theodore, how- ever, triumphed over these difficulties. He visited the several churches throughout England, and so effectually employed authority and concilia- tion, that at a council called at Hertford, in the year 673, the bishops generally consented to the canons which he had brought with him from Rome, by which a complete agreement in faith and wor- ship was established.f Theodore now addressed himself with vigour to the vindication of his authority as primate of all England, a pre-eminence with which he contended the Archbishop of Canterbury had been invested by Pope Gregory, and in right of which he claimed for himself scarcely less than a papal supremacy over the British church. In the prosecution of this object he was involved in a long contest with Wil- frid, the Bishop of York, whose extensive diocese he wished to divide, on the pretext that it was too large for the superintendence of one man. But Wilfrid was not a character to submit tamely to such a stretch of power. Appealing from the Arch- bishop to the Pope, he set off for Rome, where he was graciously received ; and he soon obtained a decree rescinding the partition of his bishopric. Though the papal mandate was so little regarded that King Egfrid, on Wilfrid's return, committed him to prison, yet this precedent was afterwards followed by ecclesiastical appeals to Rome, which terminated, as in other countries, in the universal supremacy of the Pope. Our limits do not permit us to trace the singular career of Wilfrid, so full of vicissitudes, or to delineate his character that apparently combined so many inconsistencies. With his haughtiness in power, and his restless ambition, he united, in the hour of adversity, the meekness and self-denial of an apostle. Being shipwrecked on his voyage to Rome upon the shores of Fries- land, he embraced the opportunity of preaching the faith to the barbarous natives ; and when driven into Sussex by the resentment of Egfrid, he there also, as already noticed, turned his ill-fortune to an occasion of usefulness, and, engaging with ready zeal in a new work of conversion, succeeded in gaining over to Christianity the last district in England in which the ancient superstition survived. In the mean time, Theodore being delivered from the presence of so formidable an adversary, was enabled to proceed with his division of the larger dioceses. That of Mercia, in particular, which had till now embraced the whole of the state so called, was divided by King Ethelred, at his instigation, into the four dioceses of Lichfield, Worcester, Hereford, and Chester. Many other reforms were also prosecuted by the energetic Pri- mate. He encouraged the wealthy to build parish churches, by conferring upon them and their heirs the right of patronage. The sacrecl edifices, till now for the most part of timber, began to give place to larger and more durable structvires of Btone i the beautiful chanting, hitherto confined to * For the leogthened discussion at this couucil, see Dcde iii. 25. t Bed. iv. 5. the cathedrals, was introduced into the churches generally ; and the priests who had been accus- tomed, in the discharge of their office, to wander from place to place, had fixed stations assigned to them. They and the churches had as yet been maintained solely by the voluntary contributions of the people; but, because this was a precarious resource M'hen the excitement of novelty had ceased, Theodore provided for the regular support of reli- gion, by prevailing upon the kings of the different states to impose a special tax upon their subjects for that purpose, under the name of kirk-scot.* By these and similar measures, all England, long before the several kingdoms were united under one sovereign, was reduced to a state of religious vmiformity, and composed a single spiritual empire. After living to witness many of the benefits of his important labours, this illustrious Primate died in 690, after a well-spent and active life of nearly ninety years. The age of the Christian church in England that immediately succeeded its establishment was dis- tinguished by the decline of true religion, and the rapid increase both of worldly-mindedness among the clergy, and of fanaticism and superstition among the people. From the humble condition of a dependence upon the alms of the faithful, the church now found itself in the possession of revenues which enabled its bishops to vie in pomp and luxury with the chief nobility, and even conferred no small con- sideration upon many of its inferior ministers. It is generally held that tithes were first imposed upon the Mercians in the latter part of the eighth century by their king Offa, and that the tax was extended over all England by King Ethelwulf, in 855. But the subject of this assumed donation of Ethelwulf to the church is involved in great obscurity. t All that is certain is, that in after ages the clergy were uniformly wont to refer to his charter as the foundation of their claim. The tithes of all England, however, at this early period, if such a general tax then existed, would not have been sufficient of themselves to weigh down the church by too great a burden of wealth. A great portion of the soil was still composed of waste or forest land; and the tithes appear to have been charged with the repair of churches, the expenses of worship, and the relief of the poor, as well as with the maintenance of the clergy. It was from the lavish benevolence of individuals that the church principally derived its large revenues. Kings, under the influence of piety or remorse, were eager to pour their wealth into the eccle- siastical treasury, to bribe the favour of Heaven, or avert its indignation; and wealthy thanes were in like manner wont to expiate their sins, as they were taught they might do, by founding a church or endowing a monastery. Among other conse- quences of these more ample resources, we find that the walls of the churches became covered with foreign paintings and tapestry ; that the altars and sacred vessels were formed of the precious metals, • Bedas Epistol. ad Egbert. •f- See Turner's Anglo-Saxons, I 479—481. 240 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book 1 1. and sparkled with gems j while the vestments of the priests were of the most splendid description. Other much more lamentable effects followed. Indolence and sensuality took the place of religion and learning among all orders of the clergy. The monasteries in particular, founded at first as abodes of piety and letters, and refuges for the desolate and the penitent, soon became the haunts of idle- ness and superstition. Many of the nunneries were mere receptacles of profligacy, in which the roving debauchee was sure of a welcome.* In the year 747 the Council of Cloveshoe found it neces- sary to order that the monasteries should not be turned into places of amusement for harpers and Ijuftbons ; and that laymen should not be admitted within their walls too freely, lest they might be scandalised at the offences they should discover there. t Most of the monasteries in England, too, were double houses,]: in Avhich resided commu- nities of men and women ; and the natural conse- quences often followed this perilous juxtaposition of the sexes, living in the midst of plenty and idleness. These establishments also continued to multiply with a rapidity that was portentous, not only from the tendency of the idle and depraved to embrace svich a life of indulgence, but from the doctrine current at the end of the seventh century, that the assumption of the monastic habit absolved from all previous sin. Bede, who saw and la- mented this growing evil, raised a warning voice, but in vain, against it ; and expressed his fears til at, from the increase of the monks, soldiers would at last be Avanting to repel the invasion of an enemy. § Many nobles, desirous of an uninterrupted life of sensuality, pretended to devote their wealth to the service of Heaven, and obtained the royal sanction for founding a religious house ; but in their new character of abbots, they gathered round them a brotherhood of dissolute monks, with whom they lived in the commission of every vice ; while their wives, following the example, established nunne- ries upon a similar principle, and filled them with the most depraved of their sex.]] To these evils was added the bitterness of religious contention. Men, thus pampered, could scarcely be expected to live in a state of mutual harmony ; and fierce dissensions were constantly raging between the monks, or regulars, as they called themselves, and the seculars, or unmonastic clergy, about their re- spective duties, privileges, and honours. It was natural enough that the grossest superstition should accompany and intermingle with all this gross profligacy. So many Saxon kings accordingly aban- doned their crowns, and retired into monasteries, that the practice became a proverbial distinction of their race ;•[[ while other persons of rank, nau- seated with indulgence, or horror-struck with re- ligious dread, often also forsook the world of which • Red. (In vemedio peccatorum. Wilkins's Ccncilia, i. 88, 83. + Wilkins's Concilia, i. 97. t r.inganVs Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, p. 120. § Hi'fl. Epist. at! Kgbert. 1 Aleiiin, Kpistol.T-. Lingird's Saxon Antinui'ies, .p. 133. 1 Huntingd. p. 337. they were weary, and took refuge in cells or her- mitages. The penances by which they endea- voured either to expiate their crimes or attain to the honours of saintship, emblazoned though they are in chronicles, and canonised in calendars, can only excite contempt or disgust, whether they ascend to the extravagance of St. Gmthlake, who endeavovired to fast forty days after the fashion of Elias,* or sink to the low standard of those noble ladies who thought that heaven was to be won by the spiritual purity of unwashed linen. In addi- tion to the feeling of remorse by which such expi- ations were inspired, a profligate state of society will multiply religious observances as a cheap sub- stitute for the practice of holiness and virtue ; and men will readily fast, and make journeys, and give alms, in preference to the greater sacrifice of amendment of life. We need not, therefore, won- der to find Saxon pilgrims thronging to the conti- nent and to Rome, who do not seem to have consi- dered a little contraband traffic, when opportunity offered, as detracting from the merits of their religious tour ; while ladies of rank, who under- took the same journey, frequently parted with whatever virtue they possessed by the way.f While such was the state of the English church, the invasions of the Danes commenced at the end of the eighth century, and were continued in a suc- cession of inundations, each more terrible than the preceding. These spoilers of the north, devoted to their ancient idolatry, naturally abhorred the Christianity of the Saxons, corrupted though it was, as a religion of humanity and order ; and as the treasures of the land, at the first alarm, were deposited in the sacred edifices, which were fondly believed to be safe from the intrusion even of the most daring, the tempest of the Danish warfare was chiefly directed against the churches and mo- nasteries. Those miracles lately so plentiful, and so powerful to deceive, were impotent now to break or turn back the sword of the invader. '^Ilie priest was massacred at the altar ; the monk perished in his cell ; the nuns were violated ; and the course of the Northmen might be traced by the ashes of sacred edifices, that had been pillaged and con- sumed. The effects of these devastations upon both religion and learning may be read in the mournful complaint of Alfred. At his accession, he tells us, in the interesting preface to his trans- lation of Pope Gregory's tract on the Duties of Pastors he could find very few priests north of the Humber, who were able to translate the latin service into the vulgar tongue ; and south of the Thames, not one. After the land had begun to recover from the immediate eft'ects of this visitation, and the church had resumed. its wonted position, the celebrated Dunstan appeared. He Avas born in Wessex, about the year 925. Although he was of noble birth, and remotely related to the royal family, as Avell as connected with the church through two uncles, cnc • Flop-s Sanctorum in Vit Gurtli. p. 317. t Spelman's Concilia, i. p. 237. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 241 of whom was primate, and the other bishop of Winchester, these signal advantages were not deemed enough for the future aspirant to clerical supremacy, without the corroboration of a miracle. His career was, therefore, indicated before he was born. While his mother Cynedrith attended divine service, in the church, at the festival of Candlemass, the lights which the worshippers car- ried were suddenly extinguished, and a supernatural darkness involved the whole building. But in the midst of the consternation which such a portent ex- cited, her candle was rekindled by fire which seemed to descend from heaven. Of course, the interpretation was easy, and all were thus taught what a light would proceed from her, to illuminate the church and kingdom.* While a boy, he was also honoured by divine manifestations. The church of Glastonbury, still humble in its dimen- sions, needed enlargement, and sought it at the hands of the embryo saint; for this purpose, a venerable man appeared to him in a vision, led him over the building, explained the scale on which it was to be enlarged, and stamped the whole plan so indelibly upon his mind, that he could not for- get it. His early studies having been pursued with an intensity that soon exhausted his feeble constitution, a fever ensued, and, under the deli- rium it produced, he escaped frcm his bed during the night, and hurried to the church. Having found the doors locked, he scaled the walls by the help of a ladder, reached a scaffolding — the build- ing being under repair — and safely descended into the body of the church, where he was found asleep next morning. His fortunate escape from the danger of an attempt upon which no sane person would have ventured, appeared toothers, and perhaps to himself, as nothing less than miraculous ; and his restored health, which the excitement might have produced, gave countenance to the supposi- tion. The story was, therefore, amplified and em- bellished in the spirit of the age. It was an angel that had visited his couch by night, and suddenly restored him to health. An impulse of holy grati- tude had hurried him to church, that he might re- turn thanks to heaven for the miracle ; but here, it was added, his adversary, the devil, accompanied by his dogs, had opposed his path, and endea- voured to drive him back ; however, the intrepid youth, with pious ejaculations and a staff, routed the fiend and his formidable hell-hounds, when angels came to his aid, and wafted him into the church in safety. Thus heralded in his career, Dunstan was care- ful to onait no efforts on his own part that might aid his claims to the character he proposed to assume; and therefore he accomplished himself in all the learning that might give him an in- fluence in society. He was an excellent composer in music ; he played skdfully upon various instru- ments ; was a painter, a worker in design, and a calligrapher ; a jeweller and a blacksmith. After • Osbcrniis de Vit. S. Dnnst. in .\ngUa Sacra, ii. p. 90; et Ead- niLT i.iVit. Dunst.! ibid., ii. 2i3. he had taken the clerical habit, he was introduced by his uncle Adelm, the primate, to king Athel- stane, who seems to have been delighted with his music* But Dunstan's character for saintship, attested though it had been, was still imperfect. To his other endowments, he had added a famili- arity with the heathen songs of the ancient Saxons; and this acquisition was considered by many as not a little unprofessional and profane. A miracle that would have canonized him in the cloister, almost brought about his ruin in the court. Upon one occasion, when he had hung his hai-p upon the wall, it was heard to utter, of itself, the words and tune of an anthem. Whether this effect was pro- duced by ventriloquism on the part of Dunstan, or an excited imagination in the hearer, or whether the harp was one of those called ^Eolian, of which the circumstance has obtained for him, with some, the credit of being the inventor, it is impossible to conjecture; but if he here actually attempted a miracle, the occasion was ill chosen, and the effect unfortunate. The courtiers, who envied him the flivour of the king, loudly denounced him as a dealer in sorcery, and procured his expulsion from the court ; and, not contented with this victory, they pursued him, bound him hand and foot, trampled upon him, and threw him into a marsh, where they left him to perish. He escaped, how- ever, from this imminent peril, and sought refuge with his uncle, the bishop of Winchester. A new scene noAV opens in the life of this extra- ordinary person. Contiguous to the church of Glastonbury he erected a cell, five feet in length by two in breadth, the floor of which was sunk beneath the surface, while the roof, on the outside, was only breast high, so that he could stand upriglit in it, though unable to lie at full length. This strange sepulchre ■[ was at once his bed-chamber, his oratory, and his workshop ; and it was here that one of his most celebrated combats with the prince of darkness took place. One evening, while the saint was employed at his forge, the devil thrust his head in at the window, and began to tempt him with some immoral propositions. Dunstan patiently endured the annoyance until his tongs were red-hot in the fire, when, snatching them suddenly up, he seized with them the nose of the foul fiend, who bellowed in agony till the neighbourhood resounded with his clamour. Such were the gross ideas at this time entertained of the nature and agency of spirits. In this and many similar legends Satan appears merely as the clown in the pantomime, and generally to be outwitted and baffled. J By all this mortification Dunstan gra- dually repaired the error or misfortune into which he had fallen. His character for sanctity became • " Iterum cum (Dunstanus) videret dominum regem ssccularibus curis fatigatura psallebat in tympano sive in cytliara," &c. Osbenie. I So Osberne, who had seen the cell, is pleased to term it, after describing its dimensions. J In the narrative of Dunstan's feat, the cry of . "Satan, at his de- parture, was, •' O quid fecit calvus iste ! O quid fecit calvus iste ! " Ani;Ua Sacra, ii. 97. In anotlier conflict the kaint struck llie deril so fiercely witli his pastoral staiT tliat it broke in tliree pieces Ibid. p. 105. 242 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL more illustrious than ever ; and Ethelfleda, a noble lady who occupied a cell near his own, made him, at "her death, her sole executor. He distributed the personal property among the poor, and bestowed the lands upon the church of Glastonbury, endow- ing that establishment at the same time with the whole of his own patrimony, which had lately fallen to him. His ambition, indeed, however in- ordinate and reckless, was certainly of too lofty a character to stoop to lucrative considerations. lluxNs OF Glastonbury Abbey, as they appeared in 1783;— St. John's Church, and St. Michael's Tower, on the Torr Hill, in the Dist;inoc Edmund having now succeeded to the throne, Dunstan was recalled to court ; but, in spite of his recent exploits and penances, he was still opposed by the courtiers, who probably saw his ambition, and dreaded his talents. Their intrigues again procured his dismission, but once more he was recalled through the opportune interference of a miracle ; and the king not only made him Abbot of Glastonbury, but greatly increased the privileges of that monastery. Edred, the successor of Edmund, showed him equal favour, and would have made him bishop of Crediton ; but Dunstan, who seems to have contemplated a still higher ele- vation, refused the offer. The following day he declared that St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Andrew had visited him in the night in a vision ; and that the last, having severely chastised him with a rod for rejecting their apostolic society, commanded him never to refuse such an offer again, or even the primacy, should it be offered him; assuring him, withal, that he should one day travel to Rome. It is probable that Dunstan's ultimate aim all this while was to effect what he deemed a reforma- tion of the church, and that, according to the morality of the times, he justified to himself the means to which he resorted by the importance of the object he had in view. The ecclesiastical re- formation to which his efforts were directed was such as might have been expected from his cha- racter. A fierce champion for the fancied holiness of celibacy, he determined to reduce the clergy under the monastic yoke ; and, as during the late political troubles many both of the secular and the regular' priests had married when they were driven from their homes, he insisted that those who liad so acted should put away both their wives and families. Those clergy also who dwelt with their respective bishops Avere required to become the inmates of a monastery. In these views he was happy in having for his coadjutor Archbishop Odo. This personage, born of Danish parents, and dis- tinguished in the early part of his life as a soldier, retained ever after the firmness and ferocity of his Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449^1066. 243 roEXEAiT ofDunstan IN FULL Ahchiepiscopal C08TUM8. From an Illumination in the Cuttonian MS. Claud. A ili. first calling. We have already related the part he acted along with Dunstan in the tragedy of the un- happy Elgiva. When Dunstan, soon after this, was obliged to fly from England on being accused of embezzlement in the administration of the royal revenues, it is related that while the officers were employed at the Abbey of Glastonbury, in taking an inventory of his effects, his old adversary, the devil, made the sacred building resound with ob- streperous mirth at the discomfiture of its abbot. But Dunstan checked his triumph by the prophetic intimation of a speedy return.* He then hastened to leave the kingdom, and was so fortunate as to escape the pursuit of the queen's messengers, who, it is said, were commissioned to put out his eyes. The death of Edwy immediately brought about the recal of Dunstan, and the restoration of his influence, and he was appointed by Edgar Bishop of Worcester, in 957. Three years afterwards, on the death of Odo, he was promoted to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, Avhen, according to custom, he re- paired to Rome to receive the pall at the hands of the Pope, thus fulfilling the prediction of his vision. He was now possessed of unlimited ecclesiastical authority ; and though he no longer enjoyed the powerful co-operation of Odo, he was seconded by the no less zealous efforts of Oswald and Ethel- wald, the former of whom he had promoted to the • AngUa Sac. ii. p. 105. see of Worcester, and the latter to that of Winches- ter, and both of whom were afterwards canonized with their principal. He had also the superstitious Edgar under his control, and afterwards the youth- ful Edward. Being thus surrounded with political and spiritual coadjutors, he proceeded with mer- ciless zeal in his projects of reformation, and alternately adopted force and stratagem for the ac- complishment of his purposes. The clergy were now imperiously required to dismiss their wives and conform to the law of celibacy, or resign their charges ; and when they adopted the latter alter- native, they were represented as monsters of wicked- ness by whose presence the church was polluted. The secular canons were driven out of the cathe- drals and monasteries, and their places were filled with monks. On one occasion Ethelwald entered his cathedral during the celebration of mass, and causing his servants to throw a heap of cowls which they had brought with them upon the floor, he commanded the astonished canons to assume these habits or resign. In vain they pleaded for time to deliberate ; the command was imperative, and must be instantly obeyed. Eventually a few only complied with the haughty mandate.* Mi- racles were necessary for such obstinate recusants, and therefore, besides the wonderful legends that were devised and propagated in praise of St. Bene- • Eadmet in Anglia Sac. ii. p. 219, 244 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. diet and his 'institution, the Archbishop vouchsafed to them a sign for their conviction. A s}-nod having been held at Winchester in 977, at which the canons hoped that the sentence against them would be reversed, all at once a voice issued from a cruci- fix in the wall, exclaiming, " Do it not! do it not ! you have judged well, and you would do ill to change it."* This miracle, however, so far from convincing the canons, only produced confusion, and broke up the meeting. A second meeting was held, but with no better result. A third was appointed at Calne, and there a prodigy was to be exhibited of a more tremendous and decisive cha- racter. The opponents of Dunstan had chosen for their advocate Beornelm, a Scotch bishop, who is described as a person of subtle understanding and infinite loquacity. Dunstan, perplexed by the arguments of such an antagonist, produced his final demonstration! " I am now growing old," he ex- claimed, " and you endeavour to overcome me. I am more disposed to silence than contention. I confess I am unwilling that you should vanquish me; and to Christ himself, as judge, I commit the cause of his church." At these words, the floor suddenly gave way, and fell to the ground with his adversaries, of whom some were crushed to death, and many grievously injured, while the part which Dunstan occupied, with his adherents, remained unmoved. It is no violation of charity to suspect, from this incident, that the archbishop was skilled in the profession of the carpenter as well as in that of the blacksmith. Dunstan lived for ten years after this sanguinary decei)tion, and spent them in still prosecuting his favourite schemes of ecclesiastical reform. His last moments are irradiated in the legend of his life by a whole galaxy of miracles ; but enough of this sort of matter has been already quoted. He died in the reign of Ethelred in a.d. 988. The history of the Anglo-Saxon church, from the death of Dunstan to the Norman conquest, presents little to interest the general reader. The cause for which Dunstan and his coadjtitors had labovired re- mained completely in the ascendant ; monasteries continued to be founded or endowed in every part of the kingdom ; and such were the multitudes who devoted themselves to the cloister, that the foreboding of Bede was at length accomplished — above a third of the property of the land was in possession of the church, and exempted from taxes and military service. It is probable that an in- crease of superstition of a certain kind was one of the consequences of the invasions of the Danes. In a canon of the reign of King Edgar we find the clergy enjoined to be diligent in withdrawing the people from the worship of trees, stones, and foun- tains, and other heathen practices which are therein specified ; and the laws of Canute prohibited the worship of heathen gods, the sun, moon, fire, rivers, fountains, rocks, or trees ; the practice of witchcraft, or the commission of murder by magic, • Anslia Sac. ii, pp. 112 and 219. firebrands, or any infernal devices. The peniten- tial by some ascribed to Dunstan requires that penitents shall confess whatever sins have been committed by their bodies, their skin, their flesh, their bones, their sinews, their veins, their gristles, their tongues, their lips, their palates, their hair, their maiTow — by everything soft or hard, jnoist or dry. The penances imposed upon the laity for their sins had a reference to the spirit of the age and people. They chiefly consisted in a prohibi- tion from carrying arms ; in abstinence from flesh, strong liquors, soft beds, and warm baths ; in not polling the head and beard, or paring the nails ; and if they were rich, they were required to build and endow monasteries. Some of the prescribed fastings would appear intolerable, but for the methods which they had discovered of vicarious penance in this particular. The abstinence of another, which might be obtained by purchase, was carried to the account of the offender ; so that he upon whom was imposed a cessation from food for seven years, might finish the whole in three days, if he could procure eight hundred and fifty men to fast along with him on bread, water, and vegetables. Exemption, too, was to be directly bought at a stipulated price ; so that a year's fasting would be remitted on payment of a fine of thirty shillings to the church. In the canons of Elfric, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1005, we learn that there were seven orders of clergy in the church, whose names and offices were the following: — 1st. The Ostiary, who took charge of the church doors and rang the bell. 2nd. The Lector, or reader of Scripture to the congregation. 3rd. The Exorcist, who drove out devils by sacred adju- rations or invocations. 4th, The Acolyth, who held the tapers at the reading of the gospels and the celebration of mass. 5th. The Sub-deacon, who produced the holy vessels, and attended the deacon at the altar. 6th. The Deacon, who minis- tered to the mass-priest, laid the oblation on the altar, read the gospel, baptized children, and gave the eucharist to the people. 7th. The Mass-priest, or Presbyter, who preached, baptized, and consecrated the Eucharist. Of the same order with the last of these, but higher in honour, was — the Bishop. During this long period the history of the Church of Scotland is involved in much obscurity. While the remoteness and barbarism of the country, however, protected it Irom the extending influence of Rome, it appears that the Culdees diffused themselves over the territory to the south as well as over that to the north of the Grampians, and in course of time came to form exclusively, or almost exclusively, the national clergy. Of either tlie doctrines or ecclesiastical government of the Culdees we know little positively, altliough the subject has given rise to a great deal of angry dis- putation. But it would appear that whatever may have been the principles of their founder, Columba, they eventually came to be considered as opposed to many of the claims of the Roman see. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 449—1066. 245 On this account, although a great part of the north of England was converted by missionaries sent from lona, it was decreed at the Council of Ceal- hythe, in the year 816, that no Scottish priest should for the future exercise his functions in England. The English writers of that age, never- theless, bear testimony to the purity of their lives and the zeal of their apostolic labours, while they denounce their exclusive devotedness to the autho- rity of Scripture, their rejection of the Romish ceremonies, doctrines, and traditions, the nakedness of their forms of worship, and the republican cha- racter of their ecclesiastical government. It has been maintained also by some Protestant writers that the Culdees rejected the practice of auricular confession, and various other points of ceremony and doctrine peculiar to the Roniish church. It is certain that, as had happened in every part of the Christian world, even those of them who belonged to monasteries came at length to marry, although there is much reason to suspect that this was a corruption of the rule originally established by St. Columba. The office of Culdee in Scotland would even in some cases appear to have become here- ditary. The attitude of opposition into which the Scottish priests were thrown, by circumstances, to the English church founded by Augustine and his companions upon the Roman model, naturally fixed them to the maintenance of their own creed, worship, and discipline, and consolidated their church into an establishment nearly if not alto- gether independent of that of Rome. Their sepa- ration from the Roman church, and opposition to its doctrines, was so strong, that Margaret, the Anglo-Saxon queen of Malcolm Canmore, was shocked, on her arrival in Scotland, to find the faith and worship of the people so different from the rules of that church in wliich she had been educated. She therefore endeavoured to rouse, against what she considered a profane schism, the influence of her husband, and for a time succeeded; but the Scottish church appears to have reverted, after her death, to its former condition. It is from the debates which she held with the king upon the subject that we learn a considerable portion of the little we know respecting the religious opinions of the Culdees.* • Tuvgot, in vita Sanctte Margarita?. 246 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. QBooK II. Portrait op Kino Alfred. From a Plate in Spelman's Vita Magni JElfredi J drawn from Coins and two ancient Busts. CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS. HE Roman civilization, such as it was, passed away, and a long, dreary tract of disorder and darkness succeeded. Yet that chaotic mass which then constituted society contained the elements of modem European civilization ; and in proportion to that very confusion, to the number and hetero- geneous character of the component elements of that chaos, are the richness and completeness of the civilization which has been the result of them. Our business in the present chapter is with the particular element that belonged to those wild, free, warlike barbarians who, in the fifth and sixth cen- turies, overran and conquered the larger portion of the Roman world. " Tacitus," says M. Guizot, " painted the Ger- mans, as Montaigne and Rousseau did the savages, in a fit of spleen against his country ; his book is a satire upon Roman manners ; the eloquent outbreak of a patriot philosopher who desires to see virtue there where he does not find the disgraceful effe- minacy and elaborate depravity of an old society." * Not that M. Guizot infers that Tacitus stated facts that were inaccurate. On the contrary, he admits that all subsequent inquiries have gone to prove the general accuracy of his statements. But from • Guizot, Cours d'Hisloire Moderne, torn. ii. p. 258. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 449-1066. 247 tlie circumstance above alluded to, what Guizot calls the moral colouring of the picture has in it somewhat of a false and misleading tinge. Several German writers in modern times have followed the course of Tacitus, though from a motive different from his, giving a highly-coloured picture of the virtues of their rude ancestors, who differed, how- ever, as is satisfactorily shown by M. Guizot, very little from other communities similarly situated. We perceive among the Saxons, as among other Germanic tribes, the germs of three great systems of institutions which, from the fall of the Roman empire, have divided Europe amongst them. — 1. Assemblies of freemen, in which the common affairs of the nation are debated, 2. Kings ; some hereditary, others elective. 3. The principle of aristocratic patronage; either of a military chief over his companions in arras, or of a landed pro- prietor over his family and his husbandmen.* When the bands of Saxons arrived and took possession of any tract of country, the chiefs appro- priated to themselves extensive domains, while the larger portion of the warriors who accompanied them continued to live around them. Gradually, however, the distance between the chief and his companions — at first not very great — increased, partly from the circumstances natural to their re- spective positions, and partly from a circumstance upon which it will be necessary to bestow a few words of explanation. The only kings of the continental Saxons appear to have been temporary leaders, appointed to hold the general command in time of war. This is the statement made by Caesar respecting all the German nations in his time, and it is repeated nearly eight centuries afterwards by Bede as still applicable to the Saxons who remained in their original seats. The king, according to Bede, when a war broke out, was elected by lot from among the chiefs : as soon as the war was ended, all the chiefs became again of equal power. In like manner, there is every reason to believe, the first kings of the Saxons in England were merely the captains of the several invading bands, or those appointed to succeed them in the conduct of the war with the Britons. The long continuance of that contest first made the office permanent, and converted the military commander into the supreme magistrate of his nation. The Saxon word cyning, of which our modern king is an abbreviation, appears to have meant the off- spring or creature of the community.t That in early times, among the Anglo-Saxons, the person of the king was not sacred, is proved by the fact that the law afforded him the same security (in kind, though different in degree) for his life that it did to the meanest of his subjects. It gave him the protection of his weregild, — that is, a certain pecu- niary value put upon his life, — and nothing more. We have said that the Roman civilization passed • Guizot, Cours d'Histoire, tom.ii.p. 269. + Allen's Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal Pre- rogative in England, 8vo. 1830. away ; but it was not probable that that vast power which had overshadowed the e?lrth for so many centuries with its mighty wings should disappear, like the unreal fabric of a dream, without leaving a wreck behind. On the contrary, the Roman em- pire left marks that are indelible, not merely such as, like the vast material relics of its greatness, only affect the senses, but such as sink deep into the mind and influence the actions. Those things boiTowed by the nortliern nations from the Roman civilization, which are most important to be here noted for their effect on modem European civiliza- tion were, 1st. the idea of imperial power ; and, 2nd. the municipal institutions. This idea of imperial power found much favour in the sight of our Anglo-Saxon kings, as it did in that of their Teutonic brethren in whatever part of the earth they had succeeded the Roman' occupants of the soil. But though the Anglo-Saxon princes might assume some of the external insignia, they had but little of the substance of the imperial sovereignty. The Anglo-Saxon government would seem to have been an aristocracy in a somewhat wide meaning of the term. Thus, instead of the purely mo- narchical form of the Roman imperial legislation, their style runs thus : " Ego Dei gratia, &c. cum consilio et cum doctrina — Episcopi mei, et — Epis- copi mei, et cum omnibus meis Senatoribus, et Senioribus sapientibus populi mei, et multa cum societate ministrorunv Dei," &c. &c. — that is, " I, by the grace of God, &c., with the advice and con- sent of certain of my bishops (naming them), and along with all my senators and the wise elders of my people, and a large associated number of the ministers of God," &c. Whence it appears that the laws were made by the king and a national assembly or parliament, composed of the nobility and others. This was called the Witenagemot, — - literally, the meeting of the wise men ; but before proceeding to examine its constitution, it will be necessary to say a few words respecting the several classes of the Saxon population. As the Saxons conquered Britain, every warrior obtained a number of captives, and a portion of land, proportioned to the services which he had performed. It is at least probable, however, that something similar took place in Britain to what is known to have happened in other parts of the Roman empire, where, on the settlement of the northern conquerors, though of the former inhabit- ants many were reduced to slavery, many retained their liberty ; and though the estates of some were totally confiscated, in general the vanquished were left in possession of part of their land. This was the mode adopted by the Burgundians in Gaul, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Ostrogoths in Italy.* Owing to the vigorous opposition made by the Britons, which was much beyond what the coix- querors had to encounter in other parts of the Ro- man empire, such as Gaul and Italy, a much larger • Allen's Inquiry, pp. 138—9. 248 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. number of invaders, in proportion to the native inhabitants, was required to effect the conquest than in the case of Gaul. This would be one good reason, even if no other could be found, for the ordinary divisions of land among the Saxon con- querors not being very large ones ; and we find accordingly that the land was divided into " hides," each comprehending as much as could be cultivated by a single plough. It is likely that this cir- cumstance may have something to do with the more popular character of the Anglo-Saxon institu- tions as compared with those of their continental brethren, whether remaining in Germany or trans- planted to France and Italy. When the estate of an Anglo-Saxon was large, one part of it was occupied by the kindred and free retainers of the proprietor, who gave in return military service ; another part was parcelled out into different farms, and committed to the manage- ment of particular bondmen, from whom, at the end of the year, he required an account of the pro- duce. The former came eventually to receive the name of "vassals," the latter of "villains." The distinction between the original proprietor and his vassals gave rise to the division of landed estates into " allodial " and " feudal," the former being those held without, the latter those held with, a lord superior. The feudal estates, benejicia, or fiefs, or feuds, appear to have been held originally during the pleasure of the superior, then for a determinate time, afterwards for life, and at length to have become hereditary. M. Guizot, who has treated this subject with his usual ability and research, has come to the following conclusions : — 1 . Originally the grants were generally made in usufruct and for life, provided that the grantee remained faithful to the grantor. 2. The course of events constantly tended to render them hereditary.* We may here add that the constant tendency also was, during the turbulence of the middle ages, to convert allodial into fevidal property, in consequence of the more effectual protection afforded by that description of tenure, f Connected with this subject is the celebrated Saxon distinction of land into " folcland " and " bocland," upon which Mr. Allen has the merit of having thrown a considerable quantity of new light. When the Saxons had secured a territory, after appropriating certain portions to individuals according to their claims (as stated above), they considered what remained as belonging to the state or community at large, and called it " folcland," which is interpreted bySpelman " terra popularis," that is, the land of the public. + It corresponded to the fisc of the continental nations. When a particular portion of land was severed from the folcland, and appropriated, provided the conveyance was made by a written instrument, it received the name of "bocland." The proprietor of bocland, unless specially fettered, appears to have had an • Guizot, Kss.iis sur I'Histoiie de France, pp. 128 and 143. + Allen's luqiiirv, p. Hi. t Spelni. Gloss. T. Folcland. unlimited power to dispose of it as he chose. Moreover, when once severed from the folcland or property of the community, whatever were the bur- dens and services imposed upon it, provided it was alienated by writing, an estate received the name of bocland.* However, it is, as Mr. Allen remarks, not quite correct to say that all the lands of the Anglo-Saxons were either folcland or bocland, because land was not properly bocland unless con- veyed by a written instrument, and at an early period conveyances were made by the delivery of a staff, a spear, an arrow, &c. That the Anglo-Saxon kings had private property in land, that is, bocland, is decisively proved by the will of King Alfred, still extant. When the kings in process of time began to be considered as the representatives of the state, the term terra regis^ or crown land, took the place of the word folcland. This is the terra regis of Domesday. f In time the bocland, or private estate of the king, came to be mixed up with it. The Anglo-Saxons, like the other Teutonic na- tions, were divided into various castes. The highest of these was that out of which their kings were taken; for though the Anglo-Saxon kings were elective, not hereditary, they were usually chosen out of a certain particular family or race. The Anglo-Saxon chieftains of this family were all de- scended from the deified monarch of the Asi, Odin or Woden. " It may be admitted," observes Sir Francis Palgrave, " that their proud genealogies had no foundation in truth." J Nevertheless these pretensions of theirs may probably have had some share in originating the Divine right doctrine of later times. The second gTcat caste among the Anglo-Saxons were the nobility, who bore the title of eorls, or eorlcundmen, or thane-born. § The pervading principle, as we have already remarked, of the Anglo-Saxon government, was aristocratic. But among the Anglo-Saxons, nobility, to have its full pre-eminence, required the addition of property. Noble birth, though it raised a man above the condition of villainage, did not place him on a level with those who possessed land in absolute dominion, as well as nobility of birth. We have already spokeia of the system of hlafords and men, or, in the feudal phrase, lords and vassals. If a noble did not possess the property sufficient to constitute a lordship, he was then "ranked," says Sir Francis Palgrave, " in the very numerous class, whose members in Wessex and its dependent states were originally known by the name of Sith- cundmen ; an appellation which we may paraphrase by the heraldic expression of ' gentle by birth and blood.' " The Sithcundman appears to have ori- ginally had the privilege of choosing his own lord or superior. After the reign of Alfred, the Sith- cundmen came to be commonly known by the name of Sixhaendinen, — a denomination, as Sir Francis • Allen, p. 153. + Ibid. p. IGO— 1. t Kiso and Progress of tlie English Commocvealth, vol. i. paiti. p. 10. 5 Ibid. p. 11. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION. GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D.' 449-1066. 249 Palgrave remarks, " indicating their position be- tween the highest and lowest law-worthy classes of society;" — the former, the landed nobility, being called Twelfhaendmen ; the latter, forming the third caste, Twihaendnieu. This third caste was composed of the remainder of the people, and consisted of the ceorls, or vil- lains, already mentioned. The distinctions between the enrl and the ceorl were numerous and strongly marked. The declaration of one eorl was equal to that of six ceorls ; the life of one eorl was equal in value to the lives of six ceorls ; and so for other matters in proportion. * The ceorls were known by various other names, of which Sir Francis Palgrave quotes several. " But," he continues, " the ceorl or villain, however named, may be detined as a tenant ascribed to the glebe ; one who, performing prandial or agricultural services, was unable to depart from the land which he held ; and who, either by law or by long established custom equivalent to law, had acquired a definite and recognised estate in the soil. So long as the villain performed his services he was not to be removed from his land, nor was a higher rent or a greater proportion of labour to be exacted from him than what was due and of right accustomed."! And yet the ceorl was in some sense free. Never- theless, '• a ceorl thus circumstanced — a ti"eeman — could, according to the legal language of the Anglo-Saxons, be given and bequeathed, bought and sold. These expressions, which sound so harsh, and seem so inconsistent with any degree of personal liberty, bore, however, a meaning differing essentially from that which we should now assign to them. In no instance can we find the ceorl separated from his land, — he icas always a villain appurtenant ; and, notwithstanding the language which was employed, it must be understood that the gift, the bequest, or the sale, was in effect the disposition of the land and of the ceorl, and of the services which the ceorl performed for the land ; all of which passed by virtue of the will or the charter, — a transaction widely differing from the transfer of a slave, whose person is the subject of the purchase. The assertion, therefore, not unfre- quently made, that a great proportion of the popu- lation of England was in a state of absolute servitude, cannot be warranted ; and the most con- vincing proof that the rights of the lord over the ceorl and his goods and chattels, however burden- some, were limited and certain, is founded in the fact that the ceorl, even when in actual vassalage, could purchase his own freedom and the freedom of his wife and offspring : he, therefore, had the means of acquiring wealth, and the power of retaining it." J This last fact does not prove so much, we think, as Sir Francis supposes. The slaves of the Spaniards in some of their West India settlements had the same privilege ; yet it will scarcely be thence inferred that the rights of p. 13. Rise and Progress of the Englisli Commonwealth, vol. i. part i. t Ibid. p. i-; t Ibid. p. 13. their masters over them, while in actual slavery, were limited. The ceorls were entirely destitute of political power,* and consequently their rights could not, however well ascertained, be very well protected. It has been doubted whether the ceorls were generally of British or Saxon origin. Sir Francis Palgrave, who has examined the subject with care, seems to incline to the supposition " that the ceorls were originally the British cultivators of the soil, but into whose class individuals and families of Anglo-Saxon birth and blood may have been from time to time aggregated and introduced." t The Theowes, the Servi of Domesday, were entirely destitute of political rights, — they did not rank among the people. Their condition was similar to that of the negro or the Roman slave. Some of the theowes may have been the offspring of British serfs, but by far the greatest portion consisted of freemen who had forfeited their liberty by their crimes. " A culprit who could not dis- charge tlie penalty or wite, became a wite theow. He might be redeemed by his kinsmen ; but if he was abandoned by them, — if, in the words of the law, he clasped his hands, and knew not who should make amends for him, then slavery was his doom." % During one year he might be re- deemed, but not afterwards. There is much discrepancy and confusion among writers on the subject of the territorial divisions of the Anglo-Saxons. What is tolerably certain is, that the division of the country into counties, hun- dreds, and tithings, goes back to the first age of the settlement of the Saxons in England. Over each of these territorial divisions there presided a magistrate : over the county a count, earl, or alderman : over the hundred a centenary, or hundreden : over the tithing a decanus, or tithing- man. There prevailed at one time pretty generally an opinion§ that the tithing consisted of ten families, and consequently the hundred of a hundred fami- lies. This opinion Professor Millar has, we think, succeeded in showing to be erroneous. || Each of these officers held a court, in which jus- tice was administered, and all the affairs of the district discussed. In these courts the military assemblies to provide for defence against a foreign enemy were held. There also took place sales and many other transactions in which publicity was of importance. % These courts were subordinate one to another ; so that from the decision of that of the tithing there lay an appeal to that of the hundred, and from that of the hundred to that of the shire. These courts were at first held frequently, and by all the allodial proprietors of each district.** • Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol. i.part i. p. 19. + Palgrave. Hist. p. 29. % Ibid. \ See Blackstone, Henry, &c. II Historical View of thi) English Government, vol. i. p. 180, et seci . 1[ Guizot, Essais sur I'Histoire dc France, p. 258. Lex Rip. tit. lix. cap. i. •• Millar, ib. 250 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book 11. On the continent the vassals of the king or of the count were called upon to be present as well as the allodial proprietors;* and probably this was also the case in England as soon as feuds were intro- duced there. The power of the court belonged to the assembly, not to the magistrate. The function of the magistrate was limited to convoking the assembly and presiding in it. " It is now," ob- serves M. Guizot, " a fact agreed upon among the writers the most versed in the antiquities of the mo- dern nations, that the free men, ahrimanni, rachivi- hurgi, honi homines (Anglice, ' good men and true') present in the assembly of the hundred or the county, alone judged the causes, in point of law as well as in point of fact ; that the count or centenary had no other function but to convoke the meeting, to preside in it, and cause its judgments to be put in execution. "f We see, then, that the institution of tithings, of hundreds, and of counties or shires, was not con- fined to England, but had place in most, if not all of the feudal countries. To this we would add a remark of M. Guizot, — that the graduated organi- zation of the local courts above described is no more tlian the application to their new situation of the old principles, according to which the Ger- mans governed themselves in Germany. We shall see by and by the great importance of the know- ledge of the above fact towards the solution of the question, how it hamjened that principles of liberty and popular instiJiaons were found in England at a time wheiith^were utterly unknown in almost eveiy other jHiropean country. There is one regulation connected with the ad- ministration of justice among the Anglo-Saxons that has excited a good deal of attention. " The members of every tithing," says Professor Millar, " are said to have been responsible for the conduct of one another ; and the society, or its leader, might be compelled to make reparation for an injury committed by any individual. If we look upon a tithing as regularly composed of ten families, this branch of its police will appear in the highest de- gree artificial and singular; but if we consider that society as of the same extent with a town or village, we shall find that such a regulation is conformable to the general usage of barbarous na- tions, and is founded upon their common notions of justice." J Professor Millar then shows that a similar custom prevailed among the Jews, among the Scottish Highlanders, among the ancient Irish, among the ancient inhabitants of Hindostan, and among various other tribes of human beings in a similar stage of civilization ; and he arrives at the conclusion that this noted regulation con- cerning the Saxon tithings is to be regarded as the remains of extreme simplicity and barbarism, rather than the effect of uncommon refinement or policy. The Professor supports this view by observing, that as civilization advanced somewhat, • Guizot, ib. Lex Alam. tit. xxxvi. cap. 4, 5. ^ Guizot, ib. p. 259, note. 1 Historical View, vol. i. p. 189. the original obligation imposed upon every tithinp; to repair the injuries committed by any one of its members, was subsequently subjected to certain limitations, and this among the Anglo-Saxons themselves ; for, by a law ascribed to William the Conqueror, but which is probably of an earlier date, it is enacted, that if a crime is committed by any member of a decennary, who escapes from jus- tice, his tithingman, with two others of the same tithing, together with the respective tithingmen, and two others, out of the three neighbouring tithings, shall assemble to examine the state of the fact ; and if the tithing to which the criminal belongs is cleared by the oath of these twelve per- sons, it shall be freed from the obligation to pay the damage.* Mr. Hallam, however, does not agree with the view taken of this subject by Professor Millar. He thinks there is not a complete analogy between any of the cases cited by the Professor and that of the Anglo-Saxons. He enumerates, by reference to tlie Anglo-Saxon laws, the gradual stages through which the system of frank-pledges seems to have passed ; and he comes to the conclusion that " the obligation of the tithing was merely that of perma- nent bail, responsible only indirectly for the good behaviour of their members." f There is no very great difference between this conclusion and the view of Mr. Millar, as stated above, made apparent to our perception. Professor Millar, however, it must be admitted, in the portion of his work devoted to the Anglo-Saxons, deals far too much in conjecture; not above one-fourth of his volume devoted to that subject rests upon unexceptionable evidence. The system of "frank-pledge" is considered by Sir Francis Palgrave as divided into two bl-anches : the first being the seignorial or personal liability of the superior, which rendered him the permanent surety for the appearance of his vassal, retainer, or inmate ; and the second the collective or mutual responsibility of the villainage, as included in their tithings; — " associations," adds Sir Francis, '* which, in the Saxon era, were of unequal extent, according to the custom of the country, ten being the smallest number of which a tithing could be composed, and from whence it derived its name." J The earl or alderman of the shire had a deputy, called in Ijatin vice comes, and in English the sheriff, shrieve, or shire- reeve. In some counties there was an intermediate division between the shire and the hundred, — as lathes in Kent, and rapes in Sussex. These had their lathe-reeves and rape-reeves. When a county was divided into three of these intermediate jurisdictions they were called trithings. These still subsist in the county of York, corrupted into ridings ; the north, the east, and the west riding. The subject of the constitution of the Anglo- Saxon legislature is involved in great obscurity. • Historical View, vol. i. p. 193. t Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 407. I English ComnioDwealth, vol. i. part i. page 199, Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 449-1066. 251 It is probable that whatever assemblies exercising the function of legislation existed among the Saxons and the other northern nations,they were, in their first conception, merely courts of justice, or at least had been established and had originally met chiefly for the administration of the laws. The institution of a legislative or law-making body is an idea so far from being obvious or natural to an early state of society, that it is opposed to the whole political system and notions of national government which then prevail. Every people has received its first laws either from what it has believed to be the authority of heaven itself, or from some other authority which it has felt nearly as little dispo- sition to disobey or question. For a long period the laws thus received are held to be something sacred, and nobody thinks of abolishing or altering them, any more than he would think of attempting the amendment of the laws of nature. Even when circumstances at length force on innovations, the change of the law is the last change that takes place. It does not precede and prescribe the new practice, but only, reluctantly as it were, follows and sanctions it. In this way is slowly produced in the general mind the first notion of the possi- bility of mending the old laws or making new ones ' — the first conception of legislation. And even after the first exercise of the power has been thus brought about, the act of legislation is for a long time only timidly and sparingly indulged in ; there is still something of a superstitious aversion to it, as if it were a proceeding interdicted by religion or by nature ; only the most pressing necessity is held, and scarcely held, to justify it ; the form of the old law is often retained after its spirit has been departed from ; even a new law is made to wear as much as possible the appearance of an old law revived. In short, in every way the bearing of the legislation is towards the conservation rather than the improvement of the law ; it affects to be not law-making but only law-declaring. This character is traceable nearly throughout the whole course of English legislation, and in the earlier periods especially is very strongly marked. " The legislative power of the Court of Parliament," says a writer who has investigated this subject with great learning and ability, " was exercised uncon- sciously, because it resulted from the remedial power. Complaints arose of violations of the law, of neglect of the law. The monarch promised to forbid the abuse ; and further remedies were provided in defence of the existing law. It was strengthened and declared. Its principles of justice and equity received a new and more solemn sanction. Reme- dial and declaratory statutes thus succeeded to older remedial and declaratory statutes. Yet Parliament, echoing the sentiments, if not the words, of the Barons of Merton, scarcely ever intended to intro- duce a new law, to enact a new statute." * There can be little doubt that the Saxon Witen- agemot was the root from which has sprung our * Article on Courts of the Ancient English Common Law, in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 335. modern English Parliament, and nearly as little that the Witenagemot was in its original conception and institution rather a court of law than a legis- lative body. The Parliament indeed still retains this its original character in part, and is accord- ingly styled the High Court of Parliament, although it is no longer a tribunal for the trial of ordinary causes, now that other courts have been established exclusively for that purpose. The Witenagemot seems to have been for the whole kingdom what the Shire-moot, afterwards called the Sheriff's Leet or Tourn, was for each shire, and what the leets of the hundred and the town (or manor) were for these subordinate divisions. It is to be observed that these were all to a certain extent representative assemblies. " Originally," says the writer we have just quoted, " the leet of the hundred (which he considers to have been the organic germ, or the unit as we might call it, of the Saxon com- monwealth) was held twelve times in each year. Magna Charta enacted that it should only be sum- moned twice within that period. The indwellers of the hundred, who owed suit real to the leet, appeared in the moot by their judicial represen- tatives. These were the tithing-men, the head- boroughs, the chief pledges, who were respectively accompanied by four good law-worthy men, belong- ing to the Friborgs which deputed them. The Saxon Custumal of Henry I. also notices the pre- sence of the parish priest ; and it seems to intimate that the lord or his steward mignt supply the place of the reeve. As all crimes were committed against the peace of the people, the offender who was untrue to his Friborg was impeached or accused by his pledges or the delegates of the little community which answered for his default. To use the tech- nical term of the law, the offence was presented to the leet jury, or legislative and judicial branch of the assembly."* From this account a general notion may be formed of the original constitution and probable mode of procedure of the other moots or assemblies ; the Witenagemot, or supreme national assembly, amongst the number. The most learned investigation of the constitu- tion of the Witenagemot is that which it has received from Sir Francis Palgrave. " In the smaller kingdoms," he observes, " such as Kent, the Witenagemot did not probably differ materially in composition from the Shiremoot, which assem- bled on Penenden Heath in subsequent times. The prelates appear as the first order in the com- munity. The seniors, earls or aldermen, are con- vened, not only in the character of chieftains, but also by virtue of the bond of ' trust ' which con- nected them with their sovereign. The thanes gave suit and service, as principal landlords. And the ceorls, attending for the townships, listen to the promulgation of the decree, declare their grievances, and present the trespasses committed in the communities to which they belong. The actual appearance of the foregoing classes is not a • Article on Courts of the Ancient English Common Law, in the Edinburgh Review, vol. xxxvi. p. 306. 252 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL The Witenaoemot — The Kino Presiding. From the Cotton MS. Claudius, B iv. mutter of hypothesis, but of evidence ; the docu- ment lies before vis in which they address their sovereign ; and, with respect to the functions exercised by the ceorls, the testimony of the Anglo-Saxon laws receives the fullest corroboration from the universal usage of subsequent times." * " In the earlier periods," he proceeds, " a depend- ent or vassal kingdom retained its own legislature, sitting and acting distinct from the legislature of the paramount kingdom. But the Witenagemot convened by the Basileus was the General Diet or Placitum of the empire. Here tlie King of Albion appeared, wearing his crown, and surrounded by his great officers of state. The prelates concurred in the enactments. The vassal kings, the rulers of the Cymric and Celtic tribes, testified their obe- dience. The earls, and ealdormen, and thanes, whether of Anglo-Saxon race, or the Northmen settled in the Danelagh, completed the assembly, which comprehended all the councillors and sages, redesmen and witan, both clerks and laymen, whose advice and assistance the sovereign was entitled to demand. "t The great point of doubt and dispute has been the character in which the folk or people ap])eared, who are repeatedly mentioned both by the old historians and in the laws themselves, as present at the Witenagemot. There has been much controversy both as to who the persons were that are thus designated, and as to whether they formed a constituent part of the assembly, or were only spectators of the proceedings. Taking all the circumstances into consideration. Sir Francis Pal- grave thinks that " we may be led to the suppo- sition that the elected or virtual representatives of townships or hundreds constituted the multitude, noticed as the people, in the narratives describing the great councils and other similar assemblies ; for the share taken by the folk in the proceedings forbids the conjecture that the bystanders were a mere dis- orderly crowd, brought together only as specta- tors, and destitute of any constitutional character."* " Admitting," he adds, however, " the great pro- bability that the burghs did constitute a branch of the Witenagemot, or Mycel-getheacht, it must be recollected that the members, by whom they ap- peared, would scarcely attend in the character of mere deputies. Popular election, in our modern sense of the term, rarely (if ever) existed. The functionaries who ruled the burgh became the proper and natural representatives of the commu- nity in the legislative assembly or in the congress ; and if the imperial Witenagemot was intended in any wise to protect the privileges of the nation, the heads of the burgh would be the most efficient advocates and defenders of their community." f As it was hardly possible, however, that all the magistrates could, generally, or on any occasion, give their attendance, thus leaving the burgh with- out any government, he thinks it probable that some one of them would usually be deputed by the rest to undertake the duty. It might even in par- ticular contingencies be inconvenient for any of the magistrates to leave their station. " In such a case," proceeds Sir PVancis, "the expedient of authorising a person, not bearing office, to appear as a deputy, in the name and on the behalf of the magistracy, would be easily suggested, and a repre- sentation approximating to the modern system would be formed." J Still, it must be remem- bered, there was here an election by the magistracy only, and not by the people. The people, there- * English Commonwealth, p. 634. + Ibid. p. (!36. i • Knglisli Commonwealtli. p, 635. t Ibid. p. 645. I Ibid. p. 646. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 449-1066. 253 fore, were not directly represented in the Saxon Witenagemot. The only representation of the burghs cr of the Commons was a representation merely of the thanes or governors of the burghs and townships, who in some cities, indeed, were themselves elected by the people; but in other cases appear to have been hereditary, or to have held their offices by a sort of proprietorship. To this indirect representation of the Commons, never- theless, through persons having at least a natural connexion with them and an interest in their welfare, may most probably be traced back all that yet exists among us of popular parliamentary re- presentation. Indeed, up to the passing of the Reform Bill, many burghs were only represented as they had been in the Saxon times ; and even now the Commons enjoying the right of election are everywhere only a class, however important a class, of the people. The supreme government of the state resided in the witenagemot and the king, who presided over the assembly while it sat, and who appears to have had the right of calling it together, and also pro- bably of dissolving it at his pleasure. It seems to have been wont to meet several times in the course of the year, usually at the great festivals of Christ- mas, Easter, and Whitsuntide ; and its sessions were no doubt very short. It is impossible, from the imperfect accounts that remain, to discover what were understood to be the limits of the royal authority and of that of the parliament ; but in all the more important acts of the executive, the con- currence of the legislative body seems to have been required. Alfred and his successors promulgate their laws as enacted by themselves with the advice of their Avitan. The king, as the first magistrate and head of the state, was held in high honour and invested with many prerogatives, such as the right of commanding the forces, of appointing and dis- placing all the chief administrative functionaries throughout the kingdom, of dispensing justice in the last resort, and of pardoning offenders or miti- gating and remitting penalties. His independent power of action, as one of the estates of the realm, however, seems to have been confined by the theory of the constitution within rather narrow limits. But in such a state of society the real power of the sovereign would depend much more upon his per- sonal character and the accidents of his reign, than upon any vmderstood principles of the constitution. On the whole, the royal authority had, from the first foundation of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, been gaining ground upon that of the witenagemot, in which had originally resided the supreme and sole government of the nation, the king being merely its elected president or deputy. The large and constantly increasing teiTitorial possessions of the crown no doubt greatly contributed to secure for it a position of elevation and power far beyond that which it had originally occupied. After tlie union, especially, of the several states of the old Heptarchy into one kingdom, the lands in all parts of England which were held by the king must have formed a property of immense extent. These lands, as we have already intimated, appear to have been ori- ginally in part the private domains of the kings, in part the public lands reserved on the first settle- ment of the nation for the support of the govern- ment; but the two descriptions of property had in course of time naturally become mixed up together, and the crown retained the uncontrolled manage- ment of the whole. In return, the crown, from the revenues of these estates, from the annual pay- ments by the burghs in lieu of services, and from certain other profits to which it was by law en- titled, defrayed all the ordinary expenses of the supreme civil government. The additional revenue chiefly arose from customs at the sea-ports, tolls in the markets, and other taxes paid on sales, and from the wites or public penalties exacted from persons convicted of delinquencies, over and above the were-geld or damages paid by them in satisfaction of the private injviry. There is reason to believe, also, that in later times at least much of the land throughout the kingdom be- came subject to certain occasional payments to the crown, similar to those which were after- wards made universal under the more systema- tized feudalism of the Norman government ; but their exact nature cannot now be ascertained. The only burdens to which it is quite certain that all landed estates were subject are those called by later writers the Trinoda Necessitas, — among the Saxons themselves the three common labours, or universal necessities — of the Brycg-bote, the tax for the maintenance of bridges and highways; the Burh- bote, that for the repairs of walls and fortresses ; and the Fyrd, or military service. It is conjec- tured, from the notices in Domesday Book, that in most parts of the kingdom one soldier was required to be provided in time of war for every five hides of land, — a hide being, according to Bede, as much land as could maintain a single family throughout the year. It appears that all England was divided into about 274,950 hides of land.* The Dane- geld, also, or tribute to the Danes, first collected in 991, in the reign of Ethelred, was a tax upon each hide of land ; and although for some time it was only imposed on particular occasions, it eventually became permanent, and formed an important por- tion of the ordinary revenue of the crown. At the original rate of a shilling for each hide of land, it produced 12,180/., equal in weight of silver to nearly three times the same amount in modern money, and in efficiency to a much greater sum. It is said, however, to have been raised by Canute, in 1018, to six shillings on the hide; and four shillings was in later times the common rate. Much controversy has taken place on the question of whether the feudal system of the tenure of lands is to be considered as having been introduced into England in the Saxon times. That the system, in all its regularity and extent, was not fully established till after the Conquest, is generally admitted ; but it appears to be equally clear, not • Brady's History of En^'Iand, i, 270. 254 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. only that, in the reign of the Confessor, a very con- siderable advance was made towards its perfect consolidation after the continental model, but also that in a ruder shape and looser coherency it had subsisted among the Anglo-Saxons from their first settlement in the country. We have given an account of the division of the proprietors of the soil into hlafords and men, which terms are merely the lords, or superiors, and vassals of the feudal phraseology. And in the earliest Saxon times the vassal seems to have held his land (which might have been, though it was not, called his fief) from his lord, on condition of rendering services pre- cisely similar to those which, in after times, were rendered by a vassal to his feudal superior. Upon this subject it has been well observed by a writer whose prejudices are by no means always a match for his learning and acuteness, that there are two divisions of the history of the feudal system, the former of which " extends, from the earliest ac- count of time, through the early history of Greece and Rome, till the progress of society changed the manners of these nations ; and through the early history of the Goths and Germans, who overturned that Roman empire, down to the eleventh century. At this period commences the corrupted feudal system, and lasts till the fifteenth century, when the feudal system began, after its corruption, to dissolve quite away. The feudal system was that of the Persians, who Avere, and are, Scythee or Goths, as ancient authors and their own speech testify. Xenophon tells us that when the younger Cyras came to Cilicia, he was met by Epyaxa, the beau- tiful wife of the Satrap, who, according to the custom of the East, presented her acknowledged liege lord and superior with gold, silver, and other precious gifts. Indeed, the feudal system, about which so much noise is made, is the natural fruit of conquest, and is as old in the world as conquest. A territory is acquired, and the state or the general bestows it on the leaders and soldiers, on condition of military service, and of tokens acknowledging gratitude to the donors. It was known in the Greek heroic ages. It was known to Lycurgus ; for all the lands of Sparta were held on military tenure. It was known to Romulus, when he regu- lated Rome. It was known to Augustus, when he gave lands to his veterans, on condition that their sons should, at fifteen years of age, do military service. The reason it did not preponderate and corrupt in Greece and Rome was, that it was stifled by the necessary effects of cities. In Persia, where there were no cities of any power or privi- lege, it preponderated and corrupted at an early period."* We now proceed to consider the general charac- ter of the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, and to describe their modes of judicial procedure. It is remarked by M. Guizot that there is one material point of difference between the Salic laws and the capitularies of the Carlovingian Frank *Pinkerton's Dissertation on the Scythians, p, 140. (Edit, of 1814.) kings. The former do not contain moral and reli- gious texts in the way of advice ; they only contain texts formally prohibitive or imperative. " But in the passage," we quote the words of M. Guizot, "from primitive barbarism to civilization, legis- lation assumes another character ; morals introduce themselves into it, and become, for a certain time, matter of law.* The able legislators, the founders or reformers of communities, became aware of the empire exercised over men by the idea of duty ; the instinct of genius informs them that, without its support, without the free concurrence of the human will, the society cannot maintain and de^ velop itself in peace ; and they apply themselves to introduce this idea into the minds of men by all sorts of ways, and they make of legislation a sort of preaching, a means of instruction. Consult the history of all nations, of the Hebrews, the Greeks, &c, ; you will everywhere encounter this fact : you will everywhere find, between the epoch of pri- mitive laws, which are purely penal, prohibitive, intended to repress the abuses of violence, and the epoch of civilised laws, which have confidence in the morality, in the reason of individuals, and leave all that is pvirely moral in the domain of liberty ; between these two epochs, I say, you will always find one in which morals are the object of legisla- tion, in which legislation formally writes and teaches them. Franco-Gaulish society was at this point when Charlemagne governed it, and that was one of the causes of his strict alliance with the church, the only power then capable of teaching and preaching morality." f Something similar to what M. Guizot has here described is observable in the Anglo-Saxon laws ; the laws of the earlier kings partaking more of the character of the Salic law above specified, those of the later partaking more of that of the capi- tularies of Charlemagne. Of the eighty-nine laws, of which the collection bearing the name of King Ethelbert, of Kent, the earliest Saxon laws that are extant, consists, a majority (upwards of fifty) have reference to the punishment of acts of violence against the person. The next most numerous class is occupied with penalties for illicit intercourse with, . and acts of aggression towards, women. The next has refer- ence to theft. There are not more than three or four — at the most five — laws in the collection that are not of a penal character, but descriptive merely of certain rights. There is not a single paragraph of the nature merely of a moral or religious test. We may thus tabularise the result : — Attacks on Person 58 Attacks on Property 11 Fornication and Aggressions on Women 13 Adultery 2 Total of Penal 84 Declaratory of Rights 5 Total Number of Laws 89 Ethelbert's reign was about the end of the sixth • The meaning must be, affirmations of moral truths, or supposed truths, come to be promulgated and received as laws. t Histoire de la Civilisation en France, tome ii. p. 329. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 449-1066. 255 and the beginning of the seventh century. In his legislation, adultery was thus disposed of: — " If a free man lie with a free man's wife, let him ex- piate his offence and buy another wife, and take her to the other man." About a century after, in the laws of Wihtraed, a change of tone is observ- able; the legislator uses the style of exhortation rather than of prohibition or command : — " Let adulterers be brought to repent and lead a virtuous life, or be excommunicated from the assembly of the church." It is not improbable, however, that the civil penalty was continued along with the test and the religious penalty ; for afterwards, in the laws of Canute, we find, together with the moral and religious test, the penalty much increased in severity. It is remarkable that, in the last-men- tioned collection, in one of the articles there is more attempt than usual at precise definition : — " Adul- tery is bad which a married man commits with an unmarried woman, and much worse Avith another man's wife, or with a woman who has taken upon her the monastic vows." In this collection of the laws of Ethelbert there are thirty-nine laws specifying different wounds, and inflicting various penalties accordingly. In all this we see legislation in a very rude state. But there are other points of view in which these early laws are objects of extreme interest. One of these is the nature of the penalties they decree. Here there appears a singular regard for the person and the liberty of the subject. There is little or no corporal punishment, no imprisonment, no death punishment, at least which may not be compounded for ; for as we have seen in the last sec- tion, even the life of the king had its price. The chief, or rather only, punishment in the Anglo- Saxon as in the Salic law, is the composition, the " wehrgeld," that is, a certain sum which the de- linquent was bound to pay to the injured party or to his family. To this was added, in many cases, — those which may be called, in the language of the English law, " pleas of the crown," — a sum paid to the king or the magistrate as a compensation for the violation of the public peace. The not unusual alternative, as we have already had occasion to remark, where the offending party was unable to make good the " wehrgeld," was to reduce him to the state of slavery. " The composition," observes M. Guizot, " is the first step of criminal legislation out of the cus- tom of personal vengeance. The right concealed under that punishment, the right which exists at the bottom of the Salic law, and of all barbarous laws, is the right of every man to do himself jus- tice, and to avenge himself by force : it is the war between the offender and the offended. The com- position is an attempt to substitute a legal system for war ; it is the means given to the offender of securing himself, by the payment of a certain sum, from the vengeance of the party offended ; it im- poses upon the injured party the obligation to renounce the use of violence. " We must not imagine, however, that from the first it had that effect ; the offended party for a long time preserved the right of choosing between the composition and war, — of rejecting the " wehrgeld" and having recourse to vengeance. The chronicles and documents of every kind leave scarcely a doubt of it. I incline to think that in the eighth cen- tury the composition was decidedly obligatory, and that the refusal to be satisfied with it was regarded as a violence, not as a right ; but assuredly it was not always thus, and the composition was an at- tempt, sufficiently inefiicacious, to put an end to the disorderly struggle of individual forces, a sort of legal offer from the offender to the offended."* From the apparently deep feeling of morality and liberty, in the solemn renunciation of vengeance on the part of the injured party, and as regards the offender in the respect displayed for his person and liberty, exhibited to so much greater a degree in these early laws, particularly in the composition, than in more civilised systems of legislation, some late German writers have conceived an erroneously high notion of the state of civilisation of the nations among which it is found. M. Guizot has very ably exposed the fallacy of these writers. Admitting that at that epoch individual liberty is really great, we must be on our guard against confounding such liberty with what in the present day is understood by that term. It is a liberty possessed by a man of doing what seemeth good in his own eyes, it being at the same time always carefully borne in mind that every other man has exactly the same liberty of doing what seemeth good in his eyes ; so that whenever that which seemeth good to one man doth not comport with that which seemeth good to another, a clash takes place, and in such a state such clashes are almost as frequent as those in the elemental war-of primaeval chaos. Such a state of society has been most justly and forcibly described by Hobbes in the following passage : — " Whatso- ever is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same is conse- quent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain; and consequently no culture of the earth ; no navigation ; no use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force ; no knowledge of the face of the earth ; no account of time ; no arts ; no letters ; no society ; and, which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death ; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, "f For this state of chaos, which cannot be called society, two remedies arise: — 1. Inequality of con- dition shows itself among men ; some become rich, others poor; some become noble, others obscure; some masters, others slaves : 2. A central public power develops itself, a force which in the name of * Histoire de la Civilisation en France, tome i. p. 343, f Leviathan, c. xiii. 256 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. tlie community proclaims and enforces certain laws. Thus arise on one side aristocracy, on the other, government, — two different modes of repress- ing the excess of individual liberty. But, in their turn, the remedies become evils : tlie aristocracy and the government both oppress, producing a disorder, different from the former, but deep and intolerable. In the mean time, however, by their influence, and by the natural action of social life, individuals are improved and enlightened; their understanding becomes stronger, and their will better regulated. They begin to see that they can live very well in peace without so much inequality of conditions, and so much central power, — in other words, that society can exist without costing liberty so much. Thus " if liberty," to borrow the language of M. Guizot, " perished at the com- mencement of the social career, it was because man was incapable of advancing while he retained it ; to regain it and enjoy it more and more is the end, the perfection of society ; but this is by no means the primitive state, the condition of barbarians. . . . Instead, then, of ascribing to the plan of compo- sition so much moral value, we must oidy regard it as a first step out of the state of war." * Let us now turn from these early Anglo-Saxon laws to those of a later period ; and, as the best means of affording to the reader a general idea of the character of these, we shall give an analytical table of those of the kings of the Heptarchy after the accession of Alfred, which have been collected by Wilkins.f 3.2 .2.2 ■si C a ^'1 _ o 5 3 "3 2 c 5.2 l.i II 3 .2 "a Alfred 6 32 3 12 13 66 Edward the Elder . 2 8 1 11 Athelstane 4 18 I 2 25 Edmund 8 9 17 Edgar 6 5 97 .55 163 Ethelred 1 2 2 5 Canute 15 34 10 32 7 6 104 42 108 17 143 62 19 391 We will now add a few remarks as to the rela- tive proportions of the classes in the preceding table • Ilistoire de l;i Civilisation en France, tome i. p. 349, t Tlio oldest of the Analo Snxon laws now extant arc those of King Ulhelbert, of Kent, who rei^'ned from 561 to G16. Tlie next are tliose of Illothaire and Kadric, and of Wihtraed,kini,'s of Kent. Isext are those of Ina, kin;; of the West Saxons. After the Heptarchy we hare the laws of Alfred, Kdward the Elder, Athelstane, Kdniund, Kdg:ir, Ethelred, and (Canute. There are, besides, canons and con- stitutions, decrees of councils, and other acts of a public nature. All thfse are in the Saxon language; of some of them a collection WTs made in one volume folio, by Mr. Lambnrde, and published, in 15G8, under the title of " Apvociovnuia, ; sive, de priscis An^lorum Ici^ibus." An enlarged edition of Lambarde's book was published under the superintendence of Abraham Wheloc in 1644. To this many additions have since been made by Dr. Wilkins, in his Leges Anglo-Saxonic.'B, fol. Lon. 1722. The laws in Latin, which have gone under the name of Edward the Confessor, have been rejected by antiquarians as spurious. They are supposed to have been written or collected about the end of the rei^n of William Rufus. — Iteevea's Hist, of the English Law, i. 2? i Wilkins's Leges Angl. Sax. to one another in different reigns, as well as in explanation of the classes themselves into which we have arranged these Anglo-Saxon laws. I. Declaratory Legislation. In this column of the table wc have placed, as well as we have been able to interpret their meaning, those capitula or laws which have appeared to us merely expository of rights and duties. It will be observed that the figures do not present much apparent increase in the number of this class, at least till the time of Canute. II. Penal Legislation. Under this head we have classed those commands or prohibitions having a definite sanction or penalty annexed to them. We have also, however, included certain laws of Alfred's, respecting which it may be doubted whe- ther they do not rather belong to the religious or the moral column ; for at the beginning of the collection of Alfred's laws stand about fifty capitula or articles, all taken from the laws of Moses, with the exception of one or two from the canons of the first apostolic council. Now, though many of these Mosaic laws appear merely in the shape of religious or moral precepts, others have distinct penalties attached to them ; and, therefore, as we see no evi- dence that Alfred did not mean these penalties to be enforced, we have placed them in the class of penal legislation, while those without such penal- ties we have placed in the religious and moral classes. III. Legislation of Procedure. Under this head we have classed those capitula that appear to refer exclusively to the machinery for executing the rest. Although of great importance in a rude state of society, this branch does not appear from the table to have borne, at least till the time of Canute, any considerable proportion to the others ; the reason probably being, that originally the exe- cution of the laws being vested in the same hands that had the making of them, it would be some time before those who were thus at once magis- trates and legislators would l:)ecome aware of the necessity of guiding their proceedings in their former capacity by certain fixed rules. We are told of Alfred's zeal for the proper administration of the laws ; but we do not find many enactments, among those laws of his that have come down to us, relating to tliat subject. We may assume, therefore, that the praise to which he Avas entitled was not so much that of having improved the old modes of procedure as that of having exerted him- self successfully in seeing the laws strictly and im- partially executed. IV. Religious Legislation. Under this head we place the enactments regarding the people at large in their relation with the church or the clergy. In reigns where the clergy possessed great power arising from influence over tlie king, it will be seen that this branch of legislation was a very large one, sometimes the largest of any. V. Canonical Legislation. The same remark applies to this head, under whicli we class the enactments regarding the duties and functions of Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 440-1066. 257 the clergy alone, as distiiiguislied from the rest of the community From the mfluence which church- men, from their superior education, possessed for many centuries in the European governments of the middle ages, we might expect this and the pre- ceding columns of the table to be large ones. Accordingly such they are, forming together more than half the total number of laws. VI. Moral Legislation. Under this head are classed those articles wliich, having no sanction annexed to them, are to be viewed merely as moral precepts, and not as laMS at all. The column ap- })ropriated to these in the table will be seen not to be a large one, and more than two-thirds of its articles belong to Alfred. We may add, that several of these articles being of the number of those taken by Alfred from the Old Testament, may be, under another point of view, considered as belonging to the religious column. It appears to have been not till a late period that judges were appointed among the Anglo- Saxons expressly for presiding over the trial of causes. According to Ingulphus, it was Alfred who introduced this imiovation. He is stated to have divided the office of the governor of the pro- vince or shire into the two offices of viscount (or sheriff) and justiciary. But the system of the Saxon jurisprudence was such as usually, whether the case would be called, in modern })hraseology, a civil or a criminal case, to leave very little to be done by the presiding functionary, except per- haps to pronounce the sentence. Everything was regulated by certain rigid forms, which of tliem- selves determined the issue, without the discretion or judgment of the persons before whom the trial w^as held being at all called into exercise. The trial took place in one or other of the public assemblies, the folc-mot, the leet of the hundred, the shire-mot, or the witenagemot, according pro- bably to the residence and rank of the parties, and the importance of the question, or, perhaps, according as it was a first trial or an aj)pea]. The chief ordinary business of all these courts seems to have consisted in the hearing of causes, which it was obviously necessary should at least be carried on and concluded before some public or recognised tribunal. But the trial itself Avas rather of the nature of an arithmetical calculation, or a chemical experiment, than v/hat we now tmdcrstand by the trial of a cause. A certain form was gone through, and according to its result, which was always pal- pable and decisive in the one way or in the other, the accused person was found guilty or accpiitted,— the verdict, to use the modern language, was for the plahitiff or the defendant. This view of the subject, as far as we are aware, has not before been stated ; but its correctness will be apparent from a short account of the mode of procedure in Saxon trials at law. In the first place, in all cases, whether in dis- putes about property or in the pursuit of alleged offenders, the claimant or the person who conceived himself to be injured appears to have retained, under the Saxon law, so much of the rights of a state of nature as to be entitled to begin the process at his own hands, and by an act of force; — he made forcible entry upon the land, or he seized without any Avrit the person of the accused. It was only after this that the law interfered, or rather that application was made to its authority. Tlie cause might be brought into court in various ways. A person accused of an offence, for example, might be arraigned either by the presentment of the thanes (or heads) of the hundred, or by that of the ceorls inhabiting the township, or upon the appeal of the injured party, swearing that he was not actuated by hatred or animosity, and having his oath confirmed by that of seven compurgators.* The following is the account of the sequel of the proceeding given by Sir Francis Palgrave : — " Tlie culprit being thus charged with the crime, either by the voice of the country or by the testimony of the appellant, he was put upon his deliverance ; but, at this stage of the trial, if he belonged to the Sithcund class, or to the Villainage, he was required to obtain the testimony of his superior. The hlaford, or his gerefa on his behalf, came forth and swore that the man had not been convicted of theft within the period of limitation, which appears to have been usually fixed from the last great council, and had never paid the theft-fine. This declaration was con- firmed by the oaths of two other true men, or thanes ; and the culprit had then the privilege of clearing himself, either by simple compvirgation or by the simple ordeal. If he asserted the liberty of appealing to that testimony of character wliich was termed compurgation, he himself swore to his innocence, and a certain immber of his neigh- bours, whose ' worth, ' according to the legal arithmetic of the Anglo-Saxons, was considered as equivalent to one pound, were assigned as his compurgators. If they confirmed his oath by their own, he was acquitted of the charge ; but if he was unable to procure this testimony, and dared to abide the 'judgment of God,' he plunged his arm into the boiling cauldron up to the wrist, or he bore the red-hot iron in his naked hand for the distance of nine paces ; and if, after the lapse of three days, no marks of injviry appeared, he was declared innocent of the crime. Such was the proceeding when the testimony of the lord or su- perior was in favour of the accused. But if he refused to afford the testimony which diminished the suspicions of the law, then the culprit was bound to undergo the threefold ordeal ; he plunged liis arm into the boiling water up to his elbow, the iron was of ti-eble weight, and his compurgation, if he preferred that mode of trial, consisted of five com- purgators, he being the sixth hand."t A civil suit was decided by a mode of procedure precisely similar in principle, though differing in some of the forms. In either case, everything depended upon the number and the legal "worth" or estimated value of the witnesses which each party was enabled Pal^'ravo's English Comrponweallh, p. 213. \ I bill. p. 215, 258 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [^BOOK II. to bring forward, or upon the issue of some ex- perimental process resembling the ordeals that have just been mentioned. Sometimes the question was decided by what has been called the ordeal of the cross, that is, by the accused party being allowed to draw from under a cover either of two pieces of wood, on one of which the figure of the cross had been cut : if he drew tliat, he was acquitted ; if the otlier, he was condemned. Another ordeal was that called the corsned ; this was a small piece of bread (supposed to have been, originally, though it was not latterly, the sacramental wafer), which was given to the culprit to eat, and, if it appeared to stick in his throat, or if he shook or turned pale in the attempt to swallow it, his guilt was held to be proved. It appears most probable also that the wager of battle, although commonly supposed to have been of Norman introduction, was in use among the Saxons before the Conquest.* This was merely another species of ordeal, or appeal to Heaven. By this mode of trial, after the reqvii- site averments had been made on oath by the two parties and their witnesses, each party denying word for w^ord what the other had asserted, the two would be brought together and set to fight out their quarrel with arms in the presence of the court, which here again, as in all other cases, had nothing more to do except to see that the prescribed regulations were observed, and to watch the result. The result of itself declared the verdict. ■ In everything, therefore, we see the trial was reduced to the performance of an operation every step of which was regulated by certain established rules, and about the result of which, that result deciding tbe case, there could be no mistake or dispute. This view of the subject at once explains another peculiarity Avhich has been noticed as marking the legal procedure of the Anglo-Saxons. In their trials circumstantial evidence was wholly disregarded. Witnesses were only allowed to swear that the fact in dispute was or was not as represented by either of the contending parties. t It is plain that it was only such direct evidence as this that admitted of being counted and summed up according to the simple rule of tale which we have supposed to govern the whole proceeding. The weighing of circumstantial evidence would liave demanded the exercise of discretion and judgment, and consequently the apparatus of a court in the modern sense, that is, either a single judge, or (what would have been more conformable to the spirit of the Gothic polity, and what it eventually produced) a bench or box of judges, consisting, it might be, of one to preside and direct, and a number of others to deliberate, — our present judge and jury. There has been much controversy as to whether the institution of the jury existed among the Saxons, and it is a question upon which legal antiquaries are still divided. But if the view that has been taken of the principle of the whole Saxon • This ig the opinion of SirF. Palgrave. See English Common- wealth, pp. 223-225. I Palsrave's English Commonwealth, p. 232. •■ legal system be correct, it is evident that what we now understand by a jury could have found no part in that system, so long at least as it retained its original and proper character unimpaired. A jury could have been of no use, and would have had no duties to discharge. The finding of the verdict was not an affair of deliberation; it was an affair of observation merely, and was sufficiently performed by the general body of the persons present at the trial, among whom there never could have been any doubt or dispute on the subject. We shall afterwards have occasion to show how the modern jury in all probability arose out of the ancient mode of conducting trials ; jjut the thing itself, like tbe name, is undoubtedly not Saxon but Norman, that is to say, it did not come into use until the Norman times. We will here only observe that it was not, properly speaking, the increased complication of the relations of society, and of the matters giving rise to legal trials, that I led to the abrogation of that ancient system, and the substitution of the system of the jury. The fact is, that the jury and the ordeal could not practically exist together. The principle of the one mode of trial was altogether opposed to that of the other. If the ordeal could have maintained itself against the adverse forces of another kind with which it necessarily had to contend as society advanced, and which eventually brought about its downfall, the increased complication of the affairs of the community would not have overthrown it, or intro- duced the substitute of the jury. If it could have retained the support of public opinion, it would have been sufficient for any state of society, how- ever complex, and the jury never would have supplanted it. The ordeal was the soul of the original Anglo- Saxon system of law ; and this has probably been among all nations the first resort in the attem})t to substitute any other law for the law of mere force. And although it is really not at all more equitable than the law of force, it still has cer- tain decided advantages in other respects over the rule of mere physical strength. It is the sub- stitution of policy for violence, and that is ne- cessarily in itself a humanizing and productive change. Tlie ordeal, also, it is to be remembered, tliough in reality, if fairly conducted, only a throwing of the dice, and leaving of the decision to chance, — if collusively managed, capable of being made an instrument of great injustice and cruelty, — was believed, so long as it was in use, to be nothing less than an appeal to Heaven, and to be always effective in securing the fairest and wisest of all possible decisions. It was the decay of this belief, and nothing else, that occasioned the abolition of the ordeal. But even while it was still legally recognised, and in constant apphcation as tlie final mode of determining a cause, an appreliension was naturally entertained that Heaven might be offended by such an appeal being lightly or too frequently made to it; and there was accord- ingly a shrinking from the ordeal on the part Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 449-1066. 259 of tlie law, and an effort to avoid it as far as possible by taking refuge in another method of decision. The next advance to a correct sys- tem was the admission of the sort of evidence wluch we have found to have been received in the iirst stage of the trial among the Anglo-Saxons, and the treatment of it in the manner that has been described. The resort to the ordeal was in this way avoided altogether in many cases ; for if the culprit or defendant failed in his compurgation, or could not bring up a sufficient "worth" of witnesses to balance' the testimony against him, he was not allowed his appeal to the "judgment of God." This was a great step gained in the progress towards the decision of the case solely upon the evidence, and the weighing of the evidence in the scales, not of the calculating faculty, but of the judgment. So that there may be said to be four, or, more accurately, five distinct stages in the ascent up to our present method of judicial practice, which is the last of the five. Of those preceding, the first is that in which all disputes are decided by mere brute force, emancipated from all check or regu- lation. The second is that in which disputes are decided by such a proceeding as the wager of battle, in which physical force is still left the umpire, but is constrained to act under certain forms ; and some contrivances in reference to the weapons and mode of the encounter are also usually introduced, which go in some degree to reduce any natural inequality that may chance to exist between the combatants. The third stage is that of the ordeal, or imaginary appeal to Heaven; by which the law of force is first wholly put down, being supplanted by the law of chance, taking, however, the appearance of a criterion of a very different kind, and being be- lieved to be the actual adjudication of Heaven. And the fourth is that in which evidence first makes its appearance, though as yet only in subor- dination to the ordeal, which is still maintained in its position of the supreme and finally determining test. It would be very easy to show how each of these modes of procedure is naturally evolved out of the one immediately preceding it, as well as how the last-mentioned leads in like manner to the introduction of its proper successor, — the mode that now prevails. We are apt to assume that the hearing of evi- dence is the natural mode of trying a cause, and the earliest that would be adopted. But the science , of evidence, both in law and in all other, depart- ments of inquiry where we have to do with mere probabilities, is late in springing up, and long in being brought to perfection. The science of ma- thematical demonstration, where there is little com- plexity and no uncertainty, may be early cultivated and perfected ; but not so that of the evidence cither of human testimony or of any description of what we may call merely indicative facts. The ancient Greeks and Romans, with all their culti- vation, seem to have had no distinct notions on the subject of evidence in any department cither of physical or of moral inquiry. They philosophized, indeed, eloquently and ingeniously b(5th in morals and in physics, bvit just as frequently without as with any regard to the facts bearing upon the question. In historical inquiries it is only in modern, and it may be said in very recent times, that the science of evidence has been at all applied ; the ancients do not seem to have dreamed of such a thing ; and among ourselves, down to the seven- teenth century, it was equally unheard of and unthought of. Camden was perhaps the first English writer in this department who doubted anything that had been asserted by his predeces- sors; all our older chroniclers took in each the whple of what had been told by those who had gone before him as unresistingly as one sheet of paper after another, in the process of printing, takes the impression of the types on which it is spread. Look at the boundless credulity of the numerous copiers of the fables of Geoffrey of Mon- mouth and Bishop Bale, or of those of Fordun and Boyce among the Scottish writers down even to Buchanan and Sir George Mackenzie, the latter of whom flourished at the time of the Revolution. And what was the inductive philosophy of Lord Bacon but a development of the science of evi- dence as applicable to physics ? Yet it was wholly new to the world little more than two centuries ago. The science of evidence is a study as foreign to the whole mental dispositions and habits of men in an early state of society as it is to those of children. Both equally demand certainty in all their conclu- sions, and cannot endure either to act or to believe merely upon a favourable balance upon proba- bilities. All their methods of investigation, therefore, aim at attaining this certainty. A method which promises less is despised and rejected. Hence any- thing else is preferred to the patient and impartial examination of facts ; — anything that will produce an instant and complete conviction, — a supposed sign from Heaven of any kind, — some circumstance impressive enough to occupy the imagination and exchide every other view of the subject, — or even, when nothing better is to be had, mere authority and confident assertion. This is the time of inex- perience and of ready and abundant faith. Tfie science of evidence is the offspring of doubt, as well as the parent of rational belief and of truth. To prevent objection or misapprehension, it may be proper just to remark further, that very possibly, in point of fact, one mode of procedure may have sometimes been partially introduced before another was quite abandoned ; and it is probable, indeed, that the changes were mostly brought about in this way. But what is intended to be affirmed is, that no two of the forms which we have distin- guished could ever be mixed up together in the trial of the same cause ; for instance, the jury, as we have said, could never be thus employed in association with the ordeal. It was, as is well known, not till within the last twenty years that the old mode of trial by judicial combat, or wagoi* 260 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL of battle, was abolished ;* and Sir Francis Pal- grave seems to think that tlie right to the trial by wager of law derived from the Anglo-Saxon com- purgation, still subsists. " At later periods," he observes, speaking of the times after the Conquest, " there were many irregularities arising from the breaking down of the Saxon juiisprudence ; parts and portions of the ancient forms continued in Uf:e, though no longer guided by their ancient and con- sistent principles. ... In all personal actions, wager of law was tlie regular mode of trial, until new proceedings were instituted, W'hich enabled the judges to introduce the jury trial in its stead. But this silent legislation has not destroyed the Anglo-Saxon trial ; it is out of use, but not out of force ; and it may perhaps continue as a part of the theory of the law until some adventurous indi- vidual shall again astonish the court by obtaining his privilege ; and, by thus informing the legisla- ture of its existence, ensure its abolition." f Absurd as 'the ordeal was, it had, in its suitable- ness to the particular social condition of the Anglo- Saxons, certain recommendations not only over the still ruder system which it supplanted, but even as compared with the more refined and intelligent method to which, in due time, it was in its turn to give way. That improved method would have made demands which the age and the country were altogether inadequate to meet. Neither juries nor judges could then have been found to administer justice throughout England according to that plan. Even in our own day the experience of some of the most enlightened countries in the world has proved how difficult a thing it is to get the system of trial by jury to work well among a people to whom it is new. Among the Anglo- Saxons of the ninth or tenth century there certainly was not a sufficiently general diffusion of intelli- gence either to supply competent judges and juries, or to make their decisions be respected if they could have been found. In the state of society that then existed, it would not have answered for the law to profess to give its decisions on anything like doubtful presumptions. The simple xmderstand- ings of the men of that time were to be satisfied with nothing less than absolute certainty in such matters. It would have been strange if they had been satisfied with less, so long as they believed that there was such a ready and efiective mode as the ordeal of securing that certainty. While they retained their faith in the ordeal, the establishment of any fair plan of deciding causes by evidence submitted to the unshackled judgment of a jury was impossible. But the ordeal, so long as the popular faith in it subsisted, answered the purpose • " The general law of theland,'' saiil Lotjl Ellenborougli, in the case of Asliford against TliornUm, argued before the Court of King's liench, in April, 1818, which led to the abolition, " is in Ikvuur of the wager of battle, and it is our duty to pronounce the law as it is, and not as we may wish it to be. Whatever prejudices, tlierefore, may justly exist against this mnde of trial, still, as it is the law of tlie land, the court must pronounce judgment for it."— Uarncwall and Aldorson's Reports, i. 460. + English Coramonwealth, p. 2C3, of putting an end to differences, and keeping men under subjection to the law, at least as well as a more equitable and more rational mode of judicial decision could have done. There is reason to believe, also, that on the whole its inherent injus- tice was rather mitigated than otherwise by the art and management with which the process was no doubt usually conducted. The principle that has been pointed out as that of the legal procedure of the Anglo-Saxons, it may be observed in conclusion, ran through the whole course of the law and its administration. From the first step that could be taken for the trial of a case down to its final disposal, everything was regulated upon this principle, and arranged with a view to its application ; no room was left for any exercise of discretion on the part of the court ; the human judgment was never appealed to or its exer- cise permitted ; nothing was trusted to the fallibility of that arbiter ; the element of mere probability was excluded as rigorously as it is from the demon- strations of the mathematics. That this system might be carried fully out, not only was a certain value put by the law upon every individual, which determined the amount at which his testimony was to be rated when he appeared as a witness, and the damages he could claim as a plaintiff, and those he could be called upon to pay as a defendant ; every distinct limb and part of the body had also its were, or legal worth. Thus, in the oldest law?, a leg was valued at fifty shillings, the little finger at eleven, the great toe at ten, a front tooth at six, an eye tooth at four, a back tooth at one, and a nail of the finger at the same price. In this way every personal injury that could be received had its fixed compensation. After the trial had been gone through, therefore, the sentence or the assessment of damages was as much a matter of course as all the rest of the procedure had been : here, also, the law might be said to go upon its own feet, and to do all but execute itself. ' Besides the fines, however, cither to the injured individual or to the state, with which most delin- quencies were punished, capital punishments were also in use among the Anglo-Saxons in certain cases. Among the " boteles " crimes, as they Avere called, or those for which the life of the convict was always taken, were treason, military desertion, open theft, house-breaking, and premeditated murder. * Summary punishment might also be inflicted by any private hand upon criminals taken in open delict. " When a capital offence," says Sir Francis Palgrave, "was flagrant, committed in open day, and under such circumstances as to render the act capable of instant and indisputable proof, no further trial was required ; no evidence was discussed, and no defence was allowed. Mercy was never extended to the outlaw ; he was said to bear a wolf's head, and, like the wild beast to whom he was compared, he was slain whenever he approached the haunts of human-kind ; — every * ralgvave's English Commonwealth, pp. 204, 205. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 44.9-106C. 261 hand might be raised to strike him, — none to revenge liis fall. If a thief was apprehended ' hond-habend ' and ' back-barend,' or in actual possession of the spoil, he was hanged or deca- pitated by his pursuers without respite or delay. Similar proceedings took place with respect to the murderer. If he was found standing near the corpse with the bloody weapon in his grasp, no witnesses could be heard for the purpose of explain- ing away a token, which, according to the average of human probability, was necessarily the accom- paniment of the transgression A stranger lurking in the woods, who did not blow his honi or otherwise proclaim that he was in distress and anxiety, was to be judged as a thief, though no other indication of crime could be alleged against him." * It is scarcely necessary to observe that, notwithstanding some of the expressions made use of in this statement, there was really no procedure • Turner's Anglo-Saxons, ii. 510. here upon mere suspicion or probability. For a man to endeavour to conceal himself in the woods, for instance, was, probably for very good reasons, denounced by the law as in itself a crime ; and in the case of the man found beside the newly-mur- dered body with the deadly weapon in his hand, the presvmiption of his guilt, though really only a probability, was considered to amount to absolute certainty. Rigidly speaking, indeed, the utmost attainable certainty in such matters is only a strong probability. Even the most direct evidence does not afford anything more. Among the legal punishments inflicted by the Anglo-Saxon laws, besides fines and death, are found imprisonment, outlawry, banishment, slavery transportation, whipping, branding, the pillory, amputation of limb, mutilation of the nose, ears, and lips, plucking out of the eyes, and tearing off the hair. Their common capital punishment seems to have been hanging, and in some instances stoning. Saxom FuiGELLATioN. From the Harlelan MS. 603. Saxon VVhiitino and Branding. From the Cotton MS. Claud. B iv. 2G2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY. RITAIN, as an island, and one of the Largest in tlie world, as well as from its nearness to the continent of Europe, would seem to have been intended by nature for the residence of a navigating and com- mercial people, and it might be supposed that any people who had obtained the occupation of it would be epeedlly turned to navigation and commerce by the natural temptations and advan- tages of their position. The political state of a country, however, and its social circumstances gene- rally, as well as the condition of the rest of tlie world and the spirit of the time, may all be so unfavourable as long effectually to counteract these advantages of geographical position, and even the genius and the old habits of the people themselves. Of the successive nations that obtained posses- sion of the south of Britain within the period of authentic history, the Gallic colonists of tlie time of Csesar were in too early a stage of civilization to hold any considerable intercourse with the rest of the world ; and the Romans who succeeded them, although they necessarily maintained a certain con- nexion both with the central and other parts of the extended empire to which they belonged, were of a stock that had nWays shown itself anti-commercial in genius and policy. But the Saxons, although they had not been in circumstances to turn their skill in navigation to commercial purposes, had long before their conquest of our island been accus- tomed to roam the seas, and were famous for their naval enterprises. We read of predatory warfare carried on by the different Germanic nations in small and light vessels on rivers, and even along the adjacent parts of the sea-coast, so early as before the middle of the first century. In the year 47, as we learn from Tacitus, the Chauci, dwelling along the Batavian coast, ravaged in this manner the neighbouring coast of Gaul, under the conduct of their countryman Gannascus, who had long served in the Roman armies.* It is probable that it was in the imperial service Gannascus acquired his knowledge of naval warfare, or at least the general military education which fitted him to train and command the Chauci in this expedition. In •Tac.Annal.xi. IS. little more than twenty years after this we find the Roman fleet on the Rhine partly manned by Bata- vians,* and even a Batavian fleet under the com- mand of Paulus Civilis, another individual of that nation who had been educated in the Roman armies, giving battle to the naval forces of the empire. f In the course of the next two hundred years the German nations generally appear to have improved upon the instruction and experience thus gained ; and both the Saxons and others became distin- guished for their familiarity with the sea and for their naval exploits. About the year 240 the union under the name of Franks, or freemen, of the various tribes of the Lower Rhine and the Weser, laid the foundation for those more extensive predatory incursions upon the neighbouring countries, both by sea and land, by which the barbarians of the north- west first assisted those of the north-east in harass- ing and enfeebling the Roman empire, and after- wards secured their share in its division. One remarkable incident has generally been noted as having given a great impulse to these expeditions, what Gibbon has called " the successful rashness" of a party of Franks that had been removed by the Emperor Probus from their native settlements to the banks of the Euxine. " A fleet," to give the story as he tells it, " stationed in one of the harbours of the Euxine, fell into the hands of the Franks ; and they resolved, through unknown seas, to explore their way from the mouth of the Phasis to that of the Rhine. They easily escaped through the Bos- phoiTis and the Hellespont, and, cruising along the Mediterranean, indulged their appetite for revenge and plunder, by frequent descents on the unsus- pecting shores of Asia, Greece, and Africa. The opulent city of Syracuse, in whose port the navies of Athens and Cartilage had formerly been sunk, was sacked by a handful of barbarians, who massa- cred the greatest part of the trembling inhabitants. From the island of Sicily the Franks proceeded to the Columns of Hercules, trusted themselves to the ocean, coasted round Spain and Gaul, and steering their triumphant course through the British Channel, at length finished their surprising voyage by landing in safety on the Batavian or Frisian shores. The example of their success, instructing their coun- trymen to conceive the advantages and to despise the dangers of the sea, pointed out to 'their enter- prising spirit a new road to wealth and glory." This event happened about the year 280. Im- mediately after this time we read of the commence- ment of ravages on the coasts of Gaul, of Belgium, • Tac. Anna', iii. 16. t Ibid. v. 23. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL and of Britain, by assailants who are called Ger- mans by Aurelius Victor, and Saxons by Eutropius. They appear to have been a mixture of Franks and Saxons, which latter name ere long began to be also distinguished as that of another military con- federacy of the Germanic nations not less powerful than the Franks. In maritime affairs, indeed, the Saxons soon took the lead ; and while the Franks pushed their conquests by land, the Saxon name became a terror to all the neighbouring sea-coasts. Yet their marine was still of the rudest description. "If the fact," says Gibbon, "were not established by the most unquestionable evidence, we should appear to abuse the credulity of our readers by the description of the vessels in which the Saxon pirates ventured to sport in the waves of the German Ocean, the British Channel, and the Bay of Biscay. The keel of their large flat-bottomed boats was framed of light timber, but the sides and upper works consisted only of wicker, with a covering of strong hides. . . . But the daring spirit of the pirates Ijraved the perils both of the sea and of the shore : tlieir skill was confirmed by the habits of enter- prise; the meanest of their mariners was alike capable of handling an oar, of rearing a sail, or of conducting a vessel ; and the Saxons rejoiced in the appearance of a tempest, which concealed their design, and dispersed the fleets of the enemy." The Romans now found it necessary to fit out and maintain a fleet expressly for the protection of the coasts of Britain and Gaul. The command of this armament, which was stationed in the harbour of Boulogne, was given, as has been related in the preceding Book, to Carausius.* His revolt soon after, and his establishment of an empire for him- self in Britain, where he endeavoured to maintain his power by alliances with those very nations of the north whom he had been appointed to repress, and by enlisting the barbarians both among his land and sea forces, was another event in the highest degree favourable to the progress of the Saxons in navigation and naval warfare. It was a new lesson to them both in ship-building and in tactics, which must have made their boldness and hardihood much more formidable than ever. The empire of Carausius had lasted for seven years, when it was overthrown by his death in 294. In the next century we find the Saxons almost the acknowledged masters of the northern seas, and so constantly infesting Britain that the east coast of the island had come to be known by the name of the Saxon coast, and was strongly fortified, and put under the charge of a warden, whose espe- cial duty it was to repel their assaults. Their defeat by Theodosius, in the neighbourhood of the Orkney Islands, in 368, for which he obtained the surname of Saxonicus, was not accomplished till the barbarians had sustained several encounters with the Roman fleet ; and although it seems to have deterred them for a long time after from repeating their descents upon Britain, and although, after the example of the Franks, they were now also * See ante, p. 53. :::x[JSTRY: a.d. 449—1006. 263 bcgmnmg i^. ^ui^..oj ^ll^^a oirength more than for- merly in military operations by land, they certainly did not abandon the field of their elder renown. The keels of Hengist and Horsa were cruising in the British Channel when they received the invi- tation of Vortigern in 449 ; and it was their com- mand of the seas that, by enabling them to main- tain all along a free communication with the continent, and also to make their descents upon the island at the most advantageous points, chiefly contributed to gain for the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, the possession of Britain. These new settlers, therefore, the fathers of tlie future population of the country, and the founders of its political institutions and its social state, were by long use a thoroughly navigating race, and, having obtained their island stronghold, they would naturally, it might be thought, proceed both to fortify it by securing the dominion of the surround- ing seas, and to make it the centre of a great com- mercial empire. But although all this was to come to pass in process of time, nothing of the kind hap- pened in the first instance ; and the Saxons, after their settlement in Britain, completely neglected the sea, now more truly their proper element than ever, for so long a period, that when they did at last apply themselves again to maritime affairs, their ancient skill and renown in that field of enter- prise must have been a mere tradition, if it was so much as remembered among them at all, and could have lent no aid in directing or even in exciting their new efforts. It was not till the reign of Alfred, towards the end of the ninth century, that the Saxons of England appear even to have thought of building a ship, at least for war ; and it may be doubted if before that time they had even any trading vessels of their own. Ever since their settlement in Britain they seem to have wholly abandoned the sea to their kindred who remained in their native seats in the north of Germany and around the Baltic, — the Northmen or Danes, by whom they were destined to be succeeded in their career of rapine and conquest. This latter race of sea-rovers had adopted a policy different from that which had been followed both by the Franks and the Saxons. These two nations, or rather great confederacies of various nations, although they had both first made them- selves formidable at sea, had, as we have seen, suc- cessively abandoned that field of adventure as soon as they had entered upon the course of land con- quest, or at least as soon as they had secured the possession the first of Gaul, the second of Britain, and had established their Gothic sovereignties in these fair provinces of the former western empire. But the Danes, who were also a great confederacy, — the several Scandinavian nations of the Danes, the Swedes, and the Noi-wegians, being all compre- hended under that name, — continued to seek plunder and glory on the waters long after they had founded a multitude of kingdoms on shore. These, how- ever, were not kingdoms carved, like the posses- sions of the Franks and Saxons, out of the ricli and 264 HISTORY OF ENPjT^^,^ [Book II. cultivated Roman ten u^-'_^', .• . cu. .v^iinned to tlie bleak and barbarous coasts of the Baltic and the neighbouring seas, where the Romans had never been. Down to the close of the eighth century, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were each parcelled out into numerous independent principalities, the chiefs of all of which were at the same time also either sea-kings themselves, or more usually were the fathers or elder brothers of the bold piratical captains, who rejoiced in that designation; the custom being for the younger sons of the royal hoxise to be sent to seek their fortune on the ocean, while the eldest was kept at home to inherit his ancestral throne. But the class of sae-konungen, or sea-kings, otherwise called vikingr, which is supposed to mean kings of the bays, where they had their head stations, was very numerous, and comprehended many individuals who were not of royal extraction. Piracy was the common resource of the younger sons of all the best families among these Scandinavian nations ; and the sea was regarded as a field whereon a bold adventurer might rear for himself a fabric both of wealth and domi- nion almost as stable as could be founded on the land. In the course of the ninth century in all the three countries central sovereignties had arisen, and absorbed or reduced to dependence the rest of the chieftainships ; but this change did not for some time affect the free movements of the vikingr. They continued as heretofore to maintain their in- dependence on their own element. The new state of things in the north only had the effect of giving a new direction to their enterprises. Formerly the natural prey of the sea-kings of the Baltic had been the territories of the petty land-sovereigns along the coasts of that sea ; for their common origin formed no general or permanent bond between the two classes, in circumstances so nearly resembling those under which the various descriptions of wild beasts are thrown together in a forest. But now that something of the strength of union and conso- lidation had been acquired by the northern king- doms, they had become less easily assailable ; and the captains of the piratical armaments began to look out for adventures and plunder farther from home. The coasts of England, of^ Scotland, of Ireland, and of France, became henceforth the chief scenes of their ravages. Nor had civilization yet advanced so far in any of the Scandinavian countries as to discountenance these expeditions. On the contrary, the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish kings were no doubt well pleased to see their natural enemies and the most turbulent spirits among their subjects thus finding occupation else- where ; and as for the popular feeling on the sub- ject, the old national custom of roaming the seas was still universally held to be among the most honourable of employments. Navigation can be cherished and promoted only by commerce or by war ; it never has flourished in the absence of the former except under the nourishment and siipport afforded by the latter. It was the want of both war and commerce that broucht about its decay and extinction among the Franks and Saxons, after their conquests of Gaul and Britain ; it was pre- served among the Danes through the habits and necessities of that predatory life upon which they were thrown for some centuries by the peculiar circumstances in which they were placed. Tlic power of this third northern confederacy grew up during a period when the spirit of foreign conquest and settlement, generated among the barbarous nations by the dismemberment of the Roman empire, was still in full vigour, but when the n^.eans of satisfying it had been taken away in conse(|uence of the previous occupation of Gaul, of Britain, of Spain, and of all the other Roman provinces, by those whose fortune it had been to ])e earlier in the movement. The Danes were in this way left to the piratical maritime warfare in which they 5:oon became so distinguished ; it was the natural result of the ambition of foreign conquest checked by the want of any territory lying open for them to invade and overrun. Still this was in its nature only an intermediate and temporary resource. The instinct of aggression, which it could only imperfectly gra- tify, it yet fostered, and was constantly strengthen- ing and arming with new power for the full attain- ment of what it sought. The Danes, under this discipline, were becoming every day more warlike and formidable, and more capable of achieving foreign conquests, whenever they should make the attempt. On the other hand, the Franks and Saxons, whom they would have to drive before them, were, in the unassailed security of their rich and ample settlements, gradually losing the use of war and the power of defending the possessions they had gained. This was the state of circum- stances when the Danes commenced, in the latter part of the eighth century, their descents upon the coasts of France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. These Northmen were now merely repeating what had been done by their kindred, the Franks and Saxons, three or .four centuries before. They also, from mere plundering incursions, with which they had hitherto satisfied themselves, were about to rise in their turn to the grander operations of invasion, conquest, and colonization, now that occasion pre- sented itself, and called them to that career. This was-the proper consummation of their system of sea-kingship ; the true end and development of their long course of piracy and desultory warfare. That was but the impatient restlessness of the animating passion repelled, baffled, and in some sort imprisoned ; this was its free and natural action. The new path of enterprise, accordingly, immediately attracted to itself all the disposable courage, activity, and resources of the North. It was not left to the sea-kings alone ; the most potent of those of the land joined the great national move- ment,which promised to add new realms to those they already possessed, or to enable them to exchange their niggardly ancestral islets and strips of sea- coast for broader domains in a sunnier clime. By means of these expeditions the pressure and un- easiness occasioned by the opposition between the Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 265 old piratical system aiid the new order of things that was now growing up in the Scandinavian king- doms, were at once reheved ; and while occupation and settlements were found for the more active and adventurous who chose to abandon their native country, more room was also made, and more quiet secured, for those that remained behind. By these bold sea-captains and their crews was a great part of England taken possession of and occupied ; and thus, a second time, did the country receive an accession of the kind of population most appropriate to it as an island, — a race of a navigating spirit and habits. The Normans also, we may anticipate so far as just to remark, were, before they won their settlements here and in France, l)irates as well as the Danes and the Saxons ; in fact they were merely a division of the Danish vikingr and their companies. So that of the several races that were eventually mingled together to form the English people, no one had to be gradually turned towards maritime affairs by the force of the new circumstances in the midst of which it was placed ; all brought along with them an old fami- liarity with the sea, on which they had in fact lived, and conquered, and maintained dominion, before they had ever made good any footing for themselves upon land. Notwithstanding all this, however, we find each lacej as soon as it lias established itself in the country, almost wholly abandoning the former theatre of its exploits, and attaching itself to the land as exclusively as if the sea had been left a thousand miles behind. We cannot discover that either t|ie previous navigating habits of the Saxons and Danes who successively settled in Britain, or the natviral advantages of their new position, prompted them to any considerable efforts of com- mercial enterprise, after they had lost the motive which had originally impelled them to the sea. Nay, as we have already observed, the ships in which, and through which, they had m.ade their conquests, were abandoned b.y them even as instru- ments of protection ; they had served their turn in aggressive warfare, but in the defensive warfare tliat followed their employment was not thought of, till after long and disastrous experience of the in- sufficiency of other military means. Such being the case, we need not wonder that commercial navi- gation was neglected. The navigating spirit, in fact, will not of itself create commerce ; it appears to have been usually rather the commercial spirit that has taught a people navigation, where it has not been taught by war ; and even war does not teach it in the effective manner that commerce does, as we may see at once by comparing the Saxons or the Danes with the Phenicians. The latter had no doubt been a commercial long before they became a navigating, a discovering, a colo- nizing, and a civilizing people. In the same manner it is their commercial habits, growing out of their permanent geographical position, and not their use and wont of maritime warfare, that has made the English, the descendants of these ■ old Saxons and Danes, the great lords of the sea, planters of nations, and difiusers of civilization in the modern world. But a power like this can only grow up under a favourable state of circumstances in the world gene- rally, or throughout a large portion of it. The commercial empire of the ancient Phenicians was reared during the most flourishing period of the early civilization of the east ; the commercial empire of modern Britain has in like manner arisen in the midst of the later civilization of the west. In the rude and turbulent ages that followed the overthrow of the Roman power in Europe, the existence of an extensive commerce in any hands was impos- sible. Almost continual wars everywhere, either between one people and another, or between two factions of the same people, or where there was any temporary relaxation of war, the still more brutifying eflt'ects of misgovernment and oppres- sion, left no time, no inclination, and no means for carrying on any considerable commerce. The great mass of the people were in all countries sunk in ignorance and in poverty ; their miserable condi- tion hardly permitted them to aspire after the enjoyment of anything beyond the absolute ne- cessaries of existence ; they were untaught in those arts and processes of industry by which com- merce is fed ; there had been little or no accumu- lation of capital, without which there can be no extensive commerce, nor any other species of un- dertaking that looks much beyond the passing day. It was only by slow degrees that Europe emerged out of this condition, and that the begin- nings of modern commerce were nurtured into strength and stability. We shall now notice the most interesting of the few facts that have been preserved relating to the foreign trade carried on by the Anglo-Saxons, in their chronological order. The first distinct notice which we have upon the subject is not of earlier date than the close of the eighth century. At this time, it appears that some English commodities were carried abroad, and probably some of those of the continent brought to this country, by the de- votees who went on pilgrimage to Rome, or by persons who found it convenient to make profession of being so engaged. It is not to be supposed that these pilgrimages opened the first commercial in- tercourse between England and the continent ; but they undoubtedly made the communication much more frequent than it had been before. The prac- tice established by the Romans, of exacting certain payments at each seaport, on the embarkation and landing of goods, appears to have been retained in all the new kingdoms formed out of the western empire ; and their amomit probably long remained nearly the same that had been paid under tlie im- perial regime. Hence the name of customs, or some equivalent term, by which they were called, as if they had been dues universally and imme- morially demanded. There is a letter still extant, from the French Emperor Charlemagne to Ofia, king of Mercia, and Bretwalda, which seems to 266 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book II. Saxon Ships. From an Engraving in Strntt's Chronicle of England, made up from various Saxon illuminations. have been the result of a negotiation between the two sovereigns, respecting the exaction of these duties in the case of the English pilgrims tra- velling to Rome. The document must be assigned to the year 795, in which OfFa died, at the latest ; and it may be regarded as the earliest commercial treaty on record, or perhaps that ever was entered into, between England and any other country. It runs as follows : " Charles, by the grace of God, king of the Franks and Lombards, and patrician of the Romans, to our venerable and most dear brother, OfFa, king of the Mercians, greeting. First, we give thanks to Almighty God, for the sincere Catholic faith which we see so laudably ex- pressed in your letters. Concerning the strangers, who, for the love of God and the salvation of their souls, wish to repair to the thresholds of the blessed apostles, let them travel in peace without any trouble; nevertheless, if any are fovmd among them not in the service of religion, but in the pursuit of gain, let them pay the established duties at the proper places. We also will that merchants shall have lawful protection in our kingdom according to our command ; and if they are in any place unjustly aggrieved, let them apply to us or our judges, and we shall take care that ample justice be done to them." There is more of the letter, which it is unnecessary to quote. We gather from it that the profession of pilgrimage had already been taken advantage of as a cloak for smuggling; and, no doubt, in this way the practice gave an impulse to trade. Even the smuggler is sometimes of use ; he may be the means of planting a traffic which would not have grown up without his assistance, and which, of however objectionable a character originally, may eventually assume a legitimate form, and attain to great value and importance. It b conjectured that articles in gold and silver were probably the principal commodities in which these traders from England dealt, who thus put on the guise of pilgrims, with the view of cheating the custom-house of its dues. Sucli articles, being of small bulk, would be easily concealed in a tra- veller's baggage ; and it appears that even at this early age the English works in gold and silver were famous over the continent.* Already, it may be noted, there seem to have been Jews resident in England and even in the northern kingdom of Northumberland; for among the Excerpts of Archbishop Egbert of York — which must have been compiled between the years 735 and 766 — we find a transcript of a foreign canon, prohibithig Christians from imitating the manners of that people," or partaking of their feasts. The Jews have been the introducers or chief encouragers of foreign commerce, especially in jewellery, articles made of tlie precious metals, and other such luxu- ries, in most of the countries of modern Europe. From this date the history of Anglo-Saxon com- merce is again nearly a blank till we come down to the reign of Alfred. Of this illustrious prince, it is recorded in relation to the present subject, that he cultivated an intercourse with distant countries, in which he seems to have had in view the exten- sion of commerce as well as other objects. He appears to have kept up a frequent communication with Rome ; and his biographer Asser states, that he also corresponded with Abel, the patriarch of Jerusalem, who sent him several valuable presents of oriental commodities. His embassy to the Christians in India is mentioned, not only by Malmesbury and other authorities of the next age, but by the contemporary compiler of the Saxon Chronicle, who says that Bishop Swithelm made his way to St. Thomas, and returned in safety. • Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, i. 248. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 267 Malmesbury gives Siglielm as the name of the ad- venturous bishop of Shireburn, and relates that lie brought back from India aromatic liquors and splen- did jewels; some of the latter, Malmesbury says, were still remaining in the treasury of his church vvheu he wrote, in the twelfth century. Sighelm is stated to have left England in the year 883, and to have gone in the first instance to Rome, from which he probably sailed up the Mediterranean to Alexandria, and then made his way by Bassora to the Malabar coast, where it is certain that a colony of Syrian Christians, who regarded St. Thomas as their apostle, were settled from a very early period. Asser relates that he received, on one occasion, as a present from Alfred, a robe of silk, and as much incense as a strong man could carry : these pre- cious commodities must have been obtained from the East. But the interest which Alfred took in hearing of remote parts of the earth is most distinctly shown in the accounts he has himself given us of the two voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan ; the first to the North Seas, the second towards the east of the Baltic. These voyages were related to Alfred by the navigators themselves ; and he has inserted what they told him in his Saxon translation of the Latin geography of Orosius. It has been observed that Alfred " obtained from Ohthere and Wulfstan such information of the Baltic sea with the adja- cent countries, as far exceeded that of professed geographers, either before or after his time, till the route of Ohthere was retraced in the year 1553 by the English navigator Chancellor, who was sup- posed the original discoverer of tlie northern pas- sage to Russia."* Ohthere rounded the North Cape, and penetrated into the White Sea, from which he ascended a great river, which must have lieen the Dwina, on which Archangel now stands. Wulfstan navigated the Baltic as far as to the land of the Estum, the present Prussia. " This East- land," says his narrative, " is very large, and there be a great many towns, and in every town there is a king ; and there is a great quantity of honey and fish. The king and the richest men drink mare's milk, and the poor and the slaves drink mead. There be very many battles between them. There is no ale brewed amid the Estum, l)ut there is mead enough." Pytheas had re- marked the same abundance of honey and use of mead, among the people of this coast, twelve cen- turies before. It is one of Alfred's many great merits and titles to perpetual and grateful remembrance, that he first called into action, and gave proof of what could be achieved by the natural right arm of England — her maritime strength. The year 887, tlie sixth of his reign, while he was engaged in that first struggle with the northern invaders which ended so disastrously, is marked as the year in which he fitted out his first few ships. Twenty years later, in his days of prosperity and power, he l)uilt a much larger fleet, and introduced certain • Macplieison's Commerce, i.263. important improvements in the form of the ves- sels, which, whether suggested by his own inven- tive sagacity, or borrowed, as it has been conjec- tured they might have been, from the galleys then used in the Mediterranean, of which he had ob- tained models, he showed at least his usual active and inquisitive spirit in searching after, and his good sense in adopting. The Saxon Chronicler says that Alfred's ships were neither like those of the Danes nor those of the Frisians, but were made in a fashion which he himself thought would be more serviceable than that of either. They were twice as long as the aescas, as they were called, of the Northmen, and also higher than theirs ; in sailing, they were swifter and less un- steady. Some of them had sixty oars, some more. Yet, notwithstanding the statements of some later writers, we have no authentic account of any attempt by Alfred to create an English mercantile marine. One of his laws only shows that merchant ships sometimes arrived in England in those days ; and even this regulation regards not the cargoes of these foreign vessels, but the passengers. The only notice that has been found of the export of any English commodity in the time of Alfred, is the mention of some of the famous native breed of dogs having been sent as a present to Folk, arch- bishop of Rheims, in France.* By far the most remarkable and significant event in tlie whole history of Anglo-Saxon com- merce, is the law passed in the reign of King Athelstan, in the second quarter of the tenth cen- tury, by which it was enacted that every merchant who should have made three voyages over the sea with a ship and cargo of his own, should have the rank of a thane or nobleman. The liberality of this law has usually been ascribed exclusively to the enlightened judgment of Athelstan ; but we are entitled to presume that it must have been also in some degree in accordance with the gene- ral feeling of the country ; for, not to mention that it must have been passed with the consent of the Witenagemot, it is unlikely that so able and pru- dent as well as popular a monarch as Athelstan would have attempted in regard to such a matter to do violence to public opinion, without the ac- quiescence and support of which the measure could have had little efiicacy or success. We may take this decree conferring the honours of nobi- lity upon commerce, therefore, as testifying not only to the liberality and wisdom of Athelstan, but also to the estimation in which commerce had already come to be held among the English people. It may be regarded as a proof that the Anglo- Saxons had never entertained much of that pre- judice against the pursuits of trade, which we find so strongly manifested during the middle ages, wherever the political and social institutions were moulded upon, and fully animated by the spirit of the feudal system. But it is especially interesting in reference to our present subject, as an indication of the growing importance of English commeice • Macpherson.i. 265. 268 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. and of the public sense of that importance. From this time English fleets and ships of war come to be frequently mentioned. Athelstan assisted his nephew, Louis IV. of France, in his contest with tlie Emperor Otho, by sending a fleet to the coast of Flanders, to ravage the emperor's territories in that quarter. This was done in conformity with a treaty of mutual defence, which is memorable as the first of the kind ever entered into between the two kingdoms. Edgar's navy, and also that which Etiielred fitted out by a tax upon all the lands in the kingdom to repel the Danes, make a great figure in the history of the next half century. Some accounts make Edgar's fleet to have amounted to between three and four thousand ships — a statement resembling in its style of evi- dent hyperbole the whole history the old monkish chroniclers have given us of this king, whose lavish benefactions to the church have secured him an extraordinary return of their gratitude and laudation. Ethelred's is recorded to have been the most numerous naval armament that had yet been seen in England ; so that it must have surpassed that of Edgar. Even in the disastrous reign of Ethelred, we find indications of the continued progress of trade, both coasting and foreign. In certain laws enacted by Ethelred and his Witan, at Wantage, in Berk- shire, it is declared, that every smaller boat aiTiving at Billingsgate (so old are that landing- place and that name) should pay for toll or custom one halfpenny ; a larger boat with sails, one penny ; a keel, or what we should now call a hulk, four pennies ; a vessel with wood, one piece of wood ; a boat with fish coming to the bridge, one half- penny, or one penny, according to her size. And from other passages of these laws, it appears that vessels were then wont to come to England from Rouen, with wine and large fish; from Flanders, Ponthieu, Normandy, France, Hegge (an unknown place), Liege, and Nivell. Certain German mer- chants, called the Emperor's men, when they came with their ships, are declared to be worthy of good laws — that is, of being treated with favour ; but they were to pay their dues, and were not to fore- stall the market to the prejudice of the citizens. The dues to be paid by the Emperor's men, who were probably the representatives of some trading company, were two grey cloths and one brown one, ten pounds of pepper, five pairs of men's gloves, and two vessels or measures (called cabillini colenni, the meaning of which is unknown) of vinegar, at Christmas, and the same again at Easter. These were probably the articles of which their cargoes usually consisted. It is also worth notice, that a meeting was held in this reign of the wise men of England and Wales for regulating the intercourse, commercial and general, between the two kingdoms ; at which rates of compensation were fixed for slaves, cattle, &c., that might be stolen or injured, and it was agreed to appoint a standing tribvmal, consisting of six English and six Welsh lawmen, or persons skilled in the law, to j settle all disputes between individuals of the two nations. Among many other interesting details derived from a volume of Saxon Dialogues, apparently in- tended for a school-book, which is preserved in the British Museum,* Mr. Turner has quoted the fol- lowing passage, in which the Merchant, as one of the characters introduced, gives an account of his occu- pation and way of life : "I say that I am useful to tlie king, and to ealdermen, and to the rich, and to all people. I ascend my ship with my merchandize, and sail over the sealike places, and sell my things, and buy dear things which are not produced in this land, and I bring them to you here witli great danger over the sea ; and sometimes I suffer ship- wreck, with the loss of all my things, scarcely escaping myself." - He is then asked, " What do you bring to us? " to which he answers, " Skins, silks, costly gems, and gold; various garments, pigment, wine, oil, ivory, and orichalcus (perhaps brass) ; copper and tin, silver, glass, and such like." The principle of all commercial dealings is dis- tinctly enough stated in the answer to the next question, — " Will you sell your things here as you bought them there?" " I will not; because what would my labour benefit me ? I will sell them here dearer than I bought them there, that I may get some profit to feed me, my wife, and children." The silks and other Oriental commodities here mentioned were usually, in all probability, obtained from Italy, or sometimes perhaps from Marseilles. Foreign commodities can only be obtained by the exchange of other commodities produced at home. But the Anglo-Saxons had not much to export. Not- withstanding the flourishing state to which British agriculture had been raised by the Romans, there is no evidence or reason for believing that a single cargo of corn was ever exported from England during the whole of the period now under review. Although, however, there is no positive authority to establish the fact, Mr. Macpherson thinks there can be little doubt that the Flemings, the great inanufaclurers of fine woollen goods for the whole of Europe, carried away great quantities of English wool in this period, as we know for certain they did in the following ages. That there was an export trade in wool would seem to be indicated by the dis- proportionate price the fleece appears to have borne compared with the whole sheep, and also by the high price of wool.f Probably also the mines of the difleient metals yielded something for exportation. The Abbe Raynal has mentioned, but without quoting his authority, that among the traders of different nations who resorted to the fairs established in France by King Dagobert in the seventh cen- tury, were the Saxons with the tin and lead of England ; J and Mr. Macpherson is of opinion that, as we know i'rom Domesday Book, that in the neighbourhood of Gloucester there were iron--works in the time of Edward the Confessor, which liad probably been kept up since before the invasion of • Cotton. MS. Tib. A iii. + Macpherson, i. 288. t Hist, des ludes, ii. i Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 269 the Romans, iron, too, as well as lead and. tin, may ])erhaps have been one of the few British exports duringthe Anglo-Saxon period. This writer thinks it also not impossible that mineg of the precious metals may have been wrought at this time in England, and part of their produce exported, although the exist- ence of such mines in the island is unnoticed by any historian since the beginning of the Roman dominion, with the exception of Bede.* It is certain that large sums in gold and silver were raised in the country on ditferent occasions, and much coin or bullion repeatedly carried out of it ; and it appears difficult to comprehend whence all this wealth could be obtained with so few manufac- tures and so little exportable produce of any kind. The early eminence of the Anglo-Saxons in the art of working gold and silver may be taken as affording another presumption that, whencesoever procured, there was no want of these metals in the island. " We have undoubted proof," says Mr. Macpherson, " that the English jewellers and workers of goM and silver were eminent in their professions, and that probably as early as the begin- ning of the seventh century. ... So great was the demand for highly-finished trinkets of gold and silver, that the most capital artists of Germany resorted to England ; and, moreover, the most pre- » Macpherson, i. 291. cious specimens of foreign workmansliip were im- ported by the merchants."* On the other hand, articles in gold and silver seem to have been the chief description of manufactured goods exported from England in this period. Among the exports from Britain during part of this period are supposed to have been horses, because one of King Athelstan's laws prohibits their being carried out of the kingdom unless they were to be given as prej:cnts. Another part of the export trade, which was probably carried on to a much greater extent, was the trade in slaves. The mission of Augustine, which effected the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, was, it will be recollected, the memorable result of the attention of Augustine's patron, Gregory, having been at- tracted by the appearance of a group of young Angles exposed for sale as slaves in the market- place of Rome. Afterwards several laws and ecclesiastical canons were passed prohibiting the sale of Christian slaves to Jews or Pagans. Finally it was enacted that no Christians, and no peri^ons who had not committed some crime, should be sold out of the country. But William of Malmes- bury, who wrote nearly a century after the Conquest, affirms that the practice of selling even their nearest relations had not been alto- • Macplieison, i. 290. Ektuance op tier Mine of Odin, an ancient Lead-mino in Derbyshire : the hill called Jfam Tor in the distance. 270 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. gether abandoned by the people of Northum- berland in his own memory. And in the contem- porary biography of Wulfstan, who was Bishop of Worcester at the time of the Conqviest, the following curious account is given: — "There is a sea-port town called Bristol, opposite to Ireland, into which its inhabitants make frequent voyages on account of trade. Wulfstan cured the people of this town of a most odious and inveterate custom, which they derived from their ancestors, of buying men and women in all parts of England, and exporting them to Ireland for the sake of gain. The young women they commonly got with child, and carried them to market in their pregnancy, that they might bring a better price. You might have seen with sorrow long ranks of young persons of both sexes, and of the greatest beauty, tied together with ropes, and daily exposed to sale ] nor were these men ashamed, O horrid wickedness ! to give up their nearest relations, nay, their own children, to slavery. Wulf- stan, knowing the obstinacy of these people, some- times stayed two months among them, preaching every Lord's Day, by which, in process of time, he made so great an impression upon their minds that they abandoned that wicked trade, and set an ex- ample to all the rest of England to do the same."* But for this remarkable passage it would scarcely liave been suspected that there ever was a time when the natives of England were regularly ex- ported to be sold as slaves to the Irish. Their principal purchasers were probably the Danes, or Ostmen (that is. Eastern men), as they were called, who were at this time the dominant people in Ire- land, and especially were masters of nearly the whole line of the coast opposite to Britain. They appear to have carried on a considerable commerce both with England and o.ther countries. Chester, as well as Bristol, is particularly mentioned as one of the ports to which Irish ships were accustomed to resort about the time of tlie Norman Conquest. William of Malmsbury describes the inhabitants of Chester as depending in his day upon Ireland for a supply of the necessaries of life ; and, in another place, he speaks of the great distress the Irish would suffer if they were deprived of their trade with England. Marten skins are mentioned in Domesday Book among the commodities brought by sea to Chester ; and this appears, from other authorities, to have been one of the exports in ancient times from Ireland. Notices are also found of merchants from Ireland landing at Cambridge with cloths, and exposing their merchandise to sale.f Other English ports which are noticed as possessed of ships at the time of the Conquest, or immediately before that event, are Pevensey, Rum- ney, Hythe, Folkstone, Dover, Sandwich, South- wark, and London. Bede speaks of merchants' ships sailing to Rome ; and it appears that trading- vessels sometimes joined together, and went out armed for their mutual protection.! At all the above places, and at every other sea- port in the kingdom, customs seem to have been • AngUa Sacra, ii. 258. + See Turner, iii. 113. t Ibid. exacted upon the arrival and departure of ships and goods, both by the king and by the lord, ge- nerally called the earl or comes, whose property or under whose protection the town was ; and trade was besides fettered by many restrictive regulations. At Chester, for instance, if a ship arrived or sailed without the king's leave, she was subject to a line of forty shillings to the king and the earl for every one of her crew. If they came against the king's express prohibition, the ship, the men, and the cargo were forfeited to the king. Ships that came in with the king's permission might sell quietly what they brought, paying at their departure to tlie king and the earl four pennies for every last, or load. Those that brought marten skins, however, were bound to allow the king the pre-emption of .™ them, and, for that purpose, to show them to an officer before any were disposed of, under a penalty of forty shillings. It is possible, however, that some of these oppressive regulations may liave been first imposed by the Conqueror. At the time when the account in Domesday Book was drawn up, the port of Chester yielded to the crown a revenvie of forty-five pounds, and three timbres (whatever quantity that may have been) of marten skins. Of the internal trade of England during tliis period we know very little. That it was on a very diminutive scale might be inferred from the single fact, that no person was allowed to buy anything above the value of twenty pennies, except within a town, and in the presence of the chief magistrate, or of two or more witnesses. Such at least is the regvilation found in the laws of King Hlothaere of Kent, who reigned in the seventh century. Another enactment in the same collection is, that " if any of the people of Kent buy anything in the city of London, he must have two or three honest men, or the king's port-reve (who was the chief magistrate of the city), present at the bargain." And a third of Illothaere's laws is, — " Let none exchange one thing for anotlier except in the ])resence of the sheriff", the mass-priest, the lord of the manor, or some other person of undoubted veracity. If they do otherwise tliey shall pay a fine of thirty shil- lings, besides forfeiting the goods so exchanged to the lord of the manor." These regulations were probably intended in part to prevent fraud and disputes, and they might perhaps be in some measure serviceable for that purpose in an age when writing was not in common use ; but there can be no doubt that they liad principally in view the protection of the revenue of the king and the lord of the manor ; to each of whom, it appears from Domesday Book, a certain proportion of the price of everything sold for more than twenty pennies, was paid, the one-half by the buyer, and the other by the seller. The amount here specified would prevent the rule from affect- ing the ordinary purchases of the people in sliops, to which it must be supposed they were permitted to resort for the necessaries of life without any of these annoying formalities. The transactions to which it applied would chiefly take place at the Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 271 public markets or fairs, which appear to have been established in various parts of the country, and which in all the greater towns were probably held every week. Originally the Sunday seems to Imve been the usual market-day ; but the repeated efforts of the church at length efitcted the general substitution of Saturday. Besides the weekly markets, however, there were probably others of a more important kind held at greater intervals. At many of the markets, besides the duties exacted upon all sales, a toll appears to have been de- manded either from every individual frequenting the market, or at least from all who brought goods to dispose of. Most of these commercial usages of the Anglo-Saxons were inherited from their pre- decessors the Romans. They had also, to a certain extent, the advan- tage of the facilities of communication between the different parts of the country, which had been created while it was in the occupation of that great people. The four great highways appear to have received Saxon names, and they were undoubtedly maintained in use during the whole of the Saxon period, as were also, it may be presumed, most of tlie other roads, or streets, as they were called, with which the country was intersected in all directions. And besides the navigable rivers, it has been sup- posed that artificial canals were cut in some places. A canal in Huntingdonshire, in particular, called Kingsdelf, is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle under the year 963 ; and several of the boundary ramparts, erected primarily for the purposes of defence, appear to have had wide ditches, along which boats might be dragged. The subject of the Money of the Anglo-Saxons is in some parts extremely perplexed and obscure. The different denominations of money of which mention is found, are, the pound, the mark, the mancus, the ora, the shilling, the thrimsa, the sceatta, the penny, the triens, the halfling, or half- penny, the feorthling, or farthing, and the styca, or half-farthing. Of some of these, however, we know with certainty little more than the names. The first difficulty that occurs is in regard to which of these kinds of money were actual coins, and which were merely nominal, or money of ac- count. Upon this part of the subject, Mr. Ruding, from whom it has received the latest as well as the most elaborate investigation, comes, though not without hesitation, to the following conclusion : " That the penny, halfpenny, farthing, and half- farthing were actual coins; as was probably the triens, which divided the penny into three equal parts ; and that the mancus, the mark, tlie ora, the shilling, and the thrimsa, were only money of account ; or, that if the mancus was ever current among the Anglo-Saxons, it was a foreign coin, and was never imitated in their mints."* There is no doubt that the pound was merely money of , account. The sceatta seems to have been rather a general expression for a piece of money, than the • Annuls of the Ccinago.i. 316. (Edit, of 1819.) denomination either of a coin or of a particular sum. Others, however, have held that the sceatta, the mancus, the shilling, the thrimsa, and perhaps also the ora, were all coins. The next question that arises relates to the metal of which each coin was made. Mr. Ruding is of opinion, " that no evidence has yet been adduced to prove that the Anglo-Saxons struck any gold money ; but thaf^ the balance of probability appa- rently inclines to the determination that no such money was issued from their mints." * By others the mancus is supposed to have been of gold ; and Mr. Turner thinks that both gold and silver were used in exchanges in an uncoined state. f It is certain that mention is repeatedly made of pay- ments in gold. It is agreed that the penny, the halfpenny, the farthing, and the triens (if that was a coin) were all of silver ; and that tlie styca was of copper, or of that metal with an alloy. In fact, no Saxon coins have yet been discovered except some of those last mentioned. Of pennies and stycas some large hoards have been found within these few years. In April, 1817, a wooden box was turned up by a ploughman in a field near Dorking, in Surrey, which contained nearly seven hundred Saxon pennies, principally of the coinages of Ethelwulf, the son and successor of Egbert, and of Ethelbert, the father of Alfred, but partly also of those of preceding kings of Wessex, of Mercia, and of East-Anglia.J Eighty-three silver coins of King Ethelred, and two of his father. King Edgar, were found in 1820, by a peasant while digging a woody field in Bolstads Socked, in Sweden, and are now deposited in the Royal Cabinet of Anti- quities at Stockholm. § And in 1832, a brass vessel containing about eight thousand stycas, principally of the kings of Northumberland, was found at Hexham in that county. Abovit five thousand of them were recovered from the persons into whose hands they had fallen ; and a selection of about three hundred of them is now in the British Museum.|l But the most important, and unfortunately also the darkest question of all, is that of the determi- nation of the value of these several coins or deno- minations of money. There has been the greatest doubt and difference of opinion both as to the absolute value or weight, and as to the relative value, of nearly every one of them. Almost the only thing which is perfectly certain is, that tlie pound was always understood to be a full pound of silver. It appears, however, to have been not the common troy pound, but another measure, long known in Germany by the name of the Cologne pound, and used in this country as the Tower or Mint weight down to the reign of Henry VII. It was three quarters of an ounce less than the pound • Annals of the Coinage, i. 316. ( Edit, of 1819.) t Hist, of Anglo-Saxons, ii. 470, 471. i See account of these Coins by Taylor Combe, Esq., in the Arcliseolog'a, vol. xix. (for 1821 ) p. 1 10. § Turner's Anglo-Saxons, ii. 480. I) See account of these stycas, by John Adamson, Esq., with en- jjravings of some hundreds of them, in the Archaeologia, vol. xxv. (for 1834), pp. 229-310 ; and vol. xxvi. (for 183G) pp. 346-8. , 272 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. tToy, and was equal, therefore, to only eleven ounces and a quarter troy weight, that is, to 5400 grains. Out of this amount of silver, throughout the whole Saxon period, the rule seems to have been to coin 240 silver pennies, each of which would therefore weigh 22^ of our grains. Accordingly, tliis is about the average weight of the Saxon pennies that have been found. Our present pound no longer means a pound of silver of any denomination; but the old relation between the pound and the penny, it will be remarked, is still preserved — the value of the pound is still 240 pence. A few passages in old writers and documents have inclined some antiquaries to suspect that the Saxons had two kinds of pennies, u greater and a less ; but, on the whole, this notion does not seem to be tenable. Tlie name of the penny in Saxon is variously written, — peneg, penig, peninc, pening, penincg, penning, and pending. Supposing the value of the penny to have been tlms ascertained, we have obtained that also of each of the inferior coins. The halfpenny, which, as existing specimens show, w^as also of silver, would weigh about IH of our grains, and the feorthling, or farthing, about 5^. But no Saxon farthings have been discovered, and we do not know whether the coin was of silver or copper. The styca was of copper much alloyed, in other words, of bronze ; but, as it was the half of the farthing, its precise value would be estimated at 2||- grains of silver. All the stycas that have yet been found are from the mints of the Northumbrian kings and the Arch- bishop of York ; but the circulation of the coin appears to have been general throughout England. If there were such coins as the thrimsa and the iriens, the former at least was probably of silver. The value of the thrimsa seems to have been three pennies, or Gli grains of silver ; that of the triens, the third of a penny, or 7^^- grains of silver. These conclusions, as we have intimated, are not unattended with some difficulties ; but they seem, on the whole, to be tolerably well made out, and at any rate it would only embarrass the statement, without adding any information of the least interest or value for our present purpose, to enter upon a discussion of the doubts or objections that have been raised upon certain points. One of the main hinges on which the investi- gation of the subject of the Saxon money turns is the question of the nature and value of the shilling. The Norman shilling, like that of the present day, was the twentieth part of the pound, and consisted of twelve pence ; and this is'the scale according to which the payments in Domesday Book are com- monly stated. The scill or scilling of the Saxons is the denomination of money most frequently men- tioned in their laws and writings, and it appears to have been that in which sums were usually reck- oned ; yet no Saxon shilling has ever been found, and the different ancient accounts and computations in which it is mentioned seem to be only recon- cileable upon the supposition that it was of fluc- tuating value. Both these facts go to support the conclusion that the shilling was not a coin, but only a denomination of money of accompt. At one time it appears to have contained five, and at another only four pennies : if there were not indeed two sorts of shillings circulating together of these different values. * When the shillhig contained five pennies its value was the forty-eighth part of the pound, or 112^ grains troy of silver ; when it contained four pennies only, it was the sixtieth part of the pound, and its value was only 80 grains troy of silver. The principal evidence for there ever having heen a shilling containing only ibur pennies is a law of Athelstan, in which 7200 shillings are distinctly stated to be equal to 120 pounds; in which case there must have been sixty sliillings in each pound. But there is equally good evidence that five pennies was the value of the shilling both before and after the time of Athelstan ; and it has therefore been supposed that the shilling was depreciated by that king, and afterwards restored to its ancient value. In the laws of Canute the shilling appears clearly to be reckoned the forty- eighth part of the pound ; and Elfric, the gram- marian, who wrote in this age, expressly states that there were five pennies in the shilling. If the mancus ever was a coin, Mr. Ruding is of opinion that it became latterly merely a deno- mination of money of accompt. The commonly received etymology of the word, from the Latin manii cusum, struck with the hand (though tliis etymology may be doubted), would seem to favour the notion that it had been a coin at one time ; but as we find the mancus of silver mentioned as well as the mancus of gold, it must be concluded that the name came to be afterwards used as that simply of a certain sum, for it is improbable that any coin w^as in use of so large a size as a silver mancus would have been. The value of the mancus is stated by Elfric to have been thirty pennies, in the same passage in which he states five pennies to have made a shilling. The mancus, therefore, con- tained six Saxon shillings, or was of the value of 675 grains troy of silver, being rather more than is contained in seven of our present shillings. It is observable that a gold coin, sometimes called a mancus, in other cases known by other names, cir- culated during the middle ages in many countries both of Europe and the East, the weight of which was 56 grains troy, which would be just about the weight of gold equivalent to thirty Saxon pennies, on the supposition, which other considerations render probable, that the relative value of gold and silver was then as twelve to one. Of this weight were the mancuses or ducats of Italy, Germany, France, Spain, and Holland, the sultani of Constantinople, the sequins of Barbary, and the sheriffs of Egypt. The mark used to be supposed the same wi'.li the mancus, but this opinion is now quite expl(;dcd. The mark appears to have been a Danish deno- mination of money, and to have been introduced into this country by the Danish settlers, the first nien- • Mr. Rudinj; is inclined to think that this was the case. Sco his Annals of the Coiiuge, i. 310. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 273 tion of it being found in the articles of agreement between Alfred and Guthrun. Some of the notices would seem to imply that, at first, the mark was accounted equivalent in value to only a hundred Saxon pennies ; but it certainly came eventually to be estimated at one hundred and sixty pennies, that is, at two-thirds of the pound. Two-thirds of a pound is still the legal value of a mark. The mark, therefore, may be set down as of the value of 3600 grains troy of silver. The mark has never been supposed to be a real coin, except by those who have taken it for the same with the mancus. The ora was also a Danish denomination, and appears to have been tlie eighth part of the mark. Its value, therefore, would be twenty Saxon pennies, or 450 grains troy of silver. There appears also, however, to have been an ora which was valued at only sixteen pennies. The amount of silver, .5400 troy grains, which made an Anglo-Saxon pound, is now coined into 21. 16^. 3rf. sterling. The value, therefore, of each of the Saxon coins, according to the view that has now been taken, would be as stated in the following Table :— The Pound, — Money of Account equivalent to 5400 grains troy of Silver,. . .or £2 The Mark, ditto 3600 .or 1 The Mancus, ....... ditto (probably) 675 or about The Ora, ditto 450 or The greater Shilling, ditto (probably) I ' 2^- or The femaller Shilling, ditto (probably) 90 or The Thrimsa, ditto (probably) 67| or The Penny, Silver Coin, weighing. . . . 22J-, value in sterling money about The Triens, ditto (probably) 15 The .Halfpenny, ditto 11^ The Farthing, ditto (perhaps) .... about. ... hh The Styca, . . . .Copper Coin, . . . .equivalent to about 2f about ^ of a Farthing. 16 17 7 4 1 3 9 04 84- 2 The Saxon coins are generally sufficiently rude in workmanship ; and this circumstance has been used as an argument to prove that the Saxons brought the art of coining with them to Britain from Germany, and did not acquire it by imitation of the Roman models. The earliest Saxon coin that has been appropriated is one in silver (a penny apparently, though commonly called a sceatta) of Ethelbert, king of Kent, who reigned from 56 1 to 616, the patron of St. Augustine. As the coin does not exhibit the usual Christian symbol of the cross, it may be presumed to have been struck before the year 597, in which Ethelbert was bap- tized. According to Mr. Ruding's description, " it bears on the obverse the name of the monarch, and on the reverse a rude figure, which occurs on many of the sceattcc, and which is supposed to be intended to represent a bird." But other coins that exist without names, or w^ith names that cannot be deciphered, may be older than this. Besides the kings of the different states of the Heptarchy, and afterwards of all England, the Archbishops of Can- terbury and York had mints and issued money in the Anglo-Saxon times. In addition to the name of the king or the archbishop, the coins usually contain that of the moneyer by whom they were struck, and from the time of Athelstan also that of the town where tlie mint was situated. The later kings appear to have usually had numerous moneyers, and mints in all the principal towns throughout the kingdom.* • Complete lists of tlie moneyers and mints in each reigu, as far as tliey c<n he recovered, are given in Ruding's elaborate and exact Annals of tlie Coina(»e, 2nd Edit. 5 vols. 8vo. and 1 4to. of Plates, Lon. 1819. On the subject of the Anglo-Saxon Coinage, the reader may also ponsult Bishop Fleetwood's ChroniconPreciosum, 2nd Edit. 8vo. I,on. 17-15; the Introduction to Leake's Historical Account of English money from the Conquest, 2iid Edit. 8vo. Lond. 1745 (but the views of these earlier writers have been corrected in some im- portant respects by the results of subsequent investigation); Pejrge's Dissertations on some Anglo- Saxon Remains, 4to. Loa. 1756; Clarke's VOL, I. Besides the coins of their own minting, several foreign coins appear to have circulated among the Anglo-Saxons, especially the byzantine gold solidi, commonly called byzantines, or byzants, each weighing seventy-three grains troy, and being of the value of forty Saxon pennies, or (at their estimation of the relative values of gold and silver) nine shil- lings and fourpence-halfpenny of our present money. Thus St. Dunstan is recorded to have purchased the estate of Hindon (now Hendon), in Middlesex, from King Edgar, for 200 gold byzantines, and then to have presented it to the monks of St. Peter in Westminster.* There were also silver byzantines, which, according to Camden, were valued at two shillings each. At an early period even some of the Roman imperial money might remain in use. " That gold and silver," Mr. Turner remarks, " had abounded in the island while it was pos- sessed by the Romans and Britons, the coins that have been found at every period since, almost every year, sufficiently testify ; and it Avas the frequency of these emerging to view which made treasure- trove an import'diit part of our ancient laws, and which is mentioned by Alfred as one of tlie means of becoming wealthy."! Slaves and cattle passed also as a sort of cir- culating medium during this period so generally that they are spoken of as living money. Cattle, the first wealth of mankind, were probably in most countries the first money ; that is to say, commodities were valued at so many cattle, and cattle were com- monly given in exchange for all other things. When metal money, therefore, was first introduced, Connection of the Roman, Saxon, and English Coins, 4to. Lon. 1767 (both Pefige and Clarke endeavour to show that the Saxons coined gold); and Folkes's Tables of English Coins, publislipd at the expense of the Society of Antiquaries, 4to. Lon. 1763 (in this work was announced the important discovery that the Saxon pound was the Old Tower or Colojjne pound). • Camden's Britannia, 399. ' + Ilist. Ang. Sax. iii. i237. or THE 274 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. it was looked upon not as a convenient represen- tative of commodities or property of all kinds, but only as a substitute for cattle ; some of the oldest coins have the figures of cattle stamped on them ; and in some languages money was actually called cattle. Thus pecus, cattle, is the origin of the Latin pecunia, money, and of our English pe- cuniary. The same thing is very curiously shown by the history of another still existing term, the word mulct, meaning a fine or pecuniary penalty. Mulct is a translation of the Latin mulcta, or, as it is more properly written, multa, which was an ancient Roman law-term for a fine, but which the Roman lawyers and antiquaries themselves, as we learn from Aulus Gellius, admitted to have originally meant a sheep, or rather a ram. Varro asserted that it was a Samnite word, and that the Samnites, the descendants of the old Sabines, had used it in that sense within his own recollection. It is re- markable that the original word still survives, in its original signification, in the Celtic dialects of Ire- land and Scotland, in the former of which a wether is to this day molt, and in the latter mult* Hence, in fact, come the French mouton, and our English mutton. The Anglo-Saxons, it would appear, although they had metallic money, had not com- pletely passed out of the state of only commencing civilization in which cattle serve the purposes of money. A certain value seems to have been affixed by the law to horses, cows, sheep, and slaves, at which they might be seized by a creditor in pay- ment of a debt due to him ; and it is supposed that all kinds of fines, or pecuniary penances, imposed either by the state or the church, might be dis- charged either in dead or living money. The church, however, which to its honour from the first opposed itself to slavery, and greatly contributed by its systematic discouragement and resistance to put down that evil, early refused to accept of slaves instead of money in the payment of penances. In the parts of Britain not occupied by the Saxons, it may be doubted if during the present period any metallic money was coined. No coins either of Scotland or of Wales of this antiquity have ever been found. Considering the intercourse, however, that in the later part of the period subsisted between both of these countries and England, it is impossible to suppose that, although they may .not have minted any money themselves, they could be unacquainted with its use. A few of the Saxon coins probably found their way both to the Welsh and Scotch, and supplied them with a scanty circulation. The Welsh laws indeed show that the denominations, at least of money, were familiarly known to that people ; but they seem to show, also, by the anxious minuteness with which they fix the price of almost every article that could become the subject of com- merce, that a common representative of value and medium of exchange was not yet in common use. These Welsh laws, for instance, in one section, lay down the prices of cats, of all different ages, and with a most elaborate discrimination of species and ■ Qranfa Origin and Descent of the Gael, 145. properties. This may be regarded as a rude attempt to provide a substitute for barter without a coinage ; but the system which it would aim at establishing is in reality anything rather than an improvement of simple, unregulated barter. The real price, or exchangeable value, of a commoditj'^, depending as it does upon a variety of circumstances which are constantly in a state of fluctuation, is essentially a variable quantity, and we can no more fix it by a law than we can fix the wind. A law, therefore, attempting to fix it would only do injustice and mischief; it would, in so far as it was operative, merely substitute a false and unfair price of com- modities for their natural and proper price. When the prices of commodities, however, are thus settled by the law, it may be presumed that! the prices assigned are those generally borne by the] commodities at the time ; and in this point of viewj the law becomes of historic value as a record of ancient prices. Thus, from one of the Saxon laws* of King Ethelred we learn that in England the com- mon prices of certain articles, about the end of the tenth century, were as follows :- £. s. d. Of a Man, or slave A pound. . , equivalent to 2 16 Ssterl Horse , . Thirty shillings „ 1 15 2 Mjire or colt Twenty shillings „ 13 5 Ass or mule Twelve shillings „ U 1 Ox . . . Six shillings „ 7 Oi Cow . . . Five shillings ,, 5 6 Swine , . One shil. and 3 pennies „ 1 lOi Sheep . . One shilling ,, 1 2 Goat . . Two pennies „ 5i We are not to suppose, however, that these legal rates were always adhered to in actual sales and purchases. The prices of all commodities among the Saxons, no doubt rose and fell as they do at present, and with much more suddenness and vio- lence than now ; for, in that rude period, from the scarcity of capital, and the comparatively little communication between one place and another, supplies of all kinds were necessarily much more imperfectly distributed than they now are over both time and space; and any deficiency that might, from any cause, occur, was left to press with its whole severity upon the particular moment and the local market, without the greater abun- dance of other places or other seasons being admitted to relieve it. Comparative, though not absolute steadiness of prices, or at any rate a steady and calculable, in lieu of an irregular and jolting move- ment of prices, especially of those of the great neces- saries of subsistence, is, on the whole, the accom- paniment of an advanced civilization, the general character and result of which, indeed, may be said to be to repress irregularities of all kinds, and to bring all social processes nearer and nearer to the equability of those of mechanics. Several of the articles enumerated in the above list, we find men- tioned elsewhere, as bearing a variety of other prices. In one case, for instance, we find a slave purchased for half a pound; in another, for an yre of gold (the amount of which is not known) ; in another, for three mancuses, or about a guinea; in another, for five shillings and some pence.* In • See these instances collected by Mr. Turner, from Ilickes anJ other authorities in Hist Ang. Sax. iii. 90. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 275 these purchases it is generally mentioned, that be- sides the price, the toll was paid. " The tolls mentioned in some of the contracts for slaves," observes Mr. Turner, " may be illustrated out of Domesday Book. In the burgb of Lewis, it says, that at every purchase and sale, money was paid to the gerefa : for an ox, a farthing was collected ; for a man, four pennies." Slaves, of course, differed very considerably from one another in real value. On the other hand, the same sum at which a sheep is here rated at the end of the tenth century, ap- pears to have been also its legal price three hun- dred years before. At least, in the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, who reigned at the close of the seventh century, a sheep with its lamb is valued at a shilling. In another of Ina's laws, the fleece alone is valued at two pennies, that is, at two-fifths of the price of the entire sheep and lamb. This high price of wool, as has been mentioned above, is accounted for on the supposition that there was some foreign trade in that commodity in the Anglo-Saxon times. By a law of Edgar, in the latter half of the tenth century, the highest price which could be taken for a weigh of wool was fixed at half a pound of silver ; " being," observes Mr. Macpherson, " if the weigh contained then, as now, 182 pounds of wool, near three-fourths of a (Saxon) penny (equivalent to nearly twopence in modem money) for a pound ; a price which, as far as we are enabled to compare it with the prices of other articles, may be thought high."* Of the prices of other articles, however, in. the Anglo-Saxon times, with the exception of articles of agricultural produce, we scarcely know any- thing. Money being then comparatively scarce, the prices of most commodities were of course much lower than they now are — that is to say, they might be purchased for a much smaller amount of money. But there is no uniform proportion be- tween the prices of that period and those of the present day, some things being nominally dearer than they now are, as well as many others nomi- nally cheaper. Books, for instance, were still scarcer than money ; and accordingly their prices were then vastly higher than at present. We shall have occasion in the next chapter to mention some of the prices that were given by the Anglo-Saxons for books. It follows, that no correct estimate can be formed of the proportion generally between the value of money in those times and its value at pre- sent; for the calculation that might be true of some articles, would not hold in regard to others. Some conclusions, indeed, may be deduced from the comparison of the prices both of the same article at different periods, and of different articles during the same period ; but these will be most conveniently adverted to in speaking, as we shall now proceed to do, of the several arts or processes of industry of which the commodities in question are the products. In giving some account of the useful arts during the Anglo-Saxon period, it is scarcely possible to • Annals of Commerce, i. 288. exhibit a sketch of their progressive state from its commencement to its close; and yet, during the lapse of six centuries, external circumstances, vary- ing in their character and in the influence which they exercised, must, no doubt, at certain times, have given an impulse to industry, while at others the arts were repressed or continued in an un- improving and languid state. But it may safely be concluded that, on the whole, the various arts which contribute to the comfort or embellish- ment of life were in a state of greater advance- ment during the reigns of the last Anglo-Saxon monarchs than they could possibly be under the fierce domination of their restless and warlike ancestors who overran the island in the fifth cen- tury. Still the extent of that improvement which undoubtedly took place, was small considered with reference to so long a period, though it was as con- siderable as could be expected under the circum- stances of the times. The last fifty years have pro- duced in our own day greater changes, as compared with the period of similar length by which it was immediately preceded, than all the social changes which occurred during the Anglo-Saxon age, even when the extreme points, which offer the most striking contrasts, are compared with each other. The influence of order and the laws may be sup- posed in ordinary circumstances to have gradually increased in efficacy ; and under this protection men would pursue their avocations with augmented security both of life and property ; but there was nothing which could act with sudden and electric power on the nation, or quicken into fuller life and activity the germs of civilization which were ad- vancing with such slow development. In all the means by which a people can be sus- tained in a state above want, and supplied with food, shelter, and clothing, the Saxon invaders were inferior to their immediate predecessors in the occupation of the island, the Britons, who had derived their knowledge of the arts by which this is accomplished from the practices of their Roman conquerors. The produce they raised from the soil was sufficient not only for the consumption of the inhabitants of Britain, including a considerable non-agricultural population, but a surplus remained which was exported to Rome. Agriculture had been benefited by the improved methods of cultivation employed by the Romans ; and when they left the island, it was capable of diffusing considerable wealth. But the incursions of the northern bar- barians and the ravages which they committed in the better cultivated districts of the south, were calculated to act with most fatal effect on agricultural industry, and to weaken the stimulus to exertion by frequent and often successful attempts to rob the cultivator of the fruits of his labour. The advancement of agriculture as an art it would be hopeless to antici- pate under such discouragements; and, judging only by the known operation of human motives, its decline would be inevitable, as all the best allure™ ments to industry would be taken away, and it was verging to that point when the land would be tiUed i 276 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. only to such an extent as wovild aitord little beyond a narrow subsistence. Such was the state of agri- culture when the Britons invited over the Saxons ; and from them they could derive no improvements in this useful art, even if their protection had enabled it to recover from the depressed condition in which it was placed by the ravages of the Picts previous to their arrival. But the subsequent proceedings of the Saxons, by engendering acts of rapine and war- fare, still further oppressed industry. TVhen, how- ever, the Saxon invaders had become dominant, they applied themselves to the cidtivation of the soil, and the Britons in all probability were to a great extent their servants as well as their agri- cultural teachers. From this point agriculture began to emerge into that state in which we find it during the Anglo-Saxon period. Leaving these general views we proceed to notice the few facts relative to the state and practice cf agriculture, and the other useful arts which have been handed down to us on good authority. The great bulk of the Anglo-Saxon population were engaged in producing food. A considerable portion of each estate was woodland, which fur- nished a supply of fuel and timber for building ; and farms generally, though varying in size, were divided as at present, though in different proportions to those which now prevail, into meadow, pasture, arable, and woodland. Though the last-mentioned description of land was everywhere in the greatest abundance, the laws carefully protected both timber and growing trees, a wite, or penalty to the state, of thirty shillings being incurred by each offence, be- sides a payment of five shillings for each large tree that was cut down, and five pennies for every other; these two latter sums being probably an approximative estimate of the damage committed. The value of a tree appears to have been deter- mined by the number of swine which could be gathered under its branches. The boundaries of property were accurately defined, and were in- dicated by a ditch, a brook, a hedge, a wooden mark, or some other promment object. Gates are mentioned, so that the inclosures were pro- tected from the devastations of cattle. This was only necessary in the case of their arable land and that from which they obtained their crops of hay. There are many regulations concerning the pasturing of cattle in the Anglo-Saxon laws. In Wales, as appears from the Welsh laws, — and the case was probably the same in England, — the com- mon lands were pastured by the cattle belonging to several owners under the direction of a neatherd and his assistants. Pasturage, indeed, is the most im- portant department of rural economy when agri- culture is in a rude state. " The English people," says Stow, referring to this period, " might have been said to be graziers rather than ploughmen, for almost three parts of the kingdom were set apart for cattle." This must necessarily be the case when cattle run on the uncultivated lands, and require merely the superintendence of a neatherd or shepherd. A very trifling amoimt of labour is demanded compared with that which arable land requires. It is not profitable under these circum- stances to fatten cattle at a great cost with the pro- duce of cultivated land, and hence cattle generally form the chief wealth of a people who have not made much progress in agriculture. This was the case of the inhabitants of Britain under the Roman dominati(m, and it had not become altered in the Anglo-Saxon times. But though cattle formed a large proportion of the property of an Anglo-Saxon landed proprietor, an erroneous idea is apt to be formed of the degree of wealth which the possession of this description of agricultural stock implies. They were abundant because land was exceedingly cheap. An acre of land appears to have been fre- quently sold for the price of four sheep. Those animals which could feed on waste and common lands were cheap, while such as it was necessary partly to support by the produce of land cultivated for the purpose were disproportionately dear. A cow, as we have seen, was of six times less value than a horse, and an ass or mule was double the price of an ox. The value derived from neat stock must have been small, and the system of managing them very imperfect, when ewes were milked for the sake of the cheese which was made from their milk. The month of May was, however, denominated Trimilchi, because they commenced milking their cattle three times a-day. To keep live stock during a long winter is sometimes a difficult task in the present day, with all the natural and artificial aids obtained from grasses of a more valuable kind, better and larger crops of hay, green food in winter, and various modes of Y>reparing artificial food ; but when none of these improvements ex- isted, it may easily be conceived that cattle, although in large herds, would not be so productive of wealth as their numbers might lead us at first to suppose. The practice in the Hebrides wdthin the last half century probably resembled in many points this department of Anglo-Saxon husbandry. It was as follows, and the results would doubtless be some- what similar in the case of the Anglo-Saxons : — "AVith the exception of the milch-cows, but not even of the calves, they were all wintered in the field. If they were scantily fed with hay, it was coarse and withered, and half rotten ; or if they got a little straw, they were thought to be well taken care of. One-fifth of the cattle, on an average, used to perish every winter from starvation. When the cold had l)een unusually severe, and the snow had been long on the ground, one-half of the stock has been lost, and the remainder have afterwards been thinned by the diseases which poverty had engendered."* Dr. Walker f adduces a fact which shows that there may be a large amount of live stock existing at the same time with an unproductive and poor system of husbandry : — " A farm in Kin- tail was found to have on it 40 milch cows, which, with their young stock, from a calf to a four-year old, made about 120 head of catde; besides 80 • Cattle; Lib. of Useful Knowledge, p. f>7. + AgficuUural Siiney of Iho Hebrides. Chap. IY.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY : A.D. 449~10G6. 277 ewes and 40 goats, which, with their young, were about 250 ; and 10 horses. Yet this"^^ farm, with arable land sufficient to supply all the family, was rented at 20/. a-year." This 'was about the year 1810. The Saxon Chronicle mentions several years in which there was an extraordinary mortality among cattle. The year 897 and the two previous 5'ears were thus remarkable. The year 986 is noted for the great murrain of cattle ; and in 1041 it is stated that more cattle died, either owing to various diseases or the severity of the weather, than any man ever remembered. In 1054, the writer of the Chronicle states, " was so great loss of cattle as was not remembered for many winters before." There can be . little doubt that the Anglo-Saxon system of cattle husbandry was exceedingly imper- fect, that every year probably some loss was sus- tained in consequence, and that on the whole it bore considerable resemblance to that which up to a recent period existed in tlie Hebrides. Cattle were, however, fattened for slaughter. Two fatted cows are mentioned, in an existing Anglo-Saxon manu- script, as forming a portion of the annual rent paid for the occupation of land.* The possessions of the Anglo-Saxons in swine were, there is reason to believe, as available, or at least nearly so, as their herds of neat cattle, in fur- nishing them with supplies of flesh-meat. The sheep, it has already appeared, was prized chiefly on account of its fleece, wliich was valued at two-fifths of the price of the vvhole sheep. There are several additional facts which denote that it was less on account of their flesh than for the materials for clothing which the fleece afforded, that sheep were bred and reared. The average price of a sheep was about four shillings ; but the value which it would bring varied of course accord- ing to the season, and until a fortnight after Easter it was not considered worth more than a shilling. The fleece was not to be shorn until Midsummer, and from Easter until this period it was gradually increasing in value, owing to the increase of the wool, until it reached its highest price, just before the time of shearing. On the other hand, swine were of no value except as food, and yet they were kept in great numbers during the whole of the Anglo-Saxon times, and none of the common occu- pations of husbandry are more frequently mentioned than that of the swineherd. They could be driven into the woods and on the waste lands equally well with neat cattle ; and the food which they picked up there — the oak and beech-mast — was much superior for its fattening effects to that which w-as the spontaneous growth of the pastures in which cattle were fed.t Swine could therefore be fattened on what may be regarded as the surplus bounty of nature, while cattle could only be rendered fit for slaughter by a more expensive process — the con- sumption of cultivated produce, the fruits of much • Turner's A ni^lo-S.ixons, ii. 54? (5th edit.). t The word bacon is said to have been applied to the flesli of the Mvi tie, from llils custom of feeding tlie animal on beech-mast, the Bucient name of which was bucon. — Verstcgan's Uestitution of De- cayed Intelligence, p. 331. Be.iti.no Acor.ns fob .Swjne. Cotton MS. Nero, C 4. previous labour. Great numbers of swine there- fore were naturally kept, as they were a stock easily provided for, and supplying nutritious food at a small expense. In Domesday Book pan- nage (swine's food) is returned for 16,535 hogs in Middlesex; in Hertfordshire for 30,705; and in Essex, which was one continued forest, for 92,991. In the will of a nobleman two thousand swine are left to his two daughters ; another noble- man gives to his relations a hide of land with one hundred swine, and he directs two hundred swine to be given to two priests in equal proportions for the good of his soul. An individual gives land to a church on condition tliat two hundred swine are fed for the use of his wife. Besides the live stock already mentioned, they had goats, geese, and fowls. The arable portion of an estate was generally situated nearest to the dwelling-house as a matter of convenience. It produced but a small portion of what it w^as capable of doing under a better system of cultivation, but still sufficient to supply corn for bread ; and after tliis article of primary necessity had been piovided for, there remained grain for the purpose of making their favourite drink. Their bread was made of barley as well as wheat. The use of marl as a manure had been known in Britain under the Romans, and aniarl-pit is alluded to in an old Anglo-Saxon conveyance ; but the suc- cessful application of manures is only of modern introduction in British agriculture. The state of cultivation in some parts of Scotland before the Union may, perhaps, be taken as an illustra- tion of its condition in England before the Con- quest. The lands which were kept manured did not amount to a third or a fourth part of the whole farm, and sometimes did not equal 278 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. a fifth or a sixth. The remainder was culti- vated when that part of the farm which had been for some time arable was exhausted of its natural fertility.* A great breadth of land was required to supply the wants of a small number of con- sumers, as the relative quantity of produce was small, though at the same time the labour and cost of cultivation were proportionably low. Famines were frequent ; but these were a consequence of imperfect social relations, the want of intercourse which prevented men from being mutually ac- quainted with each other's wants, the non-existence of a class of individuals who busied themselves in attendmg to the means for obviating these events, • Smith's Wealth of Nations, book i. chap, ii. as well as to an imperfect state of agriculture. The Saxon Chronicle mentions several of these periodical visitations. In 193 a great famine took place. In 9T5, to use the expressive words of the Chronicler, " famine scoured the hills." In 976 it is briefly stated that " this year was the great famine in England ; so severe that no man ere remembered such." In 1040 "rose the sester of wheat to fifty-five pence, and even farther. " In 1044 the following notice occurs: — "This year there was very great hunger all over England, and com so dear as no man ever remembered before ; so that the sester of wheat rose to sixty pence, and even further." In the Anglo-Saxon times, as in every country Ploughing, Sowing, and CAsayiNe Corn. Harleian MS. 603. in which agriculture is not in an advanced condition, seed-time and harvest were almost the only seasons of exertion. There was not room for that conti- nuous labour which is required when a gi-eat number of intermediate operations are practised; but the division of employments existed to some extent, and on a considerable estate the services of the hinds were carried on under the eye of a steward or bailiff. The duties of the cowherd were distinct from those of the ploughman. The latter went out to his labours at day-break, attended by a boy to drive the oxen. Four oxen usually, but sometimes fewer, VfsEEL-TiovaU. From the Bayeiu Tapestry. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 279 were yoked to the plough. When the cattle were not turned out, as was the case in the whiter, the ploughman attended to the feeding and watering of the oxen in the stable ; but in the summer season they were committed to the care of the cowherd at the close of the day's labour, and were driven by him to the meadows, and, for fear of thieves, he attended them during the night, and in the morn- ing drove them to the plough. Horses were not employed in field labour, but only oxen, the use of horses being prohibited. We have some ac- count, also, of the occupation of the shepherd. C06TUUE OF Shxphebds. Cotton MS. Nero, C 4. Lest his flock should be attacked by wolves, he watched over its safety, attended by his dogs. The sheep were folded, and the folds were at times changed. Twice a-day the ewes were milked, and the cheese and butter were prepared by the shep- herd. The swineherd was an occupation as necessary as any of the above. An Anglo-Saxon manuscript* contains a series of sketches repre- senting the operations of husbandry during each month in the year. In January the plough- man is pursuing his labours. The plough, drawn by four oxen, which are attended by a driver, is provided with an iron coulter and share, and has * Cotton MS. Tiberius, B 5. Two-HANDBD WhkbitPWuqh, deawh bv Four Oxkn. gaxon Calendar. Cotton MS. Tib. B 5. 280 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. a wlieel attached to the end of the beam. The ropes by wliich the oxen are attached were made of twisted willows, and sometimes, it appears, of the skins of whales ;* and this is certainly better than the practice prevailing in the Hebrides not longer ago than 1811, which dispensed with harness • In Norway ships' ropes were m.ide of the skins of both whales and seals.— See Voyage of Olithere, alreaily mentioned. altogether, the horse's tail being fastened to the harrow by a rope made of hair.* In the manu- script alluded to the seed is scattered by a man who follows close to the ploughman, and it is at once deposited in the newly-made furrow. The Bayeux tapestry, however, shows tliat, in Nor- mandy harrows were used ; and there can be little • Macdonald's Agric. Survey of the Hebrides. Harp.om'IKo and So'mKo. E-iyeux Tapestry. Sowing. Cotton MS. Kero. C 4. DiooTNo, Breaking Earth with a Pick, axd SowiNa. The form of the Spade is remark.ible. Cotton MS. Tib. B 5. Chap. IV.] ■NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 281 AVHKr.T.-ri.orcH and Spades. From the Cotton JIS. Claud, B 4. doubt that, at the same period, they were employed in England, though in the ninth century agriculture may have been practised in so loose and slovenly a manner as to omit their \ise altogether. The plougji-bectle, in the hand of the ploughman above represented, used for breaking clods of earth, is men- tioned in the list of ' husbandry furniture' by Tusser. It had not wholly gone out of use in some parts of the country so early as twenty-five years ago. In February the husbandmen are engaged in trimmhig l)lants, some of which resemble vines, and in loosen- ing the earth around their roots. In March, one man is digging, another is sowing, and a third is using a pickaxe. Their labours seem to relate to the garden rather than the field. In April, the labours of seed-time being over, the landowner or occupier is regaling his friends, two of whom, who are seated beside him, are engaged in drinking out of horns. In May he goes into the fields to examine his flock previous to the time of shearing. In June the reapers are cutting down the com.* • Mr. Strutt supposes the illuminator to have here, by miBtakc, transposed the illustrations for June and July. Reaping and Cartisq Coun. Cotton MS. Tib. B 5. 282 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. It is bound into sheaves, and put into a cart for" conveyance to the bam or stack. One man is represented as blowing a horn, perhaps for the purpose of enlivening the labours of the reapers. In July the husbandmen are in the woods felling and trimming the trees. In August the barley is cut : it is mown as in the present day. In Septem- ber, the harvest being finished, the lord and his FixiaNCi ANJU Cautinq Wood. Cotton MS. Tib. B 5. Mowing. Cotton MS. Tib. B 5. attendants are hunting the wild boar ; and in October they are pursuing the diversion of hawking. In November the husbandmen are engaged around a large fire repairing their implements. In Decem- ber they are employed in threshing out the grain, which is winnowed or sifted, and carried out in Threshing and Winnowino Coen. Cotton MS. Tib. B 5. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.B. 449—1066. 283 Plouohino, Sowino, Mowing, Gleanino, Measubiko Corn, and Hab ykst gvrPEE. Harleiau MS. 603. large baskets to the granarj' ; an overseer or steward taking an account of the quantity by notches cut on a tally. From these notices some idea may be obtained of the general nature of their field labours. The lands belonging to the church were generally in the best state of cultivation, and exhibited the ap- plication of a more intelligent system than those belonging to other landowners. On the church property the woods were better cleared, and the quantity of waste land was smaller. The monks themselves engaged in the labours of the field. Bede, in his Life of the Abbots of Wearmouth, tells us that one of these ecclesiastics, "being a strong man, and of a humble disposition, used to assist his monks in their several labours, sometimes guiding the plough by its stilt or handle, and some- times forging instruments of husbandry with a hammer upon an anvil." One of the customs of modern tenancy — the principle of which is now carried out still further — existed at this period, viz., that the land should be left in a proper condition on its being given up. Thus, the holder of twenty hides of land was required to leave twelve hides of it sown for the advantage of the succeeding occupant. The implements of husbandry vv'ere ploughs, scythes, sickles, spades, axes, pruning-hooks, forks, and flails ; and they had also carts and waggons. PavMKa XKJbJb:s. Cotton MS. Juiioii, A G, The gardens and orchards attached to the mo- nasteries are mentioned at an early period of Anglo- Saxon history , They produced figs, grapes, nuts, almonds, pears, and apples. The monks did not neglect ornamental planting, and planted herbs and shrubs around the monasteries as well as fruit- trees. The cultivation of the vine had been intro- duced by the Romans ; and the county of Glouces- ter, according to William of Malmesbury, was famous for the excellence of its grapes. The management of bees must also have been an object of considerable importance. 284 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. ■Raising Watek from a Weli. ■with a Loaded Levee. Cotton MS. Nero, C 4. An account of the productions raised from the soil by the agriculturist necessarily affords consi- derable insight into the diet in general use. Cattle, sheep, and swine were numerous; and, therefore, meat was a common article of food. They also reared poultry ; and ten geese and twenty hen fowls are mentioned among the articles to be sup- plied to the lord of the manor by the occupier of a certain quantity of land. Milk, cheese, and eggs were allowed on fast-days. Broth and soups were made, flavoured and seasoned with herbs. i3arley- bread, being cheaper, was consvmred by a greater number of persons than that made from wheateu flour. The peasant baked his own bread, some- times probably in an oven, sometimes by toasting, sometimes on a heated plate of iron, placed over the fire. The baker carried on his art in the towns, and in the monasteries it was the business of a particular individual. At the commencement of the Anglo-Saxon period hand-mills were common, but the establishment of water-mills and windmills had become general towards its close. Cases occur in Avhich several hundred loaves are paid as a portion of the rent of land. We find an instance of a poor monastery in which the monks could not afford to eat wheaten bread, but were obliged to confine themselves to that made from barley. The monastic establishments were sometimes so poor, at an early period, that even a cheaper food was resorted to than barley-bread. Land is mentioned as being given to one monastery, in order to furnish salt, bean?, and honey. Th3 latter article was held in much esteem, and continued to be so until the discovery of the tropical regions of the west afforded sugar from vegetable productions. Herbs, eggs, fish, cheese, butter, and beans, with meat, constitvited the diet of children. The spices of eastern countries found their way overland, and small quantities were offered as acceptable presents from one person of distinction to another. The want of green food in winter rendered it necessary to provide a supply of salt meat sufficient to last until the pastures again furnished the cattle with nutritive grasses. The manufacture of salt was conducted by a separate class of men ; and in grants and conveyances, vessels for the boiling of salt, wood sufficient to boil salt, and the utensils used, are mentioned. Horse-flesh, which had been eaten by the ancient Saxons, was not rejected by those of Britain until some time after their con- version to Christianity ; but in the eighth century this practice was discouraged, and as it had been declining since the time of Egbert, there can be no doubt but that it soon entirely ceased. Of fish, eels, being caught with the greatest ease, were more common as food than other descriptions. They were received in payment of rent, and also offered as presents to the monasteries. Two portions of land, purchased for twenty-one pounds, bring a rent of 16,000 fish annually. Salt-water fish could oidy have been conveyed far from the coast at a disproportionate cost ; and the country being undrained, the meres, brooks, and ditches offered a receptacle for those which reside in fresh water ; and thus the proportion of the latter which would be eaten as foocl, would probably exceed the con- sumption of salt-water fish. The fitting out a boat, and providing materials for sea- fishing in- volved an expense which the limited extent of the marlict might not justify, except in the vicinity of the most populous places. Fish were taken both by the rod and in nets ; and amongst those which were an object of pursuit were eels, eel-pouts, lam- preys, skates, flounders, plaice, haddocks, herrings, salmon, sturgeon, minnows, porpoises, oysters, cockles, crabs,- lobsters, mussels, and winkles. The serfs who were employed as fishermen were conveyed to a purchaser along with the fishery, when the latter was sold. They formed a separate class. The people on the coast of Sussex, who are now the most expert fishermen in tlie British Channel, were, as we have already had occasion to notice, unable to avail themselves of the riches by which they were surrounded until after the middle of the seventh century. Henry of Huntingdon relates that the Anglo- Saxon kings were " so generous and bountiful, that they commanded four royal banquets to be served up every day to all their courtiers ; choosing rather to have much superfluity at their tables than the least deficiency." They were, in common with other northern nations, as much devoted to drink- ing as to the substantial bounties of the table. Their most common drink was ale, prepared as now, from malted barley ; and allusions are made in old manuscripts to three descriptions or quali- ties, viz., mild ale, clear ale, and Welsh ale. Ale- houses seem to have been established, as priests were forbidden to frequent the " wine-tuns ;" and Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY : A.D. 449—1066. 285 DiiiNKiNO FROM Cows* HoRNS. Cotton MS. Claud. B 4. Other liquors as well as ale were perhaps sold at these places. Mead was, if not more highly prized, at lea&t more costly than ale ; and it was the fa- vourite beverage of the Welsh. Honey, which is the chief ingredient, generally formed a portion of the rent paid in kind ; and in some cases the liquor itself already prepared was required. In case this part of the agreement could not be fulfilled to the letter, the payment was commuted, and two casks of spiced ale, or four casks of common ale, weie received in lieu of one cask of mead. A liquor called morat was made of honey, flavoured with the juice of mulberries. Pigment was a sweet liquor, or perhaps cordial composed of honey, wine and spices. Wine was expressed from the grape by means of a wine-press, but it does not seem to have been a common drink, and it is not mentioned in the laws of Wales. None but the wealthy, we may suppose, could indulge in these luxuries. Wine-Press. Cotton MS. Cltiud. H 4. The comfort even of the best furnished dwelling- houses would have been very incomplete without an abundant supply of fuel, which was obtained from a portion of each estate set apart for the growth of wood for burning and building. Turf also appears to have been in use, and probably coal. In a lease examined by Mr. Turner, the conditions on which it was granted are, the yearly payment of sixty fother of wood, six fother of turf, and twelve fother of gra;fan, which he is of opinion may mean coal. In another lease, amongst the articles mentioned are, five waggons full of good twigs, and every year an oak for building, and others for necessary fires, and sufficient wood for burning ; and in one grant is included also wood sufficient to boil salt. Candles made of wax were used in the palace cf Alfred, as appears from the story we have related in a preceding chapter, of the contrivance by which he made them serve the pur- pose of marking the lapse of time, as well as giving light. If this story be correct, we must attribute to Alfred the invention of lanterns; and they Saxon Lantern. Engraved in Strutt's Chronicle of England. 286 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Beem afterwards to have come into common use, and, from the representations of them found in the illuminated manuscripts, to have been sometimes highly ornamented. Candlesticks of bone were used ; but we also find that silver candelabra were in use. Candelabra. Ilarlelan MS. 603. The materials used for clothing were, to a great extent, the produce of household industry. The female domestics were employed in spinning and sewing, and there were under each landowner serfs who were trained to the practice of the most neces- sary mechanical arts. The most skilful artificers were attached to the monasteries, and there also were to be found those who were proficients in the superior departments of art ; such as architects, illuminators, and workers in gold and silver, as well as carpenters, smiths, shoemakers, millers, bakers, and farming-servants. Females of the highest rank did not disdain the labours of the distafl:", the loom, and the needle. The daughters of Edward the Elder were taught to occupy themselves in this manner ; and Alfred, in his will, terms the female part of his family the spindle side. The word spinster, applied in the present day to un- married females, had its origin in an age when the distaff really occupied a large portion of their time. At the same time the art of weaving was suffi- ciently advanced to give variety to the fabric, whether of linen or woollen, by the introduction of different colours. A robe belonging to Aldhelm was purple, and, within black circles, were worked figures of the peacock. A love of gaudy colours is a natural characteristic of a comparatively rude age, and several recorded facts show that the Anglo- UioaiNO AND Spinnino. From Cottou MS. Nero, C 4, In the first compartment of this J'icture, an Angel is represented in the act of giving a Spade to Adam, and a Distaff to Eve ; and the second exhibits the Instruments in use. Saxon mind was deeply imbued with this taste. Bede states that, in St. Cuthbert's monastery, the clothing of the monks was made of the natural wool, and not dyed ; but this monastic rule may be regarded only as an instance of what was conceived aa act of mortification ; and Aldhelm, in a simile in one of his homilies, gives us more information on this point, and also on the art of weaving, than we derive from any treatise professedly on these subjects. The virtue which he is panegyrising does not, he observes, alone constitute a perfect character ; and he sustains his argument by stating Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 449—1066. 287 that " it is not a web of one uniform colour and texture, without any variety of figures, that pleaseth the eye and appears beautiful, but one that is woven by shuttles, filled with threads of purple, and many other colours, flying from side to side, and forming a variety of figures and images, in different compartments, with admirable art." This was written towards the close of the seventh cen- tury. In an illuminated manuscript the robes of the four Evangelists exhibit the following colours : — yellow, green, pea-green, purple, blue, red, lilac. The art of dyeing was doubtless in great request, but we possess no accounts concerning the substances which were used. The art of obtaining a scarlet dye from an insect of the cochineal species was discovered about the close of the tenth century.* Silk was worn only by the most wealthy. The common materials of wearing apparel were linen and woollen. Several articles of dress were derived from the art of the tanner, who seems to have afterwards worked up the leather he had tanned into shoes, ankle leathers, and leathern hose, and to have also made a variety of things which are now obtained from the hands of the saddler and harness- maker, such as bridle thongs, trappings, halters, and leather neck-pieces; as well as bottles, wallets, pouches, flasks, and boiling-vessels. The variety of articles which one class of men were required to make illustrates the imperfect division of employ- ments which existed. The art of tanning skins with the wool or hair on was also practised. The skins * Muriatori, Antiq. ii. 415. of martens, as we have seen, were imported, but a bishop is mentioned who never made use of other fur in lining his garments than lambs' skins. Cats' skins were also used. The handicrafts of the blacksmith and the car- penter are of great importance in any state of society, but especially in such as existed in the Smithy. From the Cotton MS. B 4. Smithy : a Habfsb in tbx other Compabtment. From the Cotton MS. Anglo-Saxon times. They demand considerable skill, and are therefore among the first to become separated from other occupations. The implements of the blacksmith were the bellows, anvil, hammer, and tongs. The number of smiths' forges in the city of Gloucester, in the time of Edward the Con- fessor, was six. Iron ore was obtained in several counties, and there were furnaces for smelting. The mines of Gloucestershire in particular are alluded to by Giraldus Cambrensis as producing an abundance of this valuable metal ;* and there is every reason for supposing that these mines were wrought by the Saxons, as indeed they had most probably been by their predecessors the Romans. The lead- mines of Derbyshire, which had been worked by the * Itin, Cambrix, lib. i. c. 5. 288 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Romans, furnished the Anglo-Saxons with a supply of ore ; but the most important use of this metal in the Anglo-Saxon period— that of covering the roofs of churches — was not hitroduced before the close of the seventh century.* The ecclesiastics were the most skilful workers in metal, but none were more famous than Dunstan. Edgar had commanded that every priest, " to increase knowledge, should diligently leam some handicraft;" and the wants of the age residered a compliance with his directions a matter of convenience to the priests themselves, for there did not exist a class of native artificers capable of executing in a superior manner the orna- ments for the churches. Bells, images, and cruci- fixes are among the articles on which their skill was exercised. No vessel made of horn or wood was used in the various offices of the church. Precious stones were inserted in their works of silver and gold, to add to their value and beauty. Gold and silver cups, gold dishes, silver basons gilt, gold rings, silver mirrors, and bracelets, are among the articles of this description, the manufacture of which is mentioned. The art of gilding was known, and gold and silver thread was made. 'I he art of the coppersmith was also called into requi- sition. The carpenter was called the treow-wyrhta, that is, the tree or wood-worker. Carts, waggons, ploughs, and other implements of agriculture, were constructed by his art, as well as articles of house- hold furniture. The machinery for their corn-mills, though rude, would call into exercise the abilities of the most skilful of this class of artificers. Their services appear also to have been required in making other four-wheeled carriages besides those required for agricultural purposes. These were doubtless constructed with as much elegance as the workman was capable of giving to his work. The IJede. body was formed of some flexible material, proba- bly leather, and was slung like a hammock. It could not apparently contain more than one person, who must have reclined as in a palanquin. Ship- building, after the incursions of the Danes directed attention to its revival, was also a most important department of the useful arts. The head of a royal vessel was Avrought with gold ; tlie deck was gilded, and the sails were purple. That the useful arts were held in much esteem at a time when they were practised by a comparatively small number of individuals may be readily imagined, as the advantages which they conferred would be the more obvious and striking on this account. The office of king's chief smith was one of considerable dignity. In the court of the kings of Wales his place at table was next to that of the king's chap- lain. There were, however, two classes of smiths, those who forged arms and weapons for military purposes, and others who were employed in fabri- cating the more humble implements of agriculture and articles required for the daily purposes of life ; and unhappily the former would enjoy the honours which were due to their more useful brethren. The above arts may all be considered as of native origin, since they were practised, in however rude a state, from the earliest period. But the art of making glass was not indigenous. In the seventh century the Anglo-Saxons are described by Bede as being " ignorant and helpless " in the manu- facture of glass. At that period, however, persons acquainted with the art were brought over from France by Benedict Biscop, the founder of the Abbey of Wearmouth, for the purpose of glazing the windows of his monastery. Our ancestors were initiated into the process by these artificers, and windows and drinking vessels of glass, though they did not become common, were still within reach of the affluent. Saxon Ship. Taken from an Illumination of Noah building the Ark, in CoUon j:s. B. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 440—1066. 289 CPIAPTER V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS. '^-'■i HE space of about a ; thousand years, ex- tending from the over- throw of the Western Roman empire, in the middle of the fifth century, to that of the ) Eastern, in the middle of the fifteenth, may be divided into two nearly equal parts ; the first of which may be considered as that of the gradual decline, the second as that of the gradual revival of letters. The first of these periods, coming down to the close of the tenth century, nearly corresponds with that of the Saxon domination in England. In Europe generally throughout this long space of time we perceive the intellectual darkness, notwithstanding some brief and partial revivals, deepening more and more on the whole, as in the natural day the grey of evening passes into the gloom of midnight. The Latin learning, properly so called, may be re- garded as terminating with Boethius, who wrote in the early part of the sixth century. The Latin language, however, continued for some time longer to be used in literary compositions, both in our own country and in the other parts of Europe that had composed tlie old empire of Rome. Of the early British and Irish authors, some of whose works still remain, we have already made mention of the two famous heretics, Pelagius and his disciple Celcstius, who flourished in the fourth century. To the next century belong the great Apostle of the Irish, St. Patrick, from whose pen we have the composition styled his Confession ; his friend and fellow-labourer the Irish Bishop Secundinus, by whom there is extant a Latin poem in praise of St. Patrick ; and the poet Sedulius, or Shiel, who, although an Irishman by birth, appears to have resided on the continent, and whose various works have been repeatedly printed.* All these wrote only in Latin, although St. Patrick, in his Confession, apologizes for the rudeness of phrase with which he expressed himself in that language, owing to his long habit of speaking Irish. Gildas, our earliest historian, also wrote in Latin. St. Gildas the Wise, as lie is styled, was a son of Caw, Prince of Strathclyde, in the capital of which kingdom, the town of Alcluyd, now Dun- barton, he was born, about the end of the fifth • Sec an article on Sedulius in IJiivle. or beginning of the sixth century. Caw was also the father of the famous bard Aneurin. In his youth, Gildas is recorded to have gone over to Ireland, and to have studied in the schools of the old national learning that still flourished there; and like his brother Aneurin, he also commenced his career as a bard, or composer of poetry in his native tongue. He afterwards, however, was con- verted to Christianity, and became a zealous preacher of his new religion. The greater part of his life he appears to have spent in his native island ; but he at last retired to Armorica, or Little Britain, on the continent, and died there. He is said to lie buried in the cathedral of Vannes.* He is the author of two declamatory effusions — the one entitled a ' History of the Britons,' the other an ' Epistle to the Tyrants of Britain,' which have been often printed. They consist principally of violent invectives directed both against the Saxons and the author's own countrymen ; but they also contain a few historical notices respecting the ob- Bcnre period to which they relate that are of some value. The immediate successor of Gildas among our historians is Nennius, said to have been one of the monks of Bangor, from the massacre of whom in 613 he escaped, and to have written his History of the Britons a few years afterwards. His native name is supposed to have been Ninian, and lie was, like Gildas, of Welsh or Cumbrian origin. But there is much obscurity and confusion in the accounts we have of Nennius ; and it appears to be most probable that there were at least two early historical writers of that name. The author of ' Britannia after the Romans,' who has bestowed considerable pains in investigating the subject, sup- poses that the true work of the ancient Nennius only came down to the invasion of Julius Caesar, and is now lost, although we probably have an abridgment of it in the work published under the name of Nennius, by Gale, in the first volume of the ' Historise Britannicae, Saxonicse, Anglo- Danicsc Scriptores Quindecim' (fol. Oxon. 1691), and commonly referred to as his British History. That performance is stated in the preface by the author himself to have been written in the year 858.t Contemporary with the original Nennius was the Irish ^'aint Columbanus, distinguished for his missionary labours among the Gauls and Germans. Columbanus died in 615, at the monasterv of • Britattnia after the Romans, pp. xiv. — t Ibid. pp. 21, 32. XX., anair.5-180. 290 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Bobbie, in northern Italy, of which he was the founder. " The writings of this eminent man that have come down to us," observes Mr. Moore, " display an extensive and various acquaintance, not merely with ecclesiastical, but with classical literature. From a passage in his letter to Boni- face, it appears that he was acquainted both with the Greek and Hebrew languages ; and when it is recollected that he did not leave Ireland till he was nearly fifty years of age, and that his life after- wards was one of constant activity and adventure, the conclusion is obvious, that all this knowledge of elegant literature must have been acquired in the schools of his own country. Such a result from a purely Irish education, in the middle of the sixth century, is, it must be owned, not a little remark- able. Among his extant works are some Latin poems, which, though not admissible of course to the honours of comparison with any of the writings of a classic age, shine out in this twilight period of Latin literature with no ordinary distinction."* Another learned Irishman of this age was St. Cum- mian, the author of an epistle, still extant, ad- dressed to Segienus, abbot of lona, in defence of the Roman mode of computing Easter, in which he shows a very extensive acquaintance both with the subject of chronology and with the works of the fathers, Greek as well as Latin. " The va- rious learning, indeed," says the writer we have just quoted, " which this curious tract displays, implies such a facility and range of access to books, as proves the libraries of the Irish students, at that period, to have been, for the times in which they lived, extraordinarily well fiirnished."t To the Irish scholarship of this age may also be re- garded as belonging the two Latin lives of Co- lumba ; the first by Cuminius, who succeeded him as abbot of lona in 65*7 ; the second, which is of much greater length, by Adomnan, who succeeded Cuminius in the same office in 679. Both these productions, the second of which in particular is highly curious, have been printed. Their authors, although they resided in one of the North British islands, were probably Irishmen by birth. The school of lona was at least an Irish foundation. Of the Latin writers among the Anglo-Saxons the most ancient is Aldhelm, abbot of Malmes- bury, and afterwards bishop of Sherborn, who died in 709, and has left various writings both in prose and verse. Aldhelm received his education in part from an Italian monk named Adrian, who had come over to England with Archbishop Theo- dore, but chiefly from MaildufiF, an Irishman, the founder of the monastery of Malmesbury, by whom he tells us he was thoroughly instructed both in Latin and Greek. Among the studies of his after- life, he mentions the Roman law, the rules of Latin prosody, arithmetic, astronomy, and astro- logy. He also wrote a tract on the great scientific question of the age — the proper method of com- puting Easter. But Aldhelm's favourite subject seems to have been the virtue of virginity, in praise . * History of Ireland, i. 267. t Ibid. 273. of which he wrote first a copious treatise in prose, and then a long poem. Both these performances have been printed. Aldhelm long enjoyed the highest reputation for learning; but his writings are chiefly remarkable for their elaborately unna- tural and fantastic rhetoric. His Latin style bears a strong resemblance to the pedantic English, full of alliteration and all sorts of barbarous quaintness, that was fashionable among our English theological writers in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I. But the Anglo-Saxon name most distinguished in literature is that of Beda, or Bede, upon whom the epithet of the " Venerable" has been justly bestowed by the respect and gratitude of posterity. All that Bede has written, like the other works already mentioned, is in Latin. He was born some time between the years 672 and 677, at Jarrow, a village near the mouth of the Tyne, in the county of Durham, and was educated in the neighbouring monastery of Wearmouth, under its successive abbots Benedict and Ceolfrid. He re- sided here, as he tells us himself, from the age of seven to that of twelve, during which time he ap- plied himself with all diligence, he says, to the meditation of the Scriptures, the observance of regular discipline, and the daily practice of sing- ing in the church. " It was always sweet to me," he adds, "to learn, to teach, and to write." In his nineteenth year he took deacon's orders, and in his thirtieth he was ordained priest. From this date till his death, in 735, he remained in his mo- nastery, giving up his whole time to study and writing. His chief task was the composition of his celebrated Ecclesiastical History of England, which he brought to a close in his fifty-ninth year. It is our chief original authority for the earlier portion even of the civil history of the Anglo- Saxons. But Bede also wrote many other works, among which he has himself enumerated, in the brief account he gives of his life, at the end of his Ecclesiastical History, which has just been quoted. Commentaries on most of the books of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, two books of Homilies, a Martyrology, a chronological treatise entitled ' On the Six Ages,' a book on ortho- graphy, a book on the metrical art, and various other theological and biographical treatises. He also composed a book of hymns and another of epigrams. Most of these writings have been pre- served, and have been repeatedly printed. The first edition of the Ecclesiastical History appeared at Esling, in Germany, in 1 474 ; and there are three continental editions of the entire works of Bede, each in eight volumes folio, the latest of which was published at Cologne, in 1688. Some additional pieces were published at London in a quarto volume, by Mr. Wharton, in 1693. It ap- pears also, from an interesting account of Rede's last hours, by his pupil, St. Cuthbert, that he was engaged at the time of his death in translating St. John's Gospel into his native tongue. Among his last utterances to his affiectionate disciples watch- ing around his bed, were some recitations in the Chap. V.] LITERATUKE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 291 Jakkow, at the Jlou'th of the lUver Tyne. The Birthplace and llesidence of Bede. English language : " For," says the account, " he was very learned in our songs; and putting his thoughts into English verse, he spoke it with com- punction." Another celebrated Anglo-Saxon churchman of this age was St. Boniface, originally named Win- frith, who was born in Devonshire about the year 680. Boniface is acknowledged as the Apostle of Germany, in which country he founded various monasteries, and was greatly instrumental in the diffusion both of Christianity and of civilization. He eventually became archbishop of Mentz, and was killed in East Friesland by a band of heathens in 755. Many of his letters to the popes, to the English bishops, to the kings of France, and to the various Anglo-Saxon kings, still remain, and are printed in the Magna Bibliotheca Patrum. We may here also mention another contemporary of Bede's — Eddius, surnamed Stephanus, the author of the Latin life of Bishop Wilfrid. Bede men- tions him as the first person who taught singing in the churches of Northumberland. But at this time, and down to a considerably later date, as we have already had occasion to ob- serve, the chief seat of learning in Europe was Ireland ; and the most distinguished scholars who appeared in other countries were either Irishmen, or had received their education in Irish schools. We are informed by Bede, that it was customary for the English of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest, to retire for study and devotion to Ireland, where, he adds, they were all hospitably received. and supplied gratuitously with food, with books, and with instruction.* His contemporary, Aid- helm, in a passage in which he labours to exalt the credit of the Enghsh scholars, and especially of his patrons, Theodore and Adrian, yet admits that those of Ireland enjoyed the higher reputation, and bears distinct, though reluctant testimony to the crowded attendance of her schools. " Why should Ireland," he exclaims, " whither troops of students are daily transported, boast of such un- speakable excellence, as if in the rich soil of Eng- land Greek and Roman masters were not to be had to unlock the treasures of divine knowledge ? Though Ireland, rich and blooming in scholars, is adorned like the poles of the world with innumer- able bright stars, it is Britain has her radiant sun, her sovereign pontiff Theodore, "t It was durirg the eighth and the early part of the ninth century that the Irish scholars made the most distinguished figure in foreign countries. Virgilius, the bishop of Saltzburgh, famous for his assertion of the exist- ence of antipodes, for which he was denounced as a heretic by his British contemporary Boniface, but was not, as is commonly said, deposed by Pope Zachary, his elevation to the bishopric having, on the contrary, taken place some years afterwards, was an Irishinan, his native name having been probably Feargil, or Feargal. He died in "784. Of the learned persons who were attached to the court of France in this age by the munificent pa- » Hist. Eccles. iii. 28. t Translated in Moore's Hist, of Ireland, i. 299. 292 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. . [Book II. tronage of Charlemagne, the most eminent were Irish. Such, hy birth, at least, Alcuin himself, the chief ornament of the imperial court, a])pcars to have been, the oldest accounts designating him a Scot, although he has himself told us that he re- ceived his education at York. Alcuin was ap- pointed by Charlemagne to preside over the semi- nary established by that emperor out of which the University of Paris is regarded as having grown. At the same time, his friend and fellow-countryman, Clement, was set over a similar institution in Italy. Somewhat later, we find another eminent Irishman, named Dungal, selected by the Emperor Lothaire I., the grandson of Charlemagne, to superintend the whole system of the Italian universities or public schools. He governed that of Pavia in person ; but he is stated to have founded and exercised a general control also over those of Ivrea, of Torino, of Ferno, of Verona, of Vicenza, and of Cividad del Friuli. Dungal has left various works, which bear honour- able testimony both to his scientific and his literary acquirements. A second Irish Sedulius, the author of a prose Commentary on the Epistles of St. Paul, also appears to have flourished in the early part of the ninth century. He became bishop of Oreto in Spain ; and besides his Commentary, is the author of a treatise entitled * The Concordance of Spain and Hibernia;' in which he not only main- tains the Irish to be Spaniards by origin, but asserts their right to be still considered as merely a divi- sion of the Spanish nation. Donatus, Avho was about the same time bishop of Fiesole, in Italv, was also an Irishman. The only piece of his that remains is a short Latin poem in praise of his native country.* But the glory of this age of Irish scholarship and genius is the celebrated Joannes Scotus, or Erigena, as he is as frequently designated, — either appellative equally proclaiming his true birth-place. He is supposed to have first made Iiis appearance in France about the year 845, and to have remained in that country till his death, Avhich appears to have taken place before 875. Erigena is the author of a translation from the Greek of certain rnystical w^orks ascribed to Dionysius the Areopa- gite, which he execiited at the command of his patron, the French king, Charles tlie Bald, and also of several original treatises on metaphysics and theology. His productions may be taken as furnishing clear and conclusive evidence that the Greek language was taught at this time in the Irish schools. Mr. Turner has given a short account of his principal work, his Dialogue de Divisione Naturae (On the Division of Nature), which he characterises as " distinguished for its Aristotelian acuteness and extensive information." In one place " he takes occasion," it is observed, " to give concise and able definitions of the seven liberal arts, and to express his opinion on the com- position of things. In another part he inserts a very elaboraie discussion on arithmetic, which he says he had learnt from his infancy. He also details a • Trauglated from Moore's Hist, of freland, p. 300. curious conversation on the elements of things, on the motions of the heavenly bodies, and other topics of astronomy and physiology. Among these he even gives the means of calculating the dia- meters of the lunar and solar circles. Besides the fathers Austin, the two Gregories, Chrysostom, Basil, Epiphanius, Origcn, Jerome, and Ambro- sius, of whose works, with the Platonising Diony- sius and Maximus, lie gives large extracts ; he also cpiotes Yirgil, Cicero, Aristotle, Pliny, Plato, and Boethius ; he details the opmions of Eratosthenes and of Pythagoras on some astronomical topics ; he also cites Martianus Capella. His knowledge of Greek appears almost in every page."* The subtle speculations of Erigena have strongly attracted the notice of the most eminent among the modem inquir- ers into the history of opinion and of civilization ; and the German Tenneman agrees witli the French Cousin and Guizot in attributing to them a very extraordinary influence on the philosophy of his own and of succeeding times. To his writings and translations it is thought may be traced the introduction into the theology and metaphysics of Europe of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school. It is remarkable, as Mr. Moore has observed, that the learned Mosheim had previously shown the study of the scholastic or Aristotelian philosophy to have been also of Irish origin. "That the Hibernians," says that writer, "who were called Scots in this (the eighth) century, were lovers of learning, and distinguished themselves in these times of ignorance by the culture of the sciences beyond all the other European nations, travelling through the most distant lands, both with a view to improve and to communicate their know- ledge, is a fact with which I have been long ac- quainted; as we see them in the most authentic records of antiquity discharging, with the highest reputation and applause, the function of doctor in France, Germany, and Italy, both during this and the following century. But that these Hibernians were the first teachers of the scholastic theology in Europe, and so early as the eighth century illus- trated the doctrines of religion by the principles of philosophy, 1 learned but lately." t And then he adduces the proo!s that establish his position. We now proceed to give some account of the Anglo-Saxon language and literature. The Anglo-Saxon language is one of the dialects of the ancient Gothic, which prevailed over all the countries of Europe designated as barbarous by the Greeks and Romans, except those in which the Celtic and Sclavonian were spoken. The three immediate descendant languages from the Gothic were the Anglo-Saxon, the Franco-Tlieotisc, and the old Icelandic. From the Anglo-Saxon the English, and probably also the Lowland Scotch, are descended; from the Francic, the German, and the Dutch ; from the old Icelandic, the Swedish, the Danish, the Norwegian, and the modern Icelandic. Of the Gothic itself but a single monument remains, an imperfect copy of * Turner, Anglo-Sax. iii. 393. f Moore's Ireland, i. 302. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 293 the Gospels, preserved in the library at Upsala in Sweden. From the silver with which the charac- ters in it are adorned, it has long been called the Codex Argenteus, or silver book ; and it is be- lieved to be a portion of the. Gothic Bible, all, or the greater part of which was translated by Ulphilas^ bishop of the Moesian Goths, who lived under the Emperor Valens, about the year 360, and who is supposed to have invented or applied an alphabet, formed from the Greek and Latin, to his translation. What was the form of the Saxon language when Hengist and Horsa entered Britain, in 449, it is impossible to discover. The Saxons were evi- dently at that time a people without learning, and there is every probability that they were without an alphabet. Till after the arrival of St. Austin we have no monument of their literature. A passage in Bede, which is copied in the Saxon Chronicle, under the year just named, points out the tribes who in the two centuries which followed Hengist's and Horsa's invasion were called in to complete the Saxon domination. " Then came the men from three powers of Germany ; the Old Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes. From the Jutes are descended the inhabitants of Kent and the Wight- ware, that is, the race that now dwells in Wight, and that tribe among the West Saxons which is still called the Jute tribe. From the Old Saxons came the East Saxons, the South Saxons, and the West Saxons. From the Angles' land, which has ever since stood waste between the Jutes and the Saxons, came the East Angles, the Mer- cians, the Northumbrians, and also the other na- tions of England." Raske, in the preface to his Grammar, in conformity to this passage, considers the Anglo-Saxon language, in its origin, to have been a rude mixture of the dialects of these three people ; which, in the progress of time, melted into one language, just as the kindred tribes them- selves united to form one nation after they had taken possession of England. Dr. Hickes and other philologists have divided the Saxon language as spoken in England into three dialects : the first, that in use from the arrival of the Saxons till the irruption of the Danes — a period of 330 years — this they term the Anglo-Saxon; the second, which prevailed from the Danish to the Norman invasion, they call the Dano-Saxon ; and the third, which was in fact beyond the limits of the tongue (which was then in a state of transi- tion to tlie English), they call Norm anno- Saxon, and extend it as low as the time of Henry II. But these were, in fact, merely successive stages of the language, not dialects. That a mixture of Danish might be found in the Northumbrian part of England is probable, as the Danes landed so frequently and in such numbers in that country, that they had mixed with the inhabitants ; but we agree generally with Raske, that, at least in the Anglo-Saxon works hitherto printed, no clear traces are to be met with of anything that can pro- perly be called a variation of dialect. The Song of the elder Caedmon, " On the Origin of Things," preserved in Alfred's Translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History is one of very few specimens now remaining of the Saxon of the earliest period.* It follows, with a literal translation in the opposite column : — Nu we sceolan heiian. Heofon-iices weard. Metodes mihte. & Ills mod gethonc. Wera wuldor-fsejler. Svva he wundra gchwses. Ece drihten. Cord onstealde. He ajrest gesceop. Eovthan bearnum. Heofon to hrofo. Halig scyppend. Tha middangeard. Moncynnes weaid. Ece dryhten. .^fter teode. Firum fold an. Frea sehnihtii'. Now must we praise The fiuardian of heaven's kingdom, The Creator's might. And his mind's thought ; Glorious Father of men ! As of every wonder he, Lord eternal. Formed the beginning. He first framed For the children of earth The heaven as a roof; Holy Creator ! Then mid-earth, The Guardian of mankind, The eternal Lord, Afterwards produced ; The earth for men, Lord AlmiLdity! The next specimen of Saxon which we shall give is a copy of the Lord's Prayer, written by Eadfrith, bishop of Lindisfarne, about the year 100 : there is litUe in it that is unintelligible to an English reader. It is preserved in the ancient copy of tlie Gospels called the Durham Book :t — Fader uren thu arth in heofnum sie gehalgud noma thin ; to cymeth rie thin ; sie willo thin suedIs inheofne & in eortho : hlaf usenno ofer wistlic sel us todseg ; & forgef us scylda usna suae ua; forgefon scyldgum usum ; & ne inlaod usih in costunge uh gefrig usich from vile. ' Conjbeare, lllust. p. 36, gives the year C70 as its date. + MS. Cotton, Brit. Mus. Nero, D iv. 294 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II, Next in order of time, as a composition, we are perhaps to place the " Metrical Paraphrase of Parts of the Holy Scriptures," by a nameless author, but ascribed to a second Caedmon, which has recently been so ably edited by Mr. Benjamin Thorpe. The first portion of this poem, after an exordium of thanks- giving to the great Creator, relates the fall of a portion of the angelic host, and the design of the Deity to replenish the void thus occasioned in his creation by a better and a holier race. The fall of Man is next considered, ushered in by a repetition of the circumstances already introduced in the exordium, of the pride, rebellion, and punishment of Satan and his powers, and with a resemblance to Milton so remark- able, that, as Mr. Conybeare has observed, much of this portion might be almost literally translated by a cento of lines from that great poet. We shall produce a specimen or two, accompanied by Mr. Thorpe's version : — Tha wearth se mihtiga gebolgen. Hehsta heofones waldend. Wearp hine of than hean stole. Hete haefde he set his hearran gewunnen. Hyld hajfde his ferlorene. Gram wearth him se goda on his mode. Forthon he sceolde grund gesecan. Heardes helle-wites Thses the he wann with heofnes waldend, Acwffith hine tha fram his hyldo. And hine on helle wearp. On tha deovvan dalas. Thser he to deofle wearth. Se feond mid his geferum eallum. FeoUon tha ufon of heofnum. Thurh longe swa threo niht & dagas. Tha englas of heofnum on helle. & heo alle forsceop drihten to deoflura. Forthon heo his dsed & word. Noldon weorthian. Forthon the heo on wyrse leoht. Under eorthan neothan. iEllmihtig god. Sette sigelese. On tha sweartan helle. Thser hsebbath heo on sefyn. Ungemet lange. Ealra feonda gehwilc. Fyr-edneowe. Thonne cymth on uhtan. Easterne wind, Forst fyrnum cald, Symble fyr oththe gar. Sum heai'd geswinc, Habban sceoldon, Worhte man hit him to wite. Hyra woruld wajs gehwyrfed. For man-sithe. Fylde helle. Mid tham andsacum. Then was the Mighty angry, The highest Ruler of heaven Hurled him from the lofty seat ; Hate had he gain'd at his Lord, His favour he had lost, Incensed with him was the Good in his mind. Therefore he must seek the gulf Of hard hell -torment, For that he had warr'd with heaven's Ruler. He rejected him then from his favour, And cast him into hell, Into the deep parts, When he became a devil : The fiend with all his comrades Fell then from heaven above. Through as long as three nights and days, The angels from heaven into hell ; And them all the Lord transformed to devils, Because they his deed and word Would not revere ; Therefore them in a worse light, Under the earth beneath, Almighty God Had placed triumphless In the swart hell ; There they have at even, Immeasurably long. Each of all the fiends, A. renewal of fire ; Then cometh ere dawn The eastern wind, Frost bitter-cold, Ever fire or dart ; Some hard torment They must have, It was wrought for them in punishment, Their world-life was changed ; For their sinful course He filled hell With the apostates.* Hsefdon wite micel. Wseron tha befeallene. Fyre to botme. On tha hatan hell. Thurh hygeleaste. & thurh ofermetto. Sohton other land. That wses leohtes leas. & wses liges full. Fyres fsBr micel They had great torment ; Then were they fall'n To the fiery abyss. Into the hot hell, Through phrensy And through pride ; They sought another land, That was void of light, And was full of flame, A great receptacle of fire. + Satan mathelode. Forgiende sprsec. * Thorpe's Caedmon'* Par-nihrnse, p. 19. Satan harangued, Sorrowing spake. + Ibid. p. 21. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 295 Sethe helle forth He who hell thenceforth Healdan sceolde. Should rule, Gyman thses grundes. Govern the abyss. WsDS 8Br Codes engel. He was erst God's angel, Hwit on heofne. Fair in heaven, Oth hine his hyge forspeon. Until him his mind urged, & his oferraetto. And his pride Ealra swithost. Most of all. Thset he ne wolde. That he would not Wereda drihtnes. The Lord of Hosts' Word wurthian. Word revere ; WeoU him on innan. Boil'd within him Hyge ymb his heortan. His thought about his heart. Hat wses him utan. Hot was without him Wrathlic wite. His dire punishment. He tha worde cwaoth. Then spake he the words, Is thes senga stede ungelic swithe. ' This narrow place is most unlike Tham othrum the we ser cuthon. That other that we ere knew, Hean on heofon-rice. High in heaven's kingdom, The me min hearra onlag. Which my Master bestow'd on me, Theah we hine for tham alwealdan. Though we it, for the All-powerful, Agan ne moston. May not possess, Romigan m-es rices. Must cede our realm ; Nsefth he theah riht gedon. Yet hath he not done rightly Thset he us hsefth befylled. That he hath struck us down Fyre to botme. To the fiery abyss Helle thsere hatan. Of the hot hell. Heofon-rice benumen. Bereft us of heaven's kingdom, Hafath hit gemearcod. Hath it decreed Mid mon-cynne. With mankind To gesettanne. To people. That me is sorga msest. That of sorrows is to me the greatest. That Adam sceal. That Adam shall. The wses of eorthan geworht. Who of earth was wrought. Minne stronglican. My strong Stol behealdan. Seat possess. Wesan him on wynne. Be to him in delight, & the this wite tholien. And we endure this torment, Hearm on thisse helle. Misery in this hell.* The following is another passage from the same Paraphrase, — a part of the Song of Azariah :- - Tha of roderum wees. Then from the firmament was Engel aelbeorht. An all-bright angel Ufan onsended. Sent from above. Wlite scyne wer. A man of beauteous form. On his wuldor-haman. In his garb of glory ; Se him cwom to frofre. Who to them came for comfort. & to feorh-nere. And for their lives' salvation, Mid lufan & mid lisse. With love and with grace ; Se thone lig tosceaf. Who the flame scattered Halig & heofon-beorht. (Holy and heaven-bright) Hatan fyres. Of the hot fire. Tosweop hine & toswende. Swept it and dashed away. Thurh tha swithan miht. Through his great might, Ligges leoma. The beams of flame ; That hyra lice ne wses. So that their bodies were not Owiht geegled. Injured aught : Ac he on andan sloh. But in haste he cast Fyr on feondas. Fireon the foes. For fyren-dsedum. For their wicked deeds. Tha wses on tham ofne. Then was it in the oven, Thser se engel becwom. Where the angel came, Windig & wynsum. Windy and winsome. Wedere gelicost. To the weather likest Thonne hit on sumeres tid. When there, in summer's tide. Sended weortheth. Is sent Dropena drearung. A falling of drops. On dsBges hwile. In the day's space. Wearmlic wolcna sour. A warm shower of the cloudg. • Thorpe's Caedmon's Paraphrase, p. 22. 296 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Swylc bith wedera cyst. Swylc wffis on thara fyre. Frean mihtum. Halgum to lielpe. Wearth se hata lig. Todrifen & todwsesced. Thser tlia daed-hvvatan. Geond thone ofen eodon. & se engel mid. Feorli-nerigende. Se thser feortha wses. Annanias. & Azarias. & Misael. Thser tha mod-hwatan. Thry on gethancum. Tlieoden heredon. Bsedon bletsian. Beam Israela. Ball land-gesceaft. Ecne drihten. Theoda waldend. Swa hie thry cwsedon. Modum horse e. Thurh gemsene word. As is the bounty of the skies, So was it in the fire, Through the Lord's might, In help to the holy ones. The hot llame was Scattered and quenched. There those bold of deed Went through the oven, And the angel with them, Life preserving, Who was there the fourth: Hananiah, And Azariah, And Mishael. There those, bold of mind, The three, in their thoughts, Praised the Lord, Prayed him to bless The children of Israel, All the land-creation. The Lord eternal, Ruler of nations. Thus they three spake With minds sagacious Through common voice.* We shall now give one or two specimens of the language as it existed in the latter part of the ninth century, from the works of Alfred. The following is the preface to his paraphrase, or imitation of Boethius' De Consolatmie Philosophic^ ; a work which we are assured he carried constantly about him : — Alfred, king, was translator of this book, and turned it from book Latin into English, as it now is done. Sometimes he set word by word, sometimes meaning of meaning, as he the most plainly and most clearly could render it, for the various and manifold worldly occupations which often busied him both in mind and body. The occupations are to us very difficult to be numbered, which in his days camo upon the kingdoms which he had undertaken ; and nevertheless, when he had learned this book, and turned it from Latin into tlie English language, he afherwards composed it in verse, as it now is done. And he now prays and for God's name implores every one of those whom it lists to read this book, that be would pray for him, and not blame him if he more rightly understand it than he could ; for every man must, according to the measure of his under- standing, and according to his leisure, speak that which he speaks, and do that which he does. We add the Story of Orpheus, from the 31st chapter of the work : — It happened formerly that there was an harper in the country called Thrace, which was in Greece. The harper was inconceivably good. His name was Alfred kuning wa)s wealhstod thisse bsc. & hie of bee Ledene on Englisc wende. swa hio nu is gedon. hwilum he sette worde be worde. hwilum andgit of andgite. swa swa he hit tha sweotolost and andgit- fuUicost gereccan mihte for thsem mistlicum & manigfealdum weoruld bisgum the hine oft segther ge on mode ge on lichoman bisgodan. Tha bisgu us sint swithe earfoth rime the on his dagum on tha ricu becomon the he underfangen hseide. & theah tha he thas boo hsefde geleornode & of Lsedene to Engliscum spelle gewende. tha geworhte he hi efter to leothe. swa swa heo nu gedon is. & nu bit & for Godes naman hoalsalh selcne thara the thas boc raedan lyste. that he for hine gebidde. & him ne wite gif he hit rihtlicor ongite thonnc he mihte. for- thsemthe selc mon sceal be his andgites msethe and be his semettan sprecan thset he sprccth. & don that that he deth. Hit gelarap gio. that te anhearpere. waeson thaere theode. the Thracia hatte. sio wses on Creca rice, se hearpere was swithe. ungefr&eglice god. thses nama wses Orpheus, he hsefde an swithe tenlic wif. sio wses haten Eurydice. tha ongann monn secgan. be tham he- arpere. that he mihte hearpian that se wudawagode. and tha stanas hi styredon. for thy swege. & wild deor. thaer woldon to irnan. & standon. swilce hi tame waeron. swa stiUe. theah hi men. oththe hun- das. with eodon. that hi hi na ne onscunedon. tha saedon hi. that thaes hearperes wif. sceolde acwelan. & hire sawle. mon sceolde. laedon to helle. tha sce- olde se hearpere. weoithan swa sarig. that he ne mihte. on gemong othrum mannum bion. ac teah to wuda. & saet on thsem muntum. a>gther ge dseges. ge nihtes. weop & hearpode. that tha wudasbifodon. & tha ea stodon. & nan heort. ne onscunode. naenne leon. ne nan hara. naenne hund. ne nan neat, nyste Orpheus. He had a very excellent wife, who was called Eurydice. Then began men to say, concern- ing the harper, that he could harp so that the wood moved, and the stones stirred themselves at the sound, and wild beasts would run thereto and stand as if they were tame ; so still, that though men or hounds pursued them, they shunned them not. Then said they, that the Ir.irper's wife should die, and her soul should be led to hell. Then should the harper become so sorrowful that he could not remain among other men, but frequented the wood, and sat on the mountains, both day and night, weeping and harping, so that the woods shook and the rivers stood still, and no hart shunned any lion, nor hare any hound, nor did cattle know any hatred or any Thorpe's Caedmou's Paraphrase, p. 237. Chap, v.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 297 naunne andan. lie naenne ege. to othrum. for thaere niirhte thaes sones. Tha thaem hearpere tha thulite. that hine tha. nanes thiiiges lie lyste on thisse worulde, that thohle he. that he w olde gesecan. helle Godu. & onginnan him. oleccan mid his hearepan. & bid- dan that, hi him ageafan. eft his wif. Tha he tha tliidcr com. tha seeolde cuman. thaere helle hund. ongean hine. thses nama waes Geruerus. se seeolde I'.abban. thrio haefdu. & ongan faegenian. mid his y'eorte. & plegian with hine. for his iiearpunga, Tha was thaer eac. swithe egeslic geatweaid. thces nama seeolde beon Caron. se haefde eac thrio heafdu. & se wa?s swithe oreald. Tha ongan the hearpere. hine biddan. that he hine gemundbyrde. tha hwile the he thaer wa3re. & hine gesundne. eft thanon brohte. tha gehet he him that, fortbsem he woes oflyst. thses seldcuthan sones. Tha eode he further otli he gemette. tha graman Gydena the folcisce men. hatath Parcas. tha hi secgath. that on nanum men. nytou nane are. ac aelcura menu, wrecan be his gewyrhtum. tha hi secgath. that vvealdan. aelces monnes wyrde. tha ongann he biddan. hiora miltse. tha ongunnon hi wepan mid him. Tha eode [he] furthor. & him urnon calle hellwaran ongean. & la-don hine. to hiora cyninge. & ongunnon ealle sprecan mid him. & biddan thaes the he baed. And that unstillB hweol. the Ixion waes to gebunden. Laiuta cyning for his scylde. that othstod. for his Iiearpunga. And Tantalus se cyning. the on thisse worulde. ungemetlice gifre waes. & him thaer that il'je. yfel fyhgde. thaes gifernesse. he gestilde. And se Uultor. seeolde forleetan. that he ne slat, tha lifre Tyties. tha-s cyninges. the hine aer. mid thy witnode. And eall hellwara. witu gestildon. tha hwile the he bciforan tliam cyninge hearpode. Tha he tha lange. & lange hearpode. tha clipode. se hellwarana cynign & cwaeeth. Uton agifan. thaem esne his wif. fortham ho hi. liajfth geearnod. mid his hearpunga. Behead him tha. thset he geara wiste. that he hine naefre. uaderbaec ne besawe. siththan he thononweard waere. & sx'de. gif he hine underbtec besawe. that he seeolde. forlsetan thset wif. Ac tha lufe mon ma'g swithe uneathe. oththe na forbeodan. wila wei. hwset Orfeus tha. Isedde his wif mid him. oththe he com. on that gemaere. leohtes & theostro. tha eode that wif aefter him. tha he forth on that leohtcom. tha beseah he hine underbaec. with thaes wifes. thalosede heo him sona. Thas leasan spell. Iserath gehwilcue man. thara the wilnath. helle thiostra. to llionne. & to thses sothes. godes liohle. to cumenne. that he hine ne besio. to his ealdum yfelura. swa that he hi eft. swa fullice fuUfremme. swa he hi aer dyde. fortham swa hwa swa. mid fuUon willan. his Mod went, to tha ytlum. the he aer forlet. & hi thonne fulfremeth. and he him thonne. fullice liciath. and he hi naefre. forlaetan ne thencth. thonne forlyst he. eall his serran god. buton he hit eft gebete.' Her endath nu. seo thridde boe Boeties, and ongith ses feorthe. fear of others, for the sweetness of the sound. Then it seemed to the harper, that he desired nothing in this world. Then thought he, that lie would seek the gods of hull, and endeavour to soften them with his harp, and pray that they would give him back his wife. When he came thither, then should there come towards him the dog of hell, whose name was Cerberus (he should have three heads), and began to wag his tail and play with him for his harping. Then was theie also a very dreadful gate-keeper, whose name should bo Charon. He had also three heads, and he was very old. Then began the harper to beseech him, that he would protect him whilst he was there, and bring him thence again safe. Then did he promise that to him, because he was capti- vated with the unaccustomed sound. Then went he further, till he met the grim goddesses, whom the common people called Parcse, of whom they say that they know no respect for any man, but punish every man according to his deserts, and of whom they say that they control every man's fortune. Then began he to implore their mercy. Then began they to weep with him. Then went he further, and all the inhabitants of hell ran towards him, and led him to their king, and began all to speak with him, and to pray that which he prayed. And the unstill wheel, which Ixion the king of the Lapithae was bound to for his guilt ; that stood still for his harping. And Tantalus the king, who in this world was immode- rately greedy, and whom that same vice of greediness followed there ; he became quiet. And the Vulture should cease, so that he tore not the liver of Tityus the king, which before therewith tormented him. And all the punishments of the inhabitants of hell were suspended while he harped before the king. When he long and long had harped, then spoke the king of the inhabitants of hell, and said : Let us give the man his wife, for he has earned her by his harping. He then commanded him that he should well observe that he never looked backwards after he departed thence, and said that if he looked back- wards he should lose the wife. But men can with great difficulty, if at all, restrain love. Wellaway ! What ! Orpheus then led his wife with him, till he came to the boundary of light and darkness. Then went the wife after him. When he came forth into the light, then looked he backwards towards the wife. Then was she immediately lost to him. This fable teaches every man who desires to iiy the dark- ness of hell, and to come to the light of the true good, that he regard not his old vices, so that he practise them again as fully as he before did. For whosoever with full will turns his mind to the vices which he had before forsaken, and practises them, and they then fully please him, and he never thinks of for- saking them ; then loses he all his former good, un- less he again amend it. Here ends the third book of Boethius and begins the fourth. * A different character of language is found in Athelstan's Song of Victory, which is given in the Saxou Chronicle under the year 938 : — iEthestan cyning eorla drihten beorna beah-gyfa & his brother eac Eadinund ^theling. ealdor langyne tyr. geslogon aet secce sweorda ecgum -(Ethelstan king, of carls the lord, rewarder of heroes, and his brother eke, Edmund Atheling, elder of ancient race, slew in the fight, with the edge of their swcrds. ' Cftrdale's Hoelhius, p. 261. 298 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. ymbe Brunan-burh Bord-weall clufon. heowon heatholinde. hamera lafum. afaran Eadwerdes. Svva him ge-sethele waes from cneo-maegum. that hie set campe oft with lathra ge-hwsene land ge-ealgodon. hoi-d & hamas. Hettend crungun Sceotta leoda. and scip-flotan faBge feollon. feld dynede. secga swate. Syththan sunne up on morgen-tid. msere tuncgol. glad ofer grundas. Godes condel beorht eces Dryhtnes. othth sio SBthele gesceal't sah to settle.'. thaor Iseg secg msenig. garum ageted. giiraa Northerna. ofer scyld scoten. swilce Scyttisc eac werig wiges-ssed. . West-Seaxe forth ondlongne daeg eorod-cystum on-last legdun lathum theodum. heowon here-fiyman hindan thearle mecura mylen scearpum.*. Myrce ne wyrndon heordes hond-plegan hseletha nanum thara the mid Anlafe ofer sera-geblond on lides bosme land gesohtun faege to gefeohte.*. Fife legun on tham camp-stede cyningas geonge sweordum aswefede. Svveolca seofene eac eorlas Anlafes. and unrira heriges-flotan.'. And Sceotta thser geflemed ■wearth. Northmanna bregu. nyde-gebseded to lides stefne litle werede.'. Cread-cnearon flot-cyning ut gewat on fealone flode feorh generede.'. Swilce thser eac se froda mid fieame com on his cyththe north Constantinus.*. Har Hylde-rinc hreman ne thorfte the foe at Brumby ! The sons of Edward their board-walls clove, and hewed their banners, with the wrecks of their hammers. So were they taught by kindred zeal, that they at camp oft 'gainst any robber their land should defend, their hoards and homes. Pursuing fell the Scottish clans ; the men of the fleet in numbers fell ; 'midst the din of the field the warrior sweat. Since the sun was up in morning-tide, gigantic light ! glad over the grounds, God's candle bright, eternal Lord ! 'till the noble creature sat in the Western main : there lay many of the Northern heroes under a shower of arrows, shot over shields ; and Scotland's boast, a Scythian race, the mighty seed of Mars ! "With chosen troops, throughout the day, the West-Saxons fierce press'd on the loathed bands ; hew'd down the fugitives, and scattered the rear, with strong mill-sharpen'd blades, The Mercians too the hard hand-play spared not to any of those that with Anlaf over the briny deep in the ship's bosom sought this land for the hardy fight. Five kings lay on the field of battle, in bloom of youth, pierced with swords. So even eke of the eavls of Anlaf; and of the ship's-crew unnumber'd crowds. There was dispersed the little band of hardy Scots, the dread of northern hordes ; urged to the noisy deep by unrelenting fate ! The king of the fleet with his slender craft escaped with his life on the felon flood ; and so too Constantine, the valiant chief, returned to the north in hasty flight. The hoary Hildrinc cared not to boast Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 299 majcan gemanan. among his kindred. Her wses his msega sceard Here was his remnant & freonda gefylled. of relations and friends on folc-stede slain with the sword beslagen set secce. in the crowded fight. And his sunu forlet His son too he left on wsel-stole. on the field of battle, wundum forgrunden. mangled with wounds, geonge set juthe. young at tlie fight. Gylpan ne thorfte The fair-hair'd youth heorn blanden-feax had no reason to boast bil-geslehtes.'. of the slaughtering strife. Eald Inwidda Nor old Inwood ne Anlaf thy ma and Anlaf the more mid heora here-lafum with the wrecks of their army hlehan ne thorftan. could laugh and say, that hie beadu-weorca that they on the field bete ran wurdon. of stern command on camp-stede. better workmen were, cumbel-gehnades. in the conflict of banners, gar-mittinges. the clash of spears, gumena gemotes. the meeting of heroes, waepen-gewrixles. and the rustling of weapons. thses the hie on wael-felda which they on the field •with Eadvveardes of slaughter played aforan plegodon.'. with the sons of Edward. Gewitan him tha Northmen The Northmen sail'd naegledon cnearrum. in their nailed ships, dreorig daretha laf. a dreary remnant. on dinnes mere. on the roaring sea ; ofer deop wseter. over deep water DifeUn secan Dublin they sought. & heora land. and Ireland's shores. cewisc-mode. in great disgrace. Swilce tha gebrother Such then the brothers, begen ret samne. both together. cyning and aetheling. king and aetheling. cyththe sohton. sought their country, West-Seaxna land. West Saxon land, wiges hreamie. in fight triumphant. Lseton him behyndan They left behind them hra bryttian. raw to devour, salowig padan. the sallow kite, and thone sweartan hrefn. the swarthy raven hyrned nebban. with horny rib. & thane hasean padan. and the hoarse vulture. earn aaftan hwit with the eagle swift aeses brucan. to consume his prey ; grsedigne guth-hafoc. the greedy gos-hawk, & that grsege deor and that grey beast wulf on wealde.*. the wolf of the weald. Ne wearth wsel mare No slaughter yet on thise iglande was greater made sefer gyta e'er in this island, fblces gefylled of people slain. beforan tliissum before this same. sweordes ecgum. with the edge of the sword ; thses the us secgath bee as the books inform us ealde uthwitan. of the old historians ; 1 siththan eastan hider since hither came Engle & Seaxe from the eastern shores up becomon the Angles and Saxons, ofer brymum brad over the broad sea, Brytene sohton. and Britain sought, — wlarce wig-smithas. fierce battle-smiths. Wealas ofer-coraon. o'ercame the Welsh, eorlas arhwate. most valiant earls, eard begeaton.-. and gained the land.* • Ingr. < 3ax. Chron. p. HI— 145. 300 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. We shall give but one more specimen of the Saxon language, from the Preface to ^Ifric's Ilomilicp, probably written some time in the reign of Canute : — Ic ^'Elfric munuc & mgesse preost swa theali waccre thonne svvilcum hadum gebyrige. wearth asend on Jjlthelredes dsege cyninges fram ^Elfeage biscope iEthelwoldes Eefter-gengan to sumum myns- tre the is Cernul jrehaten thurh ilithelm seres bene thses thegenes. his gebyrd & goodnys sind gehwser cuthe".* Tlia be arn me on mode ic truwige thurh godes gife. thaet ic thas boc of ledenum gereorde to Engliscre spraece awende. na thurh gebylde miceh'e lare. ac forthan the .ic geseah & gehyrde micel ged- wyld on manegum enghscum bocum. The unge- laerede men thurli heora bilewitnysse to micclum wisdome tealdon. and me ofhreow thjEt hi ne cuthon ne nsefdon tha godspellican lare on heora gewritum. huton tham mannura tlie that leden cuthon. & buton tham bocura the ^Elfred cyning snoterhce awende of ledene on Enghsc. tha sind to haebbenne".* For thisum antimbre ic gedyrstlsehte on gode truwiende. that ic thas gesetnysse under gann. & eac fortham the menn behofath godre lare swithost on thisum timan the is ge cndLuig thyssere worulde. & beotli fela frecednyssa on man cynne aerthan the se ende becume. swa swaure drihten on his godspelle cwseth to his looming cnihtum".' I ^Elfric, monk and mass-priest, although a man of less abilities than are requisite for one in such orders, was sent in the days of King ^thelred from Alphege the bishop, the successor of ^thelwold, to a monastery which is called Cernel, at the desire of ^thelmar the thain, whose noble birth and goodness is everywhere known. Then ran it in my mind, I trust through .the grace of God, that I ought to translate this book out of the Latin tongue into the English speech, not upon presumption of great learning, but because I saw and heard much error in many English books, which ignorant men, through their simplicity, esteemed great wisdom, and because it grieved me, that they neither knew, nor had the gospel learning in their writings, except from those men that understood Latin, and those books which are to be had of King Alfred's, which he skilfully translated from Latin into English. For this reason I took coura<re, trusting in God, to enter upon this task, and because men have now most need of sound doctrine, especially at this time, which is so near the end of the world, and vexations will torment man- kind, before the end is come, as our Lord in his gospel said to his disciples. The reader will remark that the term English is more than once used in this extract to designate the Saxon language ; but the same name had been applied to it by Bede, himself an Angle, three centuries before. It is impossible also not to be struck with the close resemblance in phrase and style which the earliest and latest specimens of Saxon bear to each, other, throughout our selections. The Anglo-Saxon in all these specimens has been given in Roman, not in Saxon characters. With tlie exception of the Ip {th, as in thin}, the ^ {dh, or tli, as in that), and the P (w/), the Saxon characters have the same forms with those of the Roman alphabet. Having given specimens of tlie language from its earliest to its latest use, we shall now take a rapid survey of what is still remaining of the native literature of the Anglo-Saxons, beginning with their poetry as its oldest branch. With the exact laws of their metres we are un- acquainted. Their poetical compositions, however, strongly resemble the Runic Odes so admirably imitated by Gray ; they are generally more or less marked by alliteration, by a mixture of regular and irregular cadence, by abrupt transitions, by a frequent omission of the particles, and by an arti- ficial inversion of words and phrases. At a late period, and in a few instances, we have an ap- proach to rhyme. The most remarkable poem in the language is the Narrative of the attempt of Beowulf to ^^ reck the feehthe or deadly feud on Hrothgar ; sup- posed to be founded upon certain mythic legends of the Angles, and to be far older than the writing of the manuscript which contains the story. The copy of this poem, which forms one of the Cotto- nian volumes (Vitellius, A. xv.), is unique. Wanley first noticed it in 1 705 ; Mr. Sharon Turner made some copious extracts from it in his History of the Anglo-Saxons ; and an elaborate memoir upon its composition, accompanied by some criticisms and some beautiful translations, was presented to the literary world by the late Rev. John Josias Conybeare, in his lUvistrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 8vo. London, 1826. The earhest publi- cation, however, of the entire work appeared in 4to. at Copenhagen in 1815, with a Latin transla- tion nearly literal, a preface and indices, from the pen of the late Grimm Johnson Thorkelin. It was the second time he had translated it, his first version having been burnt in 1807, in the bom- bardment of Copenhagen. Another edition of Beowulf has since appeared, more acceptable to the English reader, in two small volumes, one con- taining the text, 12mo. Lond. 1833; the other, a translation by John Mitchell Kemble, Esq., 12mo. Ijond. 1837, with a copious glossary, preface, and philological notes. Of similar character toBeo'wulf is the Fragment on the Battle of Finsborough, first printed by Hickes, subsequently in Conybeare's Illustrations, and lastly with the Traveller's Song, as appen- dages to Beowulf, by Mr. Mitchell Kemble. Of the metrical Paraphrase of different parts of Scripture, ascribed to a second Caedmon, we have already spoken. It was first published by Junius, in 1655 ; and lately, with an English translation, under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries, by Mr. Thorpe, 8vo. Loiul. 1832. A manviscript volume of Saxon poetry given by Bishop Leofric to the cathedral of Exeter, about the time of the Norman conquest, preserves some invaluable relics, among which the Song of the Traveller, already mentioned, stands conspicuous. This volume, which contains a number of Llymns aard minor sacred Poems, most of them enumerated Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449— 106G. 301 in the Introduction to Conybeare's Illustrations, is preparing for publication under the same auspices, and by the same editor, as the Paraphrase of Caedmon. The fragment of the Apocryphal History of Judith, printed by Thwaites, at the end of the Heptateuch ; the fragment on the Death of Byrth- noth, published by Hearne, from the Cottonian MS., Otho A xii., at the end of John of Glaston's Chronicle ; a short Menology, cr poetical Calendar, first printed by Hickes, in the Thesaurvis, and since separately, with an Enc;lish translation and notes, by the Rev. Samuel Fox, 8vo. Lond. 1830; Alfred's Boethian Metres; and some Odes and Elegies in the Saxon Chronicle, in part already referred to, and all translated by Dr. Ingram ; form the other chief remains of Saxon poetry. In scriptural learning, we have the Heptateuch, with the Story of Job, and the Pseudo-Gospel of Nicodemus, to Avhich the fragment of Judith, already mentioned, is added, published at Oxford, in 8vo. 1698; the Gospels of the four Evangelists, with the English in parallel columns, edited by John Foxe, in 1511, imder the auspices of Arch- bishop Parker; the Gothic and Saxon Gospels, by F. Junius and Marshall, published at Dordt, in 1665, and again at Amsterdam in 1684; a Latin and Saxon interlineary version of the Psalms, published from a manuscript in his father's library, by Sir John Spelman, 4to. Lond. 1640 ; and a Saxon and English Psalter, published from another manuscript, by Mr. Thorpe, two years ago. No other portions of the Saxon Scriptures now remain except a scattered Gloss upon the Proverbs and some excerpts from Ecclesiasticus, preserved among the Cottonian manuscripts. LIumphry Wanley, Lord Oxford's librarian, selected numerous pas- sages of various parts of Scripture, as quoted in the Saxon Homilies, which still remain in manuscript. Either to enumerate, or enter into the history of the various Saxon Llomilies which remain, would occupy a larger space than we can allow. Many of them are not now assignable to any particular author ; but the greater part are known to have issvied from the pens of ^Ifric and Lupus, the latter of whom was the same person with Wulfstan, archbishop of York, and bishop of Worcester. Orm,- or Ormin, is the name of another writer whose homilies are preserved among the manu- scripts of Junius, at Oxford ; and \^thclwold, who became bishop of Winchester in 961, occurs as a fourth Ilomilist, previous, in point of time, to the former. From these homilies alone can the faith and doctrines of the Saxon church be recovered and explained. Celibacy, it appears, though encouraged among the clergy, was not en- joined : the peo])le as well as the ])riests were allowed the use of the Scriptures in the native tongue ; nor had the Saxon church embraced the doctrine of Transubstantiation. ^^Ifric's Homilies were principally written at the abbey of Cerne, in Doisetshire. They were compiled from the writings of St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Jerom, Bede, Gregory, Smaragdus, and Haimo ; and were directed to be read constantly to the faithful in the church. Mrs. Elstob, the celebrated female Saxonist, published an English-Saxon Homily on the birthday of St. Gregory, 8vo. Lond, 1709; and she and l;er brother contemplated a folio edi- tion of the Honiilies at large, with an English translation, of which a few sheets only Avere printed, when the work dropped : their prepared manuscript, in part translated, is preserved in five volumes among the Lausdowne Manuscripts in the British Museum.* Connected with the Homilies are tlie Injunc- tions to the clergy, which go by the name of -^Ifric's Canons, drawn up for the use of Wulfsin, bishop of Sherburn. As the Homilies contained the form for the clergy to instruct the laity, these supplied the form for the bishops to instruct their clergy, and they aff^ord the most complete view of the discipline and ceremonies of the Saxon church which can be anywhere obtained. Some Lives and Passions of the Saints, exclu- sive of those in the Homilies, translated from the Latin, may be here mentioned, which are still pre- served in our manuscript libraries, particularly that of St. Guthlac, in the Cottonian collection, originally Avritten about the year 730, by Felix, a monk of Croyland. Bishop Ethelwx)ld, about the middle of the tenth century, whilst abbot of Abingdon, received tlie manor of Sudburn, in Suffolk, from King Edgar-, on condition of translating from the Latin the mo- nastic rule of St. Benedict. His Anglo-Saxon version formed afterwards the basis of the Concord of Rules promulgated by Dunstan, of which a fine and contemporary manuscript is preserved in the Cottonian Collection, f Previous to that time the Saxon monks lived principally \mder the rule which had been brought from Ireland. Among works connected with theology which remain in manuscript only, are versions of Gre- gory " De Cura Pastorali," of the " Flores ex D. Augustini Soliloquiorum Libro," and of the " Libri Dialogorum Gregorii Magni et Petri Dia- coui ejus." The two first are by King Alfred, who also made the selection of the " Flores :" but the Dialogues of Gregory and Peter Diaconus were translated by W^erefrid, bishop of Worcester, one of the learned men who aided Alfred's studies, by whom a short introduction was prefixed. Of these last a beautiful manuscript was all but destroyed in the Cottonian fire of 1731 ; though other ancient manuscripts of the Dialogues remain in the Bod- leian and among Sir William Dugdale's manu- scripts at Oxford, and in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. The Bodleian MS. is of the age of Canute, that in Corpus Christi College a little later than the time of the Conquest. In Moral Philosophy we have Alfred's version of Boethius " De Consolatione," of which specimens have been already given, but which disijlays tlxe * MS Liinsd. No.370— 374. + MS. Cotton, Tiberius, A iii. 302 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. spirit rather than the letter of Boethius. It is in some cases abridged, and in others paraphrastic. This translation has by some been attributed to Werefrith, bishop of Worcester, and by others to Asser, Bishop of St. David's; but the Cottonian Manuscript, Otho, A vi., evidently of the ninth cen- tury, ascribes it in the proem to Alfred. It was made, we are told, at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, and so addressed to the passions, as frequently, in the Saxon times, to draw tears from those who read it. Alfred named it Hand-hoc, or the manual. The Saxon was first published in 1698 at Oxford, by Christopher Rawlinson, of Carke Hall in Lan- cashire, from Junius' transcript of a manuscript in the 13odleian, collated with a Cottonian manu- script. It was again published with an English translation and notes, 8vo. 1829, by J. S. Cardale, who has also given a revised copy of the text. In Civil History we have only one work of pri- mary importance, the Saxon Chronicle; which is, in fact, a collection of chronicles, rather than one uniform work, continued from time to time, to the year 1154. A portion of it was first edited under the name of Chronologia Saxonica, at the end of Wheloc's Bede, fol. Camb. 1644 ; and an enlarged and improved, though still not a complete edition of the work, was published by Edmund Gibson, then a scholar of Queen's College, Oxford, afterwards bishop of London, 4to. Oxford, 1692, accompanied by an elegant Latin version. An English translation from Gibson's edition, by Miss Gurney, of Keswick, in Norfolk, was printed for private distribution in 1819. Lastly appeared the Saxon Chronicle, with an English translation, and notes, critical and explanatory, by the Rev. J. Ingram, B.D. 4to. Lond. 1823 — a work of superior value. A synoptical view of the different manu- scripts of the Chronicle which remain is prefixed, with a short grammar of the Anglo-Saxon lan- guage.* Fox, in his Acts and Monuments of the Church, speaks of having seen a manuscript in Saxon entitled the Story of Alfred, written by Alfred himself; but no such work is at present known to be extant. The Ecclesiastical History of the English, by Bede, formed another of King Alfred's translations. It was first edited by Abraham Wheloc, fol. Cambr. 1644, and again by Dr. John Smith at Cambridge in 1722. A third edition is intended to appear, with an English traYislation, in the great collection of our historians preparing by Mr. Petrie. We have but one specimen of what may be termed the Saxon knowledge of other countries ; and for that, too, we are indebted to King Alfred, who epitomised Orosius, the best abridgment of ancient history then extant. He sometimes deserted his author to make additions, of which the most important of all are an original account of the geography of Germany in the ninth century, and the two voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, already • Some light lias been attempted to be thrown upon the authorship of the different portions of the Saxon Chronicle in a late publication entitled "Ancient History, English and French, exemplified in a Regular Dissection of the Saxon Chronicle." 8vo. Lond. 1830. noticed. These voyages were edited at the end ot the Latin copy of Spelman's Life of Alfred, by the Hon. Daines Barrington, with an English translation, in the body of Orosius, 8vo. Lond. 1773; and again more perfectly in 1807 by Dr. Ingram, at the end of his inaugural lecture as Saxon Professor in the University of Oxford. We have already mentioned the several printed editions of .the Saxon laws by Lambarde, Wheloc, and Wilkins. A republication of the Anglo-Saxon laws is in- tended to form a part of the Corpus Historicum, the new History of Britain, undertaken by Mr. H. Petrie. A separate edition of Canute's Saxon Laws was published at Copenhagen in 4to. in 1826, with numerous Notes, by Professor Rosenvinge. There is a copy of Wheloc's Archaionomia in the Bodleian Library, in which the celebrated F. Junius has made almost a fresh translation of the Saxon laws neatly written above Lambarde's version. King Alfi'ed's will is preserved in a register of the Abbey of Newminster at Winchester, founded by that king a short time before his death ; and, as a legal document, is interesting to us on many accounts. " First," as is observed in the Preface to the Oxford edition, " we learn from it the ideas entertained by the king and the great men of the realm concerning the succession of the crown in the times of the Saxons. Secondly, we are informed of several particulars relative to the rights, liberties, and privileges of the different orders and degi'ees of men at that early period. Thirdly, we are fur- nished with many curious facts which elucidate the nature of the tenures by which estates were held in the time of our Saxon ancestors." Alfred's will was published at Oxford, by the delegates of the University Press, in 4to. hi 1788, accompanied by a literal translation from the pen of the Rev. Owen Manning, the editor of Lye's Dictionarium Saxonico et Gothico Latimim. It was re-published, with a preface and additional notes, in 8vo., Lond. 1828. Here, too, may be mentioned the numerous charters which remain, so extensively illustrative of the civil polity of the Saxons. They are often accompanied by what are termed land-books, or exemplifications of the boundaries of land, in the less-cultivated parts of our country, still useful to topographers.* A collection of these is intended to form one of the divisions of Mr. PeLrie's Corpus Historicum. Our Saxon ancestors were not entirely without treatises on natural knowledge and medicine, or rather medical botany ; for their remedies were usually vegetable medicines, sotnetimes accom- panied by incantations. The principal, how- ever, were translations from a Latin herbal falsely ascribed to Apuleius. The most beautiful and curious manuscript which is known of this work is • See Sir Richard Hoare's Registrum Wiltunonse. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 303 preserved in the Cottonian Library,* accompanied by the Medicina ex Quadrupedibus ; with drawings not only of the herbs and animals, but of ^Escu- lapius, Apuleius Platonicus, and Chiron, whom the Greeks reputed the inventor of medicine. Another ancient manuscript of it occurs, though without the drawings, in the Hatton Collection at Oxford,t and a third Herbal is particularly described by Wanley in the Catalogue which accompanies Dr. Hickes' Thesaurus. J It forms a small thick volume in octavo, largely written, and contains a few specimens of incantations. The most valuable manuscript in medicine, however, is the Liber Medicinalis in the Royal Library now at the Bri- tish Museum. § It appears to have been the work of one Bai,d, and was compiled from the old Latin physicians, such as Marcellus, Scribonius Largus, Pliny, Ccelius Aurelianus, and Theodorus Pris- cianus ; and is evidently of the tenth century, if not earlier. In Romance Literature we have a fragment of the story of Apollonius of Tyre, which has been carefully edited from a manuscript in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, with a translation by Mr. Benjamin Thorpe, 8vo. Lond. 1834. The Latin of this Romance forms the 153rd chapter of the Gesta Romanorum. The story, as is well known, is the same upon which the play of Pericles was founded, attributed to Shakspeare. In Grammatical Learning we have a valuable though late treatise, of which the best manuscripts liave been neglected. It is a translation of the younger Priscian by Archbishop ^Elfric, accom- panied by a glossary of words. Somner, in the preface to his Dictionary, complains of the errors and barbarity of the ancient copy of this glossary which he used from the library of his and Junius' friend Rubenius at Brussels ; and Skynner, in his Etymologicon, has also noticed its errors. It is remarkable that, at the close of his preface, ^Ifric should express a fear that his labours would in after times be mutilated by transcribers. The variations in the different copies of the Glossary now remain- ing prove the reality of his suspicions. There are several copies both of the Grammar and the Glos- sary among the Cottonian and Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum ; but the finest of all, and by far the most copious manuscript, is in the Library of St. John's College, Oxford, improved by ^'Elfric Bata, the grammarian's scholar. This manuscript is very different from the other copies, and is accompanied with Dialogues by both TElfrics. Such forms the general survey of the native literature of tlie Anglo-Saxons. We have not mentioned every fragment which remains, but the reader who would be more inquisitive has only to refer to Humphry Wanley's Catalogue of SaXon Manuscripts, inserted in Dr. Hickes' Thesaurus, * VilfaU. C ii. f MS. Hattoii 100, transcribed in MS. Junius 58. t Tom. iii. p.304. 5 12 U xvii. which Wanley travelled through England to compile. Limited as the circle of Saxon literature and science may appear, it is impossible not to reflect with wonder on the exertions of the man to wliom we are indebted for the greater part ; who, amidst the most violent commotions of the state, found leisure not only to rival the illustrious Charlemagne in the protection and promotion of literary merit, but to surpass him in the personal exertions of a strong and active genius. * But even at this early period the Saxon is not our only native literature that claims some notice. The Irish were probably possessed of the know- ledge of letters from a very remote antiquity ; for, although the forms of their present alphabetical characters are Roman, and were probably intro- duced by St. Patrick, it is very remarkable, as we have before observed, that the alphabet, in the number and powers of its elements, exactly corre- sponds with that which Cadmus is recorded to have brought to Greece from Phenicia. If we may believe the national traditions, and the most ancient existing chronicles, the Irish also possessed a suc- cession of Bards from their first settlement in the country ; and the names at least of some of those that are said to have flourished so early as in the first century of our era are still remembered. But the oldest bardic compositions that have been pre- served are of the fifth century. Some fragments of metrical productions to which this date is attributed are found in the old annalists, and more abundant specimens occur in the same records under each of the succeeding centuries. The oldest existing Irish manuscript, however, is believed to be the Psalter of Cashel, a collection of bardic legends, compiled about the end of the ninth century, by Cormac Mac Culinan, bishop of Cashel and king • Ilearne in a Note to the English edition of Spelman's Life of Alfred, from a meraorandnm among Dr. James' manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, mentions a translation by King Alfred of ^Esop's Fables from the Greek into Latin and Saxon; and it is not a little remarkable that the same fact is recorded in one of the old Lays in the Romance language, the Lay of iEsop, the author of which writes tliat /Esop's Fables were translated out of Greek into Latin and into English, l)y King Alfred, from whose version, now lost, he made his own in French:— Esope apelum cest liure, Qu'il transla'a e fist escrire Del Grin en Latin le turna Li reis Alitrcz (jui mult lama Le translata puis en Engleis E jeo lai rimdo en Fianceis. Harl. MS. 978, Fol. 60. In prosecuting tl'.e study of Anglo-Saxon literature the reader will find Dr. Hickes' " Linguarum Vett. SepteutrionaUum The- saurus," 3 torn. fol. Oxou. 1705, an indispensable work for consul- tation. The Dictionaries are, Somner's, fol. Oxford, 1659, and Lye's " Dictionarium Saxonico et Gothico Latiniim,'' edited by O. Manning, 2 vols. fol. Lond. 1772, with Benson's Vocabulary, clnefly abridged from Somner, 8vo. Oxf.1701. The earliest Grammar was Dr. Hickes's, 4to. Oxf. 1689, reprinted with additions in tlie Tliesaurus, and pub- lished in an abridged form bv Ed. Thwaites,8vo. Oxf. 1711 ; Elstob's Grammar, 4to. Lond. 1715; Orator Henley's, 8vo. Lond. 1720; Man- ning's, prefixed to Lye's Dictionary, fol. 1772 ; Ingram's short Grammar, prefixed to the Sa.Kon Chronicle, 4lo. L<md, 1823;, Bos- worth's Elements, accompanied by a Grammatical Praxis, Svo. Lond. 1823, followed by his Compendious Grammar, Svo. Lond. 1826 ; Gwilt's Rudiments, Svo. Lond. 1829; and Raske's Grammar of tlie Anglo-Saxon Tongue, translated from the Danish by B. Tliorpe, Slid edit. Svo. Copenli.l8:J0. Raske's Grammar was first published at Copenhagen, Svo. 1817. To these may be added," Analecta Anglo- Saxonica. A Selection, in prose and verse, from Anglo-Saxon authors of various ages; witli a Glossary. Designed chiefly as a First Book for Students." ■ By Benjamin 'niorpo, Svo. Lo'id. 1834. 304 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. of Munster. But the most valuable remains of this period of Irish literature that have come down to us are the various historical records in prose, called the Annals ofTigernach, of the Four Masters of Ulster, and many others. The most important of these have been published in tlie original, and ac- companied with Latin translations, in Dr. O'Conor's ' Rerum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres,' 4 vols. 4to. Buckingham, 1814-1826 ; a splendid monu- ment of the munificence of his grace the present Duke of Buckingham, at whose expense the woik was prepared anl printed, and from the treasures of whose library its contents were principally derived. Tigernach, the oldest of these Irish annalists whose works we have in the original form, lived in t!ie latter part of the eleventh century ; but both his and the other Annals profess, and are believed, to have been compiled from authentic records of much greater antiquity. They form undoubtedly a col- lection of materials in the highest degree precious for the information they supply with regard to the history both of Ireland and of the other early Bri- tish kingdoms. These Annals differ wholly in character from the metrical legends of Irish history found in the book of Cashel and in the other later compositions of the Bards. They consist of ac- counts of events related for the most part liotli with sobriety and precision, and with the careful nota- tion of dates that might be expected from a con- temporary and official recorder. They are in all probability, indeed, copies of, or compilations from, public records. Not of such historic importance, but still more curious and interesting in another point of view, are the remains we still possess of the early Welsh literature. The Welsh have no annals to be com- pared in value with those of the Irish ; but some of their Bruts, or chronicles, fabulous as they evi- dently in great part are, are undoubtedly of consi- derable antiquity. There can be little doubt that Geoffrey of Monmoutli's Latin history is really a translation from a much older W^elsh original. The Chronicle of Tyssilio, who flourished in the seventh century, still survives, and has been pub- lished in the original (in the Welsh Archaeology), as well as in an English translation, by the Rev. Peter Roberts, 8vo. Lond. 1810. The Laws of Howel Dha, who reigned in South Wales in the early part of the tenth century, have been printed with a Latin translation, by Wotton, in his Leges Wallicse, fol. 1130. They develope a state of society in which many primitive features are strangely mixed up with a general aspect of consi- derable civilization, and all the order of a well- established political system. Then there are the singular compositions called the Triads, which are enumerations of events or other particulars, bound together in knots of three, by means of some title or general observation — sometimes it must be con- fessed forced and far-fetched enough — under which it is conceived they may all be included. Of the Triads, some are moral, and others historical. The historical are certainly not all ancient; for they contain allusions to events that took place in the reign of our Edward I.; but it appears most probable that the form of composition which they exemplify was long in use ; and, if so, the compa- ratively modern character of some of them does not disprove the antiquity of others. A late writer, who considers them to be a compilation of the thir- teenth century, admits that they " reflect, in a small and moderately faithful mirror, various pas- sages of bardic composition which are lost."* The most voluminous of the ancient Welsh remains, however, are the poems of the Bards. The authenticity of these compositions may be consi- dered to be now established, beyond dispute, by the, labours of various writers by whom the subject has been recently investigated, and especially by Mr. Turner's able and elaborate ' Vindication.' t The most ancient of them aie the poems ascribed to the four bards, Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and Merdhin, or Merlin, the Caledonian, who all ap])ear to have belonged to the sixth cen- tury. A few additional pieces have also been pre- served of the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, which are printed along witli these in the first volume of the ' Myrvyrian Archae- ology of Wales,' 3 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1801. Much of this early Welsh poetry is in a strangely mystical style, and its general spirit is evidently much more Druidical than Christian. The author of ' Bri- taimia after tlie Romans' has endeavoured to show that a revival of Druidism w^as effected in Wales in the sixth century, principally through the efforts of the Bards, whose order had formerly com- posed so distinguished a part of that system ; and certainly the whole char-acter of this ancient poetry seems strongly to confirm that supposition, which does not, however, rest upon this evidence alone. No existing manuscript of these poems, we may observe, nor any other W^elsh manuscript, appears to be much older than the twelfth century. As the forms of the Saxon alphabetical charac- ters are the same with those of the Irish, it is pro- bable that it was from Ireland the Saxons derived their first knowdedge of letters. There was cer- tainly, however, very little literature in the country before the arrival of Augustin, in the end of the sixth century. Augustin is supposed to have esta- blished schools at Canterbury ; and about a quar- ter of a century afterwards, Sigebert, king of the East Angles, who had spent part of his early life in France, is stated by Bede to have, upon his coming to the throne, founded an institution for the instruction of the youth of his dominions similar to those he had seen abroad. The schools planted by Augustin at Canterbury were afterwards greatly extended and improved by his successor. Arch- bishop Theodore, who obtained the see in 668, Theodore and his learned friend Adrian, Bede in- forms us, delivered instructions to crowds of pupils, not only in divinity, but also in astronomy, medi- • Brit.innia after the Romans, xiv. + Published at tho end of liis History of the .\n!.'lo-Saxons. See •also the Rev. K. Uavics's Collio Keseiiiclies, Mr. Probcrt's Preface to liis edition of Aneurin, and Britannia aftei tho Romans, i.-vi. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 305 cine, arithmetic, and the Greek and Latin lan- guages. Bede states, that some of the scliolars of these accomplished foreigners were alive in his time, to whom the Greek and Latin were as fami- liar as their mother tongue. Schools now began to multiply in other parts, and were generally to be found in all the monasteries and at the bishops' seats. Of these episcopal and monastic schools, that founded by Bishop Benedict, in his abbey at Wearmouth, where Bede was educated, and that which Archbishop Egbert established at York, where iVlcuin studied, were among the most famous. Others of great reputation were superintended by learned teachers from Ireland. We have already mentioned that of Maildulf at Malmesbury, to which Aldhelm repaired after having studied for some time under Adrian. At Glastonbury also, it is related in the life of St. Dunstan, some Irish ecclesiastics had settled, the books belonging to whom Dunstan is recorded to have diligently stu- died. The northern parts of the kingdom were indebted for the first light of learning as well as of religion to the missionaries from lona. It should not seem to be altogether correct to attribute the decline and extinction of this earliest literary civilization of the Anglo-Saxons wholly to the Danish invasions. The Northmen did not make their appearance till towards the close of the eighth century, nor did their ravages occasion any considerable public alarm till long after the commencement of the ninth ; but for a whole cen- tury preceding this date, learning in England ap- pears to have been falling into decay. Bede, who died in 135, exactly ninety-seven years before that landing of the Danes in the Isle of Sheppey, in the reign of Egbert,* which was followed by incessant attacks of a similar kind, until the fierce marauders at last won for themselves a settlement in the coun- try, is the last name eminent for scholarship that occurs in this portion of the English annals. The historian Malmesbury, indeed, affirms that the death of Bede was fatal to learning in England, and especially to history ; " insomuch that it may be said," he adds, writing in the early part of the twelfth century, " that almost all knowledge of past events was buried in the same grave with him, and hath continued in that condition even to our times." " There was not so much as one Eng- lishman," Malmesbury declares, " left behind Bede, who emulated the glory which he had ac- quired by his studies, imitated his example, or pursued the path to knowledge which he had pointed out. A few, indeed, of his successors were good men, and not unleamed, but they generally spent their lives in an inglorious silence ; while the far greater number sunk into sloth and igno- rance, until by degrees the love of learning was quite extinguished in this island for a long time." The devastations of the Danes completed what had probably been begun by the confusion of tlie internal dissensions that attended the breaking up of the original system of the heptarchy, and per- • See ante, p. 151. VOL. I. haps also by the natural decay of the national spirit among a race long habituated to a stirring and ad- venturous life, and now left in indisturbed ease and quiet before the spirit of a new and superior acti- vity had been sufficiently diffiised among them. Nearly all the monasteries and the schools con- nected with them throughout the kingdom were either actually laid in ashes by the northern in- vaders, or were deserted in the general terror and distraction occasioned by their attacks. When Alfred was a young man, about the middle of the eighth century, he could find no masters to instruct him in any of the higher branches of learning ; there were at that time, according to his biographer Asser, few or none among the West Saxons who had any scholarship, or could so much as read with propriety and ease. The reading of the Latin lan- guage is probably what is here alluded to. Alfred has himself stated, in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastoralia, that though many of the English at his accession could read their native language well enough, the knowledge of the Latin tongue was so much decayed, that there were very few to the south of the Humber who understood the common prayers of the church, or were capable of translating a single sentence of Latin into English ; and to the south of the Thames he could not recol- lect that there was one possessed of this very mode- rate amount of learning. Contrasting this lament- able state of things with the better days that had gone before, he exclaims, " I wish thee to know that it comes very often into my mind, what wise men there were in England, both laymen and ecclesiastics, and how happy those times were to England ! The sacred profession was diligent both to teach and to learn. Men from abroad sought wisdom and learning in this country, though we must now go out of it to obtain knowledge if we should wish to have it." It was not till he was nearly forty years of age, that Alfred himself commenced his study of the Latin language. Before this, however, and as soon as he had rescued his domiiiions from the hands of the Danes, and reduced these foreign dis- turbers to subjection, he had exerted himself with his characteristic activity in bringing about the restoration of letters as well as of peace and order. He had invited to his court all the most learned men he could discover anywhere in his native land, and had even brought over instructors for himself and his people from other countries. Werfrith, the bishop of Worcester; Ethelstan and Wervvulf, two Mercian priests ; and Plegmund, also a Mer- cian, who afterwards became archbishop of Can- terbury, were some of the English of whose supe- rior acquirements he thus took advantage. Asser he brought from the western extremity of Wales. Grimbald he obtained from France, having sent an embassy of bishops, presbyters, deacons, and reli- gious laymen, bearing valuable presents to his ecclesiastical superior Fulco, the archbishop of Rheims, to ask permission for tlie great scholar to be allowed to come to reside in England. And so 306 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. in other instances, like the bee, looking everywhere for honey, to quote the similitude of his biographer, this admirable prince sought abroad in all directions for the treasure which his own kingdom did not aflTord. The works which he is known to have trans- lated from the Latin, after he had acquired that language, have been enumerated in a preceding page. These labours, so interesting and valuable to posterity, he seems himself to have been half in- clined to regard as to be justified only by the low state into which all learning had fallen among his countrymen in his time, and as likely perhaps to be rather of disservice than otherwise to the cause of real scholarship. Reflecting on the erudition which had existed in the country at a former period, and which had made those volumes in the learned languages useful that now lay unopened, " I wondered greatly," he says, " that of those good wise men who were formerly in our nation, and who had all learned fully these books, none would translate any part into their own language ; but I soon answered myself, and said, they never thought that men would be so reckless, and that learning would be so fallen. They intentionally omitted it, and wished that there should be more wisdom in the land, by many languages being known." He then called to recollection, however, what benefit had been derived by all nations from the translation of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, first into Latin, and then into the various modern tongues J and, "therefore," he concludes, " I think it better, if you think so (he is addressing Wulfsig, the bishop of London), that we also translate some books, the most necessary for all men to know, that we all may know them ; and we may do this, with God's help, very • easily, if we have peace; so that all the youth that are now in Eng- land, who are freemen, and possess sufficient wealth, may for a time apply to no other task till they first well know to read English. Let those learn Latin afterwards, who -will know more, and advance to a higher condition." In this wise and benevolent spirit he acted. The old Avriters seem to state that, besides the translations that have come down to us, he executed many others that are now lost. It is probable, though there is no sufficient autho- rity for the statement, that Alfred re-established many of the old monastic and episcopal schools in the various parts of the kingdom. Asser expressly mentions that he founded a seminary for the sons of the nobility, to the support of which he devoted no less than an eighth part of his whole revenue. Hither even some noblemen repaired who had far outgrown their youth, but nevertheless had scarcely or not at all begun their acquaintance with books. In another place Asser speaks of this school, to which Alfred is stated to have sent his own son Aethelweard, as being attended not only by the sons of almost all the nobiHty of the realm, but also by many of the inferior classes. It was pro- vided with several masters. The common opinion is, that this seminary, instituted by Alfred, is to be considered as the foundation of the illustrious Uni- versity of Oxford. Up to this time absolute illiteracy seems to have been common even among the highest classes of the Anglo-Saxons. We have just seen that, when Alfred established his schools, they were as much needed for the nobility who had readied an advanced or a mature age as for their children ; and indeed the scheme of instruction seems to have been in- tended from the first to embrace the former as well as the latter, for, according to Asser's account, every person of rank or substance who, either from age or want of capacity, was unable to learn to read himself, was compelled to send to school either his son or a kinsman, or, if he had neither, a servant, that he might at least be read to by some one. Anglo-Saxon charters exist, which, instead of the names of the kings, exhibit their marks, used, as it is frankly explained, in consequence of their ignorance of letters. The measures begun by Alfred for effecting the literary civilization of his subjects were probably pursued under his successors; but the period of the next three quarters of a century, notwithstand- ing some short intervals of repose, was on the whole too troubled to admit of much attention being given to the carrying out of his plans, or even, it may be apprehended, the maintenance of what he had set up. Dunstan, indeed, during his adminis- tration, appears to have exerted himself with zeal in enforcing a higher standard of learning as well as of morals, or of asceticism, among the clergy. But the renewal of the Danish wars, after the ac- cession of Ethelred, and the state of misery and confusion in which the country was kept from this cause till its conquest by Canute, nearly forty years after, must have again laid in ruins the greater part of its literary as well as ecclesiastical establish- ments. The concluding portion of the tenth cen- tury was thus, probably, a time of as deep intellec- tual darkness in England as it was throughout most of the rest of Europe. Under Canute, how- ever, who was a wise as well as a powerful sove- reign, the schools no doubt rose again and flourished. We have the testimony of the historian Ingulphus, who wrote immediately after the Norman conquest, but whose boyhood coincided with the early part of the reign of the Confessor, that at that time semi- naries of the higher as well as elementary learning existed, in England. He tells us that, having been born in the city of London, he was first sent to school at Westminster ; and that from Westminster he proceeded to Oxford, where he studied the Aristotelian philosophy and the rhetorical writings of Cicero. Tliis is, we believe, the earliest express mention of the University of Oxford. The studies that were cultivated in those ages were few in number and of very limited scope. Alcuin, in a letter to his patron Charlemagne, has enumerated, in the fantastic rhetoric of the period, the subjects in which he instructed his pupils in the school of St. Martin. "To some," he says; " I administer the honey of the sacred writings, Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 307 others I try to inebriate with the wine of the ancient classics. I begin the nourishment of some with the apples of grammatical subtlety. I strive to illuminate many by the arrangement of the stars, as from the painted roof of a lofty palace." In plain language, his instructions embraced grammar, the Greek and Latin languages, astronomy, and theology. In the poem in which he gives an account of his own education at York, the same writer informs us that the studies there pursued comprehended, besides grammar, rhetoric, and poetry, " the harmony of the sky, the labour of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering planets ; the laws, risings, and settings of the stars, and the aerial motions of the sea ; earthquakes ; the nature of man, cattle, birds, and wild beasts, with their various kind and forms ; and the sacred Scriptures." This poem of Alcuin's is especially interesting fur the account it gives us of the contents of the library collected by Archbishop Egbert at York, the benefit of which Alcuin had enjoyed in his early years, and which he seems to speak of in his letter to Charlemagne, already quoted, as far superior to any collection then existing in France. He proposes that some of his pupils should be sent to York to make copies of the manuscripts there for the im- perial library at Tours. Among them, he says, were the works of Jerome, Hilary, Ambrose, Austin, Athanasius, Orosius, the Popes Gregory and Leo, Basil, Fulgentius, Cassiodorus, John Chrysostom, Athelmus, Bede, Victorinus, Boethius ; the ancient historical writers, as he calls them, Pompeius (most probably Justin, the epitomizer of thei lost Trogus Pompeius), and Pliny ; Aristotle, Cicero ; tlie later poets Sedulius and Juvencus ; Alcuin him- self, Clement, Prosper, Paulinus, Arator, Fortu- natus, and Lactantius (writers of various kinds evidently thus jumbled together to suit the exigen- cies of the verse) ; Virgil, Statius, Lucan 3 the author of the Ars Grammaticee ; the grammarians and scholiasts, Probus, Phocas, Donatus, Priscian, and Servius ; Entychius ; Pompeius (probably Festus) and Commenianus ; besides, he adds, many more whom it would be tedious to enumerate. This was certainly a very extraordinary amount of lite- rary treasure to be amassed in one place, and by one man, at a period when books were everywhere so scarce and necessarily bore so high a price. " Towards the close of the seventh century," says Warton, in his Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning into England, " even in the Papal library at Rome, the number of books was so inconsider- able that Pope St. Martin requested Sanctamand, Bishop of Maestricht, if possible, to supply this defect from the remotest parts of Germany. In the year 855, Lupus, Abbot of Ferrieres in France, sent two of his monks to Pope Benedict the Third, to beg a copy of Cicero de Oratore, and Quin- tilian's Institutes, and some other books : ' for,' says the Abbot, ' although we have part of these books, yet there is no whole or complete copy of them in all France.' Albert, Abbot of G^mblours, who with incredible labour and immense expense had collected an hundred volumes on theological and fifty on profane subjects, imagined he had formed a splendid library. About the year 790 Charlemagne granted an unlimited right of hunting to the Abbot and monks of Sithiu, for making their gloves and girdles of the skins of the deer they killed, and covers for their books. We mav ima- gine that these religionists were more fond of hunting than of reading. It is certain that they were obliged to hunt before they could read ; and, at least, it is probable that under these circum- stances, and of such materials, they did not manu- facture many volumes. At the beginning of the tenth century books were so scarce in Spain, that one and the same copy of the Bible, St. Jerome's Epis- tles, and some volumes of ecclesiastical offices and martyrologies, often served several different monas- teries." To these instances we may add what Bede relates in his History of the Abbots of Wear- mouth, in which monastery, as already mentioned, Benedict Biscopt, the founder, had about the end of the seventh century collected a considerable library, at the cost not only of much money, but also of no little personal exertion, having made five journeys to Rome for the purchase of books, relics, and other furniture and decorations for the esta- blishment. Bede records that Benedict sold one of his volumes, a work on cosmogi-aphy, to his sovereign, Alfred of Northumberland, for eight hides of land. The account which lias been given of the exist- ing remains of the Saxon literature, and of the other works of the period vmder review, hns suffi- ciently indicated the branches of learning and science that were chiefly cultivated. We shall, therefore, merely add a short account of the state of the fine arts of architecture, sculpture, painting, and music among the Anglo-Saxons. It will be proper to introduce our notice of the Anglo-Saxon architecture by a short inquiry into its origin, especially as we shall find that the Nor- man style, and perhaps in some particulars that of the middle ages in general, may be traced to the same source. The pure style of classical architecture perfected by the Greeks, underwent several modifications in the hands of the Romans, which materially changed its character, and finally led to its debasement. Even the Roman temples, which are direct imita- tions of those of the Greeks, have not the same purity of style, though superior to them in magni- ficence; and in their more extensive works, the use of the arch draws a strong line between the architecture of the Romans and that of the Greeks, the distinctive characteristic of the latter being the horizontal architrave supported on columns. But though the Romans adopted the arch in their con- structions, they did not therefore abandon the archi- tectural details of the Greeks ; when, from the in- troduction of vaulted coverings and arched forms generally, columns ceased to be used as supports, 308 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. they were retained as ornaments; and it is this combination of incongruous members, of vaults with columns and horizontal architraves, to which, by the gradual addition of other corruptions, we owe the style of architecture which at length be- came universal throughout the extent of the Ro- man empire, and to which has been given the name of Romanesque. To this point, the decline of the Roman archi- tecture was rapidly advancing as early as the reign of Diocletian. In the baths of Diocletian at Rome, vast groined vaultings are supported on columns, and their outward thrust covmterpoised by external piers, performing the same otiice as the buttresses to extensively introduced into the constructions of later ages. Iii the palace of Spa- latro, bviilt by the same emperor, the porticoes of the internal courts are formed by arches springing Golden Gate of the Palack of Diocletian at SrAi^Taa directly from single columns ; and over the prin- cipal entrance, or golden gate of the palace, small arches springing from columns — the columns rest- ing on consoles projecting from the wall — are in- troduced merely''as a decoration ; and it is a curious coincidence with reference to the purpose for which this example is cited, that we find in the consoles two forms which make a mcst important figure in the decorations of the 11th century, viz., the zig- zag ornament and the corbel head. To what state of decay the arts had fallen when Constantine removed the seat of em])ire to Byzan- tium, may be seen by such parts of his triumj)hal arch at Rome, as were the work of that period. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 809 Console from the Palace at Spalatho, Tlie empire and the arts decayed together, and the general decline of prosperity finally led to the ruinous custom of demolishing ancient buildings, in order to furnish materials for erecting new ones, and especially such as were required by the spread and supremacy of the Christian religion. The ancient temples were incapable of being converted to the purposes of Christian worship ; but the Basilicas were so well calculated to receive large assemblies of people, that their form was adopted and retained in the construction of churches, their name became diverted from its original meaning, and the Christian Basilicas, erected with the spoils of ancient Rome, remain the most striking monu- ments of the barbarous magnificence of the lower ages. There seems to be no foundation for attribviting to the Goths and other northern nations who over- ran the Roman provinces, any influence upon the state of art, further than that of precipitating its fall. On the contrary, these conquerors, with the wealth of the Roman empire, carried back with them a taste for the arts of civilization ; and the conversion of the northern nations to Christianity, which established an intimate connexion with Rome and with the Latin clergy, introduced among them as much of the arts and sciences as survived in the western world. With some modi- fications, the R(jman architecture of the fifth and sixth centuries will be found to have prevailed wherever the Christian religion was established; and as regards the Goths, so far from having any distinct architecture of their own, there is positive proof that the buildings erected by Theodoric, who reigned in Italy from 493 to 526, and was a great builder, were in the Roman style, and built by Roman architects. The celebrated Boethius is named by Cassiodorus as one of the architects of that conqueror. Nor is there any proof that the Lombards carried with them into Italy any inno- vations in architecture, or that during the existence of their kingdom, which lasted for above two cen- turies, they introduced any deviations from the style they found established there. Whatever mo- difications architecture may have received in Italy, are probably to be attributed to the Byzantines, who long took the lead in all matters connected with the arts. Admitting this view of the state of the arts sub- sequently to the time of Constantine the Great, we shall not expect to find any original traces of art among a people in so rude a state as the Saxons at the time of their settlement in England. They came as invaders and destroyers ; they entered an abandoned and despoiled province, and neither brought nor inherited the arts. Most of the edi- fices, either public or private, which the Romans, in accordance with their universal practice in their provinces, had erected in Britain, appear to have perished during the devastating wars in which the country was involved with Scots, Picts, and Saxons; and the final supremacy of the latter obliterated the arts, till they were restored from without. That the Saxons erected temples of some kind for their pagan worship there can be no doubt, but of their form or materials nothing is known with certainty. It has, indeed, been inferred, that they were not altogether deficient in show or solidity, from the fact that some of them were converted into churches at the first establishment of Chris- tianity ; and it is certain that Pope Gregory writes to St. Augustin, advising him not to demolish the temples, but to cast out and destroy the idols, and consecrate them to the service of Gcd. This, however, throws no light upon the nature or extent of the Saxon temples. Gregory's impression of temples -was a Roman one, and in any case we can hardly suppose that the buildings of a people so uncultivated as the Saxons before their conversion, ever possessed any distinct architectural character. The conversion of the Saxons led immediately to the erection of churches. Some few churches left by the Romans appear to have escaped the general devastation. Bede records two in the city of Canterbury, one of which was repaired and given to St. Augustin, by King Ethelbert, on his conversion, dedicated to our Saviour, and &A&- blished as tlie episcopal see. Two other churches were also founded by Ethelbert — that of the mo- nastery of St. Peter and St. Paul at Canterbury, and that of St. Andrew, at Rochester, v/hich also became an episcopal see. About the same time the see of London was founded, and a church built, by Sebert, king of the East Saxons. So little is upon record concerning these churches, that it has been a subject of controversy among antiquarians, whether they were of stone or timber, and even whether the Anglo-Saxons were sufficiently ad- vanced in the arts to erect stone buildings for a considerable time afterwards. That many timber buildings were erected about this period, there is no doubt. The first chapel or oratory erected by Edwin, king of Northumberland, at York, in 627, was of timber. A wooden church is mentioned by William of Malmesbury, at Dutlinge, in Somerset- shire ; and the cathedral of Lindisfarne was built in 652 entirely of sawn oak, and even covered with thatch, till Eadbert, the seventh bisho]i of Lindis- 310 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. fame, replaced the thatch with lead. But the cathedral of York, founded by Edwin soon after his baptism, was undoubtedly a stone buildiiig, and it marks the progress of the arts in this cen- tury, tliat in 669 Bishop Wilfrid glazed the win- dows. The glass for this purpose seems to have been imported from abroad, since, as we have already mentioned, the famous Benedict Biscop, abbot of Wearmouth, is recorded as the first who brought artificers skilled in the art of making glass into this country from France (about 676). These artificers not only glazed the windows of Biscop's church at Wearmouth, biit taught their art to the native workmen : before this period, windows even of churches were enclosed by lattice-work, or some- times by linen blinds. These two prelates, Wilfrid and Benedict Bis- cop, were the most munificent patrons of archi- tecture in the seventh century. The monastery of Wearmouth was begun by the latter in the year 675, when he went over to France, in order to engage artificers to execute his church " in the Roman manner," as it is expressly termed by Bede. In the same style mvist have been the buildings of Wilfrid, enumerated in his life by Eddius, of which the most important, and indeed one of the most important buildings of the age,- if we may believe the biographer, was the church of St. Andrew, at Hexham, of which Wilfrid laid the foundation in 674. Eddius expatiates at some lengUi upon the glories of this edifice, of which, he says, the like is not to be seen on this side the Alps. But it will be more to the purpose to quote the description of Richard, Prior of Hexham, who viTote toward the end of the 12th century, when it was still in existence ; and as he might compare this church with those by which the Normans had then attested their magnificence and skill in archi- tecture, there can be no doubt that it really merited his praises, from which we cannot but conceive a somewhat high idea of the state of architecture among the Anglo-Saxons at this period. Prior Richard's description is as follows. " The foundations of this church St. Wilfrid laid deep in the earth for the crypts and oratories, and the passages leading to them, which were then with great exactness contrived and built under ground. The walls, which were of great length, and raised to an immense height, and divided into three several stories or tiers, he supported by square and various other kinds of well-polished columns. Also, the walls, the capitals of the columns which supported them, and the arch of the sanctuary, he decorated with historical repre- sentations, imagery, and various figures in relief, carved in stone, and painted with a most agreeable variety of colours. The body of the church he compassed about with pentices and porticoes, which, both above and below, he divided with great and inexpressible art, by partition walls and winding stairs. Within the staircases, and above them, he caused flights of steps and galleries of stone, and several passages leading from them both ascending and descending, to be artfiiUy disposed, that mul- titudes of people might be there, and go quite round the church, without being seen by any one below in the nave. Moreover, in the several divi- sions of the porticoes or aisles, both above and below, he erected many most beautiful and private oratories of exquisite workmanship, and in them he caused to be placed altars in honour of tlic Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Michael, St. John the Baptist, and the holy apostles, martyrs, confesEors, and virgins, with all decent and proper furniture to each of them ; some of which, remaining at this day, appear. like so many turrets and fortified places." The same historian mentions three other churches remaining at Hexham, all of which he attributes to the munificence of Wilfrid, One of these, dedi- cated to the Blessed Virgin, is particularly worthy of notice. It is described as being in the form of a tower, almost circular, having four poiticoes at the four principal points. We may here see the rudiments of a cruciform church with a tower at the intersection, a form which subsequently became universal in large churches, and of which the adoption was accompanied by important changes of style in the architecture of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Wilfrid appears to have been one of the most enterprising and enlightened prelates of his age. He was in high favour with Oswy, king of Nor- thumberland, and for some part of his reign with Egfrid ; and, by his influence with them and the nobility, enriched the church, and obtained the funds necessary to carry his designs into effect. According to his biographer Eddius, he was him- self eminent for his skill in architecture, and prin- cipal director of his own works, with the assistance of many eminent artists, whom he invited from Rome, and retained in his service by his liberality. Eddius was engaged by him, in conjunction with Eona, to instruct his choir in the Roman manner of singing. In the beginning of the eighth century the arts had begun to penetrate into the northern parts of our island. In the year 710, Naiton, khig of the Picts, wrote to Ceolfrid, Abbot of Jarrow, of his intention to build a church of stone, and desired him to send some artificers to build it after the Roman manner. In 716, Ethelbald, king of Mercia, erected the Abbey of Croyland, in Lincolnshire, the foundations of which are described as being laid upon large wooden piles driven into the ground, solid earth, brought in boats from a distance of nine miles, being laid upon them. In the year 767, tlie churcli of St. Peter, at York, having been damaged by fire, was taken down and rebuilt by Albert, then archbishop of that see. Albert was a learned, accomplished, and munificent prelate. He had visited Rome and other seats of learning abroad, and brought home with him a fine collection of books and relics, and various objects of art. In the re-edification of his Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 311 Basilica of Sr, Vavl, Kome, after the Fire, 1823. church he was assisted by his pupils, Eanbald, who succeeded him in the see, and the famous Alcuin. The latter, in the account he has left of the church 'he contributed to build, describes it as a lofty pile, supported by arches on solid columns, with admi- rable vaultings and windows, surrounded by por- ticoes and galleries, and containing thirty altars variously ornamented. We have few notices or indications of the pro- gress of the arts during the wars which desolated the country, with little intermission, during the ninth and tenth centuries, shortly after which the Anglo-Saxon architecture merged into that modifi- cation of the Romanesque, which, regarding the source from whence we immediately derived it, we properly term the Norman style. As the intro- duction of this style forms a second period of Anglo-Saxon architecture, it will be well here to take a short view of the few facts which have been collected concerning the first. Of the btuldings of the period we have gone through, not one stone remains upon another to inform us either of their character or extent, and it is only from the scanty notices of them in the chronicles and records of the time that we are enabled to judge of either. From what has been cited of this sort, we may safely infer that the architecture of the Anglo-Saxons was identical with that of the Continent, as far as the Christian religion had spread a taste for Roman art — an iiifer- ence confirmed by the analogy of later styles, even down to the fourteenth century. That the larger Anglo-Saxon churches were in form as well as in name the same as the Roman Basilicas, may be inferred from the fact that they are frequently spoken of by historians as being in the Roman manner, as well as from their quadrangular form and internal porticoes, which are clearly described by Bede in more than one passage. Add to these considerations the absence of any allusion to tran- septs or large towers, and they are identified with the churches of the same age, of which so many remain in Italy, and some in Germany. The Basilica of St. Paul without the walls of Rome, founded by Constantine, is in its general features as close a copy of the ancient Basilica as the use for which it was designed would allow, and the degenerate age in which it was erected could pro- duce. The interior of this magnificent church, until the year 1823, when it was nearly destroyed by fire, remained much as it was left by Theodosius the Great, who was a great benefactor to it, with 312 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. the exception of the extraneous decorations of all ages, laid upon it by the piety of succeeding empe- rors and pontiffs ; and its style of architecture con- trasted strangely with the precious materials and beautiful workmanship of the hundred columns which supported it, the plunder of many a classical edifice, and especially of the sumptuous mausoleum of Hadrian. The view even of the ruins of this church will give a perfect idea of the form and arrangement "of the Basilica in general, which con- sisted of a nave and two lateral internal porticoes, sometimes double, sometimes single (or, as we should now say, of five or three aisles), leading to the upper end of the building, which in the ancient Basilica was occupied by the public tribunal, and in the Christian church by the high altar. But as it is not to be supposed that the Anglo-Saxons ever produced, or were capable of producing, anything upon this scale, tlie plan of the church of St. Grisogono, at Rome, believed also to have been founded by Constantine, will probably give a per- fectly correct idea of their more important eccle- siastical structures during the period we have been considering ; and that the Roman architecture had not undergone any material change upon the con- tinent by the latter part of the eighth century, will be evident from a view of the portico to the Atrium of the church at Lorsch, near Manheim, foimded in 764, and consecrated in the presence of Charle- magne in 774. This portico is undoubtedly part of the original building. By referring to the Roman Basilica, the descrip- tion 'which has been quoted of the church at prT\ e L. o ■ Ground-plan op the Chuech op Gkisogono, Kome. ^gSSS^!($s;c<»(>»ss<»i»^^ ■■i^:i'::i'i--'i-^^^^ I'oinico AT LcKscn. Chap, v.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 419—1066. 313 Hexham becomes perfectly intelligible. It was evidently a Basilica, with an upper internal portico over the side aisles, — an arrangement described by Vitruvius in his Chapter on the Ancient Basilica, and actually existing in the Christian Basilica of St. Agnese at Rome. In the tenth century we find a very evident change of style prevailiiig on the continent. The doorway of the cathedral at Mentz, founded about 978, though it exhibits the old Roman detail, some of the capitals of the columns being strictly of the Corinthian order, presents the same general form that prevailed in all gateways of the middle ages through successive changes of style, — namely, a series of recessed arches reducing the real aperture to a much smaller size than the external archway; and in the Cathedral of Worms, a little 'later in date, there is not only a change of plan by the distinct marking of the cross, but the style alto- gether approaches that of the Normans, in which, as we have already observed, the architecture of the Anglo-Saxons finally merged. The origin of this style, which speedily became universal, may perhaps be traced to the Byzantine school. This at least is certain, that the Byzantine style of sculpture accompanies it to a great extent both in Germany and France, though rare in England. A comparison of two capitals, from works already noticed, the portico at Lorsch, and the doorway at Mentz, may serve to illustrate this hypothesis. The Roman and Greek styles of orna- C.'.i'iTAT, ritoM TiiK Doorway of ATentz CATHF.Di>Ar.. mental sculpture cannot be more strikingly marked or more vividly contrasted ; and it may be furtlier remarked that the cruciform plan had been sha- dowed out in the religiims edifices of Constantinople as early as the sixth century. The subject is very obscure, and this is not the place to examine it ; but it may be observed that the settlement of the Western Empire by the Franks, and the munifi- cence of Charlemagne, had brought the arts from L^ Capital from the Portico at Loesch. Constantinople, and even from Arabia, and that they continued to flourish under his successors, at a period when the Anglo-Saxons were struggling for their existence as a nation with their Danish invaders, and had neither means nor leisure to bestow upon the arts. During this period, when all the resources of the church and government must have been cut off or diverted to more exigent purposes, there could have been no temptation to foreign artists to settle in the country. Alfred the Great, in the interval of quiet he had won by his arms and policy, applied himself to architecture ; but though he did not neglect the restoration of the ruined monasteries and churches, yet his chief care, and that of his two immediate successors, was directed chiefly to military works, and to walling and fortifying the towns. His monastery at Athelney seems to have been an insignificant build- ing, and probably only of timber. From this period scarcely a fact that throws any light upon architecture as an art is to be met with vmtil the reign of Edgar, surnaracd the Peaceable ; in whose time, under the influence of St. Dunstan and his coadjutors, monastic establishments were multiplied, and their riches increased in an enor- mous degree, and numerous ecclesiastical edifices jippear to have been the result. Among these we have a description of the Abbey of Ramsey, in Huntingdonshire, founded by Ailwin, styled in history the Alderman of all England, with the assistance of St. Oswald, Bishop of Worcester. This church was completed in 974, and is described in the history of the abbey as having two towers raised above the roof, — one at tlie west end, and the other, which was larger, supported by four pillars in the middle of the building, where it divided into four parts, being connected together by arches with other adjoining arches, which pie- vented their giving way. This is a clear descrip- tion of a church with transepts and a tower at the intersection. How far this change of plan was accompanied by the introduction of the charac- teristic details of the new style, we have no means of judging. The date is too early to suppose the alteration complete in all particulars, and a state of 814 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. transition has been found invariably to precede every radical change at subsequent periods ; but that architecture at this time was at a very low ebb, and had grievously fallen off from its former flourishing condition, may be inferred by a remark made by Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, in 1084, upon a work of this very St. Oswald. Wulstan, who founded a new church at Worcester in that year, is said to have wept at the abandonment and demolition of the former edifice, erected about 960 ; and being reminded that he ought rather to rejoice at the superior extent and magnificence of the new foundation, answered, — " We destroy the works of our holy forefathers that we may obtain praise. These pious men kneiv not hmv to construct pom- pous edifices, but under any roof devoted them- selves to God, and excited others by tlieir example. We, on the contrary, heap up stones, and neglect the care of souls." The introduction of the Norman style is un- Windows rEo:M tkf Palacf. of Westmikster. doubtediy what the historians mean by the " new manner " in which Edward the Confessor rebuilt the Abbey of Westminster. Of this style the par- ticular description must be reserved for the next period, to which it properly belongs. The Palace of Edward the Confessor, at Westminster, was built in the same style, and its remains show it to have been a spacious and solid structure. The Painted Chamber, or, as it was called as late as the fifteenth century, St. Edward's Chamber," though its architectural character was changed by Henry III., possesses strong claims to be consi- dered a part of the original structure, together with other apartments which have disappeared only within a few years ; and this claim is corroborated by the character of the arches and triangular door- way in the vaults underneath. The apartment to which belong the ancient windows, still extant toward Palace-yard, is supposed, with good reason, to have been the great hall of the palace previously to the erection of that by William Rufus. In this view of the architecture of the Anglo- Saxon period, our remarks have been chiefly con- fined to ecclesiastical edifices, since little remains that can be described, and the only information to be gathered on the subject is principally from his- torians who have written upon ecclesiastical afiairs. D00R^^-AY FROM THE I'ALACE OP WBSTMINSTEH. Chap. V.] LITEHATURfi, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 315 and whose attention lias consequently been con- fined to ecclesiastical structures. Parish churches had become frequent early in the ninth century, since a particular canon, relating to their consecra- tion, was enacted in the Council of Ceal-Hythe in 816. Their most general form was probably that of the smaller parish churches of later date, con- sisting of a simple nave and chancel, without side aisles ; but that some of the smaller Anglo-Saxon churches were built with side aisles is proved by that still existing at Brixham, near Northampton. This church has been considered a Roman work, from the nature of the bricks with which the arches are turned. But that the Anglo-Saxons weie ac- quainted with the use of bricks, — whether the ait of making them had remained in the island from the time of its occupation by the Romans, or was restored with the other arts for which the Anglo- Saxons were afterwards indebted to the Latins, — is clear from a passage in Bode, who says of St. Cuthbert's hermitage, that he did not build it with squared stones, nor with tiles and cement^ but with such materials as he could collect on the spot. The church of Brixham, however, is midoubtedly consi- derably older than the time of the Norman conquest. It has a square tower at the west end, with a circular staircase attached in a most inartificial manner. The diligence of antiquarians has distinguished a clais of bell-towers, which, from their peculiar character, are reasonably presumed to be of a date earlier than that at which the Norman style was esta- blished in England. Of these towers, that of Earl's Barton, in Northamptonshire, is the most remark- able, and displays most conspicuously their pecu- liarities of style. Of the triangular arch we have seen a specimen in the degraded Roman style, and it is common on the sarcophagi of the lower ages; both this form, and the sort of balustrade which appears in the belfry-windows, are also to be seen in the architecture represented in Anglo-Saxon manu- Tower of Eakl's Bartox Chuecu. 316 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. scripts. It is to be supposed that this tower was finished by a modillion cornice and low roof; at present it terminates with a modern battlement, which is omitted in the view. The construction of these towers is extremely massive, with rubble-work, and stone quoins and dressings, the walls being equal in some instances to the whole space inside ; but they betray a low state of the art and igno- rance of its principles. The first introduction of bells among the Anglo- Saxons is involved in obscurity. Large ones were certainly rare as late as the middle of the tenth century, since William of Malmesbury reckons them amona; the wonderful and strange things which St. Dunstan gave to the Abbey. Bell towers are therefore probably not more than a century older than the Norman conquest. It might be possible to enumerate a few insignificant buildings, which, from something analogous in their construc- tion, may be presumed to approach an equal anti- quity, but they possess no architectural interest. The little church of Dareut, in Kent, from some pecvdiarities of detail, may be selected as a spe- cimen. It consists of a nave without aisles, and a chancel with a plain groined vault, destitute of any ornament, twelve feet two inches long, and thirteen feet four inches wide : the height to tl^c springing of the arch is only seven feet. Heads of Windows, Dauext Chukcii, Kk.nt. Kjjwaiu) the Cuxi'essok's Chapel, M'ESTiiiKSTEii Aubey— now used as the Pix Office. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 317 Tlie extreme rarity of any well-authenticated work older than the Conquest, is to be attributed to the demolition of the churches of any importance by the Normans, for the sake of replacing them by more magnificent structures ; and though it can scarcely be doubted that they may have incor- porated some of the old work with their own, yet such work can have belonged only to the latest Anglo-Saxon period, since the most critical ex- amination has failed satisfactorily to detect the difference between the two constructions. A por- tion of Edward the Confessor's work at West- minster Abbey, forming vaults to the College buildings, and now used as the Pix Office, is the only part of the building that can be satisfactorily identified as a specimen of the latter Anglo-Saxon architecture. On the DOMESTIC architecture of the Anglo- Saxons there is but little information to be obtained. That edifices of this class were generally of tiniber may be inferred from the circumstance that all tTie monastic buildings (which properly come under this head) of which we have any description were so constructed. Such was the Abbey of Croyland, with its infirmary and chapel, baths, hall, strangers' apartments, brewhouse, bakehouse, granaries, and stables ; all of which, we learn from Ingulphus, were constructed of beams of wood, and boards most exactly joined, and most beautifully worked, by the admirable art of the carpenter, and covered with lead. The prevalent use of timber in mo- nastic buildings may also be inferred from the often-quoted passage in King Edward's charter to Malmesbury Abbey, in which he says, " All the monasteries of my realm are to the sight nothing but worm-eaten and rotten timbers and boards." But this use of timber by no means necessarily implies a low state of art. We shall have oc- casion to see, in treating of later periods, that the use of timber in domestic architecture pre- vailed in England throughout the middle ages ; that timber buildings vrere susceptible of a very high degree of architectural character; that they were thought worthy of being carried to a con- siderable extent, and of being executed with all the luxury of art as late at least as the fifteenth century ; and that the general discontinuance of timber constructions is comparatively of a modem date. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose, that during the period when ecclesiastical archi- tecture was in a flourishing condition, the domestic style would not be neglected, though exemplified in more humble materials. King Alfred, we are told, displayed a superior taste in the construction and decoration of his palaces. It must, however, be admitted, that at the period of the Conquest, the dwellings of the Anglo-Saxons must have pre- sented an unfavourable contrast with those intro- duced by the Normans ; since William of Malmes- bury observes, that the houses of the former were low and mean, though their way of living was luxurious and extravagant ; whereas the Normans, though moderate, and even abstemious in their 'diet, were fond of stately and sumptuous houses, Hesiuence op a Saxon Nocleman. The Proprietor, seated at the entrance of the Great Hall, is engaged in alms-giving ; on his right appear a number of armed Servants, and on his left a Chapel, at the door of which, as is common in most illuminations, a lamp is suspended. Ilarlcian MS. No. C03. 318 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. and affected magnificence in their buildings both public and private. On the MILITARY ARCHITECTURE of this pcriod, there is as little to be collected. That the Anglo- Saxons walled and fortified their towns, has already- appeared ; and that they had the skill to do so with effect, is evident from the sieges some of them were able to sustain against the Normans. Exeter could resist the Conqueror for eighteen days, and then, says the Saxon Chronicle, " the citizens sur- rendered because their chiefs deceived them." Oxford, Wanvick, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, and York, were all fortified places, and made sufficient resistance to provoke the utmost ven- geance of the conquering army. At Leicester there appears to have been a citadel. In the absence of any authority affording a description of the Anglo-Saxon fortresses, we may venture to suppose that such of them as might possess any architec- tural character or solidity of structure, bore a re- semblance to those of the continent, though pro- bably on an inferior scale. But it is useless to waste conjectures on a subject which will form an important branch of the architecture of the Norman period. The little that is known of the state of architec- ture in Wales during this period, is not much calculated to excite either our interest or our curiosity to know more, since the art appears not to have advanced beyond the most primitive modes of construction. The chief palace of the kings, and place of assembly for the great council of the nation, appears to have been no better than an edi- fice of wattles, and was called the White Palace, from the osiers with which it was woven being peeled. This we learn incidentally from the Leges Wallicai, in which it is enacted, that a fine of one pound and eighty pence shall be paid by whoever shall burn the king's hall or palace. Eight buildings or dependencies upon the palace are also enumerated, the destruction of each of which is valued at one hundred and twenty pence. These buildings are, the dormitory, the kitchen, the chapel, the granary, the bakehouse, the store- house, the stable, and the dog-house. It will be sufficient to notice very briefly the state of SCULPTURE and painting during the Anglo- Saxon period. The former was necessarily prac- tised by the idolatrous Saxons ; descriptions of the forms and attributes of their deities have been handed down to us, but their efforts to represent them were undoubtedly of the lowest grade of bar- barism. The art of sculpture, such as it was in the seventh century, accompanied the introduction of Roman architecture into England, and probably underwent similar vicissitudes, flourishing and decaying from the same causes. Nothing remains which may mark its progress or exemplify its merits, except a few of the smaller works of art, among which the Horn of Ulphus, preserved at York, may be cited for its undoubted authenticity. But there must have been a demand for the images Horn of Ulphus. of saints for the churches, and monumental sculpture was not uncommon. In an episcopal tomb of the eighth century (that of Acca, Bishop of Hexham), two crosses elegantly decorated with ornaments of sculpture are described as being set up, one at the head, the other at the foot of the tomb ; on one of which, — namely, that at the head, — were letters declaring who was buried there. Stone coffins became common among the richer classes as early as the middle of the seventh cen- tury, and were frequently charged with decorative carvings and sometimes even with an effigy of the deceased. If we may trust Leland, the figure of Eschwine, an Anglo-Saxon Bishop of Dorchester, was in his time still extant on his tomb in the church there. Such effigies, however, were pro- bably rather relievos than statues, and perhaps in no worse taste than those of other nations, if we may judge by analogy firom the state of the sister art, upon which we are fortunately possessed of better information. One of the earliest notices on the art of painting is the record of the munificence of Benedict Biscop, who imported a vast number of pictures in the several voyages he made to Rome, principally for the purpose of collecting books, relics, and orna- ments for the churches he had founded at Wear- mouth and Jarrow. These pictures, which were not merely effigies of the saints and apostles, but, as Bede informs us, comprehended the whole Gospel history, with the concord of the Old and New Testaments, must have been of the Byzantine school, to which, at this period, and long after, artists of all countries looked for instruction. But whatever improvement the Anglo-Saxons may have derived from an acquaintance with Greek art or the instructions of foreign artists, an inde- pendent school for the illumination of manuscripts appears to have existed in Ireland as early as the sixth century j and the perfection to Avhich the Anglo-Saxons had arrived in this branch of paint- ing at the beginning of the eighth is sufficiently proved by many existing manuscripts, particularly that celebrated by the name of the " Durham Book," or " St. Cuthbert's Gospels," the work of Eadfrid, Bishop of Lindisfarne, who came to that see in 698, and died in 721. In this splendid example of Anglo-Saxon art the figures certainly bear strong marks of the Byzantine style of drawing, but the design and execution of the illuminated capitals are original, and such as are not to be foimd in the works of any continental scliool. The chief fea- tures of this species of illumination are described by Sir F. Madden to be, extreme intricacy of pattern, Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 319 Awoio-Saxok Illuminated Lettek, From MS. of the Eighth Century. Anglo-Saxon Obnament. rrom MS. of the Tenth Century. interlacings of knots in a diagonal or square form, sometimes interwoven with animals, and termina- ting in heads of serpents or birds. Though we cannot distinctly trace the progress of this art, we may conclude that it continued in a flourishing and im- proving state in the interval from the eighth to the tenth and eleventh centuries, which were so prolific in Anglo-Saxon works of calligraphy and illumi- nation, that perhaps, says a competent authority speaking of this period, our public libraries and the collections abroad contain more specimens executed in this country than any other can produce during the same space of time. This art, like all others, flourished in the cloister. The greatest dignitaries of the church not only en- couraged but practised it, and a specimen is extant in the Bodleian Library by the hand of no less a personage than St. Dunstan. St. Ethelwold, Bishop of Winchester, was a great patron, and perhaps also a professor of the art ; and the names of Ethric and Wulfric, monks of Hyde Abbey, are recorded with the additional designation of *' painters, " in a manner which shows such artists to have been persons held in the highest respect and estimation. New Minster, or Hyde Abbey, at Winchester, appears to have been one of the principal schools 320 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. HBOOK II. of illumination, and many of the finest manuscripts of the period are known to have been produced there. The magnificent Benedictitnal of St. Ethel- wold, the execution of which is attributed to the monk Godewin, may be especially referred to, and is the more remarkable and honourable to our native talent, as being the work of an age when the arts were generally, and particularly in Italy, in the most debased condition. The paintings exhibit much of the Greek character, Avhich may arise from the use of a standard set of designs originally emanating from that school, particularly as the scriptural subjects represented are treated in nearly the same manner in different manuscripts. But with the exception of the naked parts, in which the ignorance of the period is most conspicuous, the drawing displays no little proficiency : the draperies especially are full of grace and intelligence; and the decorations, which are in a style altogether peculiar to the Anglo-Saxon school, exhibit bold and rich masses of foliage not to be surpassed either in composition or execution by any contem- porary productions of the same class. The well- known manuscript of the sacred poem of Ceedmon is also supposed to have issued from the New Minster school about the year 1000. The drawings are curious, rather than of any value as works of art; but it contains some very remarkable initials, composed by the interlacing of foliage with birds, serpents, &c. Anglo- Saxon Illuminated Lettek. From MS. of the Tenth Century. There is little on record concerning the more ex- tensive branches of the art. Stubby, in the Actus Pontificum Eboracensium, speaks of a magnificent " heaven " executed in gold and colours under Archbishop Aldred shortly before the Conquest. This may have been mere' decoration painting, — stars on a blue ground, &c. ; though the term gene- rally implies something more. In the arts of design it will be proper to include embroidery, in which the Anglo-Saxon ladies were reputed eminently skilful. The four daughters of Edward the Elder excelled in spinning, weaving, and needle-work ; and St. Dunstixn himself conde- scended to draw a pattern for a sacerdotal vestment which a religious lady of the tenth century exe- cuted in threads of gold. In the same century a drapery on which were represented the actions of Brithnod, Duke of Northumberland, was presented by his widow Edelfleda to the church of Ely ; and at an earlier period Witlaf, king of Mercia, in a charter to the Abbey of Croyland, gives, among other things, a golden veil embroidered with the siege of 'Iroy, to be hung up in the church on his birth-day. Music, before the invention of the present mode of notation by Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh cen- tury, and the other improvements introduced about the same epoch or soon after, may seem^ to be scarcely entitled to the name of a science, if com- pared with Avhat it is in its present state. Yet, although confined to melody merely, music was certainly cultivated with much ardour in this coun- try from a somewhat early date in the Anglo-Saxon period. The Anglo-Saxon music of which the fullest and most distinct notices have come down to us is the church music. St. Ambrose, in the fourth century, has the credit of having first introduced singing into the Christian services of the West; and his method (of the peculiarities of which, hoAv- ever, nothing appears to be known) continued in general use till the latter part of the sixth century, when it was reformed by Pope Gregory the Great. The Gregorian chant may be presumed to have been brought over to this country along with the Christian religion, by St. Augustine and his com- panions, and it was this mode of singing most pro- bably of which they gave a specimen at the first audience granted them by King Ethelbert, and on Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 449—1066. 321 their solemn procession immediately afterwards into the city of Canterbury.* The musical service, however, seems to have been confined to the metro- politan churcli, or at least to the district of Kent, till the tune of Archbishop Theodore, in the latter part of the seventh century. Some are disposed to attribute to Theodore and his friend Adrian the first introduction into England of the Gregorian chant : it is admitted on all hands that it was to their exertions that the general diffusion of a knowledge of the improved chant was owing. .Bede relates that, in 678, one John was sent from Rome by the Pope to teach music to the English clergy, and that he both gave instructions in the art during his stay and left behind him written directions for its study. Accordingly, to quote the account as it stands in Holinshed, *' whereas, before time, there was in manner no singing in the English churches, except it were in Kent, now they began in every church to use singing of divine service after the rite of the church of Rome." *' The Archbishop Theodore," the chronicler proceeds, " finding the church of Rochester void by the death of the last bishop, named Damian, ordained one Putta, a simple man in worldly matters, but well instructed in ecclesias- tical discipline, and namely (especially) well seen in song and music to be used in the church after the manner as he had learned of Pope Gregory's disciples." Putta indeed would appear, from the sequel of his story, to have been intended by nature rather for a singing-master than a bishop. His church of Rochester having been spoiled and de- faced a few years after in a hostile incursion made into Kent by the Mercian King Ethilfred, he went, we are told, " to Servulf, Bishop of Mercia, and there obtaining of him a small cure and a portion of ground, remained in that country, not once labour- ing to restore his church of Rochester to the former state, but went about in Mercia to teach song, and instruct such as would learn music, wheresoever he was required or could get entertainment."t Some time after this a chief seminary of music was esta- Tkombones, or Flutes. From tUe Cotton MS. Cleopatra, C 7. • See ante, p. 232. + Holinshed's England, b.v. cb. 35. blished at Canterbury, and other permanent schools also in the other monasteries. Nor were the Saxons by any means without in- strumental music. Among their musical instru- ments, besides bells, we find mention made of the horn, the trumpet, the flute, the drum, the cymbal, the rota, or viol, the lyre, and the harp. Repre- sentations of most of these are found among the illuminations of their manuscripts. They also seem to have been acqviainted with the organ. Mr. Turner has produced a passage from Aldhelm's Latin poem in praise of virginity, and another from a work of Bede's, in both of which the organ is mentioned ; and William of Malmesbury describes an organ as existing in his own church, which bore an inscription stating that it had been presented by St. Uunstan, who, the historian elsewhere tells us, gave many great bells and organs to the churches of the West. These Saxon organs, according to Malmesbury, had brass pipes and bellows. The drum is described by Bede as formed of tense leather. The Saxon lyre is represented in the illuminations with four strings, struck by a plec- trum. The harp is depicted in some instances of the modern triangular form, in others square or oblong- shaped. In one manuscript the Psalmist David is represented playing on one of the latter fashion, which has ten strings ; he plays with the fingers of his right hand, and holds the instrument with his left. VOL. X. ^Daviu Playing on tiie Hakp. From the Cotton MS. Tib. C 6. hi another instance, the royal psalmist has a tri- angular harp of eleven strings ; and he is accom- panied by three other musicians, one with a straight trumpet, supported in the middle by a pole j another with a curved horn ; and the third with a sort of violin, on which he plays with a bow. Bede tells us, in his History, that the harp was in V 322 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL The Haiip, accompanied by othek Instkbment8. From the Cotton MS. Tib. C 6. common use among liis countrymen on all festive occasions ; when the custom was for it to be handed round the company, that all might sing and perform in turn. The art of playing on this instrument appears to have been practised professionally by wandering minstrels or gleemen, and to have been also a fashionable accomplishment of the higliest and best educated classes. The reader will remem- ber the story that is told of Alfred on one occasion disguising himself as a minstrel, and in that cha- racter finding ready admission to the camp of the Danes, with his harp in his hand.* A similar story is related of a visit paid by Anlaff, the Danish king or earl of Northumberland, to the camp of the Saxon Athelstane, on the eve of their famous encounter at Brunanburgh. Dunstan also, it will be remembered, was celebrated, among his other accomplishments, for his skill as a harper. Tlie harp, and the popular music generally, of the Saxons, were in all probability borrowed from the Irish, among whom the art appears to have flourished from the remotest antiquity, and to have been carried, at an early period, to a perfection elsewhere unknown. Some of the most learned of the Welsh antiquaries have admitted that their national music is of Irish origin; and there can be little doubt, from the character of the Scottish melodies, that they also have been derived from the same source. Even to the Italian music an Irish exti-action has been assigned, and by Italians themselves. The harp, called in Celtic the cruit, is noted in the oldest records, as well as in the traditions of the people of Ireland, as the favorite instrument of their bards from the earliest times. The most remarkable foreign testimony, however, to the musical skill of the Irish is that of Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century. Their eminence in instrumental music he describes as beyond com- parison superior to that of any nation he had known. Their modulation, he adds, " is not slow and solemn, as in the instruments of Britain, to which we are accustomed, but the sounds are rapid and precipitate, yet at the same time sweet and pleasing. It is wonderful how, in such precipitate rapidity of the fingers, the musical proportions are preserved ; and how, by their art, faultless throughout, in the midst of their complicated modulations, and most intricate arrangement of notes, by a rapidity so sweet, a regularity so irregular, a concord so dis- cordant, the melody is rendered harmonious and perfect." So famous, also, was the church music of the Irish at an early period, that the daughter of Pepin of France, in the seventh century, is recorded to have sent to Ireland for persons qua- lified to instruct the nuns of the Abbey of Nivelle in psalmody.t * See ante, p. 159. i- See these and other similar testimonies collected by Mr. Moore, Hist, of Ireland, i. 312—316. See also O'Brien's Round Toners, pp. 404—407. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 323 CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. UR knowledge of the miscellaneous particu- lars coming under this head in the present period is much more extensive, as well as more distinct and cer- tain, than that which we possess of the man- ners and customs of the ancient Britons, hut it is still far from being perfectly satis- factory. We have indeed many Anglo-Saxon writings, from which a good deal of authentic in- formation may be gleaned respecting various parts of the subject ; but the information thus preserved consists, after all, only of incidental notices, which are often so brief or so allusive as to admit only of a conjectural interpretation, and which leave many things which it would be important for us to know altogether untold and untouched ujwn. No work professing to present a view of their domestic and social usages, their popular pastimes and super- stitions, the accommodations of their dwelling- houses, their dress, and their mode of living in general, has been bequeathed to us by our Saxon ancestors. We are left to gather what hints we can respecting all these matters from records drawn up with no view of affording us any such instruc- tion, — from their chronicles of transactions in church and state, from their laws, from their works of science and learning, from their homilies, from their almanacs, from their wills, their grants of land, their leases, and other charters and legal docu- ments. But perhaps the richest of all our now remaining sources of information respecting all the minor details of the social condition of the Anglo- Saxons has been furnished us by what we may call their national art of illumination. The drawings on their manuscripts, originally intended merely for embellishment, and still in a high degree interesting and estimable as works of art, have now acquired a new value, as preserving distinct representations of many things of which no intelligible verbal descrip- tion has come down to vis, and of some of which perhaps the very memory would otherwise have been lost. Of the industrious arts, as well as of the popular customs of this period, the fullest and clearest record that has been transmitted to us is literally a pictorial history. In the present chapter, as in that upon the National Industry, we shall draw liberally from this source, both in the illus- trations and in the text.* Having already given an account of the houses of the Anglo-Saxons, in so far as regards their archi- tecture, we shall now proceed to describe their furniture as far as our materials enable us. The dwellings of the higher classes appear to have been completely and sometimes splendidly furnished : their walls were hung with silk richly embroidered with gold or coloure. Tlie needle-work, for which the English ladies were so famous, was herein dis- played to great advantjige. Ingulphus mentions some hangings ornamented with golden birds in needlework, and a veil or curtain on which was represented in embroidery the destruction of Troy. In the Anglo-Saxon poem of Beowulf we read that, in *' the great wine chamber" — " There, shone varicgateil with goUl The web on the walls. Many wonders to the sight Of each of the warriors That would gaze on it became visible." Tlie Saxon term for a curtain or hanging was wah- rift ; and, in the will of Wynfloeda, we find the bequest of a long heall xcahrift and a short one. The same lady also bequeaths three coverings for benches or settles (^setl-hrcegF). Pedalia, or foot- stools, are mentioned by Ingulphus, the larger ones covered with woven lions, and the smaller sprinkled with flowers. A common form of the Saxon chair Chairs. From Cotton MS. Claud. B 4. * It is proper to state, that although some of the ancient drawings presented in the present work have been before engraved in Strutt's Horda Angel-Cynnan, Kegal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities, Chro- nicle of England, &c., and in other expensive publications, the representations here given have, -with few exceptions, been traced or otherwise copied from the originals, and with scrupulous fidfility. 324 HlSTOilY OF ENGLAND. QEOOK II. An Elevated and Richly-Obnamented Seat. From Cotton MS. Tiberius, B a. or bench, as may be seen from several cuts already given, appears to have somewhat resembled that of our modern camp-stool, consisting of a seat held in tension by two or more crossing bars. Chairs, however, or seats with backs to them, are occasion- ally met with in Saxon illuminations, and, as well as the benches and stools of various descriptions, are generally ornamented at their extremities with the heads and feet of lions, eagles, griffins, &c. These were commonly formed of wood, and carved, but occasionally of gold and silver, or were at least highly ornamented with those precious metals. Their tables were sometimes made of the same costly materials. In the reign of Edgar a table is Saxon Tablf-s. From Hnrlcian MS. No. G03. Chap. VJ.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449— 10G6. 325 said to have been made of silver, by an artist named iEthelwold, which was of the value of 300/ * In the illuminated MSS. we perceive tables, both oblong and oval, covered with table-cloths, and fur- nished with knives, spoons, drinking-horns and cups, bowls and dislies, but no forks. That they had gold and silver plate in abundance, and of the most costly description, we have ample evidence in the wills of Wynflceda, Wulfur, and Brithric, and similar documents. Wulfur bequeaths four cups, two of which are described as of 41. value. f A lady on one occasion makes a gift of a golden cup weighing four marks and a half ; J and the King of Kent sent to Boniface, the Anglo-Saxon missionary in Germany, a silver bason, gilt within, weighing three pounds and a half.§ Two silver cups, weighing twelve marks, are mentioned as used by the monks in a refectory to serve their drink. II A king in the ninth century is recorded to have made a present of his gilt cup, en- graved on the outside with vine-dressers fighting dragons, which he called his cross-bowl, because it had a cross marked within it and four angles pro- jecting like a similar figure ;% and in other places we read of golden and silver dishes, and a dish adorned with Grecian workmanship.** Those of the commonalty were of brass, of wood, of horn, and of bone. Cups and dishes of horn were for- bidden to be used in the sacred offices. ff But drinking-horns were much used at table, and some of them were richly carved and ornamented. Witlaf, King of Mercia, gave the horn of his table to Croyland monastery, " that the elder monks might drink thereout on festivals, and in their be- nedictions remember sometimes the soul of the donor." |J The delivery of a drinking-horn, at least under the Danish kings, was a mode of conveying landed property. The estate of Pusey, in Berkshire, is still held by the possession of a horn, by the deli- very of which it was granted by Canute to an officer of his army, who, according to tradition, had made his way in disguise into the camp of the Saxon enemy, and there obtained information of a plot laid to surprise the Danes. The Pusey horn was most probably the drinking-horn of Canute. It is an ox horn, of a dark-brown colour, about two feet in length, and a foot in circumference at the rim. At the small end is a hound's head of silver gilt, made to screv/ in as a stopper ; and, by taking out this, it might be made to serve as a hunting- horn, a use of it which appears to be indicated by two rings, one at the mouth and another at the middle, with which it is furnished, as if for a strap • Dugdalti's Monasticoii, 104. + Hickes, Diss. Ep.54. t Dugdile's Mon. p. 240. 5 Mai;. 1Mb. Pat. xvi. p. 64. I Gale, Sciiptoios, iii. 406. 1[ Inj^ulpli. p. 9. •• Du£;dale's Mon. 21. 40. 123. H Spelman's Coucil. 295, and iu Die Exliortations of Elfiic it is said that " the sacramental cup should be of fjold or silver, glass, or tin, and not of eartli, at least uot of wood." — Wilkins, Leg. 1(59. So also in the Canons of Edgar. " The cup was to be of something molten, not of wood." — Ibid. 85. tt Ingulph. p. 9. or belt to go through. Upon a broad silver ring, encompassing the middle of the horn, and by whicii it is supported on a stand, is the following inscrip- tion, which, however, is comparatively modern : — " Kyng Kuowde gcve Wyllyam Pewse This home to hold by thy loud."* The Pusky-Horn. From the Archoeologia, vol. iii. fi»iiiiii««»»Mmiiiin«iiiiimiiniiiiiiii/iimiiiinimn»i\ FaC SIMILE OF THE INSCRIPTION ON THE PUSEY-IIORN. Glass vessels were rarities in the early periods, but became more common towards the Norman Conquest. A disciple of Bede inquired of LuUus, in France, if there were any man in his parisli who could make glass vessels well ; and desired in such case that he might be persuaded to go to England, as its people were "ignorant and helpless in the art." f Bede, however, mentions glass lamps and vessels for many uses. J They had silver candelabra and candlesticks of various descrii}tions.§ Lanterns of horn, as already mentioned, were also vised. A silver mirror is mentioned in Dugdale, and hand-bells were used to summon the attendants. || In an illuminated MS. we have a representation of an Anglo-Saxon bedstead. It has a roof like that of a house to it, and is furnished with curtains, pillow, &c. In the Anglo-Saxon poem of Judith the bed of Holofcrncs is described as hung witli a " golden fly-net." In various wills Ave read of beds, pillows of straw, bed-clothes, curtains, sheets, &c. ^ Skins of animals were sometimes used as coverlids. A goat-skin bed-covering is mentioned as presented to an Anglo-Saxon abbot.** The terms seedling (sacking) and lang bolster also occur in Saxon works. In the poem of Beowulf we are told tliat when the evening came on, the tables were taken away, and the place was spread with beds and bolsters, by which it would appear that the warriors slept in the same halls iu which • See Archajologia, iii. 1, and xii. 397. + Mag. IHb. Pat. xvi. 88. t Bede, p. 295. • J Du-idale's Mon. 40. 221. 11 Mon. 24. 221. if Hickes, Diss. Ep. 54. •* 16 Mag. Bib. I'at. xvi. 54. 326 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Saxon Bed. From the Cotton MS. Claud, B 4. they had feasted. " The beer-servants," continues the bard, " Speedy and joyful. Prepared the chamber of rest. They fixed over their heads The shields of Hilda, The boards of bright wood. There, high over the Etheling on his bench, The helmet of the noble one was seen. His ringed coat of mail. His glorious wood of strength." (i. e. his spear.) Thus, whether seated at the banquet-board or stretched on his couch, the arms of the warrior ornamented the wall above his head, ready to be grasped at the first alarm.* • His coverlid was frequently nothing but his cloak, for Charle- magne, deriding the short cloaks then in fashion, remarks, amongst other things, " We cannot be covered by them in bed."— MonV of St. Gall. Saxojj Beds. From the Hurleian MS. No. CO Wheel Bed. From the Cotton MS. Qaud. B 4. Not to enter a warm-bath or a soft bed was en- joined by what they called their deep-like or severe penance.* For culinary purposes they possessed boiling vesselsjt and ovens for baking meat and bread. In one of the manuscripts is an illumina- tion, representing men killing and dressing meat. One of them has put a stick, with a hook at the end, into a cauldron which stands upon a four-legged trivet, within which the fire is made. In the same MS., also, we perceive that the roast meats are brought up to table by the servants upon the spits, * Leges Edgari. Wilkins, p. 94. + These were of leather, and made by the ?ceo-wyrtha or shoe- maker. Saxon Dialogues in Cotton MS. Tib. A 3. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 327 the guests cutting off such portions as pleased them. This continued to be a custom amongst the Normans, as we find by the Bayeux Tapestry. Not one of the least important parts of the his- tory of manners and of civilization is the history of costume. The dress of a people is always in some degree an indication of the progress they have made in wealth as well as in taste, and in the useful as well as in the merely elegant arts. Nor can we call up in imagination any lively picture of a past age without a knowledge of its prevailing forms of attire, and of the distinctions in this respect that marked the different classes of the community. An ignorance of this subject will prevent us from enter- ing perfectly into a feeling of the spirit of the period and of the condition of society in regard to matters in themselves of nuich more consequence ; and false notions here may falsify our conceptions as to many other things. The history of British costume properly com- mences with the Anglo-Saxon period. We have no pictorial authority for the costume of the Anglo- Saxons earlier than the eighth century ; but Paulus Diaconus, who Mrote during the latter half of that RoYAi. Costume. From a picture of Herod and the Magi, in the Cotton MS. Ncio, C 4. KoYAL Costume, and thk ITarness anu EauxPMENi of Horses. From a Picture of the Magi, leaving the Court of Herod, in tlie Cotton MS. Nero, C 4. 328 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. century a history of the Lombards, describes a painting of the sixth century which he had seen in the palace of Theodelinda, queen of the Lombards, in Italy, said to be painted by her command, and representing some of the exploits of her country- men, whose dress the historian expressly states to have been the same as that of the Anglo-Saxons. "Their garments," he tells us, " w^ere loose and flowing, and chiefly made of linen, adorned with broad borders, woven or embroidered with various colours." His description perfectly agrees with Eginhart's elaborate account of the costume of Charlemagne, and also with the dresses depicted in the illuminated MSS. of the eighth and ninth centuries ; and that they continued to wear some ancient habits at that period is tolerably evident from the reproach addressed to them by the council of Cealchyth in a.d. 787 : " You put on your gannents in the manner of pagans, whom your fathers expelled from the world ; an astonish- ing thing that you imitate those whose life you always hated." From the eighth to the tenth cen- tury we have, however, abundant authority for the civil, military, and ecclesiastical costume of the Anglo-Saxons, both in the notices of the writers of the time, and especially in the immerous miniatures with which the MSS. are ornamented. From their concurring evidence we find that the undermost part of the male attire consisted of a linen shirt, above which they wore a tunic of linen or woollen, ac- cording to the season, descending to the knee, and plain or ornamented round the collar and borders, according to the rank of the wearer. It was open at the neck, and sometimes at the sides, and had long sleeves reaching to the wrists, s;ometimes tight, at others, set in close rolls or wrinkles from the wrist to the elbow. It was generally confined by a girdle or belt round the waist. Its Saxon name was roc or rooc. Over this was worn a short clcak (jnentW), fastened sometimes on the breast OnN-AMKNTKU TuNic. From Cotton MS. Claud. B 4. and sometimes on the shoulder, with brooches or fibulaj. Linen drawers, and stockings (called brech-liose) of linen or woollen, the latter fre- quently bandaged from the ankle to the knee with strips of cloth, linen, or leather, were worn by the better orders, and shoes of some description by all, as even the common labourers, who are gene- rally depicted bare-legged, are rarely teen bare- footed.* The Saxon shoe {sceo or scoli) is gene- rally painted black, and drawn with an opening down the instep, secured by two thongs. t Thev also wore a sort of short boot or buskin ; and "a half-stocking or sock (probably what they called Bocca) is sometimes seen worn over the hose instead of the bandages. J • To go barofooted was a penitentiary injunction. Upon tlie landing of one of the great Danish armies, a general penance for three days was ordered, and eyery man commandcil to go " barefoot to cliurch, without gold and ornaments." MS. C C Cautab anud Wauley, i>. 138. ' •|- In the Life of St. Npot he is said to have lost his scoh (shoe), and to have seen a fox having the " tliwanges'' of it in his mouth. Cotton MS. Vespasian, I) xiv. p. 144. t_ Soccas and hosan are mentioned in St. Benedict's rules, Cotton MS. Til). A 3; also two oilier coverings for tlie legs and feet called meon and tiaud reaf iota, and the earm slife for the upper part of the body. Saxon- Cloaks, Plain and Embroideueu Xukics and Siioks. Vvom Cotton MS. Claud. J3 4. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 419—1063. 329 The practice of bandaging or cross-gartering the hose was followed by the Franks, whose costume, as well as that of the Lombards, was very similar to that of the Saxons. The Monk of St. Gall says, that " over their stockings or drawers they wore fillets bound crosswise in such a manner as to keep them properly upon the legs." Such bandaged hose were worn as late as the sixteenth century by the butchers in France, and called les lingettes. * The Saxon name appears to have been scancbeorg, literally shank or leg guard. A similar fashion still exists amongst the people of the Abruzzi and tlie Apennines, and in some parts of Russia and Spain. The bandages are sometimes depicted as gilt on the legs of regal personages, as are also the shoes and buskins of princes or high ecclesiastical dignitaries. Theganus, in his life of l.,ouis le Debonnaire, son of Charlemagne, describes his buskins as being of gold stuff or gilt (pcreas aureas). The hose are commonly represented either red or blue. Coverings for the head are rarely seen except upon the figures of warriors. The cap, therefore, seems to have been the helmet, and its shape is either conical or of the ancient Phrygian description. Indeed, the whole of the Anglo-Saxon costume, whether civil or military, curiously resembles the Phrygian. Silk, which was known as early as the eighth century, and purple cloth, formed the mantles of sovereigns and princes ; and golden tissues, and embroideries in gold, silver, and silks of various colours, were also worn from the eighth to the tenth century by persons of high rank.f Furs were also used for the lining and ornamenting of gannents. Those of sable, beaver, and fox, by the richer classes, and the skins of cats and lambs by the poorer or more economical. The ornaments of the male sex con- sisted of bracelets, brooches, and fibulae of gold, silver, and ivory ; chains, crosses, and rings of gold and silver, sometimes beautifully enamelled ; belts of gold and silver studded with jewels, and headbands or diadems of the same magnificence. The hair, when worn long, was parted on the fore- head, and suffered to fall naturally down the shoulders. The beard was ample, and generally forked. The fulminations of the clergy against long hair may be supposed occasionally to have produced some effect for a short period, as we find in some illuminations the hair cropped and the face shaven. * The old Teutonic passion for long, flowing ringlets, however, was never totally eradicated. Tlie barbaric custom of tatooing, or puncturing the skin, was practised by the Anglo- Saxons as well as by the Britons, and a law was passed against it a. d. 785 ; but it was never- theless continued during the whole of the Anglo- Saxon period, and is amongst the English vices reprobated by William of Malmesbury after the Norman Conquest. KiNOED Mail. Ciotton MS. Claud. B 4. • ArchoBologia, xxiv. 37. t Bede, p. 297. lusulvh, p. 61. Dugdale'B Mod. S4. Costume op Femalk, exhibiting the Undeh and Ui>peu Sleeved Tunic, the Mantle, and Hood. From Harlcian MS. No. 2908. The female costume of this period appears to have consisted generally of a long and ample gar- ment with loose sleeves (probably that called the qunna or gown),t worn over a closer-fitting one (either the tunic or the hirUe),X which had tight sleeves reaching to the wrist, shoes similar to those worn by the male sex, and a head-dress formed of a veil or long piece of linen or silk wrapped round the head and neck, called in Saxon heafodes rcp.gel (head rail), or iccejles, derived from wcefan, " to cover." The mantle also formed part of the dress of the superior classes, and in some of the illumi- nations it resembles the ecclesiastical vestment called a chasuble. We may presume tliat the socca or some other sort of hose was worn by the women as well as by the men ; but the length of • In the fourth century, we are told thoy cut their hair so close that the head appeared diminished and the face enlargi-d. Sid. ApolUnarius. t A Bisliop of Winchester sends as a present "a shoit !{uniia, sewed in our manner." Mag. Bib. Pat. xvi. 82. But that it was the exterior garmi-nl that was so called is evident from anotlier passage in the same work, where a gunna is stated to liave been composed of otter's skin, p. 88. In Scotland an upper garment worn bv women, which comes down only to the middle, is still called a sliortgown (with a strong emphasis on the first syllabic). X Will of Wyufleed.. Vide Preface to" Hickes's Anglo-Saxon Gram- mar, p. 23. 330 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. the tunic prevents our observing them in the illu- minations. Notwithstanding the universal appear- ance of the head-rail, we find that the Anglo-Saxon ladies paid great attention to the dressing and or- namenting of their hair. Adhelm describes the twisted locks of a lady as being delicately curled by the iron of those adorning her ; and Judith, in the Anglo-Saxon poem so called, is apostrophised as the " maid of the Creator, with twisted locks." Adhelm also describes the wife as loving to paint her cheeks with the red colour of stibium. Canute and his QtEEN. From the Ilegister of Hyde Abbey. Engraved in Strutt's Horda Angel Cynan. Cuffs and ribands (cuffian and hindan) are mentioned in the will of an Anglo-Saxon lady, and an engraved beah or bracelet. In other Anglo- Saxon documents mention is made of a golden fly beautifully adorned witli gems, of golden vermicu- lated necklaces, of a bulla that had belonged to the grandmother of the lady spoken of, golden head- bands, ear-rings, a neck cross, and of golden orna- ments called sylas. Gloves appear to have been very rare amongst the Anglo-Saxons. In one illumination only have we seen the hand covered except by the sleeve of the gown or tunic, and in that instance it is by a species of muffler, having a thumb, but no sepa- rate fingers. Amongst the representations of male figures they are never met with ; but from a law of Ethelrcd the Unready, quoted in a pre- ceding chapter, it may be inferred that, at the close of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century they were great rarities — five pair forming a considerable part of the duty paid by a society of German merchants for the protection of their trade. Of the royal costume among the Anglo-Saxons pernaps the most distinct representation to be found IS that furnished by the drawing in one of the manuscripts, of King Edgar seated on his throne- ■'.-jO-, King Eboak. From the Cotton MS. Tib. A 3. To this we may add some representations of the costume and ornaments of the ecclesiastical order. St. Augustin. From Royal MS. 10, A 13. Chap. VL] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 331 Bishop .«jd Priest. From Cotton MS. Gaud. B i. Egfrid, Kino of Northumbf.eland, and an Ecclesiastical Sit^od OFFEBINO THE BlSIJOPRIC OF HEXHAM TO ST. CUTHBEUT. MS. Life of Bede, a.d. 1200. Statue or St. Cuthbeet. From one of the external Canopies of tli3 Middle Tower of Durham Cathedral. 332 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL Golden Cnoss. Worn lij; St. Cntlihprt, and found on his body at the opening of his Tomb in 18:27. The military costume of the Anglo-Saxons on their first appearance in Britain is exceedingly un- certain. The Welsh bard Aneurin, who nourished in the sixth century, and fought in person against the invaders, describes them as being armed with " daggers, white-sheathed piercers, spears, and shields, the latter being made of split wood, and four-pointed or square helmets." He says " their leader was armed in scaly mail, carrying a project- ing shield, a slaughtering pike, and wore (as a mantle perhaps) the skin of a beast." His men- tion of the square or four-pointed helmet is a cir- cumstance which goes to confirm the credit of his narration, as that singular head-piece is to be seen both in Frankish and Anglo-Saxon illuminations.* The Saxons who invaded Thuringia in the same century are described by Wittichind as leaning on small shields, bearing long lances, and wearing Costume of a Soi.dieh. From Cotton MS. Tib. C 6. • Tlie regiU diadem of the Franks and Anj>lo-Saxons is also occa- sionally dejiicted quadrangular. Vide Plates in Strutt and Mont- faucon, Mon. Franc. great knives or crooked swords by their sides. But Wittichind wrote at the close of the tenth century, and Mr. Sharon Turner, who quotes this passage, remarks, in another part of his work, that Wittichind, though a Saxon himself, appears to have been completely ignorant of Saxon anti- quities.* Alcuin and Adhelm, both writers of the eightli century, are the first who afford us any authority on which we may rely for the military dress of the Anglo-Saxons. The former tells us that the short linen tunic was preferred to all other ve&tments as the one in wliich they could most freely wield their weapons ; and from the composition by the latter, entitled his iEuigma, we find that some description of metal armour, if not the gehringed byr7ie, or tunic of iron rings, derived from the East, and Latinised (indiscriminately with other armour) lorica, was known at the same period. " I was produced," runs the Enigma, " in the cold bowels of the dewy earth, and not made from the rough fleeces of wool : no woofs drew me, nor at my birth did the tremulous threads resound : the yellow down of the silkworms formed me not : I passed not tlrrough the shuttle, neither was I stiicken with the woolcomb ; yet, strange to say, in common dis- course, I am called a garment. I fear not the darts taken from the long quivers." This testimony is in favour of the descriptions of Aneurin, who speaks of "loricated bands" and "scaly mail." The latter, the lorica squamata, which the Romans derived from the Sarmatians, and wliich was known to and worn by so many nations of the East, may very probably be supposed to have been worn by the leaders of the Saxon host. The scales or rings were sewn in rows upon an under garment of linen or leather. Piirygian warriors are often depicted so arranged ; and Pausanias describes a Sarmatian lorica, witli the scales made of thin slices of horses' hoofs, whicli he saw and inspected in the Temple of Esculapius at Athcns.f Tiie improvement of connecting the rings one with the other, so as to make a tunic of them, independent of their leather or linen foundation, is ascribed by most antiquaries to a period as late as the reign of Edward T. There are some expressions, however, that occur in an Anglo-Saxon poem of the tenth century, which seem to prove that such defences were then in use ; and the " lorica" of Adhelm being called a garment at the same time that he expressly denies the assistance of wool, linen, or silk in its compo- sition, would lead to the inference that it was a vestment complete in itself, which could only arise from its being formed of linked rings, or scales or plates of metal riveted one to the other. The expressions alluded to are such as " Their bixttle-mail shone ny hard liands well luciitd. The shining iron rings Suns against their weapons When they to llie palace In their formidable apparel were delighted to go." • • • • • • Hist. Anglo-Saxons, vol. i. p. 236. + Lib. i. p. 50, ICdit. Kuhn. The Sarmatians are also represented with such coats of mail en tlie Trajan Columu. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449— 106G. 333 * Beowulf addressed liim ; The mail shone ui-on him ; The heavy net tvas linked By tJie smith's care."* The " locking and linking of iron rings" by "hard hands," or "the smith's care," and the mail form- ing " a heavy net," are phrases which may autho- rise us to believe that the gchringed byrne of the Saxon was occasionally, and at least as early as the tenth century, nearly the same as the hawberk of single-chain mail of the thirteenth. Be this, however, as it may, the chiefs only • Poem of Ueowulf. Turner's Trans. Hist. Anglo-Saxons, iii. 3:35 6, could afford so expensive an equipment. The linen tunic was the general gari) of the Anglo- Saxon soldiery, to which was occasionally added a border or collar of metal, as a thorax or pectoral, as we find it alluded to by the term of hreost- bedcn, or brcosl-heorg^ literally, breast-defence, or breast-guard. The helmet, originally of the Phry- gian shape, was made of leather, sometimes bound or bordered with metal. It had sometimes a serrated comb or crest, called by their writers camb on hette, or camb on helmc. In the tenth cen- tury we find the helmet becoming conical, and ap- proacliing to the form of the nasal helmet of the eleventh. Baitle Scese. From the Cotton MS. Claud. B 4. The Anglo-Saxon shield appears to have been oval and convex, with an iron umbo or boss. The shields appear in the illuminations painted with red and blue borders, but the ground and centre generally white. Aneurin describes them as being made of split wood; and in the Anglo- Saxon poem of Beowulf they are called " The shields of Hilda, Tlie boards of bright wood." They were sometimes covered with leather, but, according to one of the Saxon laws, no shield- maker was allowed to put a sheep-skin over a shield.* The rim and the boss were of iron, either painted or gilt. They were lield at arm's length in action, like those of the Britons, and were sometimes large enough to cover nearly the whole body ; but their sizes are various in the illumi- nations; and we also read of "little shields," " lesser shields," and of " the targan," or " tar- get, "f The offensive weapons were all formed of iron. Their swords were long, broad, and double- edged, their javelins and spears sometimes barbed, sometimes leaf-shaped. They fought also with axes fixed to long handles, called bills, and the double axe or bipennis, called iwy-byl. To these ?omc authorities add the aUc-barde or cleave-all. The specimens of Anglo-Saxon weapons here engraved are in the collection of Sir S. Meyrick, at * Wilkins, Leg. Saxon, p. 59. ♦ WiU of Ethfdstan. son of Etheldred II., dated 1015. Goodrich Court, and were found in one of the tumuli called Chapel Tumps, near Pengethley, county of Hereford. No. 1 is the head of u javelin. Nos. 2 and 3 are spear-heads. No. 4, the blade of a bill or alle-barde. No. 5, Sir S. Meyrick considers to be a specimen of the often ■ talked of scax, the curved sword or dagger from which tradition says the Saxons derived Iheir Anglo-Saxon Weapons. 134: HISTORY OF ENGLAND. QBooK II. Ajtolo-Saxon Weapons. name, and with which the famous massacre of the Britons is said to have been perpetrated. That the seax Avas not a curved sword or dagger, however, is pretty evident from the testimony of Bede, who, in his relation of the attempted assassi- nation of Edwin by an emissary of Cwichelm, king of Wessex, a.d. 625, tells us that the tici-eced (double-edged) seax of the ruffian passed through the body of Lilla, the king's thegn, who had flung himself before Edwin, and slightly wounded the king himself* Such a blow could never surely be struck by a curved weapon. It was evidently a thrust; and if the weapon here engraved be indeed the hand-seax of the Saxons, it will be observed that it can scarcely be called curved, the hilt only taking an inclination like the but-end of a pistol. Wittichind is the only authority who speaks of a crooked sword ; and if he is to be relied upon, the Saxons must certainly have abandoned it very shortly after their arrival in Britain, if not before,t as the swords discovered in Saxon tumuli are long, broad, and straight, corresponding exactly with those depicted in all the illuminations from the eighth to the eleventh century. And as to the term seax meaning a weapon of any particular shape, the proofs are all to the contrary. The word is used to express any sharp instrument, whether a sword, a dagger, a knife, or a lancet, the latter being called (sder-seax, or vein-knife. The spur worn by the Anglo-Saxon horsemen appears to have been the goad, or pryck-spur, and to have been fastened with leathers nearly as at present. • Bede, lib. ii. c. 9. + The curved or crooked sword is, in our opinion, the weapon of the third great stream of population vliicli flowed westward — namely, the Sclavonic, and not of the second or Teutonic race, from whence the Saxons were derived. Thus we find the sabre in the hands of the Pole, the Hungarian, the Bohemian, and all the Scla- vonic nations; and the still more recent Turk presents us with ths cimitar. The costume of the Danes during the ninth and tenth centuries appears, from the few authorities we possess, to have generally resembled tliat of the Saxons of the same period. A few national peculiarities alone distinguished them from their Anglian brethren. Arnold of Lubeck describes the whole Danish nation as originally wearing the garments of sailors, as befitted men who lived by piracy and inhabited the sea ; but in process of time, he says, they became wearers of scarlet, purple, and fine linen. On their establishment in England, we find them described as effeminately gay in their dress, combing their hair once a day, bathing once a week, and often changing their attire ; by which means they pleased the eyes of the women, and frequently seduced the wives and daughters of the nobility.* Long hair with them, as with the Saxons, was considered amongst their greatest ornaments. Harold Harfagre, i. e.. Fair Locks, received that appellation from the length and beauty of his hair, which is said to have flowed in thick ringlets to his girdle, and to have been like golden or silken threads. The Knyghtlinga Saga describes Ca- nute's hair as profuse. The portrait of this mo- narch, which has been given in a preceding page, from the MS. register of Hyde Abbey, written during his reign, exhibits him in the customary regal Saxon costume. The only novelty observ- able is, the fastening the mantle by cords and tassels in lieu of a fibula or a ring. The Danes wore the same description of ornaments, but were particularly partial to their massive golden brace- lets, which were always buried with them.f The military dress of the Danes of the tenth and eleventh centuries was apparently the same as that of the Normans. Both were more heavily armed than the Anglo-Saxons. But the latter speedily adopted the superior defences of their in- vaders and conquerors ; and at the commencement of the eleventh century, the conical helmet of iron with its nasal, or nose-guard, called nef biorg, and the long tvinic covered with iron rings or mascles, and furnished with a hood, as an additional pro- tection to the head and neck, are found worn in common by the three nations. The Danish shields were generally painted red ; and one of a lunated form, like the Amazonian pelta, was used by those who fought with the Danish axe — a weapon for the use of which they had acquired a terrible celebrity. The Danes were taught " to shoot well with the bow ;" a weapon which the Anglo-Saxons are said to have neg- lected. Ihe task of investigating the social usages of the Anglo-Saxons cannot be completed in a very satis- factory manner. But thovtgh it may be im- possible to give a distinct picture of every de- partment of Anglo-Saxon life, a tolerably correct delineation may be made of some of its principal * J. Wallingford, apud Gale. + Bartholinus. — Johannes Tinmuth. Chap. VL] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066'. 33.5 features. The labours of the husbandman varied only with the seasons, and the state of the useful arts admitted but of few subdivisions, so that there would be a great degree of uniformity in all the active and industrial operations of the community. Each large landowner divided the employment of his serfs in such a manner that they should be enabled to supply all his necessities. A large retinue, as in every rude age, was considered a mark of wealth and consequence. Labour was employed in a much less economical manner than in a period of greater civilization, and there being a small amount of free men practising the various handi- crafts and most necessary employments, the number of servants and artificers required by each occupier of a large landed property could not have been otherwise than great.* From whence could the various articles of daily necessity have been ob- tained but from the serfs whom their lord had trained up for the purpose ? It is stated in Bede that there were 250 slaves on some land which was given to "Wilfrid by the king. The isolating ten- dency of this state of society was, however, gra- dually counteracted by the practice of manumitting slaves, chiefly from religious motives. Men of landed property often rewarded their serfs with grants of land when they had been particularly faithful, or had excelled in the arts to which they had been brought up. From these elements arose a free population, whose existence rendered the services of a population in a state of slaverv gradually less advantageous. The higher classes were called upon to perform a number of duties which the Anglo-Saxon institu- tions attached to their station. The great festivals of the church, the royal courts, which were held at Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide, the county courts, the hundred courts, were all occasions on which they were called upon to take an active part in public life. The clergy had a variety of duties to perform. They were the best practical agri- culturists, the most skilful architects, and were, besides, acquainted with many of the common handicrafts. The accounts which we possess of domestic usages at this period are few and brief. The hours of rising amongst a coimtry population are in- variably early. The ploughman, the shepherd, the swineherd, would be at their labours by the earliest dawn. It is not improbable that a short time was devoted during the middle of the day to a siesta. In the monasteries this was the case, and indeed was rendered almost necessary by the services per- formed "before-day," and again at the dawn of day. At mid-day the monks took a me-d and slept, and again rose and went through the remaining services. In the sixteenth century, as we learn • Charlemagne commanded his jiidgos to provide for each of his castles or royal abodes " good citizens," viz., " workmen in iron, gold and silver, stoue-Gutters, turners, carpenters, armourers, en- gravers, washers ; brewers skilled in making good mead, cider, and perry, and all other liquors fit to be drunk ; bakers, wlio likeWisa iiave the art of preparii.g millet for our use; and all other tradesmen whom it would be too long to enumerate."— Sismondi's Fall of the Roman Empire, from Tusser, the labourers in husbandry enjoyed a similar relaxation.* Persons of substance had fovir meals a-day ; antl as flesh-meat was cheap in proportion to the price of bread, there can be no doubt but that it con- stituted a large portion of the food of all classes. At the commencement of the eighth century, an Anglo-Saxon missionary complains that the priests rejected animal food, which he considers as some- thing like ingratitude towards God. We have a strong proof of the extensive use of animal food in a law of Wihtrsed, which declares that a man who gave meat to his servants on fast-days was liable to be punished in the pillory. If the servant ate it of his own accord, he was either fined or bound " to suffer in his hide."t It appears, therefore, that so much cheaper was animal food than any other, that a master was restrained from giving it to his ser- vants, just as in many places near the sea it is still not unusual for servants to bargain with their em- ployers not to have fish often er than a certain num- ber of days in each week. The food allowed on fast- days consisted of milk, cheese, and eggs. As to the inferior quality of butchers' meat in the Anglo-Saxon times, there can be no question, as it is only within the last century that it has been much improved, and the Anglo-Saxons consumed their animal food in a salted state during one half of the year. In one of the manuscriptsj there is a drawing repre- senting the killing of animals, and the method of preparing their flesh for the table. A sheep is killed by a stroke on the neck with an axe, while it is held by the horns. Another man severs entirely the head of an animal with the axe. These are both rude modes of butchering. The meat is cooked in a cauldron which rests upon a trivet, and underneath is the fire: One of the attendants has a crook for the purpose of taking out the meat. The use of iron rendered the process much superior to that which was once the practice of the Scottish Highlanders, who sometimes boiled their meat in wooden vessels, and effected their object by re- peatedly plunging heated stones into the water. Boiling, baking, and broiling were the usual modes of preparing animal food. The former was perhaps the most common. The Anglo-Saxons used herbs of various kinds to season their food, but their principal vegetable ingredient was cole- wort, which there is reason for presuming was eaten with animal food. The month of February was called" sprout-kele," from the plant beginning to grow at this season. § There was a cook in all the monasteries, but in other households the duties were performed by females in a servile state. An opulent lady is mentioned who bequeathed her cook to one of her friends. The ancient Saxons had been addicted to eating raw flesh ; but amongst their descendants in this island, one of the canons of the church directed • Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, p. 157 ; Ma- vor's Edit. f Wilk., Leg. Sax. 97. t Claud, n iv. S Verstegan's Restituiion of Decayed Intelligence, p. 64. 336 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IT. that *' if a person ate anything half dressed, igno- rantly, he should fast three days ; if knowingly, four days." The following ecclesiastical regula- tions have also the same tendency as the one just given : — " For eating or drinking what a cat or dog has spoiled, he (the offending person) shall sing a hundred psalms, or fast a day. For giving another any liquor in which a mouse or a weasel shall be found dead, a layman shall do penance for four days; a monk shall sing three hundred psalms."* Some of the drawings in the MSS. exliibit the customs of the Anglo-Saxons at table. The most important fact to be noticed is, that both sexes were assembled on these social occasions, and this alone indicates many important points relative to the state of mamiers and civilization. Knives, * Spelman's Concilia, p. 287. Fkast at a Hound Table. Bayeux Tupestiy. horns, bowls, and dishes are placed on the tables ; and loaves of bread, fish, and soup or bouilli, are prepared for the entertainment. The tables are Dinner : the Company Pledging each other. Cotton MS. Cleopatra, C 8. DiNNEE Party:— the Servants on their Knees offering the Food on Spits. Cotton MS. Tib. C 7. each of them covered with a cloth ; and in some instances the cloth appears to extend over the knees of the guests, as if it was intended also to serve aa a substitute for napkins. At one table two attendants, in a kneeling attitude, offer the meat on spits. But with however keen a relish the Anglo-Saxons indulged in the pleasures of eating, they were still more addicted to the love of Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 337 drinking. William of Malnisbury, who wrote his history little more than a century after the Con- quest, and was well acquainted with Anglo-Saxon manners, states that " excessive drinking was the common vice of all ranks of people, in which they speyt whole nights and days without intermission." Even the festival days of the church were disgraced by intemperance ; and it may be recollected that it was on the festival of St. Augustin, in 946, that Edmund I. was murdered, — a catastrophe which might have been prevented but for the inebriated state of the king's attendants and of the nobles who were present.* A few years after this, Edgar the Peaceable endeavoured to check the national vice, and to put an end to the disputes and quarrels which arose from a practice which prevailed of handing round the company a common drinking vessel, which the guests were expected to vie with each other in trying who should drain to the greatest depth. He ordered that these vessels should be made with knobs of brass at a certain distance from each other, so that no one was com- pelled to drink more at a draught than from one of the knobs to another, f In the poem of Beowulf, Hrothgar, one of the heroes, is invited to " a feast in the hall of mead." Benches are spread in " the beer-hall;" the cup-bearer, "laden with ale," distributes it to those assembled, and the scop or poet is introduced. At another banquet described in the same poem, " there was then a number of men and women who the wine-chamber of the • See p. 170. + William of Malmsbury, lib, ii. c. 8. great mansion prepared." The description then proceeds as follows : — " Then were song and nmsic united; the lay was oft narrated ; the hall-games followed." 'J'he harp, as has been already noticed, as well as the drinking-cup, was handed round at festive meetings, and each individual was expected to sing and play on the instrument in turn. Bede relates that the religious poet Caedmon used always to rise from table before it came to his turn to per- form, that he might avoid taking part in what he considered too worldly a kind of hilarity. Even at their ordinary social entertainments the evenings uniformly concluded with drinking. That there might 1)0 no mistake as to the exact point against wliich the prohibitions of the church on drunken- ness were directed, one of the canons declared — " This is drunkenness, when the state of the mind is changed, the tongue stammers, the eyes are dis- turbed, the head is giddy, the belly is swelled, and pain follows. " The general love of iinrefined pleasures characterized the clergy as well as the laity. In Edgar's time the monasteries are de- scribed as presenting scenes of gambling, dancing, and singing, " even to the very middle of the night."* The monks were prohibited by the Council of Cloveshoe from admitting poets, musi- cians, or buffoons into the monasteries ; and a pre- vious Council had endeavoured to repress the love of convivial pleasures which characterized the inmates of the cloister, f « Ethel. Ab. Kiev. p. 300. Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 59. t Spelman's Concilia, 159. Convivial Paety : the Forms of the Harp, Lute, Pipe, and Trumpet, deserve attention. Harleian MS. No. 603. The mode of salutation among the Anglo-Saxons appears to have been that which several of the continental nations still observe ; for during penance a man was forbidden to kiss another.* Wlien a stranger entered a house it Avas customary to bring him water to wash his hands, and warm water for his feet. Their habits of personal cleanliness deserve to be noted. The use of warm baths appears to have been general. They were held in such estimation, that the deprivation of the use of them A\as inflicted by the church as a penance. Sometimes the deprivation of the warm bath was joined with the prohibition of a soft bed. Cold bathing, on the other hand, was imposed as a mor- tification ; and, at the same time, the penitent was • Leges Edgari, Wilk. p. 94. VOL. I. to pay so little attention to his personal ornament or comfort, that " the iron should not come to his hair or nails." These penances, inflicted by the church, would alone prove that the warlike spirit of the ancient Saxons had greatly degenerated among their descendants, and that a long course of tran- quillity and prosperity had eftected important changes in their character. The treatment of children ofiers an important illustration of national manners. The desertion of children sometimes occurred among the Anglo- Saxons. The practice was common among their pagan ancestors ; but the influence of Christianity on one of the most natural feelings of the heart soon occasioned it to be regarded as a crime, and a low was passed which, though not well calcii- V 338 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [^BOOK II. lated for its repression, shows the kindly aflfections which were aroused in behalf of deserted children. For the fostering of a foundling six shillings were to be allowed for the first year ; twelve shillings for the second year ; thirty shillings for the third year ; and aftenvards the foster-parent was to receive a sum varying according to the appearance which the child exhibited of having been properly treated.* On children being bereft of their father, they re- mained under the mother's care; but, until the eldest child became of age, were subject to the guardianship of the husband's relations. From their birth, until after the period of childhood, children were under the care of females. Edgar rewarded with lands the wife of an ealderman who had nursed and brought him up in his childhood ; and such instances of grateful feeling were not uncommon.f Cradles were used, and women generally nursed their own children. Children were baptized by immersion, within thirty days after their birth, J The holy oil, how- ever, was also used, as in the present ceremonial of the Catholic church; and the canons of Edgar direct that priests should always keep oil ready for baptism. The connexion established between the child and those who undertook the responsibility of sponsorship was much respected. The name by which each sponsor was known to the other and to the child was " godsib," implying that they were religiously allied; the word " sib" meaning kindred. § Names were given to chil- dren while yet infants, and they therefore in- dicate supposed qualities, and not those which the bearer actually possessed. Verstegan, in his admiration of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, adverts with much satisfaction to the fact, that " nobleness, honour, honesty, valour, peace, amity, quietness, charity, truth, loyalty, and all other virtues were in their name-giving recommended." (| Some of their names, indeed a large proportion, were, however, expressive rather of admiration of those rough qualities which are esteemed by a rude people. Thus we have Athelwulf, the noble wolf ; Behrtwulf, the illustrious wolf; Hundbert, the illustrious hound ; Eadwulf, the wolf of the pro- vince ; Sigwulf, the wolf of victory. There are, however, others which imply more regard for the peaceful and civic virtues : — Edgar, a keeper of his oath ; Egbert, advised unto equity ; Earnulph, the help or defence of honour ; Oswine, beloved of his house and family. Some of their female names are gentle and expressive : — Adeleve, the noble wife; Wynfreda, the peace of man; Deorwyn, dear to man ; Deorswythe, very dear ; Winne- fride, a winner or gainer of peace.^ Mr. Turner gives instances, showing that surnames derived from the appearance of an individual, from his dwelling-place, office, calling, or other circum- * Laws of Ina in Wilkins's Concilia. + Tinner's Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii.p. 6. j Wilk. Leg. Anglo-Sax., p. U. § Verstegan, p. 246. The word is still in common use in Scotland in the same sense. 11 Ibid. 304. «f Turner's Anglo-Saxons, vol, iil. p. 2. Verstegan, p. 304. stances, were in use among the Anglo-Saxons, though they were apparently by no means com- mon.* A father, if very poor, was allowed to give up his son to slavery for seven years, if the child's consent were given.f Even this restricting pro- vision had not always existed, but was introduced through the intervention of the clergy in 668, though it probably would not go far towards miti- gating the evil. We have seen, in a preceding chapter, that in some parts of the country the custom of peasants selling their children for slaves was common dov>rn nearly to the Nor- man Conquest. A child of ten years old could give evidence. Until a daughter was fifteen years old, her father could marry her to whomsoever he pleased ; but after this age he no longer possessed such power. A boy of fifteen might enter upon the monastic life, if he were so disposed; and a girl at a somewhat later period. Many of the youth were received in the monasteries, where they obtained the means of instruction. The canons of Edgar directed the clergy to " teach youth with care, and to draw them to some craft." School- boys appear to have been kept in order, and urged to their tasks by the dread of personal chastise- ment, as in modern days. The youth of superior rank, after they had passed through their limited course of instruction, were initiated and rendered proficients in the manly sports of the times. It was only at a later period, however, that it became customary for the children of the higher classes to receive any school education. The brothers of Alfred the Great did not learn to read. The respect paid to women, and the influence which they enjoyed, appear to liave been gi-eater among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors than some of the general characteristics of their state of society might have led us to expect. Before their arrival in this country the Saxons, in common with other German nations, punished unchastity in females with extreme rigour. None regard a crime of this nature with greater detestation than women them- selves ; and the severity of its punishment among the Saxons may be conceived when we find that to their hands was irequently committed the female who had disgraced her sex. A number of them pursued her from one place to another, and no- where did she obtain refuge or pity, but found fresh persecutors wherever she went. Her body was pierced with their knives, till, under this cruel and vindictive treatment, she expired. In some cases the woman was compelled to hang herself; after which her body was burnt, and her partner in crime was put to death over her ashes. J This savage mode of protecting the honour, and pro- moting the virtue of women, was quite consistent with the spirit of a rude and barbarous people, who were as yet untouched by the more kindly influ- ences of Christianity. It had, however, the effect • Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 11. Ilickes's Dis. Epist. 22-25. t Wilk. Cone. 130. X Letter of Boniface, in Mag. Bibl. Patrum, xvi, 55. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 339 of giving additional support to a virtue which is the chief basis of female excellence. Other de- sirable qualities had thus the opportunity of taking root ; and the acquisition, by women, of a consider- able degree of social influence, was the natural result. Another of the causes which contributed to the elevation of women amongst the ancient tribes of the Germanic stock is probably to be found in the fortunate circumstance of their mental and bodily faculties making their progress towards maturity at something like an equal rate. When a female was fitted to become a wife, her skilfulness in household matters, and her general experience and knowledge, gave her an authority which she could not have possessed if her bodily development had been more precocious than that of her intellect and understanding. Instead of being the slaves of their pleasures, women, even in a barbarous age, exercised a permanent influence over men, and oc- cupied the position of their associates and equals. Very seldom, if ever, in the illuminated manu- scripts which relate to this period do we find women represented as taking a part in the labours of the field, but even in those which are of the lightest kind men only are employed. In our account of rural occupations it has already been stated that the shepherd who tended his flock also milked the ewes and made cheese ; and if this were the general practice, women were more exclusively occupied within doors than at the present day, when, owing to improved practices in agriculture, there are many means of employing both them and children in field work. Women Avere therefore placed within the sphere which is most favourable to their in- fluence. In the East, the most liberal Musulmans, wlio allow a future state and future felicity to women, maintain that they will not be admitted into the same Paradise as men;* but instead of having to describe a state of society in which no- tions so degrading were prevalent, we find women among the Anglo-Saxons invested both in their families, in the eye of law, and by political cir- cumstances, with their fair share of influence.f They do not appear to have attained this condition because they embellished life by their graces, for the remains of Anglo-Saxon literature do not con- tain any notices which can lead us to infer that the charms of female society were highly prized ; but their substantial value consisted rather in the due performance of their duties as mothers and as housewives. Women were the possessors of land, of slaves, and other property. They made wills bequeathing their possessions. They appeared before the shire-gemot in disputes respecting their property ; and in a case mentioned by Mr. Turner, there were present an abbot, a priest, an etheling, eight men, two abbesses, six other ladies, and many other good thegns and women. The woman ob- tained her suit.J Another case is mentioned in • Chtirdin, iv. p. 26. + By the Canons of Edgar, women were not allowed to come near the altar at mass. It does not seem easy to account for such a regula- tion, unless its object was to prevent those engaged in the offices from being disturbed by their presence. X Turner's History, voL ii. p. 575. 5th Kd. which a man and his wife were associated in a law-suit. In their marriages, their dignity as well as inclination was consulted ; and in the History of Ely a case is mentioned of a lady refusing to marry a man because his possessions were not large enough to entitle him to sit in the witenagemot.* In the earliest of the Saxon laws that remain, those of Ethelbert, female chastity is protected by pe- nalties, varying according to the rank or condition of the injured party. The mund, or protecting fine, for a widow of the highest rank was fifty shillings ; for one of the second class, twenty shil- lings ; of the third, twelve shillings ; and of the fourth, six shillings. Even the violation of the domestic happiness of the serf was visited by a proportionate fine. The fine paid by the man who forcibly violated a female was increased if she were betrothed, and was still higher if she were preg- nant at the time. These regulations underwent some alteration in Alfred's time, but the laws on the subject were still framed on the same principle. Concubinage was expressly forbidden, and also the marrying within certain degrees of kindred. On the father's death, the children remained under the mother's care, subject to some provisions already alluded to. It appears clear, from all this, that women were surrounded witli a number of those privileges and advantages which generally accompany a better state of society than existed in the Anglo-Saxon times. The same thing will be further apparent from a notice of some of a few particulars relative to their marriage contracts and ceremonies. The laws of Ethelbert and Edmund, the former made in the sixth or seventh, the latter in the tenth century, sup- ply the best information on this subject. Ethelbert's law provided, that if a Avife who had borne children was left a widow, she was to have one half of her husband's property; but if he died without having had children by her, the property reverted to his own kindred. The morgen-gift, which the man paid on his marriage to the wife's relations, was also to be returned. The laws of Edmund in- dicate more fully what was the course pursued. Nothing appears to have been taken on trust, and every step was accompanied by certain stipulations, which, however unromantic they may appear, con- ferred real and substantial influence on women at a period when their claims to regard would not have been so certainly acknowledged if they had rested more exclusively on moral considerations. Alfred's Boethius contains a passage in which he has embodied some affectionate feelings on the love of a wife for her husband. We give it, though it is of a higher tone than we may suppose to have generally prevailed. He says : — " Liveth not thy wife also ? She is exceedingly prudent and very modest. She has excelled all other women in purity. ... She lives now for thee ; thee alone. Hence she loves nought else but thee. She has enough of every good in this present life ; but • Gale, Scrip, iii. 513. 340 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CBOOK II. she has despised it all tor thee alone. She has shunned it all because she has not thee also. This one thing is now wanting to her. Thine absence makes her think that all which she possesses is nothing. Hence for thy love she is wasting, and full nigh dead with tears and sorrow !" The pre- liminaries of a marriage consisted in obtaining, first, the consent of the lady ; next, of her friends, one of whom was appointed to act on her behalf, and who required not only the pledges of the bride- groom expectant, that he would keep his wife in circumstances suitable to her condition, but also the sureties of his friends, who thus bound themselves to see that he duly fulfilled his engagements. But the precautions taken did not terminate here ; the next subject for consideration was the means of supporting the children who might be the issue of the marriage; and the friends of the bridegroom were here again called upon to become responsible for the proposals which he made. The amount of the morgen-gift, a bridal offering or jointure (ge- nerally a piece of land), which was given the day after the marriage; and of the property to be settled upon the wife in case of the husband's death, were next determined upon ; and pledges having been mutually given that in case of removal from one jurisdiction to another no injury should arise to the wife, and, on the other hand, that if she com- mitted any offence, the proper compensation would be made, the seal was put to all these negotiations by the performance of the marriage. This cere- mony was of a religious nature, and was attended by a priest, who implored a blessing on the union. It was followed by festivities, which often continued many days. Alfred was attacked with the disorder which never left him, during the protracted ban- quets in honour of his nuptials. Hardicanute died with tlie cup in his hand at the marriage festivities of a noble Dane. The marriage of Gunihlda, Har- dicanutc's half-sister, who was married to the Emperor Henry III., was performed with unusual splendour. The chroniclers state that never had there been so great a display in England of gold and silver, gems, garments of rich workmanship, and horses. Songs Avere composed in honour of the lady, to perpetuate the recollection of her beauty, and were sving by the people for a long period afterwards. A widow might not marry until twelve months of .her widowhood had expired. If she neglected this observance, she lost all claim to the property which she had obtained by her previous marriage. In addition to the influence derived by women from the possession of property which they could freely dispose of by will, those of the highest rank not unfrequently had some share in the manage- ment of political affairs, and sometimes displayed an activity and energy which led to important events. They were, in early times, frequently instrumental in the conversion of their husbands to Christianity, and the mission of Augustin was rendered much more successful through their in- fluence than it might otherwise have been. The influence of ladies of rank who took the veil and became abbesses could not have been unimportant throughout the whole of the Anglo-Saxon period. There are also instances in which they took a part in concerns which demanded sterner qualities. Ethelburga, the queen of Ina, put herself at the head of an army to repress an insurrection which had taken place in her husband's absence, and a fortress which she attacked was taken and levelled with the ground. About fifty years before, an able and spirited woman, Seaxburgha, the widow of King Cenwealth, had reigned for a short time, in conformity with her deceased husband's nomina- tion, over the powerful kingdom of Wessex, in spite of the hostility of the neighbouring princes, which she counteracted by her prudence and activity. Notwithstanding this instance, however, a female sovereignty was altogether abhorrent to the notions and customs of the Saxons and the other Germanic nations. Even the right of being crowned was for some time taken from the wives of the Anglo-Saxon kings in consequence of the crimes of Eadburgha, the queen of Brihtric of Wessex, who poisoned her husband ; but they afterwards recovered this honour. The queen is frequently mentioned as sitting in the witenagemot ; and her position was no doubt alto- gether one of great influence as well as dignity. Suit seems to have been not unusually made to her, and her interest sought, when a favour was soli- cited from the crown. Thus, Alfwin, Abbot of Ramsay, in order to procure the favour of Edward the Confessor to his monastery, gave the king twenty marks of gold ; but he did not neglect at the same time to propitiate his queen, Editha, to whom he presented five marks. Ties of political amity were often cemented by marriages ; and this would also be the means of conferring importance and distinction upon the highest rank of females, and of elevating the general standard and tone of manners with regard to women. Four of Athelstan's sisters were married to powerful princes ; one of whom was Hugo, Count of Paris, the founder of the dynasty of Capet. Hugh urged his suit by an embassy loaded with splendid presents, which appear to have been intended partly for the lady, and partly for her brother, who had the disposal of her hand. Among them were the sword of Constantine the Great, the spear of Charlemagne, besides horses, perfumes, jewels, and relics. Another of Athelstan's sisters was married to Otho the Great, Emperor of Ger- many. Various instances might be quoted of marriages entered into by the Anglo-Saxon kings for political objects, and of the effect of such con- nexions in promoting peace and intercourse between different states But it was not only in politics that the influence of women of the higher classes was often bene- ficially exerted. Their mental endowments and acquisitions were also occasionally employed with the happiest effect in domestic life. It was Os- burgha, the mother of Alfred, it will be remem- bered, who first awakened the literary taste of Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 341 her illustrious son.* Ethelfreda, Alfred's eldest daughter, was the inheritor of her father's intellect and accomplishments, as well as of his patriotic spirit, and even of his martial ardour and talent. t She is spoken of by the old chroniclers as the wisest lady in England. The character of Athel- stan was formed by Ethelfleda ; and her judicious superintendence of his education rendered this monarch only inferior to Alfred the Great. Editha, the queen of Edward the Confessor, we have also seen, graced her high rank by high mental culti- vation. J The conclusions to which we may fairly come from a consideration of the facts which have been brought forward in relation to the condition and influence of women, arc, upon the whole, highly favourable both to them and to the general state of society in the Anglo-Saxon period. Women then occupied a position which has enabled them ever since to move forward with every social imjjrove- ment ; and their present condition is not the result of any sudden revolution in public feeling, but the • See p. 166. + Sue p. 168. J See p. 187. consequence of a gradual advancement which has operated with nearly equal effect upon the various parts of society. There has never yet existed a people without their peculiar sports and pastimes. The popular diversions of a nation are a part of its civilization, and they change with the various phases of its social condition. For example, hunting and fishing, which, in one stage of a people's progress, are pursued as a means of subsistence, become in a subsequent period a principal source of recreation and amusement. It is related by Asser in his life of Alfred, that the young nobles, after having received some instruction at school in the Latin tongue, applied themselves to the " arts adapted to manly strength, such as hunting." Many of the Anglo-Saxon kings were great lovers of the chase. One of them, the first Harold, received the sur- name of " Harefoot," from the fleetness with which he pursued the game on foot. The huntsman, however, was usually mounted. Boars and wild deer were the principal objects of pursuit, and hounds were trained for the purpose of hunting them down. Hares, and sometimes goats, were BoAU IIuKTiNo. From Cotton MS. Julius, A 7. also hunted. Nets were frequently used, into which the hunter endeavoured to drive these ani- mals. The chase was enlivened with the sounds of the horn. The laws respecting game were mild and liberal compared with those which were after- wards enacted by the Norman princes. When the king went to hunt in any place no one was allowed to interfere with his pastime; but at other times every man might pursue the animals which were found upon his own land.* Until the reign of Canute it was customary to hunt on Sundays. • Wilkins, Leg. Sax. U6. Hawking Parit. Ilailuiau MS. No. C03. 342 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. Hawking always ranked next in consideration to hunting, and in latter times became a sport of still higher distinction. Alfred wrote a book on the management of hawks j and, according to Asser, his biographer, he instructed his falconers, hawkers, and hound-trainers. We read of an archbishop of Hawking. From Cotton MS. Julius, A 0. Mons, a native of England, sending a hawk and two falcons to Ethelbert, king of Kent, at the commencement of the seventh century. The birds bred in England were not held in much esteem ; and a king of the Mercians requests the same archbishop to send him two falcons that had been trained to attack cranes, not being able to procure such as were sufficiently skilful and courageous at home. Such presents, between per- sons of consequence, were frequently made. Hawk- ing, at a later period, became so common that regulations were made for the purpose of restrain- ing some of the abuses to which it gave rise. The monks were forbidden to keep hawks and falcons ; and, in 821, persons carrying hawks were prohi- bited by a king of the Mercians from trespassing upon the lands belonging to the monks of Abing- don. Both hawks and hounds were frequently bequeathed by will. The falconer seems to have taken his birds in harvest, and after training thera for use, kept them until the spring, when he let them fly to the woods ; and again, in harvest, pro- vided himself with others. By some, however, they were kept through the whole year. Birds of various kinds were also taken in snares, traps, and with bird-lime, and wild-ducks by decoys. The bow and arrow, and also the sling, were used for the destruction both of birds and beasts. In the KiLLiNQ Birds with a Sli.no. Cotton MS. Claud. B 4. Cotton MS. of the paraphrase of Caedmon there is a representation of Esau going to seek venison, and of Ishmael in the'desert. Both are provided with a bow and arrows, and Esau is accompanied by a dog. The bow is ornamented so as to resem- ble a serpent, the head being carved at one end, and the tail at the other. The string is not fixed at the extremity of the bow, but within a short distance of it. The birds which Ishmael has killed are slung by the neck on his belt. We have no account of any horse-racing among the Anglo-Saxons ; but Bede, in one passage, speaks of a party of young men trying the speed of their horses on an open piece of grovmd to which they happened to come. The in-door sports were various, and suitable to diff'erent ranks. The games of chess and back- gammon were both known, or at least games very similar to them. Canute is mentioned on one occasion as being found engaged in a game of tesserae or scacci. Backgammon is said to liave been invented in the tenth century, and some ety- Chap. VL] MANNEES AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 343 mologists have assigned the name a Saxon or a Welsh derivation. In the canons of Edgar games of chance are forbidden to the clergy. The gleemen were the most important characters in the Anglo-Saxon festivals. Some of them seem to have performed tricks, gambols, and feats of all kinds, while others were harpers or bards, and ballad-singers. In the edicts of the Council of Cloveshoe, among those who practised the sportive arts, are classed poets, harpers, musicians, and buffoons. The first-mentioned class of glee- men were in fact mimics, dancers, tumblers, and performers of slight of hand tricks ; and the rudi- ments of the drama are to be traced in some of the performances with which they amused the people. Some of their dances appear to have Dance. The Lyre and Double Flute are of the Classic Form and Proportions. Cotton MS. Cleopatra, C 8, demanded great exertion and skill. One of these was a sort of war-dance by two men in martial dresses. They were armed with a sword and shield, and went through a mock combat to the sound of music, — the musicians, a man playing on a horn, and a female, dancing round the two com- batants. An illuminated MS. which is intended to exhibit Herodias dancing before Herod, represents her as tumbling ; and it may therefore be concluded that their dancing consisted to some extent of this kind of posture-making. But exercises of strength and agility were practised by others as well as by these professional performers. St. Cuthbert is recorded by Bede to have excelled in running, wrestling, and other athletic exercises. Another of the feats of the gleemen consisted in throwing up three balls and three knives alternately into the air, and catch- ing them in their -fall. This performance is repre- sented in one of the drawings given in the preced- ing chapter. Animals also were taught to dance and put themselves into variovis attitudes for the popular amusement. Bear-baiting, and doubtless many other unrefined amusements, afforded plea- sure during an age in which education included very little to exercise the intellect. We may here notice some of the popular super- stitions of the Anglo-Saxons, the remains of their old paganism which Christianity had not succeeded in uprooting. The change from one system to the other would for a great length of time be imper- fect, and, until the work was completed, we may conceive that the old superstitions would still con- tinue to exercise an almost undiminished influence over the popular mind : some of them have scarcely yet been put to flight. The Christianized Saxons accordingly retained unimpaired that belief in witches, charms, and prognostics, which had formed the greater part of their former religion. The male or female dealer with the powers of darkness was all but universally supposed to have the power of inflicting sickness, of inciting to love or hatred, controlling the elements, or rendering the fields fertile. Every day in the year was distinguished by its aptitude or unfitness for one or other of the concerns of life. From the occurrence of some trivial circumstance at a certain time unfavourable omens were drawn ; while some other equally natural and unimportant incident was regarded as the harbinger of every blessing. The diminution in the amount of individual happiness among a people liable every hour of the day to be filled with the apprehensions of approaching calamity must have been incalculable. Dreams, in like manner, operated upon the Anglo-Saxon mind with more than the force of actual events. The law, however, endeavoured to repress certain of the forms of the national superstition, which evinced in a more pal- pable manner the imperfect conversion of the people to Christianity. The following is one of the earlier laws which were passed with this object: — " We teach that every priest shall extinguish all heathendom, and forbid wilweorthunga (fountain worship), and licwiglunga (incantations of the dead), and hwata (omens), and galdra (magic), and man worship, and the abominations that men exercise in various sorts of witchcraft, and in frith- splottum, and with elms and other trees, and with 344 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IL stones, and with many other phantoms." * Even so late as in the time of Canute the practices here prohibited were still rife, for in one of his laws the people are ordered not to worship the sun or the moon, fire or floods, wells or stones, or any sort of tree ; not to love witchcraft, or frame death-spells, either by lot or by touch; nor to efi'ect anything by phantoms. t We shall close our sketch of the domestic and social usages of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors with a notice of their mode of disposing of the dead and their funeral ceremonies. The burning of the dead, as practised by the Britons, after the Roman exam- ple, had at one time also been prevalent amongst the ancient Germans. The Germans were accustomed to divide their history into two periods; the first, in vvhicli the bodies of the dead were bvirnt, termed the age of burning ; the second, termed the age of hillocks, in which the dead were buried, and a cairn or mound of earth raised over their remains. J But the Germans, in the time of the Anglo-Saxons, burned the bodies of criminals ; and it may there- fore be presumed that this was not their usual mode of disposing of their dead. There is abund- ance of proof that in England the custom of inter- ment had then become general. The body of Edward the Martyr, indeed, who was murdered in 978, was burnt by his friends, and the ashes were depo- sited at Wareham ; but this is the only instance we meet with of a body being burnt among the Anglo- Saxons. The interment of a corpse in a pit or grave succeeded to the custom of covering it only with a mound or a heap of stones. The use of * Wil.k. Leg. Anglo-Sax. p. 53, quoted by Mr. Turner in Hist, of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. iii. p. 136. .5th edit, + Wilkins, p. 134, in Turner, iii. 137. X Bartholin. lib. i.e. 8. coffins would not perhaps at first be general, but it svibsequently became so. For persons of distinc- tion or wealth they were of stone, and for others of wood. The corpse was sometimes covered with a sheet of lead, and was then placed in a wooden coffin. Linen shrouds were used, and the clergy were buried in the habits of their office. The burial-places at first were not in tlie midst of the population ; but Archbishop Cuthbert, about the middle of the eighth century, obtained permission to b\iry the dead within cities. The churches in consequence at length became crowded with graves, so that in the course of time it was found necessary to restrain the practice ; and none were allowed to be buried in the churches but ecclesiastics and persons whose lives had been distinguished by piety and good works. The body was often conveyed a considerable distance for burial Wilfrid, Arch- bishop of York, died at Oundle, in Nortliampton- shire, in 108, and was buried at Ripon. The manner in which the funeral was conducted is thus described by the bishop's biographer, Eddius : — " Upon a certain day many abbots and clergy met those who conducted the corpse of the holy bishop in a hearse, and earnestly begged that they miglit be allowed to wash the sacred body, and dress it honourably, according to its dignity ; and they ob- tained permission. Then one of the abbots, named Bacula, spreading his surplice on the ground, the brethren deposited the holy body upon it, waslied it with their own hands, dressed it in the pon'iifical habits, and then taking it up, carried it towards the appointed place, singing psalms and hymns in the fear of God. Having advanced a little, they again deposited the corpse, pitched a tent over it, bathed the sacred body in pure water, dressed il in Tuts Coffin and Geaye-clothes.— From a Picture of the Kaisiug of Lazarus in Cotton MS. Nero, C 4. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 449—1066. 345 robes of fine linen, placed it in the hearse, and proceeded, singing psalms, towards the monastery of Ripon. When they approached that monastery the whole family of it came out to meet them, bearing the holy relics. Of all this numerous com- pany there was hardly one who abstained from tears ; and all raising their voices, and joining in hymns and songs, they conducted the body into the church which the holy bishop had built and dedi- cated to St. Peter, and there deposited it in the most solemn and honourable manner." These honours, it will be recollected, were paid to a per- sonage of importance and of great sanctity. It is mentioned* that a nobleman having died during his attendance at the King's Easter Court, the king directed that the body should be attended to the place where it was to be deposited by several bishops, earls, and other noblemen. The custom of ringing the passing-bell when a person's death occurred originated in the Anglo- Sa-Kon period. The intention was, that those within reach of the sound might put vip a prayer for the dead. Bede relates that at the death of the Abbess of St. Hilda, one of the sisters of a distant monas- tery thought she heard the well-known sound of that bell which called them to prayers when any of them had departed this life ; and the superior of the monastery was no sooner informed of this than she raised all the sisters, and called them into the church to pray fervently and sing a requiem for • Gale, Script, iii. 306. the deceased abbess.* A payment called the " sonl- sceat " was made to the clergy on a person's death. The anxiety of persons to procure the prayers of the clergy for the good of their souls was one of the most productive sources of ecclesiastical wealth. One of the objects of the associations among arti- sans, called gilds, was to provide for the honourable interment of a member according to his last wishes. A fine, paid in honey, was inflicted upon any brother for non attendance at the funeral ; and the gild was to provide half of the provisions for the funeral entertainment, at which all wlio were present gave twopence for alms. If a member died, or fell sick, out of his own district, the rest were to fetch him back, according to his wish, under the same penalty. The period which elapsed between the death of a person and the interment of his remains was usually short, except where it was necessary to convey them to some distant burial-place. The body of Edward the Confessor was interred the day after his death. The head and shoulders of the corpse remained uncovered until the time of burial. It would ap- pear from the delineations in some of their MSS., that the bodies of the dead were sometimes con- veyed to the grave on a bier, and that no coffin was used. One person taking hold at the head, and another at the feet, deposited the deceased in the grave, the priest throwing incense over it. Besides the shroud, the body was enveloped in a coloured garment. • Brande's Popular Antiquities. 346 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CBooK II. CHAPTER Vn. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. URING the period of which we are now about to close the sur- vey, the population of the British Islands was more diversified in respect of lineage, language, and laws, — the three great constituents of na- tionality, than at any other time either before or since. In Ireland, even if we suppose the Scots and other earlier Gothic colonists, or conquerors, to have been already completely melted down into the mass of the native Celtic population, we have still two perfectly distinct races dividing the land between them, and contending for its sovereignty, — namely, the old Irish, and their recent invaders, the Northmen or Danes. The latter had established themselves, by the middle of the ninth century, along the whole line of the east coast, from Belfast to Cork, and occu- pied Dublin and nearly all the other towns of any importance throughout the island ; the proper Irish were driven beyond what might be called the pale as completely as they were some centuries after- wards by their Anglo-Norman invaders. In Scot- land also a large Danish or Norwegian population was settled not only in the Shetland, Orkney, and Western Islands, but also in the northern part of the mainland : these foreigners had maintained a long and fierce struggle with the Scottish ruler for his crown; and even after their failure in that object (for the Danes never succeeded in Scotland in acquiring the supreme dominion of the country, as they did for a season both in England and in Ireland), it may be doubted if the allegiance of the Danish chieftains of Sutherland and Ross to the Celtic monarch was for a considerable period so much as nominal. The Scottish Celts themselves, though they had obtained the sovereignty of the country, and it came eventually to be called by their name, were intruders upon an older population of a different race. The Picts, the representatives of the ancient Caledonians, who had held the whole of North Britain up to the beginning of the sixth century, subsisted as an independent state till the middle of the ninth ; and, although from that date united under one sceptre with the Scots, continued to be recognised as a distinct people for a long time after. A Welsh kingdom maintained its existence in the south-west of Scotland till the latter part of the tenth century. In South Britain, finally, the Welsh occupied, and retained at least the nominal sovereignty of, the whole western side of the island ; and, even if we include Cumbria in the northern Strathclyde, not fewer than three separate kingdoms that were not Saxon survived there throughout the Saxon period. Nor was the rest of South Britain — that part of the island which was properly called England — all in the occupation of one race of people. The Saxons themselves were divided into at least three several great tribes ; some of them were Saxons proper, some were Angles, some were Jutes ; and they appear to have come from different parts of the continent — some from a point so far north as the present duchy of Sleswig in Denmark, others from a quarter so much farther to the south as the modem Friesland in Holland, and the coun- try of the ancient Belgae, which extended to the Seine. This mixed population continued down to the ninth century to be distributed into seven or eight distinct states or kingdoms, all, except when any of them happened to be reduced for a time to subjection by force, substantially independent of each other. But the different tribes of the Anglo- Saxons only possessed a part even of England proper. Here also, as in Ireland and in Scotland, there was settled, in full occupation and possession of a large portion of the country, a population of Danes or Northmen, who had made good their footing by their swords, and had wrested tlie soil from the Saxons exactly in the same manner as the Saxons had before wrested it from the Britons. These Danes at length actually acquired the sove- reignty of England, and retained it for a consi- derable time ; nor after the Saxon line of kings was restored did the kingdom itself cease to be still to a full half of its extent in the hands of the Danes. In the latter years of the Anglo-Saxon period England appears to have been divided into thirty- two shires, of which nine constituted what was called West-Seaxnalage or Sexenalaga (the pro- vince, or, as the word perhaps properly signifies, the law of the West Saxons) ; eight, Myrcenlage or Blerchenelaga (the district over which the Mercian law prevailed) ; and the remaining fifteen, Danelage or Denelaga (the Danish territory). The nine West Saxon shires were — Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Berks, Hants, Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, and Devon ; the eight Mercian — Chester, Shrop- shire, Hereford, Stafford, Worcester, Gloucester, Warwick, and Oxford; and the fifteen Danish — Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Hertford, Chap. VlL] CONDtTIO:^ OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 449—1066. 347 Middlesex, Huntingdon, Bedford, Leicester, North- ampton (including Rutland), Buckingham, Lin- coln, Nottingham, Derby, and York (which in those times appears to have comprehended Durham and Lancashire, and also perhaps the whole or part of Westmoreland). Northumberland and Cum- berland seem as yet to have been usually considered as rather belonging to Scotland than to England ; nor was either Cornwall or Wales (in which Mon- mouth Avas included) reckoned as part of England proper.* Although, therefore, the whole country was subject to one sovereign, it may be considered as having been composed of three territories, which were probably nearly as distinct from each other as if they had been three separate states, both in regard to the races by which they were chiefly inhabited, and the laws and customs by which they were governed. The southern counties only com- posed the original dominion of the state which had acquired the general sovereignty ; the district extending from the heart of the country to the borders of Wales was still regarded, in every- thing except its subjection to the authority of the common sovereign, as the distinct state of Mercia, of which kingdom it had anciently formed a part; and what might properly be called a foreign people held possession of all the east and north, a space certainly not less than that occupied by the English in the south and west. The distinction of the West Saxon, the Mercian, and the Danish laws, as severally prevalent in these three territories, appears to have subsisted for a considerable period after the Norman conquest; but in what it con- sisted is very imperfectly known. The account usually given is, that what is called the common law of England was originally composed of a selec- tion from all these diiferent codes, and received its name of the common law from that circumstance. But it may be reasonably doubted if this was really the origin of the name; the common law would rather seem never to have existed in the shape of any regularly compiled or promulgated collection of enactments, but to have been always a body of imwritten rules and usages, which were designated common, as being believed to have been observed throughout the whole course of the national history. It is probable enough, however, that the efforts of the later Anglo-Saxon kings may have been directed to the removal, as far as pos- sible, of such diversities of legal usage as distin- guished one part of the kingdom from another, — an object which the natural tendency of events would itself assist in promoting. The chief part of this task of assimilating the laws of the West Saxons, Mercians, and Danes, is generally ascribed to Edward the Confessor; but it was begun, ac- cording to some authorities, nearly a century before his time, by Edgar. Still the work does not seem to have ever been completed during the Saxon period. The West Saxons, the Mercians, and the Danes, all along appear to have had their distinct • See Camden's Brit, ccxxvii., Blackstone's Com. lutrod, § 3., . and Palgrave's English Com. i. 48, laws, though they had all, as Spelman has observed^ "an uniformity in substance, differing rather in their mulcts than in their canon ; that is to say, in the quantity of fines and amerciaments, than in the course and frame of justice," ..." In those districts," says Sir Francis Palgrave, "which were conquered and colonized by the Danes, the settlement of the invaders was probably accom- panied by a partial introduction of their peculiar usages. It must be recollected that these strangers made the country entirely their own. Halfdane divided Northumbria amongst his followers, who tilled and sowed the land which they had won. The portion of ancient Mercia constituting the commonwealth of the five burghs, Lancaster, Lin- coln, Nottingham, Stamford, and Derby, became a Danish state in the following year ; and the division of East Anglia amongst the army of Guthrun com- pleted the colonization of Danelage. Within the limits of these acquisitions, and which, so far as East Anglia and its dependencies extended, were settled and confirmed by the treaty between Alfred and Guthrun, the conquest of the Anglo-Saxons by the Danes appears to have been as complete as that which was effected at a subsequent period by William of Normandy." " Yet," he concludes, "the influence of the more civilized community was not unfelt, and the laws which Edgar recom- mended to the Danes, perhaps without immediate effect, were adopted after his decease, when both Danes and Angles, in the midland and eastern parts of the island, were gradually uniting into one people. Beyond the Trent the process was more tardy ; and it was not until the close of the reign of the Confessor that the laws of Canute were promulgated by the Confessor in the earldom of Northumbria. The chief peculiarities of the Danelage are to be sought rather in forms of policy and administration than in the doctrines of the law itself." * Of the old states of the heptarchy, the West Saxon province comprehended the kingdoms of Wessex, Sussex, and Kent ; the province of Mer- cia consisted of part of the former kingdom of the same name ; and the remainder of the kingdom of Mercia, with the whole of those of Essex, East Anglia, and Northumberland, constituted the Da- nish province. According to the account in Bede and the Saxon Chronicle of the races by which these several kingdoms were founded, and the ter- ritories composing them originally occupied, f the subjects of the West Saxon law would be partly Saxons, and partly Jutes ; those of the Mercian law. Angles ; and those of the Danish law, in so far as they were not Danes, partly Angles, and partly Saxons. The Britons, as we have seen in the preceding book, although they had strongholds in the woods, had no towns properly so called. These were first founded by the Romans. Gildas, writing in the sixth century, says, that there were then twenty- eight cities in Britain. Lists of these twenty- • English Com. p. 51. f See ante, p. 293, 348 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. eight cities under their British names are given in the History bearing the name of the Nennius of the nintli century, and in their British and in some instances also in their modern names, by Henry of Huntingdon, who, although he lived in tlie twelfth century, evidently compiled many parts of his Avork from records or documents of a much earlier period. In regard to about twenty of the names, the two lists may be considered to corre- spond, although both are obviously much cor- rupted ; the remaining places seem not to be the same in the one as in the other. The lists, how- ever, defective and in part imintelligible as they are, are still highly curious, as furnishing the oldest notice we have of the topography of Britain after the time of the Romans, and the earliest that can be regarded as appertaining to the Saxon period. The towns which are found in both lists appear to be the following : — Verulam, or the ancient St. Alban's (called Cair-Municip by Nennius, Kair-Mercipit by Huntingdon) ; Carlisle, Mei- vod in Montgomeryshire, Colchester, York, Cam- bridge, or rather Grantchester in the neighbour- hood of that place ; London, Canterbury, Worcester, Porchester, Warwick, Caer-Seiont near Carnarvon, Caerleon, Leicester, Draiton in Shropshire, Wrox- eter, Lincoln ; and three imknown towns, of which the British names are, in Nennius, Cair-Caratauc, Cair-Mauchguid, and Cair-Guorthigim ; in Hun- tingdon, Kair-Cuserat, Kair-Meguaid, and Kair- Guortigern. The last would seem to mean the City of Vortigern. The fullowing are enumerated by Nennius, and not by Huntingdon : Cair-Gun- tuig, supposed to be Winwik, in Lancashire ; Cair- Custeint, literally Constantine's town, probably Constanton, near Falmouth; Cair-Daun, Don- caster; Cair- Legion, Cliester; Cair-Guent, either Winchester, or Caer-went in Monmouthshire ; Cair- Brithon, supposed to be Dunbarton ; Cair-Pensa- velcoit, Pevensey ; and Cair-Celemion, Camalet in Somerset. Those in Huntingdon and not in Nennius are, Kuir-Glou, Gloucester ; Kair-Cei, Cliichester ; Kair-Bristou, Bristol; Kair-Ceri, Cirencester; Kair-Dauri, Dorchester ; Kair-Dorm, nearWalms- ford, on the Nen ; Kair-Merdin, Caermarthen ; and Kair-Licelid, the modern name or site of which is not known. These, however, were cer- tainly not all the towns left in Britain by the Romans. One remarkable omission is Bath ; but we are inclined to suspect that Cair-Badon, the ancient name of this city, should be substituted in the list of Nennius for Cair-Brithon, taken to mean Dunbartun, which never was a Roman town. In another list given by Alfred of Beverley, a writer contemporary with Huntingdon, although it contains only twenty names in all, we find both Caer-Badon, and Caer-Paladour, supposed to be Shaftesbury. Although, however, some of the names, in all the lists as we now have them, may be wrong, or may be misunderstood, we may probably rely upon the correctness of the general statement of Gildas — that, in his time, the number of cities, by which he may be supposed to mean walled towns, in the island, or rather in that portion of it whicli had formed the Roman province, was twenty-eight. There were also, he says, some strongly fortified castles. This was, tlien, the amount, or at least the measure of what may be called, with somewhat more than mere etymological propriety, the civili- zation of the country at the time when the Saxons entered upon the possession of it ; for, not only is it true, that without towns there can be little or no civilization in any country, but the quantity of civilization in a country may be generally taken as being nearly in proportion to the number of towns in it. These are, at least, the fouiitains where the light of knowledge is collected and preserved, and from which it is difiused over the popvilation. Many of the Roman towns appear to have been deserted or laid in ruins in the course of the long, fierce, and desolating warfare that preceded the establishment of the several states of the heptarchy; no contest so obstinate and protracted had to be fought by the barbarian invaders in taking pos- session of any other part of the Roman empire. Tlie Saxons, when they first issued from the seas and woods of the north of Europe for the conquest of Britain, probably held the peace and protection of walled towns and congregated buildings in con- tempt ; and in this feeling they may have reck- lessly destroyed,- or taken no pains to preserve, those of the British cities that fell into their hands, so long as they were actually engaged in contend- ing, sword in hand, for the possession of the coun- try. But as they gradually eflected a settlement in it, and became transformed from invaders into colonists, and from mere soldiers into occupants and cultivators of the soil, the instinct of their new- position and circumstances turned them to new views and another mode of procedure. Their attention was now awakened to what had been done by their predecessors in the sovereignty of the island ; they set themselves to take advantage of, and to improve upon, the foundations which that illustrious people had laid; the Roman cities and other fortified stations were once more oc- cupied, and became the sites and beginnings of new cities and towns, most of which subsist to the present day. But this was not nearly all that was accomplished by the Anglo-Saxons in the embellish- ment of the country, and in planting througliout its soil at least the roots of future industry, weaUh, and civilization, during the period it was in their hands. They certainly did not work with any- thing like the high finish of the Romans ; tliey were from the first, and continued all along, a people in a much less advanced state in regarcl to the arts, and almost every kind of intellectual cul- tivation, than those inheritors of all the knowledge and philosophy of the ancient world ; and what they produced, therefore, was infinitely less pcrl'ect, less imposing, and in everyway less remarkable in the result actually attained, than were the creations and achievements of the older and more lettered people. But they evinced, nevertheless, in all that Chap. VIL] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE : A.D. 449—1066. 34.9 they (lid, a sufficiently robust and productive genius ; and if they did not themselves carry out many things to a very elevated degree of excellence, they at least scattered the seeds of improvement for others to rear over a wide field, and in no stinted measure. Very striking evidence of this healthy fertility is afforded by the multiplication of towns and villages, which seems to have taken place in South Britain during their domination, and by a comparison of the state to which the country was eventually brought by them in this respect with the state in which they appear to have found it. It is a remarkable fact, and one which has scarcely been sufficiently adverted to, that, with very few exceptions indeed, all the towns, and even villages and hamlets, which England yet possesses, appear to have existed from the Saxon times. This is in general sufficiently attested by their mere names, and there is historical evidence of the fact in a large proportion of instances. Our towns and villages have become individually larger in most cases in the course of the last eight or ten centuries ; but in all that space of time no very great addition has been luade to their number. The augmenta- tion which the population and wealth of the country have undergone, vast as it has been, in the course of so many ages, has nearly all found room to collect and arrange itself around the old centres. This fact does not disprove the magnitude of the increase that has been made to the numl)ers of the people, for the extension of the circumferences without any multiplication of the centres would suffice to absorb any such increase however great; but seeing how thickly covered the country actually is with towns and villages, it is certainly curious to reflect that they were very nearly as numerous over the greater part of it in the time of the Saxons. And if only about twenty-eight of our cities and towns, or even twice that number, can be traced to a Roman original, the number indebted to the Saxons for their first foundation must be very great, for, as we have seen, nearly all that are not Roman are Saxon. As for our villages, the un- doubted fact that the present division of the country into parishes is, almost withovit alteration, as old at least as the tenth century, would alone prove that the Englisli villages in the Saxon times were nearly as numerous as in our own day. One account, in- deed, which has been often quoted as trustworthy, though it seems impossible to believe that it does not involve some great mistake, makes the number of parish churches in England about the time of the Norman Conquest to have been 45,011, and that of the villages 62,080.* The number of • Tliis statement is quoted in Spclmau's Glossary, voc. Feodum, from Thomas Sprot, a monk of the monaslery of St. Aun;ustin, in Canterbury. Tliu circumstance of the numbcrs'both of parishes and of villages being set down, and that of a certain corresiioudence bein" preserved between them, would rather go to negative the supposition that there was any corruption in the text of the manuscript. On tlie other liand, the particularity of the figures would seem to indicate that they were the result of something like an actual computation. It appears that a similar exaggerated notion of the number of parishes in England was long entertained. In the year 1371 the parliament granted Edward III. a subsidy of 50,000/., which it was calculated would be raised by an assessment at the average rate of 11, 2s. id. upon each parish; but it was found that the number of parishes at present is not much above 10,000, and that of the villages would probably be overrated if reckoned at half as many more. If, in like man- ner, instead of the numbers just given, we allow only 10,000 parishes and 15,000 villages to Eng- land in the time of the Saxons, we shall be led to form a very high idea of the extent to which the country must already have been reclaimed and settled. Let it be conceded that many of the vil- lages were very small, consisting perhaps only of a dozen or two of cottages ; still we apprehend the facts imply a diffusion of population and of cultiva- tion vastly beyond what can be supposed to have taken place in the preceding or Roman period, during which, indeed, the country was traversed in various directions by noble roads, and ornamented with some considerable towns, but does not appear, from any notices that have come down to us, or any monuments or signs that remain, to have been gene- rally covered with villages of any description. Various attempts have been made to extract an estimate of the amount of the population of Eng- land in the Anglo-Saxon times from the statements in Domesday-Book ; but very little dependence can be placed upon any of the inferential calcu- lations upon this subject (for they are nothing more) that have been founded upon that record. Domesday-Book does not profess to present any census of the population; the object with which the survey was undertaken appears to have been merely to obtain an exact account of the demesnes and profits belonging to the crown, and of the public services due by the several estates in the kingdom; and whatever information respecting other matters may be found in the register must be con- sidered as having been introduced principally if not exclusively with a view to this its primary design. It is in this way only that we can explain such entries as those which mention no more than forty-two persons as resident in the town of Dover, forty-six in St. Alban's, five in Sudbury, nine in Bedford, ten in Bristol, and many others as mani- festly not intended to include the whole population of the places to which they refer. By counting a parishes had been so much overrated that, to make up the sum, the assessment had eventually to be raised to 5/. 16s. on each. Tlie number of parislies tlierefoie had been taken to be about five times as great as it really was— a curious specimen of statistical ignorance on the part of a government — and also a striking example of the absurdity and inconvenience of legislating in the absence of that knowledge of facts which ought to be the basis of every legislative proceeding. So, in a treatise published in 1527 by Simon Fish of Gray's Inn, entitled ' A Supplication of the liegg,trs to the King,' the number of parishes in England is assumed to be 52,000. let several actual enumerations appear to have been made before this time. It is adirmed, in a work entitled "The Happy Future State of England,' publislied in 1689, that a MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford makes the jiarishes in the time of Edward I. to have been only about 8300, exclusive of many chapclries since grown up into parsonages. Stowe, in his Annals, states that the parishes were actually numbered for the purposes of the tax laid on in 1371, as above mentioned, and were found to amount only to 8600. And Camden tells us (IJvilannia, ccxxx.) that in anenumeration made for Cardinal Wolscyin 1520, there were reckoned in all the counties of England 9407 churches. He himself gives us another enumeration made in the reign of .Tames I , which makes the number of parish churches to amount to 928-1. Although the present number of parishes, ju-operly or popularly so called, amounts only to about 10,700 (see Macoul- loch's Statis'tical Account of the British Empiie, i. 171), it has been ascertained, in the course of the recent inquiries into the administra- tion of tlie Poor Laws, that the entire number of places throughout tlie kingdom separately relieving theirown ))aupers is (or rather was before the formation of the new unions) 15,635. 850 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. man for every wood, mill, pasture, or house that is mentioned (evidently a very arbitrary assumption), Mr. Turner makes the total number of persons of all descriptions enumerated in Domesday-Book to amount to 300,7 85 . He then considers this number of individuals as representing so many families, each of which may be supposed to have consisted of five persons on an average. This would produce an entire population of about a million and a half, of which about a third part is assigned to the Danish half of the kingdom.* But as several towns, especially London and Winchester, are not men- tioned at all, while the four northern counties of Cumberland,Durham,Westmoreland, and Northum- berland, are likewise altogether omitted ; and as, moreover, no account appears to be taken either of the monks or (except in a very few instances) of the parochial clergy, it is conjectured that at least half a million more may be allowed for these defi- ciencies, and that therefore the entire Anglo-Saxon population, in the reign of the Confessor, must have rather exceeded two millions. t Sir James Mackintosh has drawn up a table which appears to make the entire number of persons mentioned in the survey only 258,293. He has omitted, he says, such of Mr. Turner's estimates as seem to depend upon a supposed proportion of persons to tenements. He adds, that " nothing more than a very general approximation can be expected till Domesday-Book be much more critically examined than it has hitherto been." Perhaps it would have been more correct to say tliat no satisfactory infor- mation upon the subject in question is likely ever to be obtained from that source. Some valuable particulars, nevertheless, of another kind may be thence gathered in illustra- tion of the state of the country in the Anglo-Saxon period. In the first place, we obtain evidence at least of the existence in those times of a long list of cities and burghs (as they are usually designated in the record), comprising nearly all the consider- able towns the kingdom yet contains ; a good many of the number, indeed, having apparently been of greater consequence then than they are now. We also gain some small insight into the government or political constitution of these burghs ; and some light is thrown upon the constitution of society generally by the notices of the different classes or orders of the people, though, for the reasons that have been stated, little or nothing can be inferred from the particular numbers of each class that are registered in different places. The larger towns, as we have just observed, were distinguished among the Saxons by the name of burghs, the same term with our modern English • But upon what authority does Mr. Turner exclude from th6 Danish part of the kingdom the counties of Noitharapton (with Rutland), Leicester, Nottingham, Buckingham, Cambridge, Hert- ford, Bedford, Derby, Huntingdon, and Middlesex, whicli the old writers generally enumerate as belonging to the Danelage ? Re- storing these counties to their proper place in the table, the account will stand thus:— Danish counties, 151,100; other counties, 149,685. Cornwall (with 5606 persons for its share) is included among the latter. " t Turner's Hist. Ang.-Sax. iii.254. boroughs.* The word burgh has been derived from the Latin burgus, which was in common use in later times among the Romans for a fort or mili- tary stronghold, and is itself nearly the same with a (xreek word of similar signification which is as old as the time of Homer. f The burghs of tlie Anglo-Saxons appear to have in most instances arisen out of the military stations of their Roman predeces- sors ; as the places they distinguished by the name of cities had in general, if not always, been Roman towns or civitates. All cities, however, came in course of time to be considered as burghs, though only some burghs were cities. " It must be clearly understood," observes Sir F. Palgrave, " that a Saxon burgh was nothing more than a hundred, or an assemblage of hundreds, surrounded by a moat, a stoccade, or a wall j and the name of the hundred was actually given to some of the most considerable cities, burghs, and towns of England. No right was conferred or destroyed by the feeble fortification which protected the burgesses ; and the jurisdiction of the burgh- moot or portmoot differed from that possessed by the analogous districts in the open country only in consequence of the police required by a more condensed population, and the institutions, perhaps of Roman origin, which incorporated the trading portions of the community." J " We must aban- don," the learned writer afterwards remarks, " any conjectures as to the government of the burghs in the earlier periods. We must rest satisfied with the fact that, in the reign of the Confessor, the larger burghs had assumed the form of commu- nities, which, without much impropriety, may be described as territorial corporations. The legal character of the burgess arose from his possessions ; it was a real right arising from the qualification which he held. The burgess was the owner of a tenement within the walls, and the possession might descend to his heirs, or be freely alienated to a stranger. The lawmen of the burgh were so deno- minated in respect of the mansi which each held. .... Lawmen occur by name only in the Danish burghs ; but a similar territorial magistracy existed in other places. The soke of the aldermen of Canterbury was transferable, like any other inherit- ance ; and the possession of the land imparted to the lord the right of judicature in the burgh-mote or municipal assembly. Such functionaries were lawmen or aldermen by tenure. Other burghs, however, may possibly have possessed an elective magistracy. . . . Nor is it improbable but that the guilds of traders and handicraftsmen possessed con- siderable influence ; and the aldermen of these cor- ••In Scotland the term used is still burgh, which however is there always pronounced as a word of two syllables, and exactly like the English borough. Thus the name of the capital is a word not of three, but of four syllables,— as Wordsworth has correctly given it,— " And stately Edinburgh throned on crags." But the true old Scottish form of the word, also still in familiar use is brogh, with the guttural strongly pronounced. ' + See Jos. Scaliger, Lection. Ausou. ii. 9.— Palgrave's English Com- monwealth, p. 353.— The Burgundioncs, or people of Burgundy, are said to have been so called as being sprung from the soldiers bv whom the Roman forts in that country were occupied. Isidor. OriJ ix. 2 and 4. But this etymology has been disputed, t English Commonwealth, p. 103. Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 449—1066. 351 porations may have been allowed to enter the folk- moot, and to share in its proceedings." * Sir Francis proceeds to state that, in the larger and more important cities, the only rights that the king had were to the various payments and services which were imposed upon the municipal commu- nities, and that, provided these were discharged, he had nothing more to demand, — ^he could not exact the oath of fealty from the citizens, nor even enter within their walls without their consent.' The only fact, however, which is referred to in proof of these positions is the resistance made to the Conqueror by the citizens of Exeter, who, as will appear in the next Book, although they offered to pay to that king the same tribute they had paid to his prede- cessors, refused to become his men or vassals. But an act of resistance like this to the attack of a foreign invader (for such William might very naturally be considered in a part of the country which he had not yet overrun) would seem to afford no evidence from which we could safely infer what were the privileges possessed or claimed by the burghs under a government which they completely acknowledged. It is difficult also to understand how the Saxon burghs should have acquired this independence of the royal authority, considering the gradual manner in which they appear to have grown up to whatever importance they actually did attain. It is admitted, as we have just seen, that in their origin they were merely certain of the inhabited localities, which either from having been formerly occupied by the Romans, or from the peculiar natural advantages which they presented, came to be surrounded with walls, ditches, or some other such protection ; but this visible line of demarcation conferred no peculiar character upon the community which it inclosed. It tended no doubt to produce a state of things favourable to the acquisition, by the burgesses, of the right of managing both the police and the internal govern- ment generally of their burgh ; but in the absence of any record of so remarkable a revolution, we cannot venture to assume that these walled towns eventually became so many all but independent republics established all over the kingdom, as they would really have been if we can suppose them to have held, in relation to the general government, the position which the men of Exeter took up against William the Conqueror. The word town, it is to be observed, conveyed a different idea, as used by our Saxon ancestors, from what it now does. A town or township (in Saxon tun, from tynan, to inclose) was very nearly the same with what came after the Conquest to be de- nominated a manor. Sir Francis Palgrave explains the term thus : — " Denoting, in its primary sense, the inclosure which surrounded the mere home- stead or dwelling of the lord, it seems to have been gradually extended to the whole of the land which constituted the domain."t " Every Anglo-Saxon township," he afterwards observes, " was subjected, in demesne, to a superior ; to the sovereign, whe- • English Commonwealth, p. 630. t Ibid. p. 65. ther king or eoldorman, who succeeded to the very extensive possessions of the British princes ; or to a lord (a hlaford, or landrica). In some few in- stances the township belonged to small corpora- tions, if such a term may be used, whose members held the township as a joint property. .... The right of the lord of the township was accompanied by the sovereignty of the land. I apply the term sovereignty, rather than that of ownership, because the superiority of the township was unquestionably vested in him, although his right of possession does not seem to have extended beyond the demesne or inlands, which he enjoyed in severalty, and which he cultivated as his own. Another portion of the township consisted of the feuds which he or his predecessors had granted by landboc (or charter) to the sokemen. Such a benefice, praestarium, or feud, which in Anglo-Saxon was denominated a Laen, was usually created for one, two, or three lives, to be nominated by the grantee, after which it reverted to the lord; and duruig the existence of those derivative estates, the lord, according to the language of the later law, had only the services and the reversion. Some bene- fices, however, were granted in perpetuity. Ana- logous in many respects to the benefices were the lands which were held by the tenants, whether Sokemen or Bondes, by folkright, or customary tenure; but these do not appear to have been generally subject to devise or alienation. Lastly, every township contained those extensive common fields, or common leasowes, which the law assumed to belong to every town, and of which the usufruct was shared between the lord and the men of the community.* The whole country, therefore, it will be ob- served, was divided into towns, or townships, as well as into hundreds and shires. And the town- ship, as well as the hundreds and shires, consti- tuted in every case, for certain purposes, a commu- nity by itself, having a jurisdiction and legislative powers of its own. The chief government belonged to the lord ; but it appears that the court in which it was exercised could not be held without the presence of a certain member of the Sokemen or tenants.t The deputy of the lord, and the func- tionary through whom he usually exercised his rights, was the Tun-Gerefa, or Town-Reeve. " No township," says Sir Francis Palgrave, " was without a gerefa, who was allowed, in the folk- moots, or judicial assemblies, to speak and act on behalf of the Twelfliindman, who was the lord of the township, and to give such testimony as would have been given by the lord himself: and the right of being so represented was one of the pecu- liar privileges of the aristocracy. He appears to have been the fiscal officer of the lord : he received the seignorial tolls and dues, and superintended the performance of the agricultural labours of tlie villainage."t Yet the gerefa, though thus the officer of the lord, seems to have been usually Kn^lish Commonwealth, p. 66. t Ibid. p. 82. t Ibid. p. 79. 352 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. elected to his office by the tenantry. By him, and by four good and lawful men by whom he was attended, tlie township was represented in the monthly courts of the hundred and the half-yearly courts of the shire. Each township had also the keeping of its own police : when a crime was com- mitted, the inhabitants were required to raise the hue-and-cry, and were bound to enforce the ap- pearance of the offender to take his trial. These statements, taken in connexion with the notices in a former chapter, of the tithings and the system of frank-pledge,* will enable the reader to understand the general arrangement of the Anglo- Saxon population, in so far as regards its territorial or local distribution. An account has also been already given of the leading distinctions of rank and political condition by which it was marked. What was properly called the people, was divided into two great classes — the noble, and the ignoble ; the eorls, and the ceorls ; or, as they were desig- nated by a form of expression that denoted the re- lative estimation in which they were severally held by the law, theTwelfhaendmenand the Twihaend- men — that is, people with a dozen hands each, and people with only a pair each. In this general divi- sion, however, we must consider as included in the first class, not only the Eorls, or Eorlcundmen, or Thaneborn, who were, strictly speaking, the men of twelve hands, but also the Ealdormen, or per- sons of the royal blood, upon whom a still higher value was set, and the inferior nobility or gentry, designated Sithcundmen, or Sixhaendmen.-f On the other hand, the Twihaendmen were also of various descriptions, or at least were known by various names, although among them no distinc- tion existed in respect of legal estimation. The general name by which they were known was that of Ceorls, the origin of our modern churls. J In Latin they were called Villani, translated Villains, which properly signifies nothing more than the inhabitants of the villa, that is, of the town- ship, whether it was a village or merely a farm. Tlie word villagers would convey the nearest idea of what was meant by villani to a modem ear. Another name of the Ceorls was Bonds, or Bonds- men, that is, occupants of the soil. Boors, a name by which they were also called, means the same thing. Other descriptions of Ceorls were the Cotsetan, in Latin, Cotarii, that is, cottiers, or holders of small tenements; and Bordarii, a term of which the exact meaning is not known. § Not accounted as at all forming part of tlie people, but deprived of all rights, both poli- tical and personal, and classed rather with the cattle than among human beings, were the Theowes, in Lathi, servi, which may be translated serfs, or • See ante, p. 250. + See ante, p. 218. i Scott, in his Introduction to the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel,' has preserved the familiar old rhyming distinction of our Saxon ances- tors :— " It was not framed for village cliurls, But for high damea and mighty earls." § Palgrave's English Com. p. 17. See also " A General Introduc- tion to P.mesday-Book, by Sir Henry Ellis, K.II." 2 vols. 8vt,. 1833, pp. 44—94; and Sergeant Hevwood "On the Ranks of the People under the An({lo-Saxou Government." 8vo. Lon. 1818. slaves, in modem language. The theowes, as has been already observed, were probably, for the most part, persons who had either been convicted of crimes, or captured in w^ar, or their descendants. Some of them may also have been the descendants of the old British cultivators of the soil; but it is not likely that these were generally reduced to a state of slavery by their conquerors. The Saxon theowes spoke the same language, and, according to every appearance, were in general of the same race with their masters. Although we have not any account that can be depended upon as giving the exact numbers of the different classes of the Anglo-Saxon population, there can be no doubt that by far the most nume- rous class was that of the Ceorls. They formed the great body of the nation, corresponding very nearly in their social, though not in their political position, to the vast mass that came in after- times to be known by the name of the Commons of England. They are by no means fully repre- sented merely by the class now called the common people. If we may be permitted for the moment to regard the theowes as answering to our modern convicts, the Ceorls may be considered as compre- hending all the rest of the population except the nobility and the clergy. To this class belonged not only those of the labourers, the peasantry, and the artisans, that were not theowes, but also tlie traders of all descriptions, the farmers, and all the smaller landholders and owners of tenements, whe- ther in burgh or in the open country. Every lay person, in fact, who was not an eorl v\ as a ceorl. As for the clergy, of all orders, they were sub- stantially ranked with the nobility, if we ought not rather to say that they were considered as occu- pying a still higher place in the state. While the compurgatory oath of one eorl, for instance, was equal to that of only six ceorls, a priest in this matter was considered as equivalent to one hun- dred and twenty ceorls ; a deacon to sixty ; and a monk who was neither priest nor deacon, to thirty. The word of a bishop, again, like that of the king, was conclusive in itself, and did not require to be supported by the oaths of compurgators. The lowest priest was considered as a mass-thane, that is, a nobleman or knight of religion, and had the same degree and honour as the world-thane, with whom he was ranked in the scale of the com- munity.* Tacitus bears testimony to the lenity with which the ancient Germans treated their slaves, although he states, at the same time, that when a master chanced to kill his slave, as sometimes liappened in the heat of passion, he committed the act with impunity. We have no reason to suppose that the Anglo-Saxons differed in this matter from the custom of their ancestors. Their slave population was not so numerous as to keep them in any state of apprehension from that quarter, or to make great severity or strictness of discipline necessary in the way of self-protection. The number of the • Palgrave's English Com., pp. 164, 165. Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 449—1066. 353 servi reckoned up in Domesday Book is only between twenty and thirty thousand ; and it may be fairly assumed that fhey and their families did not amount to a tenth part of the entire population. We find no trace of any servile insurrection in Anglo-Saxon history. The life of atheowe, indeed, was no further protected by law than that of one of the inferior animals ; but he was in general worth mvich more to his master than a cow or an ox, and nearly as much as a horse ; and therefore we may suppose the slaves would be on the whole at least as well taken care of as the cattle. It appears, more- over, tbat this unfortunate class was not deprived of all means and opportunities of acquiring pro- perty. Fines v/ere imposed upon them, as upon others, for offence?, by the laws ; and frequent mention is made of slaves themselves purchasing their freedom. The practice, also, of masters emancipating their slaves, sometimes by their wills, sometimes in their lifetime, became mere and more common as the influence of the church extended itself, and religious feelings spread throughout the community. It does not ap]iear that any particular kinds of labour were exclusively assigned to the theowes. They seem to have been employed in the different handicraft arts as well as in the operations of agri- culture, indifferently with the bondes. The latter, however, from their greatly superior numbers, must have constituted the chief strength of the national industry. While Domesday Book mentions only about 26,500 servi, it enumerates about 184,000 villani, bondarii, and cottarii. These must have been all, or nearly all, labourers, partly for them- selves, perhaps, in the cultivation of their small holdings, but principally for the proprietors on whose estates they resided. Every peasant was obliged by the law, if he had not a domicile of his own, to find a householder who would take him into his service, and allow him to become one of his household. The villains who were house- holders were called heorth-fastmen ; the others, folghers, that is, followers. Any householder who allowed a person to pass three nights under his roof became responsible for the conduct of that person, and seems to have been obliged to retain him, at least for a certain term, as an inmate.* Besides all these villani, and other inferior classes of the peasantry, Domesday Book notices about 26,000 tenentes, subtenentes, and sockmanni, about the half of whom are distinguished as liberi homines, or freemen. These latter, at least, though counted as still belonging to the class of ceorls, must be supposed to have been exempted iVom that personal control and adscription to the soil under which the villani laboured. Above 1*7,000 bur- gesses and citizens are also enumerated ; but this inimber, as has been already observed, cannot be taken as that of the entire population of the cities and boroughs throughout the kingdom, nor even as that of the householders. It may be that of the tenants of the crown, or these upon whom the • Palgrave's English Commonwealth, p. 20, crown had some claim of services on account of their tenements. The cities and burghs, as well 4is the country, no doubt contained both theowes and persons of each of the various descriptions of ceorls ; and it is probable that most of those who practised the handicraft arts, as well as those en- gaged in trade, resided in these natural receptacles and sheltering places of collective industry. The associations for various purposes, which went by the name of gilds or gildships, have been already alluded to ; they seem to have been common among all classes, and to have been, some of them, of the nature of our modem friendly or benefit societies, while some were mere convivial clubs. Others, however, were associations of the traders or artisans of particular kinds in the cities and burghs ; and these appear to have been permanent institutions, which perhaps took their rise from the colleges of operatives in the Roman towns, and may be regarded as perpetuated in the guilds, or incorporated trades, of modern times. As the burghs gradually acquired more and more of the right of self-government, these fraternities or com- panies may be supposed to have obtained a share in the appointment of the municipal officers and the general direction of affairs. Tlie feature in the Anglo-Saxon system of so- ciety that appears the most singular to our modem notions is, the existence of a large body of the people in the condition which has been described as that of the villani, or chief cultivators of the soil, — that is to say, not subject to the control of any master who had a right to regard and use them as his absolute property, but yet so completely destitute of what we understand by freedom, that they had not the power of removing from the estate on which they were born, and were trans- ferred with it on every change of proprietors, they and their services together, exactly in the same manner as any other portion of the stock, alive or dead, human or bestial, which happened to be ac- cunmlated on its surface. They were bound to the soil, and could no more ui)root themselves and withdraw elsewhere, than could the trees that were planted in it. This system seems to have been of great antiquity among the Teutonic nations. The kind of prsedlal slavery which Tacitus describes as existing among the Germans of his time, is plainly nothing more than this villainage of the Anglo- Saxons. " The rest of their slaves," he says, after having noticed those that were freely sold like any other goods, " have not, like ours, particular eni- ployments in the family allotted them. Each is the master of a habitation and household of his own. The lord requires from him a certain quan- tity of grain, cattle, or cloth, as from a tenant ; and so far only the subjection of the slave extends." * It was natural enough for Tacitus to speak of this as a state of slavery ; but it is probable that neither these German villani nor their lords considered the matter in that light. Tacitus, whose acquaintance with the subject was evidently superficial enough, • Germanio, e,25. Aikin's TransL W 354 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. I^BOOK II. does not carry his delineation beyond these few general strokes, giving the mere outside view of the case ; but to understand it fully it is necessary to look to it from other points. These Anglo-Saxon villani could not, indeed, withdraw themselves from the soil to which they were said to be adscribed, nor could they withhold their services from whoso- ever might become by inheritance, by gift, by pur- chase, or in any other legal way, the lord of the manor. This is, in plain language, the whole amount of the obligation under which they lay. They were under the same obligation under which every modem tenant or lessee lies during the cur- rency of his lease, with this difference only, that the latter, provided he continue to pay his rent, may withdraw his person to where he pleases. But his rent he is as strictly bound to con- tinue to pay as the villain of old was to pay his yearly dues, and to render the accustomed services. That these services were often of a menial or otherwise degrading description, or, more correctly, of what would now be considered so, does not affect the principle of the case ; they were suited to the circumstances of the time, and no doubt the persons bound to perform them would not, in general, have agreed to any proposal of commuting them for money-rents. This, then, we repeat, was the obligation lying on the villain ; he was bound to pay certain dues, and to render cer- , tain services to his lord, which there is no reason to suppose were usually felt to be any heavier bur- den than the payment of rent is felt to be by a tenant of the present day. But had he no rights as well as obligations ? The soil, in truth, was as much his as he was the soil's. If he could not leave it, so neither could he be driven from it. It was his property to occupy, and cultivate, and reap the produce of, as much as his services and dues were the property of his lord. The master could no more sell, or dispossess, or in any other way (except by divesting himself of the land) get rid of his villain than the villain could get rid of his master. There can be no doubt that even those of this class of persons who possessed the smallest tenements considered themselves better oflF, with all the services they had to render, than if they had been without both the services and the tenements. With our modern feelings, we think only of the villain as being bom to a lifetime of hopeless bondage — he, and his children, and all his descendants after him; — he, we may be sure, looked upon himself and them as bom to the inhe- ritance of a property of which no one could deprive them. Of what real advantage would it have been to the villain in that state of society to possess the liberty of transferring his person and his residence from one property or one part of the kingdom to • another? If the law had allowed him such a liberty, the circumstances of the times would have made it, in general, almost impossible for him to exercise it. To whom could he have gone, or who would have received him, if he had left his natural lord? We have no reason to suppose that the services of the villains were, in general, accounted more than an equivalent for their holdings, or that, consequently, one lord would have usually been inclined to outbid another in a competition to ob- tain them. The case was most probably quite otherwise. These men were originally the military followers of their lord, who settled them upon his lands because they had a claim upon him for their services, and because, from the relation in which they stood to him, he was held to be bound to pro- vide for them. The arrangement was, indeed, to a certain extent, a beneficial and necessary one for him as well as for them — since, if they required the land to live upon, the land required them to cultivate it ; but the circumstances of the case cer- tainly would not have admitted of their interests being entirely sacrificed to those of their lord ; and we may fairly presume that both parties shared, however unequally, in the advantages of the trans- action. The former inhabitants would, no doubt, have been glad to remain to cultivate the ground ; but although we may not suppose them, with some, to have been in every case altogether swept away to make room for their conquerors, it cannot be ques- tioned that they were obliged to give place to the new comers to a very great extent. Had they not, the conquest of the country would have afforded no means of rewarding those by whom it was achieved. Nothing has varied more than the notions that have been entertained in different ages and covrn- tries respecting what it is that constitutes the freedom of a nation, or of a class of men. It is evident that freedom and slavery are not two con- ditions essentially and at all points opposed to each other, as they are commonly represented by the rhetoricians, but that the one rather melts by almost imperceptible gradations into the other, and that there is a considerable border space which may be indifferently, or, according to the point of view from which it is regarded, considered as either slavery or freedom. It is like the distinction be- tween high and low, or between great and small, or any other qualities of a similar kind, which, although opposed in a sufficiently marked manner in their higher degrees, yet lie, in fact, as it were, in the same continuous line, of which, notwith- standing the wide separation of the extremities, the middle portion must always be of debateable cha- racter, and assignable to either. Rigidly speaking, a nation or a class of persons is not entitled to call itself free, so long as it lies under any restraint whatever from which it might be relieved, or is deprived of any right which it might be allowed to exercise, without prejudice to the common safety and welfare. But even this point does not admit of being determined by any infallible and universal formula, in so many respects have the actual circum- stances of one age and country differed from those of another, and such disagreement will there always be in the judgments and opinions of men as to these questions. Nor below the point thus fixed upon, although it may be denied that there is anytliing that can properly be called freedom, will it be Chap. VII.J CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 449—1066. 355 affirmed that there is nothing but slavery. In fact, whatever freedom, or so called freedom, has been hitherto enjoyed by men in political society, has probably been for the most part something inferior to what the above definition would consider to be freedom at all. Still it may be quite as properly spoken of under the name of freedom as under that of slavery ; for in truth it is a mixture of the two. It will be naturally in each case regarded as slavery or freedom, according as the one or the other of these conditions is conceived to preponderate ; and if there appear to be any considerable quantity of freedom at all present, it will be described as a state of freedom more or less complete. But yet diflferent ages and countries, not to speak of dif- ferent individuals, will not always demand the pre- sence of the same elements to constitute freedom of any kind. Sometimes this prized possession will be conceived to consist in political privilege, — sometimes in exemption from personal restraint, — sometimes in mere security of person and pro- perty. It was this last-mentioned and lowest kind of free- dom which was enjoyed by the villains of the Anglo- Saxon period. They were subjected to many restrictions and burdens which we should now account of the most oppressive character ; but still they were not held to be in a state of slavery, be- cause, with all their privations, the law yet threw its full protection around both their persons and their property. It treated them as persons and not as things. They were no man's property to do as he chose with. They were, it is true, inseparable from the soil of the estate on which they lived, and as a matter of necessity, therefore, when the estate received a new owner they received a new lord ; a modern tenant in the same manner receives a new landlord whenever the farm which he rents is trans- ferred from one proprietor to another, as it may be at any time, without any more right on his part to object or interfere than had the Saxon villain. But the villain could not himself be sold, as the theowe might be ; nor could any of the rights appertaining to his condition, such as they were, be disregarded with impunity, any more than those of the classes of persons that were higher in the social scale. He may have had no political rights, and even his social rights may have been extremely limited; but the slave, properly so called, had no rights of any kind. He was, at least in the original purity of the system, a mere item of his master's stock, — a portion of his goods and chattels. Sir Francis Palgrave has advanced the opinion, that " perhaps the essential distinction between the classes of the nobility and the plebeians, was the entire absence of political power in the ceorl."* Little doubt, we imagine, can be entertained that those of the ceorls who were in a state of villain- age Avere wholly destitute of political power ; and this class seems to have constituted by far the largest portion of the population ; but the assertion of the learned writer may perhaps be thought not to * English Com. p. 19. be so indisputably applicable to those of the tenentes, subtenentes, and sockmanni of Domesday Book, who are there marked as freemen (liberi homines). These were ceorls who certainly at least were not villains ; and it seems to be not unlikely that along with their freedom from adscription to the soil they had acquired some other franchises. The period over which we have noAV passed, though exhibiting many features of a state of society only yet emerging from barbarism, is a most important one, as having been that in which were first brought together the germs of modern European civilization. A foreign writer of our own day, to whose learned and philosophical spe- culations we have already had more than once occasion to refer, has given a view of it in this light, which is in several respects novel and well deserving of attention.* Though a chaos, he ob- serves, it was a chaos out of which was to spring all of order, and light, and life, which our present civilization has to boast of. The three elements of that civilization may be regarded as being the Roman world, the Christian world, and the Ger- manic world. I. The working of the two latter of these ele- ments, having been more on the surface, has been less overlooked than that of the first. Never- theless, the first has been no less active, no less influential, than the other. M. de Savigny, in his history of the Roman law after the fall of the empire, has proved that the Roman law never perished, but that, though with great modifications undoubtedly, it was perpetuated from the fifth to the fifteenth century. M. Guizot has gone further. He has, to use his own words, " generalized this result." He has shown that not only in municipal institutions and civil laws, but in politics, in philo- sophy, in literature, — in a word, in all departments of social and intellectual life, the Roman civili- zation has been perpetuated beyond the empire ; that there is no break in the continuity ; in a word, that the modern is throughout still, to a consider- able degree, the prolongation of the ancient civili- zation. We have already touched upon the subjects of the imperial power and the municipal institutions, — in other words, of what modern civilization derived from ancient in a social point of view ; it remains to say a few words of what it received in an intellectual point of view from Greco-Roman antiquity. M. Guizot considers it as a fact, though far too little attended to, of immense importance, that the principle of liberty of thought, the principle of all philosophy, reason taking itself as a point to start from and as a guide, is an idea essentially the offspring of antiquity, an idea which modern society derives from Greece and Rome. It came neither from Christianity nor from Germany, for it was contained in neither of these elements of our civi- lization. Another intellectual legacy left by the Roman civilization to ours is that of the classical • Guizot, Hist.de la Civilis.en France. 356 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II. works of antiquity. Spite of the general ignorance tliat pervaded the middle ages, spite of the confu- sion and barbarism attendant upon the con-uption of the Latin language, the ancient literature has always been held up to the mind as a worthy object of admiration, of study, of imitation ; in a word, as the type of the beautiful. The philosophical spirit and the classical spirit, the principle of free- dom of thought and the model of the beautiful, these were what the Roman world handed down to the modern world, what survived it in the intel- lectual order of things at the end of the tenth century. II. The effects of Christianity under the intel- lectual point of view are so important, as they have been developed by M. Guizot, that they deserve especial consideration. Most of the philosophers, whether of the most brilliant era of Greek antiquity, or of later times, under the Roman empire, pursued their specu- lations nearly in perfect freedom. The state scarcely interfered either to check or control them. They, on their part, meddled little with politics ; sought little to exercise a direct and immediate in- fluence on the society in the midst of which they lived ; satisfied with that indirect, remote influence which belongs to every great mind placed in the midst of mankind. With the triumph of Chris- tianity in the Roman world the intellectual deve- lopment changed its character : what was philoso- phy became religion — the form of thought became religion. From that time it aimed at much more power over human affairs. The spiritual order continued, indeed, to be separate from the temporal order. The government of nations was not directly and fully handed over to the clergy. But the spi- ritual penetrated much further into the temporal order of things than was the case in the Greek and Roman antiquity. From this, resulted another change, not less im- portant. As human thought, under the religious form, aspired to more power over the conduct of men and the destiny of nations, it lost its liberty. But when, after a long time, the religious form ceased to have an exclusive dominion in human thought, the philosophical development recom- menced. AVhat was the consequence? Philo- sophy made the same pretensions to practical inter- ference that religion had done ; or, more accurately speaking, thought, having again become philoso- phical, retained the pretensions which it has assumed under the religious form. Philosophy aspired to do what religion did — with this differ- ence, however — that while it wished to govern mankind, it refused to submit to a legal yoke. " The union," says M. Guizot, " of intellectual liberty, as it existed in antiquity, and of intellec- tual power, as it displayed itself in Christian com- munities, is the grand, the original character of modern civilization ; and it is undoubtedly in the bosom of the revolution accomplished by Chris- tianity in the relations of the spiritual and tem- poral orders, of thought and the exterior world, that this new revolution had its origin and its first vantage ground."* in. The two principles, or rather the two germs of principles furnislied iDy Germany, were the tribe formed of all the heads of families who were proprietors, and governed by an assembly of free men; and the band of warriors, where the indivi- dual was still very free, but where the social prin- ciple was no longer the equality of free men, and common deliberation, but the patronage of a chief over his companions ; and if we consider the sys- tem of social organization, it was fitted to produce aristocratic and military subordination. The principle of the common deliberation of freemen may be said to have disappeared in the Roman world. The principle of aristocratic pa- tronage, combined with a strong infusion of liberty, had become equally unknown. Both these ele- ments of our social and political organization are of Germanic, or, to speak specifically of England, of Saxon origin. The two grand results that specially demand consideration are these: 1. The unbroken con- tinuity, though undoubtedly much weakened and modified, of ancient civilization down into modern. 2. The total want, both in the social and intellec- tual order of things, from the fifth to the tenth century, of any stability, of anything systematic, of anything fixed, general,' regular. The gene- ral fact we meet with is a continual, universal fluctuation. It is, in truth, tlie work going on of the fermentation and amalgamation of the three great elements of modern civilization. • Hist, de la Civiliz. en France, torn. iii. p. 197. BOOK III. THE PERIOD FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF KING JOHN. 1066-1816 A.D. CONTEMPORARY PRINCES. ENQLAND. 1066 William I. 1087 WUUam II. 1100 Henry I. 1135 Stephen. 1154 Henry II. 1189 Richard I. 1199 John. SCOTLAND. 1057 Malcolm III. 1093 Donald Bane. 1094 Duncan. 1095 Donald Bane (restored). 1098 Edgar. 1107 Alexander I. 1124 David I. 1153 Malcolm IV. 1165 WilUara. 1214 Alexander II. IRELAND. 1064 Turlogh. 1086 Interregnum. I B E L A N D — continued, 1094 Murtach O'Brien in the South, and Donald Mac- Lachlan O'Niel in the North. 1119 Donald MacLachlan O'Niel. 1121 Interregnum. 1136 Turlogh O'Connor the Great. 1156 Murtach MacLachlan O'Niel. 1166 Roderic O'Connor. FRANCE. 1060 Philip I. 1109 Louis VI. 1137 Louis VIL 1180 Philip IL GERM ANT. 1056 Henry IV. 1107 Henry V. 1125 Lothaire. 1139 Conrad IlL 1152 Frederick I. 1191 Henry VL 1209 Otto IV. 1061 1073 1086 1088 1099 1118 1119 1124 1130 1143 1144 1145 1153 1154 1159 1181 1185 1187 1188 1191 1198 POPES. Alexander II. Gregory VII. Victor III. Urban II. Pascal II. Gelasius 11. Calixtus II. Honorius II. Innocent 11. Celestine II. Lucius II. Eugenius III. Anastasius IV. Adrian FV Alexander III. Lucius III. Urban III. Gregory VJII. Clement III. Celestine III. Innocent III. 358 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. GRKAT SkAI> op 'WriXIAM the CONaUF.KOB. CHAPTER I. NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS. WILLIAM I., SURNAMKD THE CONQUEROR. HE first feelings of the Normans after the bat- tle of Hastings seem to have been sensa- tions of triumph and joy, amounting almost to a delirium. They are represented by a contemporary* as ma- king their horses to prance and bound over the thickly - strewed bodies of the Anglo- Saxons ; after which they proceeded to rifle them and despoil them of their clothes. By Wil- liam's orders the space was cleared round the Pope's • William of Poictiers. This writer asserts, that although Harold's mother ottered its weight in gold for the dead body of her son, the stern victor was deaf to her request, professing indignation at the proposal that he should enjoy the rites of sepulture for whose ex- cessive ciiyjidity so many men lay unburied. Harold, it is added, was buried on the beach. Most of the English historians, however, say that the body was given to his mother without ransom, and interred by her in Waltham Abbey, which had been founded by Harold before he was king. The Cottouian MS., Julius D 6, which appears to have been written in Waltham Abbey about a century after the event, relates that two monks, who were allowed by William to search for the body, were unable to distinguish it among the heaps of slain, until they sent for Harold's mistress Editha, " the swan-necked," whose eye of affection was not to be eluded or deceived. The im- probable story told by Giraldus Cambrensis (^and in more detail Jn the Harleian MS. 3776) about Harold, after receiving his wound, having escaped from the battle, and living for some years as an anchorite in a cell near St. John's Church, in Chester, though a pretty enough romance, is palpably undeservmg of notice in an historical point of view. Standard, which he had set up ; and there his tent was pitched, and he feasted with his followers amongst the dead. The critical circumstances in which he had so recently been placed, and the difficulties which still lay before him, disposed the mind of the Conqueror to serious thoughts. Not less, perhaps, in gratitude for the past than in the hope that such a work would procure him heavenly favour for the future, he solemnly vowed that he would erect a splendid abbey on the scene of this, his first victory ; and when, in process of time, this vow was accomplished, the high altar of the abbey church stood on the very spot where the standard of Harold had been planted and thrown down. The exterior walls embraced the whole of the hill, — the centre of their position which the bravest of the English had covered with their bodies, — and all the surrounding country where the scenes of the combat had passed, became the property of the holy house, which was called in the Nor- man or French language, VAhbaye de la Baiaille, and was dedicated to St. Martin, the patron of the soldiers of Gaul. Monks, invited from the great convent of Marmontier, near Tours, took up tlieir residence in the new edifice. They were well endowed with the property of the English who had died in the battle, and prayed alike for the repose of the souls of those victims and for the prosperity and long life of the Normans ^ho had killed them.* * Thierry. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 359 Battle Abbey as it appeared about 150 yearfs since.— (In tlie case of an old building, of which only the ruins now remain, the cut -will generally represent the building in the most perfect state in which an authentic engraving or drawing of it can be obtained.) Tiie Abbot of Battle was declared to be indepen- dent of the aitthority of the Archbishop of Canter- l)ury and all other prelates, and was invested with avchiepiscopal jurisdiction, and honoured with other peculiar privileges. In the archives of the house was deposited a long roll, on which were in- scribed the names of the nobles and gentlemen of mark, who came with the Conqueror and survived the battle of Hastings.* The most sanguine of the Normans, in common with the most despondent among the English, ex- pected that immediately after the battle of Hastings the Conqueror would march straight to London and make himself master of that capital. But the first move was a retrograde one ; nor did William esta- blish himself in the capital until more than two months had passed. While the army of Harold kept the field at Senlac, or Battle, several new ships, with reinforcements, came over from Nor- mandy to join William. Mistaking the proper place for landing, the commanders of these vessels put in to Romney, where they were at once assaulted and beaten by the people of the coast. William learned this unpleasant news the day after his victory, and to save the other recruits, whom he still expected, from a similar disaster, he resolved • The original roll of Battle Abbey is lost; but some copies have been preserved, from which the document has been repeatedly printed. It is believed, however, that these pretended transcripts are far from faithful, and that, besides other corruptions, many names have been inserted in later times by the monks of the Abbey, to gratify families or individuals that wished to ma^ke it appear they vere sprung from followers of the Conqueror. before proceeding farther to make himself master of all the south-eastern coast. He turned back, therefore, from Battle to Hastings, at which latter place he stayed some days awaiting his transports from beyond sea, and hoping, it is said, that his presence would induce the population of those parts to make voluntary submission. At length, seeing that no one came to ask for peace, William re- sumed his march with the remnant of his army and the fresh troops which had arrived in the interval from Normandy. The amount of this seasonable reinforcement is nowhere mentioned, but there are good reasons for believing that it must have been considerable. He kept close to the sea-coast, marching from south to north, and spread- ing devastation on his passage. He took a savage vengeance at Romney for the reverse his troops had sustained there, by massacring the inhabitants and burning their houses. From Romney he advanced to Dover, the strongest place on the coast, — " the lock and key of all England," as Holinshed calls it. With little or no opposition, he burst into the town, which his troops set fire to ; and the strong castle, which the son of Godwin had put into an excellent state of defence, was so speedily sur- rendered to him that a suspicion of treachery rests on the Saxon commander. The capture of this fortress was most opportune and important, for a dreadful dysentery had broken out in the Norman army, and a safe receptacle for the sick had become indispensable. Dover Castle also commanded the OP TMK '^ VNlVERSri ; 360 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. best landing-place for troops from the continent, and William was not yet so sure of his game as not to look anxiously for a place of retreat on the coast in case of meeting with reverses in the in- terior. He spent eight or nine days in strengthen- ing the castle and repairing some of the damage done to the town by his lawless soldiery. Mean- while, in order to conciliate the inhabitants, he made them some compensation for the losses and injuries they had sustained ; and in the same interval he received more recruits from Normandy. The historian who would pretend to write a complete and consecutive account of these obscure times must have recourse to his imagination, or to some hitherto undiscovered documents, for the chronicles and original documents we possess will not enable him to accomplish such a task. In the particular transactions we are relating, the naval forces ought to have had some share, more or less important, but we have no means of telling what steps were taken either by the English or the Norman fleet. Just before the battle of Hastings, the former of these blockaded the latter. Did the defeat and death of Harold induce the English seamen to disperse ? or did they from that moment place themselves under the command of Godwin and Edmund, Harold's sons, who certainly re-appeared, with a considerable portion of the Englisli navy, against William in the course of the following year? Ac- cording to some accounts, William burnt his ships at his first landing in England : the whole story is doubtful ; but at most, he could only have de- stroyed the rude vessels he had hastily constructed for the passage. What became of the better class of ships which were mainly supplied by his great lords and the foreign princes in alliance with him? Did these latter return to their own ports as soon as the English raised the blockade ? or did they sail round the coast and enter the Thames, co-operating with William in his advance, and making diversions in his favour? No positive answer can be given to these queries. When the Conqueror moved from Dover, he ceased to creep cautiously roimd the coast, but, penetrating into Kent, marched direct to Lon- don. A confused story is told by some of our early historians about a popular resistance or- ganised by Archbishop Stigand and the Abbot Egelnoth, in which the men of Kent, advancing like the army of Macduff and Siward against Macbeth, under the cover of cut-down trees and boughs, dis- puted the passage of the Normans, and, with arms in their hands, exacted from them ttrms most favourable to themselves and the part of England they occupied. But the plain truth seems to be, that, overawed by the recent catastrophe of Hast- ings, and the presence of a compact and numerous army, the inhabitants of Kent made no resistance, and meeting William with offers of submission, placed hostages in his hands, and so obtained mild treatment. During these calamities, the Saxon Witan had assembled in London to deliberate and provide for the future ; but evidently, as far as the lay portion of the meeting was concerned, with no intention of submitting to the Conqueror. The first caie that occupied their thoughts was to elect a successor to the throne. Either of Harold's brave brothers, at such a crisis when valour and military skill were the qualities most wanted, might probably have commanded a majority of suffrages ; but they had both fouglit their last fight; and, owing to their youth, their inexperience, their v.ant of popularity, or to some other circumstance, the two sons of Harold seem never to have been thought of. Many voices would have supported Morcar or Edwin, the powerful brothers-in-law of Harold, who had already an almost sovereign authority in Northum- bria and Mercia ; but the citizens of London, and the men of the south of England generally, pre- ferred young Edgar Atheling, the imbecile son of Edmund Iron-side, wlio had been previously set aside on account of his little worth ; and when Stigand the primate, and Aldred the Archbishop of York, threw their weight into this scale, it out- weighed the others, and Edgar was proclaimed king. It should seem, however, that even at this stage, many of the bishops and dignified clergymen, who were even then Frenchmen or Normans, raised their voice in favour of William, or let fall hints that were all meant to favour Iiis pretensions. The Pope's bull and banner could not be without their effect, and, motives of interest and policy apart, some of these ecclesiastics may have conscientiously believed they were performing their' duty in pro- moting the cause of the elect of Rome. Others there were who were notoriously bought over, either l)y money paid beforehand or by promises of future largess. The party that ultimately prevailed in the Witan did not carry their point until much precious time had been consumed ; nor could the blood of Cerdic, Alfred, and Edmund, make the king of their clioice that rallying point which conflicting factions re- quired, or a hero capable of facing a victorious invader, advancing at the head of a more powerful army than England could liope to raise • for some time. In fact, Edgar was a mere cipher ; a strip- ling incapable of government as of Vvar, — with nothing popular about him except his descent. The primate Stigand took his place at the council board, and the military command was given to earls Edwin and Morcar. A very few acts of legal authority had been performed in the name of Edgar, when William of Normandy appeared before the southern suburb of London. If the Normans had expected to take the capital by a coup-de-main, and at once, they were disappointed ; the Londoners were very warlike; and tlie popula- tion of the city, great even in those days, was much increased by the presence of the thanes and chiefs of all the neighbouring counties,. wlio had come in to attend the Witan, and had brought their servants and followers wltli them. After making a successful charge with 500 of his best horse against some citizens who were gathered on that Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 361 side of the river, William set fire to Soutliwark, and marched away from London with the deter- mination of ravaging the country around it, de- stroying the property of the thanes who had assem- bled at the Witan, and, by intenupting all com- munication, inducing the well-defended capital to surrender. Detachments of his army were soon spread over a wide tract ; and in burning towns and villages, and the massacre of men armed and men unarmed, and in the violation of helpless females, the people of Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, and Berkshire, were made to feel the full signifi- cation of a Norman conquest. William crossed the Thames at Wallingford, near to which place he established an entrenched camp, where a divi- sion of his army was left in order to cut off any succours that might be sent towards London from the west. This done, he proceeded across Buck- inghamshire into Hertfordshire, " slaying the people," till he came to Berkhampstead, where he took up a position in order to interrupt all commu- nication with London from the north. The capital, indeed, at this time seems to have been girded round by the enemy, and afflicted by the prospect of absolute famine. Nor were there wanting other causes of discouragement. The earls Edwin and Morcar showed little zeal in the command of a weak, and, as yet, unorganized army, and soon withdrew towards the Humber, taking with them all the soldiers of Northumbria and Mercia, who constituted the best part of King Edgar's forces, but who looked to the earls much more than to the king. These two sons of Alfgaf probably hoped to be able to maintain themselves in independence in the north, where, in reality, they at a later period renewed, and greatly prolonged, the contest with the Normans. Their departure had a baneful effect in London ; and while the spirit of the citi- zens waxed fainter and fainter, the partisans and intriguers for William, encouraged at every move by the prevalent faction among the clergy, raised their hopes and extended their exertions. After some time, however, earls Morcar and Edwin appear to have returned to the capital. On many an intermediate step the chroniclers are provokingly silent : but at last it was deter- mined that a submissive deputation should be sent from London to Berkhampstead ; and King Edgar himself, the Primate Stigand, Aldred, archbishop of York, Wolfstan, bishop of Worcester, with other prelates and lay chiefs, among whom the Saxon chronicler expressly names the two earls of Northumbria and Mercia, and many of the principal citizens, repaired to William, who re- ceived them with an outNvard show of moderation and kindness. It is related that when the man whom he most hated, as the friend of Harold and the energetic enemy of the Normans, — that when Stigand came into his presence, he saluted him with the endearing epithets of father and bishop. The puppet-king Edgar made a verbal renun- ciation of the throne, and the rest swore allegiance to the Conqueror ; the bishops swearing for the whole body of the clergy, the chiefs for the nobi- lity, and the citizens for the good city of London.* During a part of this singular audience, William pretended to have doubts and misgivings as to the propriety of his ascending the vacant throne ; but these hypocritic expressions were drowned in the loud acclamations of his Norman barons, who felt that the crown of England was on the point of their swords. Having taken oaths of fidelity and peace, the Saxon deputies left hostages with the Norman, who, on his side, promised to be mild and merciful to all men. On the following morn- ing the foreigners began their march towards Lon- don, plundering, murdering, and burning, just as before.f They took their way through St. Alban's. On approaching that place William found his passage stopped by a multitude of great trees which had been felled and laid across the road. The Conqueror sent for the Abbot of St. Alban's, and demanded why these barriers were raised in his jurisdiction? The abbot, Frithric or Frede- rick, who descended from noble Saxon blood, as also from King Canute the Dane, answered boldly, " I have done the duty appertaining to my birth and calling ; and if others of my rank and profes- sion had performed the like, as they well could and ought, it had not been in thy power to penetrate into the land thus far." J Even now William did not enter London in person, but sending on part of his army to build a fortress for his reception, he en- camped with the rest at some distance from the city. This fortress, which was built on the site, and probably included i)art of a Roman castle, grew gradually, in after times, into the Tower of London. Some accounts state that William's vanguard was hostilely engaged by the citizens, but according to others they m6t with no resistance, and were permitted to raise their fortifications without any serious molestation. As soon as the Normans had finished his stronghold, William took possession of it, and then they fixed his coronation for a few days after. T)ie Conqueror is said to have objected to the perform- ance of this ceremony while so large a part of the island was independent of his authority ; and ha certainly hoped, by delaying it, to obtain a more formal consent from the English nation, or some- thing like a Saxon election, which would be a better title in the eyes of the i^eople than the right of conquest. Little, however, was gained by delay ; and the coronation, which, for the sake of greater solemnity, took place on Christmas-day, was ac- companied by accidents and circimistances highly irritating to the people. It is stated, on one side, that William invited the primate Stigand to per- form the rites, and that Stigand refused to crown a man " covered with the blood of men, and the • " Bugon t!ia for nnode," says the Saxon Chronicle, "tha mnest waes to hearm gedon ; and thaet waes micel unread thaet man aoror swa ne dyde tha hit god betan nolde for iirum synuum." (They sulimittcd them for nei'd, wlien the most harm was done. It was very ill advised that they did not so before, seeing lliat Grod would not better things for our sins. — Ingram's Translation.) f Roger Hoveiien. — Chron. Sax. X Stow, Chrou. 362 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. invader of others' rights." * Although there might have been some pohcy in making this great cham- pion of the Saxon cause hallow the conqueror, it does not appear probable that William would ask this service of one who was lying under the severe displeasure of Rome ; and it is said, on the other side, that he refused to be consecrated by Stigand, and conferred that honour on Aldred, Archbishop of York, whom some of the chroniclers describe as a wise and prudent man, Avho under- stood the expediency of accommodating himself to circumstances. The new Abbey of Westminster, the last work of Edward the Confessor, was chosen as the place for the coronation of our first Norman king. The suburbs, the streets of London, and all the approaches to the Abbey, were lined with double rows of soldiers, horse and foot. The Conqueror rode through the ranks, and entered the Abbey church, attended by 260 of his warlike chiefs, by many priests and monks, and a consi- derable number of English, who had been gained over to act a part in the pageantry. At the open- ing of the ceremony one of William's prelates, Geoffrey, the Bishop of Coutances, asked the Normans, in the French language, if they were of opinion that their chief should take the title of King of England? and then the Archbishop of York asked the English if they would have Wil- liam the Norman for their king ? The reply on either side was given by acclamation in the affir- mative, and the shouts and cheers thus raised were so loud that they startled the foreign cavalry sta- tioned round the Abbey. The troops took the con- fused noise for a cry of alarm raised by their friends, and, as they had received orders to be on the alert and ready to act in case of any seditious movement, they rushed to the English houses nearest the Abbey, and set fire to them all,- A few, think- ing to succour their betrayed duke and the nobles they served, ran to the church, where, at sight of their naked swords, and the smoke and flames that were rising, the tumvilt soon became as great as that without its walls. The Normans fancied the whole population of London and its neigh- bourhood had risen against them ; the English ima- gined that they had been duped by a vain show, and drawn together unarmed and defenceless, that they might be massacred. Both parties ran out of the Abbey, and the ceremony was interrupted, though William, trembling from head to foot, and left almost alone in the church, or with none but the Archbishop Aldred and some terrified priests of both nations near him at the altar, decidedly refused to postpone the celebration. The service was there- fore completed amidst these bad auguries, but in the utmost hurry and confusion, and the Conqueror took the usual coronation oath of the Anglo-Saxon kings, making, as an addition of his own, the solemn promise that he would treat the English people as well as the best of their kings had done.f • Will, of Newbury. + GuiU Pictav.— Orderic. Vital.— Chron. Sax. Orderic says, " Tre- pidantes, super regem vehementer trementem, officium vix perege- Mean while the commotion without continued, and it is not mentioned at what hour of the day or night the conflagration ended. The English, wlio had been at the Abbey, ran to extinguish the fire, — the Normans, it is said, to plunder, and other- wise profit by the disorder; but it appears that some of the latter exerted themselves to stop the progress of the flames, and to put an end to a riot peculiarly unpalatable to their master, whose anxious wish was certainly, at that time, to conci- liate the two nations. At this, as at several subse- quent stages of the conquest, William could not prevent the wrongs done by his disorderly and rapacious soldiery, who gave but slight tokens of that superiority in civilization which has so gene- rally been challenged for the Normans. Soon after liis inauspicious coronation William withdrew from London to Barking, where he esta- blished a court which gradually attracted many of the nobles of the south of England. Edric, sur- named the Forester, Coxo, a warrior of high repute, and others, are named ; and as William extended his authority, and laid aside the harshness of a conqueror, even the thanes and the great earls from the north, where the force of his arms was not yet felt, repaired to do him homage. Turchil, Siward, and Aldred, all northern chiefs of the highest rank, are mentioned by a contemporary chronicler, as among those that presented themselves to per- form the same painful ceremony which had pre- viously been submitted to ' by earls Edwin and Morcar, the brothers-in-law of the late king. In return for the homage thus rendered, William granted them the confirmation of their estates and honours which he. had not at present the power to seize or invade. It appears that the Conqueror's first seizures and confiscations, after the crown lands, were the domains of Harold and his brothers Gurth and Leofwiii, and the lands and property of such of the English chiefs as were either very weak, or unpopular, or indifferent to the nation. But, even thus limited, the spoils of the south are represented as prodigious. Edgar Atheling, whose moral nullity secured him from suspicion and danger, was an inmate of the new court, and William, knowing he was che- rished by many of the English on account of his descent, pretended to treat him with great respect, and left him the earldom of Oxford, which Harold had conferred on him when he ascended the throne in his stead. From Barking the new king made a progress through the territory, that was rather mili- tarily occupied than securely conquered, displaying as he went as much royal pomp, and treating the English with as much courtesy and consideration, as he could. The extent of this territory cannot be exactly determined, but it appears the Conqueror had not yet advanced, in the north-east, beyond the confines of Norfolk, nor in the south-west beyond Dorsetshire. Both on the eastern and western coast, and in the midland counties the invasion was gradual and slow, and as yet the city of Oxford had certainly not fallen. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 863 All William's measures at this time were mild and conciliating, and some of them marked with wisdom and a laudable anxiety for the good of the country. He respected the old Anglo- Saxon laws, which, indeed, were not much dis- turbed or changed, at least in the letter, until the accession of Henry II., nearly a century after the Conquest. He established good courts of jus- tice, encouraged agriculture and commerce, and (at least nominally) enlarged the privileges of London and some other towns. At the same time, however, the country he held was bristled with castles and towers, and additional fortresses erected in and around the capital showed his distrust of what was termed, in the language of the Normans, an over-numerous apd too proud population. Next to London, the city of Winchester, which had been a favourite residence of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Winchester. — (This is the city as it now appears. In this and similar cases, the town or other place, about which an interest may be supposed to have been awakened by the narrative, will be represented in its existing state, except where an authentic engraving or drawing of older date may be considered to preserve some features now lost that belonged to it at or near the time to which the history relates.) excited most suspicion ; " for," says William of Poictiers, the Conqueror's chaplain, " it is a noble and powerful city, inhabited by a race of men rich, fearless, and perfidious." A castle was therefore erected at Winchester, and a strong Norman gar- rison put into it. These fortresses, hastily thrown up in the course of three or four months, could not be very large or very solid, but they answered their present end, and they were subsequently in- creased in size and strength. Such operations could not be otherwise than distasteful to the Eng- lish, who were further irritated by seeing proud foreign lords fixed among them, and married to the widows and heiresses of their old lords who had fallen at Hastings. The rapacious followers of William were hard to satisfy ; and, to sectire their attachment, he was frequently obliged to go beyond those bounds of moderation he was in- clined to set for himself. A most numerous troop of priest8 and monks had come over from the con- tinent, and their avidity was scarcely inferior to that of the barons and knights. Nearly every one of them wanted a church, a rich abbey, or some higher promotion ; and at a very early period of his occupation the Conqueror began to gratify their wishes. To pass over other wrongs and provoca- tions inseparable from foreign conquest, and, in good part, indeed, inseparable even from a change of dynasty, the people presently saw the coming on of that sad state of things which they soon after suffered, " when England became the habitation of new strangers, in such wise, that there was neither governor, bishop, nor abbot remaining therein of the English nation."* It was, however, to these foreign churchmen that our country was chiefly indebted for whatever intellectual improve- ment or civilization was imported at the Conquest. In the midst of this universal hungering after the domains and benefices of the English evinced * Holinshed, 364 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. by lay and clergy of all degrees, one single instance is recorded of a most marvellous abstinence. There was one of the Norman warriors who nei- ther asked for estates nor a rich English wife, and wlio would not accept any part of the spoils taken from the conquered. He said he had accompanied his liege lord the Duke William into England, be- cause such was his duty as a true and faithful vassal, but that property seized and stolen from other men did not tempt him, — that he should re- turn to Normandy, there to enjoy his moderate but lawful inheritance, and rest content with his own lot, without coveting the portion of others. The name of this wise man, which ought not to be per- mitted to i^erish, was Guilbert, the son of Richard.* In the month of March, 1067, the English in the north and west being yet untouched, and their countrymen in the south beginning to harbour vio- lent feelings — while the Normans were anxiovis to provoke an insurrection, and prosecute the war in the land where so many broad acres remained to reward the victors, — William resolved to pass over into Normandy. Many ingenious surmises have been made as to the motives which induced him to take this journey at this crisis ; and historians may still speculate without coming to any positive con- clusion borne out by contemporary evidence. Al- though, as he admits, no ancient writer has ascribed such a i)urpose and plan to the Con- queror, we are disposed to suspect, with Hume, that in this extraordinary step he was guided by a concealed policy, and that though he had thought proper at first to allure the people to submission, he found that he could neither satisfy his followers, nor secure his unstable government, without fur- ther exerting the right of conquest, and seizing the remaining possessions of the English, — that in order to have a pretext for this violence, he was anxious they should break out into insurrections which could hardly prove dangerous to him while he detained all the principal English nobility in Normandy, while his great and victorious army was placed in strongholds in England, and while he himself was so near at hand to crush any in- surrection. That he made the journey, as some have thought, out of a vain eagerness to show him- self as the conqueror of England to his subjects in Normandy, is a supposition not consistent with his character ; and that he crossed the sea merely to put the booty he had made in a place of safety, does not appear very probable. Had he determined to vex and rouse the Eng- lish, he could scarcely have left a more fitting in- strument than his half-brother, Odo, to whom he confided the royal power during his absence, asso- ciating with him as covmsellors of state William Fitz-Osborn, Hugo of Grantmesnil, Hugo de Montfort, Walter Gifford, and William de Ga- rennc. The Conqueror carried in his train Sti- gand, the archbishop of Canterbury, tlie abbot Egelnoth, Edgar Atheling, Edwin, earl of Mcrcia, Morcar, earl of Ncrthumbria, Waltheof, earl of » Ordcrlc. Vital. Northampton and Huntingdon, and many others of high nobility. 1'he place chosen for his embarkation was Pe- vensey, near Hastings ; and when he had made a liberal distribution of money and presents to a part of his army which had followed him to the beach, lie set sail with a fair wind for Normandy, just six months after his landing in England. Acccording to every account, he was received with enthusiastic joy by his continental subjects, who were filled with wonderment at his success and the quantity of gold and silver and other precious effects he brought back with him. A part of this wealth, the fruit of blood and plunder, was sent to the pope with the banner of Harold, which had been taken at the battle of Hastings, and another portion was distribvited among the abbey?, monasteries, and churches of Normandy ; " neither monks nor priests remaining without a guerdon." William gave them coined gold, and gold in bars, golden vases, and, above all, richly embroidered stuffs, which on high feast-days they hung up in their churches, where they excited the admiration of all travellers and strangers. Tlie whole of the account given by William's chaplain tends to raite our idea of the wealth of England. " Tliat land,'' says the Poictevin, " abounds more than Normandy in the precious metals. If in fertility it may be termed the granary of Ceres, in riches it should be called the treasury of Arabia. The English women excel in the use of the needle and in embroidering in gold ; the men in every species of elegant work- manship. Moreover, the best artists of Germany live amongst them ; and merchants, who repair to distant countries, import the most valuable articles of foreign manufacture unknown in Normandy." The same contemporary informs us, that at the feast of Easter, which William held with unusual splendour, a relation of the king of France, named Raoul, came with a numerous retinue to the Con- queror's court, where he and his Frenchmen, not less than the Normans, considered with a curiosity, mingled with surprise, the chased vases of gold and silver, brought from England ; and, above all, the drinking-cups of the Saxons, made of large buffalo-horns, and ornamented at either extremity with precious metal. The French prince and his companions were also much struck with the beauty of countenance and the long flowing hair of the young Englishmen William had brovight over with him as guests or hostages. The chaplain adds, with amusing naivete, " they remarked all those things, as also many others equally new unto them, in order that they might relate and describe them in their own country." While all thus went on merrily in Normandy, where the presence of the Conqueror, with his foreign court, move where he would, caused the suspension of all labour, and made a general holi- day, events of a very different nature were taking place on the other side of the Channel. T'ho rule of Odo and the barons left in England pressed harshly on the people, whose complaints and cries Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 365 for justice they despised. Without punishment or check, their men-at-arms Avere permitted to insult and phuider, not merely the peasants and bur- gesses, but people of the best condition, and the cup of misery and degradation was filled up, as usual in such cases, by violence offered to the women. The English spirit was not yet so de- pressed, and in fact never sank so low as to tole- rate svich wrongs. Several popular risings took place in various parts of the subjugated territory', and many a Norman, caught beyond the walls of his castle or garrison-town, was cut to pieces. These partial insurrections were followed by con- certed and extensively combined movements. A grand conspiracy was formed, and the Conqueror's throne was made to totter before it was nine months old. The men of Kent, who had been the first to submit, were the first to attempt to throw ofi the yoke. A singular circumstance attended their effort. Eustace, count of Boulogne, the same who had caused sucli a stir at Dover in the time of Edward the Confessor,* was then in open quarrel with William the Norman, who kept one of his sons in prison. This Eustace was famed far and wide for his military skill ; and his rela- tionship to the sainted King Edward, whose sister he had married, made the English consider him now in the light of a natural ally. Forgetting, therefore, their old grievances, the people of Kent sent a message to Count Eustace, promising to put Dover into his hands, if he would make a descent on the coast, and help them to wage war on their Norman oi)pressors. Eustace most readily ac- cepted the invitation, and, crossing the Channel with a small but chosen band, he landed under favour of a dark night, at a short distance from Dover, where he was presently joined by a host of Kentish men in arms. A contemporary says, that had they waited but two days, these insurgents would have been joined by the whole population of those parts, but they imprudently made an attack on the strong castle of Dover, were repulsed with loss, and then thrown into a panic by the false report that Bishop Odo was approaching them with all his forces. Count Eustace fled, and got safely on board ship, but most of his men-at- arms were slain or taken prisoners by the Norman garrison, or broke their necks by falling over the cliffs on which Dover Castle stands. The men of Kent, with a few exceptions, found their way home in safety, by taking by-paths and roads with vv'hich the Normans were unacquainted. In the west the Normans were much less fortu- tuna*:e. Edric the Forester, who had visited the Conqueror at Barking, and done homage to him, was the lord of extensive possessions that lay on the Severn and the confines of Wales. This power- ful chief was at first dcsirovis of living in peace, but Vjeing provoked at the depredations committed by some Norman captains who had garrisoned the city of Hereford, he took up arms, and forming an alliance with two Welsh princes, he was enabled *Seep. 189, ante. to shxit the foreigners close up within the walls of the town, and to range undisputed master of all the western part of Herefordshire. If there had been but one bright national idol — one prince or chief of ability or popularity to unite and lead them — the English would have cleared the country of its invaders. At this favourable moment the two sons of King Harold appeared in the west ; but though they were nearly a year older than at the time they were passed over unnoticed by the Witan assembled at London, they soon showed that neither of them had the qualities required, or was destined to be the saviour of the Anglo-Saxon nation. Their proceedings would be altogether inexplicable if we did not reflect that they were allied with, and probably controlled by, a host of pirates. These two young men sailed over from Ireland with a considerable force, embarked in sixty ships. They ascended the Bristol Channel and the river Avon, and landing near Bristol, plundered that fertile country. Whatever were the pretexts and claims set forth by the sons of Harold, they acted as common enemies, and were met as such by the English people, who repulsed them when they attempted to take the city of Bristol, and soon after defeated them upon the coast of Somersetshire, whither they had repaired with their ships and plunder. There was no Norman force in those parts, nor was it considered necessary to send one. The whole defence was made by the English, commanded by their own countryman Ednoth, who fell, with many of his followers, in the battle. The invaders, who also suffered severely, took to their ships, and returned to Ireland immediately after the defeat. In Shrop- shire, Nottinghamshire, and other parts of the king- dom, both where they had felt the Norman oppres- sion, and where, as yet, they only apprehended it, bodies of English rose in arms, and urged their neighbours to join them. It is related that Earl Coxo, who had appeared at Barking, and been ntuch honoured by William, was slain by his vassals because he refused to head them in an in- surrection ; but it seems the death of that chief took place before the Conqueror left England, and there is some doubt whether he was really killed by his vassals, or bj another English nobleman, his rival. There is, however, no doubt but that the indignation of the people was general, and that, encouraged by the Conqueror's absence, efforts were made, and others contemplated, for throwing off the yoke. Rumours spread that a simultaneous massacre, like that perpetrated on the Danes, was intended ; and it was equally natural that the English should make use of such threats in their moments of rage, and that the Norman?, conscious of oppression, and well versed in the history of St. Brice's day, should believe them and tremble at them. Letter after letter, and message after mes- sage, were sent into Normandy ; but the Conqueror, either because he was insensible to the alarm, or thought sufficient provocation had not been given, lingered there for more than eight months. When 366 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. at last he departed, it was in hurry and agitation. He embarked at Dieppe on the 6th of December, and sailed for England by night. On arriving, he placed new governors, whom he had brought from Normandy, in his castles and strongholds in Sussex and Kent. On reaching London he was made fully sensible of the prevailing discontent; but with his usual crafty prudence he applied him- self to soothe the storm for awhile, deeming that the time had not yet arrived for his openly declaring that the fickle, faithless English were to be exterminated or treated as slaves, and all their possessions and honours given to the Normans. He celebrated the festival of Christmas with unusual pomp, and invited many Saxon chiefs to London to partake in the celebration. He received these guests with smiles and caresses, giving the kiss of welcome to every comer.* If they asked for any thing, he granted it ; if they annovmced or advised any thing, he listened witlx respectful attention ; and it should seem that they were nearly all the dupes of these royal artifices. He then propitiated the citizens of London by a pro- clamation, which was written in the Saxon lan- guage, and read in all the churches of the capital. " Be it known unto you," said this document, " what is my will. I will that all of you enjoy your national laws as in the days of King Edward ; that every son shall inherit from his father, after the days of his father ; and that none of my people do you wrong." William's first public act after all these promises was to impose a tax, which was made more and more burdensome as his power increased. The war of 1068, or what may be called the Conqueror's second campaign in England, opened in the fertile province of Devonshire, where the people, supported by their hardy neighbours of Cornwall, and animated by the presence of the mother and some other relations of King Harold, refused to acknowledge his government, and had prepared to resist the advance of his lieutenants. Some of the thanes, to whom the command of the insurrection had been intrusted, proved cowards or traitors ; the Normans advanced, burning, and de- stroying, and breathing vengeance ; but the men of Exeter, who had had a principal share in organizing the patriotic resistance, were resolute in the defence of their city. Ever since the days of Athelstan, Exeter had been increasing in trade and consi- deration, and now it was a well-peopled city, sur- rounded by a strong wall. Githa, or Editha, Harold's mother, had fled there after the battle of Hastings, and earned with her considerable riches. In no part of England was the Norman name more odious, for, young and old, the citizens hated to death the whole race of Frenchmen. This feeling had been recently displayed by the populace in a cruel attack made upon some Norman ships that were driven upon their coast by a storm. When the Conqueror came within four miles of Exeter he summoned the citizens to submit, and • Duloitor ad oscula iavitabat. Orderic. take the oath of fealty. They replied, " We will not swear fealty to this man, who pretends to be our king, nor will we receive his garrison within our walls; but if he will receive as tribute the dues we were accustomed to pay to our kings, we will consent to pay them to him." To this somewhat novel proposal William said, " I would have sub- jects, and it is not my custom to take then on such conditions."* Some of the magistrates and wealthiest of the citizens then went to William, and, imploring his mercy, proffered the submission of the city, and gave hostages ; but the mass of the population either did not sanction this proceeding or repented of it, and when William rode up at the head of his cavalry he found the gates barred and the walls manned with combatants, who bade him defiance. The Normans, in sight of the men on the ramparts, then tore out the eyes of one of the hostages they had just received ; but this savage act did not daunt the people, who were well prepared for defence, having raised new turrets and battlements on the walls, and brought in a number of armed seamen, both native and foreigners, that happened to be in their port. The siege which followed lasted eighteen days, and cost William a great number of men ; and when the city surrendered at last, if we are to believe the Saxon chronicle, it was because their chiefs had again betrayed them. The brave men of Exeter, however, obtained mudh more favourable terms than were then usual ; for though they were forced to take the oath, and admit a Norman gar- rison, their lives, property, and privileges were secured to them, and successful precautions were taken by the Conqueror to prevent any outrage or plunder. During the siege we hear of a strong body of English, in the pay of the Conqueror, fighting against their own countrymen, — a fatal example which was soon followed in other parts of the kingdom. Having ordered a strong castle to be built in the captured town, William returned eastward to Winchester, where he was joined by his wife Matilda, who had not hitherto been in England. At the ensuing festival of Whitsuntide she was publicly crowned by Aldred, the arch- bishop of York ; and as this ceremony, in regard to a king's wife, was contrary to an old law of the Anglo-Saxons (which, however, had been disregarded on some former occasions), it dis- pleased the people, who were further irritated against Matilda by seeing a large share of the con- fiscated territory in the west assigned to her. On the surrender of Exeter the aged Githa, with several ladies of rank, escaped to Bath, and finding no safety there, they fled to the small islands at the mouth of the Severn, where they lay concealed until they found an opportunity of passing over to Flanders. Harold's sons, Godwin and Edmund, with a younger brother named Magnus, again came over from Ireland about Midsummer, and with a fleet about equal to the one they had brought the pre- ceding year they hovered off the coasts of Devon- • Orderic. VitaU Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 367 RouoEMONT Castle, Exkter. Founded by William the Conqueror.— From a Print dated 1725. Bhire and Cornwall, landing occasionally and in- viting the people to join them against the Normans. Nothing could be more absurdly concerted than these movements. Had they appeared a little earlier, while Exeter held out, their presence might have been most important; hut now the sons of Harold were left to shift for themselves, and having imprudently ventured too far from the shore with- out any information as to the state of the country, they were suddenly attacked by a Norman force from Exeter, under Earl Beom, and defeated with great slaughter. It appears they were even igno- rant of the facts that the city of Exeter had fallen, and that their mother had fled to a foreign country. Their means were now exhausted, and, wearied by their ill success, their Irish allies declined giving any further assistance to these exiles. The sons of Harold next appeared as suppliants at the court of Sweyn, king of Denmark. During the spring and early summer of this same year (1068), William established his au- thority in Devonshire, Somersetshire, and Glouces- tershire, and besides taking Exeter, made himself master of Oxford and other fortified cities Avhich he had left in his rear when he advanced into the West. Wherever his dominion was imposed, the mass of land was given to his lords and knights, and fortresses and castles were erected and garri- soned by Normans and other foreigners, who con- tinued to cross the Channel in search of employ- ment, wealth, and honours. The meanest of these exotic adventurers, — the least cultivated of these vagabonds, — thought himself entitled to treat the best Englishman with contempt, as a slave and barbarian. The accounts of the sufferings of the conquered people, as given by the native chroniclers, are con- densed in a striking passage of Holinshed: — " He took away from divers of the nobility, and others of the better sort, all their livings, and gave the same to his Normans. Moreover, he raised great taxes and subsidies through the realm ; nor anything re- garded the English nobility, so that they who before thought themselves to be made for ever by bringing a stranger into the realm, did now see themselves trodden under foot, to be despised, and to be mocked on all sides, insomuch that many of them were constrained (as it were, for a further testimony of servitude and bondage) to shave their beards, to round their hair, and to frame themselves, as well in apparel as in service and diet at their tables, after the Norman maimer, very strange and far differing from the ancient customs and old usages of their country. Others utterly refusing to sustain such an intolerable yoke of thraldom as was daily laid upon them by the Normans, chose rather to leave all, both goods and lands, and, after the manner of outlaws, got them to the woods with their wives, children, and servants, meaning from thenceforth to live upon the spoil of the country adjoining, and to take whatsoever came next to hand. Whereupon it came to pass within a while that no man might 368 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. travel in safety from his own house or town to his next neighbours, and every quiet and honest man's house became, as it were, a hold and fortress fur- nished for defence with bows and arrows, bills, pole-axes, swords, clubs, and staves, and other weapons, the doors being kept locked and strongly bolted in the night season, as it had been in time of open war, and amongst public enemies. Prayers were said also by the master of the house as though they had been in the midst of the seas in some stormy tempest ; and when the windows or doors should be shut in and closed, they used to say Be- nediciie, and others to answer Dominus, in like sort as the priest and his penitent were wont to do at confession in the church." The bands of outlaws thus formed of impo- verished, desperate men, were not suppressed for several successive reigns ; and while the Normans considered and treated them as banditti, the English people long regarded them in the light of im- fortunate patriots. As late as the reign of King John, popular tradition gives some of its brightest colours to Robin Hood and his outlaws who haunted Shervv'ood Forest; nor was this dangerous sym- pathy suppressed till the memory of the Saxon supremacy had waxed faint, and the conquering and conquered races, being fused into one nation, enjoyed an equality of laws and rights. Men of higher rank and more extended views were soon among the fugitives from the pale of the Conqueror. When in his conciliating mood, Wil- liam had promised Edwin, earl of Mercia, one of his daughters in marriage, and flattered by the prospect of such a prize, this powerful brother-in- law of Harold had rendered important services to the Norman cause; but now, when he asked his reward, the Conqueror not only refused the fair bride, but insulted the suitor. Upon this Edwin, with his brother Morcar, absconded from the Nor- man court and went to the north of England, there to join their incensed countrymen and make one general effort for t!ie recovery of their ancient liberties. They were followed by the good wishes of the poor people of the South ; and such of the priests and monks of English race who were not yet dispossessed, secretly offered up prayers for their success in their cells and churches. No foreign soldier had as yet passed the Humber ; and it was behind that river that Edwin and Morcar fixed the great camp of independence, the most southern bulwark of which was the fortified city of York. Among the men of Yorkshire and Nor- thumbria they found some thousands of haidy warriors who swore they would not sleep under the roof of a house till the day of victory, and they were joined by some allies from the mountains of Wales and other parts. The ever-active Conqueror, however, came upon them before they were pre- YoiiK. From the Ancient Ramparts. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 369 pared. His march, considering the many obstacles he had to overcome, was wonderfully rapid. Ad- vancing from Oxford, he took Warwick and Lei- cester, the latter of which places he almost entirely destroyed. Then crossing the Trent, whicli he had not seen till now, he fell upon Derby and Not- tingham. From Nottingham he marched iipon Lincoln, which he forced to capitulate and deliver hostages, and thence pressing forward might and main, he came to the river Ouse, near the point vihere it falls into the Humber. Here he found Edwin and Morcar drawn out to oppose him. The battle which immediately ensued was fierce in the extreme ; but, as at Hastings, their superiority in number, arms, armour, and discipline, gave the Normans tlie victory. A great number of the English perished ; the rest retreated to York, within the walls of which they hoped to find refuge ; but the conquerors following them closely, broke through the walls and entered the city, destroying every- thing with fire and sword, and massacring all they found, from the boy, as a c<nitemporary authority assures us, to the old man.* The wreck of the patriotic army fled to the Humber, and descended that estuary in boats : they then turned to the north, and landed in the country of the Scotch, or in the territory near the borders, which became the places of refuge of all the brave men of the north, who did not yet despair of liberty, or who, at all hazards, were resolved not to submit to slavery. The victors, who were not prepared to advance farther, built a strong citadel at York, which be- came their advanced post and bulwark towards the north. A chosen garrison of 500 knights and men-at-arms, with a host of squires, and servants- at-arms, was left at this dangerous post. So peril- ous indeed was it considered, from the well-known martial and obstinate character of the men that dwelt beyond its walls, that the Normans laboured day and night to strengthen their position, forcing the poor inhabitants of York who had escaped the massacre to dig deep ditches and build strong walls for them. Fearing to^ be besieged in their turn, they also collected all the stores and provisions they could. At this crisis Aldred, the Archbishop of York, the prelate who had crowned and favoured Wil- liam, came to his cathedral to celebrate a religious festival. Soon after his arrival in the city, he sent to his lands situated near York, for some corn and other provisions, for the use of his own house. As his domestics returned with pack-horses and carts loaded with these provisions, they met at the gate of the town the Norman Viscount or Governor of York, sun'ounded by a great retinue ; and though the servants told him they were the Archbishop's people, and that the provisions were for the Arch- bishop's own use, the Governor caused the corn to be seized and carried to his magazines in the castle. The calmness and accommodating temper of Aldred were not proof against such an outrage as this. He quitted York almost immediately, and journeyed Bouthward to the camp of the Conqueror, before • Guil. Gemet. VOL. I. whom he presented himself in his pontifical robes, holding his pastoral staff in his hand. William rose to ofl"er him the kiss of peace ; but the prelate stood at a distance and said, " Listen to me, King William ! Thou wast a foreigner, and, notwithstand- ing that, God wishing to punish our nation, thou obtainedst, at the price of much blood, this king- dom of England : then T consecrated thee, I blessed thee, and crowned thee with mine own hand ; but now I curse thee — thee and thy race, because thou hast made thyself the persecutor of God's church and the oppressor of its ministers !"* The Nor- man nobles of William who were present at this strange scene half drew their swords, and would have slain the bishop where he stood, but their master, caring little for the old Saxon's curse, checked their fury and permitted him to return in peace to York, where he was soon seized with a slow but consuming malady, the offspring, it was imagined, of disappointment and grief. In spite of his successes in the north, and his firm establishment in the midland counties, where he built castles and gave away earldoms, the Con- queror's throne was still threatened, and the coun- try still agitated from one end to the other. The English chiefs, who had hitherto adhered to his cause, fell ofi^, at first one by one, and then in troops together, following up their defection with con- certed plans of operation against him. To these was added a fugitive of still higher rank, of whose custody the Conqueror was very negligent. At the instance of Marleswine, Cospatric, and some other noblemen " who were anxious to avoid King William's rough and boisterous dealing, and feared to be put in ward," Edgar Atheling fled by sea into Scotland, taking his mother, Agatha, the widow of Edmund Ironside, and his two sisters, Margaret and Christina, with him. These royal fugitives were received with great honour and kindness, and conducted to his castle of Dunferm- line by the Scottish monarch, Malcolm Caenmore, who, in the vicissitudes of his early life, had been himself an exile, and had experienced in England the hospitality of Edward the Confessor and of many of his nobility. Edgar's sister Margaret was young and handsome ; " and in process of time the said King Malcolm cast such love unto the said Margaret, that he took her to wife."t Some of the English nobles had preceded Edgar to Scotland ; many followed him, encouraged by the reception they met with from the king, who was naturally anxious to strengthen himself against the growing power of William; and these emigrants, and otheis that arrived from the same quarter on various subsequent occasions, became the stocks of a principal part of the Scottish nobility. It is probable that William did not mourn much for the departure of the English thanes ; but pre- sently he was vexed and embarrassed by the de- parture of some of his Norman chiefs and many of the soldiers of fortune that had followed him from the continent. These warriors, wearied by the .I.Stubbs, Chron. + Grafton. X 370 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. constant surprises and attacks of the English, and seeing no term to that desultory and destructive warfare, longed for the quiet of their own homes. Some considered themselves enriched enough by the plunder they had made: others thought that estates in England were not worth the trouble and danger with which they were to be obtained and secured : others, again, wanted to join their wives, who were constantly pressing them to return to them and their children ; for it appears that few or none of them had as yet thought it safe to bring their families to England. The latter class of complainants were made the subjects of raillery and bitter sarcasm ; for William, who had his own spouse with him, found it unseemly that man and wife should wish to be together.* It was also whispered that those who asked leave to retire must all be cowards, to think of abandoning their liege lord when in peril and in the midst of foreign- ers. Not counting wholly on the effect of such light artillery, William tried to reanimate their zeal by offers more bountiful than ever, and by promising lands, money, and honours in abundance the moment the conquest of England should be completed. In spite, however, of all these ma- noeuvres, Hugh de Grantmesnil, earl of Norfolk, his brother-in-law, Humphrey Tilleuil, the warden of Hastings Castle, and a great number of others, re- tired from the service, and recrossed the Channel. The king punished this desertion by immediately confiscating all the possessions they had obtained in our island. Foreseeing, however, that he was about to be surrounded by great difficulties and dangers, he sent his own wife Matilda back to Normandy, that she might be in a place of safety. At the same time, he invited fresh adventurers and soldiers of fortune from nearly every country in Europe ; and, allured by his brilliant off'ers, bands flocked to him from the banks of the Rhine, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne, and the Tagus — from the Alps, and the Italian peninsula beyond the Alps. The reinforcements he thus received must have been very considerable ; for in spite of the losses he had suffered in his campaign against Edwin and Morcar, and the constant thinning of his troops by a partisan warfare, he was enabled to meet a more formidable confederacy than any pre- viously set on foot. A.D. 1069. The strong garrison which the Conqueror had left at York could scarcely adven- ture a mile in advance of that post without being attacked by the natives, who lay constantly in am- bush in all the woods and glens. The governor, William Malet, was soon fain to declare that he would not answer for the security of York itself, unless prompt succour was sent him. On re- ceiving this alarming news, William marched in person, and arrived before York just as the citi- zens, in league with all the country people of the iieighbourhood, were laying siege to the Norman fortress. Having raised this siege by a sudden attack, he laid the foundations of a second castle in • The abuse fell chiefly on the poor wives in Normandy. — Orderic. York, and, leaving a double garrison, returned southward. Soon after his departure, the English made a second attempt to drive the enemy I'rom their fortress, but they were repulsed with loss ; and the second castle and other works were finished without further interruption. Thinking them- selves now secure in this advanced post, the Nor- mans resumed the ofl^ensive, and made a desperate attempt to extend their frontier as far north as Durham. The advance was made by a certain Robert de Comine, to whom William had promised a vast territory, yet to be conquered. This Robert set out from York with much pomp and circumstance, having assumed, by anticipation, the title of Earl of Northumberland. His army wasnot large, consisting only of 1200 lances; but his confidence was boundless. He crossed the Tees, and was within sight of the walls of Durham, which the Normans called " the stronghold of the rebels of the North," — when Egelwin, the English bishop of that place, came forth to meet him, and informed him that the natives had vowed to de- stroy him, or be destroyed, and warned him not to expose himself with so small a force. Comine treated the warning with contempt, and marched on. The Normans entered Durham, massacring a few defenceless men. The soldiers quartered themselves in the houses of the citizens, plunder- ing or wasting their substance ; and the chief him- self took possession of the bishop's palace. The march of the Normans and all these proceedings had been well noted; and when night fell, the people lighted signal-fires on the hills, that were seen as far as the Tees to the south, and as far northward as the river Tyne. The inhabitants gathered in great numbers, and hurried to Durham. At the point of day they rushed into the city, and attacked the Normans on all sides. Many were killed before they could well rouse themselves fi'om the deep sleep induced by the fatigue of the pre- ceding day's march and the revelry and debauch oi the night. The rest attempted to rally in the bishop's house, where their leader had established his quarters. They defended this post for a short time, discharging their arroA's and other missiles on the heads of their assailants, but the English ended the combat by setting fire to the house, which was burnt to the ground with Robert de Comine and all the Normans in it. The chroniclers relate, that of all the men engaged in the expedi- tion only two escaped. This dreadful reverse called forth a large body of troops from York, who hastened to take ven- geance. These Normans advanced with sufficient confidence as far as Northallerton, about midway between York and Durham, but here they halted, as if seized with a panic, and refusetl to go farther. A report was spread, and believed, at least by the English, that they were struck motionless by super- natural agency — by the power of St. Cuthbert, whose body, after many removals, now reposed in Durham, and who, it was thought, protected hia last resting-place. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 371 When the Northumbrians struck the blow at Durham, they were expecting powerful allies, who soon arrived. As we have so often had occasion to repeat, these men, with the inhabitants of most of the Danelagh, were exceedingly fierce and war- like, and chiefly of Danish blood. Many of the old men had followed the victorious banner of the great Canute into England, or had served under his sons, kings Harold Harefoot and Hardicanute ; and the sons of these old warriors were now in the vigour of mature manhood. They had always maintained an intercourse with Denmark, and as soon as they saw themselves threatened by the Normans, they applied to that country for assist- ance. 1 he court of the Danish king was soon crowded by supplicants from the Danelagh, from Norwich and Lincoln, to York, Durham, and New- castle. There were also envoys from other parts of the kingdom, where the Saxon blood predominated, and the sons of King Harold added their efforts to urge the Danish monarch to the invasion of Eng- land. At the same time, the men of Northumber- land had opened a correspondence with Malcolm Caenmore and his guest Edgar Atheling, and allied themselves with the English refugees in Scotland and on the border. Even supposing that the sons of Harold made no pretensions to the crown, there must have been some jealousy and confusion in this confederacy, for while one party to it held the weak Edgar as legitimate sovereign, another main- tained that by right of succession the king of Den- mark was king of England. It seems well esta- blished that the Danish monarch, Sweyn Estridsen, held the latter opinion ; and the ill success of the confederacy may probably be attributed to the dis- union inevitably arising from such clashing in- terests and pretensions. As soon as the battle of Hastings was known, and before any invitations were sent over, Sweyn had contemplated a descent on England, To avert this danger, William had recourse to Adelbert, the archbishop of Bremen, whojWon by persuasion and presents of large sums of money, undertook the negotiation, and endeavoured to make the Danish king renounce his project. Two years passed without anything more being heard of the Danish invasion ; but this lapse was probably rather owing to a dcs-ire on Sweyn Estrid- sen's side, to gain time in order to make his prepa- rations, than to the effects of the Archbishop's diplo- macy ; and when in this, the third year after the battle of Hastings, the solicitations of the English emigi-ants were more urgent than ever, and the men of the north, his natural allies, were up in arms, the powerful Dane dispatched a fleet of 240 sail, with orders to act in conjunction with the King of Scotland and the Northumbrians. The army embarked in this fleet was composed of almost as many heterogeneous materials as the mer- cenary force of William : besides Danes and Hol- steiners, there were Frisians, Saxons, Poles, and adventurers from other countries, tempted by the hope of plunder.* The Danish king sent his two • Southey, Naval Hist. sons, Harold and Canute, with the expedition, and placed it under the supreme command of their uncle Osbeorn, who was accompanied by five Danish chiefs of high renown, and by Christian, the king's bishop. After alarming the Normans in the south-east, at Dover, Sandwich, and Ipswich, the Danes went northward to the Humber, so often ascended by their ancestors, and sailed up that estuary to the Ouse, where they landed about the middle of August. It appears that Osbeorn was not able to prevent his motley army from plunder- ing and wasting the country. As soon, however, as the Anglo-Danes, the men of Yorkshire and Northumberland, were advised of the arrival of the armament, they flocked to join it from all parts of the country ; and Edgar Atheling, with Marls- wine, Cospatric, Waltheof, the son of Siward, the great enemy of Macbeth, Archil, the five sons of Carl, and many other English nobles, arrived from the frontiers of Scotland, bearing the con- soling assurance that, in addition to the force they brought with them, Malcolm Caenmore was ad- vancing with a Scottish army to support the insur- gents. York was close at hand, and they deter- mined to commence operations by the attack of the Norman fortifications in that city. Archbishop Aldred, who had never recovered from the wrong done him the preceding year, was in York at the time : as he saw the fierce array advance on that devoted city, he prayed to God to remove him from this world, that he might not witness the total ruin of his country and the destruction of his church ; and he is said to have died of "very grief and anguish of mind," before the confederates entered the city. The Normans had rendered the walls of the town so strong that they defended them seven days : on the eighth day of the siege they set fire to the houses that stood near their citadels, in order that their assailants might not use the materials to fill up the ditches of the castles, and then they shut themselves up within those lines. A strong wind arose, — the flames spread in all directions ; the Minster, or cathedral church, with its famous library, and great part of the city, was consumed ; and even within their castles the Normans saw themselves threatened with a horrid death by the fire they had kindled. Preferring death by the sword and battle-axe to being burnt alive, they made a sally, and were slain almost to a man by an enemy far superior in number, and inflamed with the fiercest hatred. They had suffered no such loss since the ever-memorable fight of Hast- ings ; 3000 Normans and mercenaries of different races fell ; and only William Malet, the governor of York, with his wife and children, Guilbert of Ghent, and a few other men of rank, were saved and carried on beard the Danish fleet, where they were kept for ransom. Such parts of the city of York as escaped the conflagration were occupied by Edgar Atheling, who, according to some autho- rities, assumed the royal title, and exercised the rights of sovereignty, — circumstances, we should think, that could scarcely coincide with the views 372 HISTOIIY OF ENGLAND. [Book HI. of the Danes and the pretensions of their king. A rapid advance to tlie south, after the capture of York, with no enemy in their rear, might have ensured the confederates a signal and perha])s a decisive success ; but the King of Scotland did not appear with his ])romised army, and at the approach of v.-inter, Avhich proved imusually severe, the Danes retired to their ships in the Humber, or took up quarters between the Ouse and the Trent, and spent that long season in sloth and gluttony. William was thus allowed time to collect his forces and bring over fresh troops from the continent. The Conqueror was hunting in the forest of Dean when he received the first news of the catas- trophe of York ; and then and there he swore, by the splendour of the Almighty, that he would utterly exterminate the Northumbrian people, nor ever lay his lance in rest, when he had once taken it up, until he had done the deed. In the mean- time he attempted, with infinite art, to conciliate the people in the south of England, redressing many of their grievances, and promising them a just and mild rule for the future. Not relying, however, wholly on these manoeuvres, he exacted fresh oaths and hostages. At the same time he opened secret negotiations with Osbeorn, the brother of King Sweyn, and finally succeeded, by means of gold and other presents, in inducing him to agree to withdraw his Danish fleet and army, and to give no more assistance to the Northumbrians. With the earliest spring William took the field, riding at the head of the finest and most numerous cavalry that had even been seen in England, and causing his infantry to follow by forced marclies. As he thus advanced the English rose nearly every where in his rear, recommencing a war on many different points at once. An inferior commander would have been confused by this multiplicity of attacks, and inevitably ruined ; but William, who, considering times and circumstances, was one of the greatest generals that ever lived, did not suffer his attention to be distracted, and steadily pursued his course to the north, where he knew the great blow must be struck. The defenders of York learned nearly at the same moment that the ruthless conqueror was ap- proaching their Avails, and that their allies, tlie Danes, had abandoned them, and were sailing away for the south, where, according to the treacherous compact they had made, they were to be per- mitted to victual and plunder the English. Aban- doned as they were, and ill provided with defences, — for in their rage they had utterly de- destroyed the two castles, — they made an obsti- nate resistance ; nor was York taken until many hundreds of English and Normans lay dead together. Edgar Atheling, escaping with his life, and little else, fled fur a second time to the court of the Scottish king. Elated by his victory, William spent but a short time in ordering and planning fresh fortifications in York, and then con- tinued his march northward. His rage had not moderated in the time that had elapsed, and he thought it wise and good policy to carry into effect the fearful vow he had made in the forest of Dean. His troops required no excitement from him : the destruction of their comrades at Durham and Yoik in the preceding year, and the loss they had just sustained themselves at the latter city, rankled in their savage minds, and they thrcAv themselves on the territory of Northumbria in a frenzy of ven- geance, wasting the cultivated fields, burning towns and villages, and massacring indiscriminately flocks, herds, and men. To accomplish this havock over a great width of country, they marched in separate columns ; and when the natives, rushing from their concealment in the woods and mora?ses, exterminated some of their scouring parties, such oc- casional disasters only made the survivors the more pitiless. An English army, commanded by Cos- patric, disheartened, disorganised, and very infe- rior in numbers, retreated before the Normans, and either retired into Scotland or threw itself into the mountains, being followed by all the population that had strength and activity enough to escape. Egelwin, the Bishop of Durham — the same who had had the interview with Robert de Comine, — assem- bled the inhabitants of that city, and, like a good shepherd, proposed to conduct his flock to a ])lace of safety, out of the reach of Avhat an old rhyming chronicler calls " Normans, Burgolouns,* thieves, and felons." Leaving their homes to become the prey of the enemy, but carrying witli them tlie body or bones of St. Cuthbert, these wretched people followed their bishop across the Tyne to Lindisfarne, or Lloly Island, near the mouth of the Tweed ; and the Norm.ai\s a second time entered Durham, but in such force as to leave them no grounds for apprehending a repetition of the tragedy that had terminated their first visit. Having for- tified Durham, which is by nature a strong position, the invaders pushed forward to the Tyne, conti- nuing their Avork of devastation, and feeling their thirst for blood unslaked. A havock more complete and diabolical was never perpetrated, nor is the relation of any event of those ages sustained by more numerous and perfect proofs. The Norman and French chroniclers and historians join the English in narrating and deploring the catastrojjhe which, even in those times of violence and blood, seems to have overpoAvered men's minds with a Avild horror and Avonderment. William of Malms- bury, Avho Avrote in the reign of Stephen, about eighty years after, says, " From York to Durham not an inhabited village remained. Fire, slaughter, and desolation made a vast Avilderness there, which continues to this day." From Durham north to Hexham, from the Wear to the Tyne, the remorse- less Conqueror continued the same infernal pro- cess. Orderic Vitalis denounces the "feralis occisio,'' the dismal slaughter ; and says that more than a hundred thousand victims perished. " It Avas a horrid spectacle," says Roger Hoveden, " to see on the high roads and public places, and at the doors of houses, human bodies eaten by the Avornflj • Burgiiiulians. Chap. I.] CLV'IL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 10G6— 1216. 373 for there remained no one to cover tliem with a little earth." The fields in culture were hurned, and the cattle and the corn in the barns carried oft" by the conquerors, who made a famine where they could not maintain themselves by the sword. This frightful scourge was felt in those parts in the months that followed, Avith a severity never before experienced in England. After eating the flesh of dead horses which the Normans left behind them, the people of Yorkshire and Northumberland, driven to the last extremity, are said to have made many a loathsome repast on human flesh.* Pesti- lence followed in the wake of famine; and as a completion to this picture of horror, we are in- formed that some of the English, to escape death by hunger, sold themselves, with their wives and children, as slaves to the Norman soldiery, who were well provided in their citadels and castles with corn and provisions, purchased on the con- tinent with gold and goods robbed from the English. Qn his return from Hexham to York, by an im- perfectly known and indirect route across the fells, William was well nigh perishing. The snow was still deep in those parts, and the rivers, torrents, ravines, and mountains continually presented ob- stacles which the Normans had been little accus- lom.ed to in the level counties of England. The army fell into confusion, the king lost the track, • Fiorent. Wigorn, and passed a whole night without knowing where he was or what direction his troops had taken. Historians are silent as to his motives for choosing this dangerous road, when a better one lay open for him ; but his intention no doubt was to clear the mountains of the English fugitives, who, had they possessed proper information as to his movements, might have attacked his confused and scattered bands, and inflicted a severe punishment. Even as it was, and though no such attack is mentioned (by no means a proof that none happened), William did not reach York without a serious loss, for he left behind him most of his horses, which were said to have perished in the snow : his men also suffered the severest privations. Confiscation now became almost general, and William openly avowed his determination to despoil and degrade the natives. All property in land, whether belonging to patriotic chiefs or to men who had taken no active part in the conflict, began to ])ass into the possession of the Normans and other foreigners. Nor was moveable property safer or more respected. From the beginning of the in- vasion the English had been accustomed to deposit their most valuable effects in the monasteries, in the hojie that these sanctuaries would ])e respected by men who professed to be Christians, and to have a special reverence for such holy places : but now William, emboldened by success, seized the whole, under the pretext that it belonged to disloyal and 374 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. rebellious subjects. His commissioners, wlio in many places performed their work sword in hand, did not always draw a distinction between the plate and jewels left in deposit and the treasures that belonged to the monasteries themselves, but carried off the church ornaments and the vessels of silver or gold that were attached to the service of the altar. They also removed or destroyed all deeds and documents, charters of immunities, and evidences of property. The newly-conquered territory in the north, which must long have remained sufficiently unproductive, seeing how it had been wasted and the cultivators of the soil destroyed, was distributed in immense lots. William de Garenne had twenty- eight villages ; William de Percy more than eighty manors. In Domesday Book, which was drawn up fifteen years after the Norman occupation of them, most of these domains are described as laying fallow or waste. Vast tracts of country to tlie north of the city of York fell to tlie lot of Allan tlie Breton, who erected a castle and other works of. defence on a steep hill, nearly surrounded on all sides by the river Swale. In the language of the times, this fortress was intended to protect him and his against the redoubtable attacks of the dis- inherited English. Like most of the chiefs of the conquering army, he gave a French name to the place, — ^lie called it Richemont or Richmount, now Richmond. Dreux Bruere, the chief of a band of Flemish auxiliaries, had the eastern part of York- shire, between the rivers and the sea. A story is told of this man that gives a curious idea of some of William's followers. He had married a relation of the king's, and this wife he killed in a fit of passion. Before the murder was known, he went to the king and begged him to give him money in lieu of his English estates, as he had an earnest desire to return to his own country. William granted the sum he asked, and did not learn the cause of his hasty departure until it was too late to think of stopping him. The territory of the Fleming was then conferred on Eudes of Champaign, who sub- sequently married a half-sister of the Conqueror. When Eudes' wife was delivered of a son, he re- presented to the king that his lands were not at all fertile, producing only oats, and prayed he would make him a grant of an estate proper to bear wheat, that he might have wherewith to make wheaten- bread for his infant, the king's nephew. King William presented him with some lands to his heart's wish in Lincolnshire. Gamel, the son of Quetel, who came from Meaux, in France, with a troop of his own townsmen, established himself and his companions iii lands adjoining the Yorkshire possessions of Eudes of Champaign. And Basin, Sivard, Francon, and Richard d'Estouteville are mentioned as landliolders and neighbours of Gamel of Meaux. The vast domain of Pontefract was the share of Gilbert de Lacy, who soon afterwards ex- tended the Norman conquest in Lancashire and Cheshire, and obtained there estates still more extensive.* This De Lacy built Pontefract Castle, which became at a later age the scene of a fearful * Thierry. liiCHMONj), Yorkshire. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 375 Iragedy, and echoed with the dying groans of a successor and lineal descendant of the Conqueror. The desperate resistance they had made, the bands of houseless English that still roamed from place to place, made the Normans more than ever sensible of the value of deep ditches and strong stone walls. Every baron erected his castle ; and in every po- pulous town there was a strong fortress, where the Normans confined the principal natives as hostages, and into which they could retire in case of an insur- rection. William did not advance farther than Hexham ; but some of his captains continued the progress both to the north and to the west, though their tenure of the land was scarcely secured until some years later, when the mountainous country of Westmorland and Cumberland, and the ad- jacent part of Northumberland, were reduced by various chiefs. The first Earl of Cumberland was a certain Renouf Meschines, who divided the domains and handsome women of the country among his followers, thus following out the feudal system fully established by William. Simon, the son of Thorn, the English proprietor of two rich manors, had three daughters : one of these Mes- chines gave to Humphrey, his man-at-arms, the second he gave to Raoul, nicknamed Tortes-maiiis, and the third he reserved for his squire, William of St. Paul. In the north of Northumberland, Ives de Vescy took possession of the town of Alnwick, along with the grand-daughter and all the in- heritance of a Saxon who had died in battle. Robert de Bruce obtained, by conquest, several manors and the dues of Hartlepool, the seaport of Durham. Robert D'Omfreville had the forest of Riddesdale, which belonged to Mildred the Saxon, the son of Akman. On his receiving investiture of this domain, William gave to D'Omfreville the sword he had himself worn at his entrance into Northumber- land, and D'Omfreville swore upon that sword that he would make good use of it to clear the land of wolves and the enemies of the Conqueror. The nominal government of Northumberland was, how- ever, intrusted to a native who had recently borne arms against William. This was Cospatric who came in with Waltheof, the brave son of Siward, with Morcar and Edwin, the brothers-in-law of King Harold, and submitted to William for the second time, being probably induced thereto by liberal promises from the Conqueror, who then con- sidered them as the main prop of the English cause, wanting whom Edgar Atheling would at once fall into insignificance. The reward of Cos- patric we have mentioned : Waltheof was made Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, and re- ceived the hand of Judith, one of King William's nieces, and Morcar and Edwin were restored to their paternal estates. In reality, however, these four men were little better than prisoners, and three of them perished miserably in a very short time. The insurrections which broke out in William's rear during liis march to York were partially suppressed by his lieutenants, who suffered some reverses, and perpetrated great cruelties in return. The garrison of Exeter, besieged by the people of Cornwall, was relieved by Fitz-Osborn ; Mon- tacute repulsed the insurgents of Devonshire and Somersetshire; and Edric the Forester, who took the town of Shrewsbury with the help of the men of Chester and some Welsh, was foiled in his attempt to reduce the castle. The Avhole of the North-west was, however, in a very insecure state; and the haste with which William marched thither on his return to York from Hexham, seems to denote some greater peril on the side of the Normans than is expressed by any of the annalists. The weather was still inclement, and his- troops were fatigued by their recent exertions, their rapid marches and counter-marches in Northumberland, yet he led them amidst storms of sleet and hail across the mountains which divide our island lengthwise, and which have been called, not inappropriately, the Apennines of England. The roads he took as being those which led direct to Chester, were scarcely passable for cavalry, and his troops were annoyed and disheartened by actual difficulties and prospective hardships and dangers. The country lying on the western .sea, on the Mersey and the Dee, was painted in appalling colours; but the soldiers scarcely exaggerated the difficult and moun- tainous nature of Wales or the fierce valour of its inhabitants. The auxiliaries, particularly the men of Anjou and Brittany, began to murmur aloud, and not a few of the Normans, complaining of the hard service to which their chief was exposing them, talked of returning beyond sea. This dis- content was overcome partly by promises of reward when the campaign should end, and partly by an affected indifference. *' I can do very well without • them," said William, referring to the foreign mercenaries; "they may go if they please. I have plenty to follow me. I do not want their services."* And then, on the rough way over the wealds, he partook in the fatigues of the common soldiers, marching on foot with them, and faring as they fared. Chester, which still retained the outer features of a Roman city, and where the Conqueror gazed on Roman walls and gates, then comparatively entire, had not yet been invaded by the Normans. No defence, however, was attempted there; and, after entering in triumph, William proceeded to lay the foundations of a new and strong castle, while detachments of his army reduced the sur- rounding country. During the Conqueror's stay, Edric the Forester submitted, and was received into ftivour. From Chester William marched to Salis- bury, where he distributed rewards among the mercenaries, a part of whom he disbanded ; and from Salisbury he repaired to his strong citadel or palace at Winchester, which city became a fa- vourite abode with him, as it had been with his Saxon predecessors. To retain the newly-con- quered province in the north-west, he had left a strong body of troops behind him, under the com- mand of a Fleming named Gherbaud, who became the first Count or Earl of Chester. This Gherbaud • Orderic. 376 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. was soon wearied by the constant fatigues and dangers of his post, for the English rose whenever thej' found an opportunity ; and the mountaineers from North Wales harassed him incessantly, so that he was glad to resign his command, fiefs, and honours, and return to his own country. The Conqueror then granted the earldom of Chester to Hugh d'Avranches, a more warlike and much fiercer commander, who earned, even in that age, the surname of "The Wolf." Not satisfied with defensive operations, the new Earl immediately crossed the Dee, invaded North Wales, made him- self master of a part of Flintshire, and built a castle at Rhuddlan, thus taking an important step towards the subjugation of the Welsh, a project the Nor- mans never abandoned until it was completed, two centuries later, by Edward I. Hugli the Wolf and his ferocious followers, roused to even more than their usual ferocity by the obstinate and fierce resistance they encountered, shed the blood of the Welsh like water, and burnt and wasted their houses and lands. The fearful tragedy of Nor- thumberland and Yorkshire was repeated on a smaller scale in this corner of the island, and famine and pestilence stalked along the banks of the Clwyd, the Dee, and the Mersey as they had done by the rivers of the north-easteni coast. The conquered territory was apportioned as in the north. A few incidental accounts of tliese measures, that are found in the chroniclers, taken as they occur, may convey a better notion of the Norman system of settlement than any formal dis- cussion of it. Almost as soon as Hugh the Wolf was installed Earl of Chester, he invited over from Normandy one Lenoir or Nigel, a friend of his early days, whom he was anxious to make the partaker of his good fortune in England. Nigel not only came over himself but brought his five brothers, Houdard, Edward, Volmar, Horsuin, and Volfan with him, having concluded, no doubt, from good reports, that there was plenty of room and promotion for them all. The Earl of Chester gave Nigel the burgh and domains of Hulton on the Mersey, and made him his constable and hereditary marshal, with great privileges, and almost un- limited means of raising money by fines, for he had the right of administering justice himself, with power of life and death, within his district of Hul- ton. Of the booty taken, or to be taken, from the Welsh, all the four-footed beasts were declared to be the share of Nigel, who had moreover the right of pre-emption in the city of Chester, by which he or his servants could insist on being served first of whatever they wanted to buy, provided only the servants of the Earl had not presented themselves as purchasers sooner than they. All stray cattle and animals found within the limits of Hulton were his, and Nigel enjoyed the privilege of freely selling at fairs or otherwise, without tax or duty, every species of merchandize except salt and horses. These possessions, rights, and immu- nities were declared hereditary in Nigel's family on the usual condition of feudal service and fealty to the immediate superior, the Earl of Chester. In the due gradation of this feudal system, Hou- dard, the eldest of his five brothers, was placed nearly in the same political relation to Nigel that Nigel occupied with regard to the Earl of Chester : he was hereditary Seneschal of Hulton. Nigel, his lord, gave him, pro hommagio ct servitio sua (for his homage and service), the lands of Wes'.on and Ashton. His profits of war were to be all the bulls taken in Wales and the best ox, as a recompense for his standard-bearer. Edward, the second brother, received from Nigel the constable a tract of land near Weston ; Horsuin and Volmar got between them the domain and village of Runcone ; and the fifth brother, being a priest, obtained the church of Runcone. In this manner weie lands and powers lavished on hungry adventurers, who continued a slow and lasting tyranny under the names of Earls, Constables, and Seneschals.* The disturbances on the eastern coast, which had been overlooked, now grew to such importance as to demand attention. Hcreward, " England's darling," as he was called by his admiring country- men, was lord of Born, in Lincolnshire, and one of the most resolute chiefs the Normans ever had to encounter. Having expelled the foreigners who had taken possession of his patrimony, lie assisted his neighbours in doing the like, and then esta- blished a fortified camp in the Isle of Ely, where he raised the banner of independence, and bade defiance to the Conqueror. His power or influ- ence soon extended along the eastern sea-line, over the fen country of Lincolnshire, Huntingdon, and Cambridge; and English refugees of all classes, thanes dispossessed of their lands, bishops deprived of their mitres, abbots driven from their monas- teries, to make room for foreigner?, repaired from time to time to his " camp of refuge." The jealous fears of the king increased the danger they were intended to lessen. Though Edwin and Morcar remained perfectly quiet, and showed every dispo- sition to keep their oaths of allegiance, he dreaded them on account of their great popularity with their countrymen, and he finally resolved to seize their persons. The two earls received timely notice of this intention, and secreted themselves. Wlien he thought the vigilance of the Normans was lulled, Edwin endeavoured to escape to the Scottish border, but he was betrayed by three of his attendants, and fell on the road gallantly fighting against his Norman pursuers, who cut off' his head, and sent it as an acceptable present to the Conqueror. f Morcar effected his escape to the morasses of Cam- bridgeshire, and joined llereward, whose camp was further crowded about tliis time by many of the English chiefs of the north, who had been driven homeless into Scotland. Among the eccle- siastics of Northumbria who took this course was Egelwin, the Bishop of Durham. Even Stigand, the Primate of all England, but now degraded by King and Pope, and replaced by Lanfranc, an • Thierrv. ■t Orderlc. Vital.— Inyulf.—H. riant. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. lOG'G— 121C. 377 Italian, is mentioned among the refugees of Ely ; but his presence there seems to rest on doubtlul authority. William at length moved with a formidable army. The difficulties of this war on the eastern coast were difierent from, but not inferior to, what the Normans had encountered in the west and the north. There were no mountains and defdes, but the country was in good part a swamp on which no cavalry could tread ; it was cut in all directions by rivers, and streams, and broad meres ; and the few roads that led through this dangerous labyrinth were little known to the foreigners, and likely to be well defended by the natives, who would fight with many local advantages in their favour. The country, too, where the banner of independence floated was a sort of holy land to the English : the abbeys of Ely, Peterborough, Thorney, and Croy- land, the most ancient, the most revered of their establishments, stood within it; and the monks, however professionally timid or peaceful, Avere dis- posed to resistance, for they well knew that the coming of the Normans would be the signal for driving them from their monasteries. The monks of Croyland, indeed, had already to deplore and resent many wrongs sustained from the invaders. They possessed a house at Spalding, where a part of the brotherhood had resided, and their next neighbour was a fierce baron, named Taille-bois, from Anjou, who had done them all kinds of mis- chief, — laming their horses and their oxen, killing their sheep and poultry, robbing their farmers, and assaulting their servants on the highway with swords and staves. After vain attempts to mollify this tyrant with entreaties and presents, the unlucky monks had taken up their beds, and their books, and the sacred utensils, and leaving their habita- tion at Spalding to the protection of Heaven, and shaking the dust off their feet against that " son of the fire eternal," had returned in no complacent humour to Croyland.* Taille-bois sent imme- diately over to Angers fur some monks of his own country, whom he put in possession of the house and church at Spalding. The Normaiis, surprised among the bogs and the tall rushes that covered them, suffered some severe checks. The sagacious eye of William soon saw that the proper way of proceeding would be by a blockade that should prevent provisions and succour from reaching the Isle of Ely. He accordingly stationed all the ships he covild collect in the Wash, with orders to watch every inlet from the sea to tlie fens ; and he so stationed his army as to block up every road that led into the fens by land. When he resumed more active operations he undertook a • Ingulf. Cnoyi.ANi) BiiiDci:, with the Saxon sculpture of St. ETiiKinED. 378 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. •work of great note and difficulty. In order to approach the fortified camp in the midst of marshes, and an expanse of water in some places shallow, in others deep, he began to build a wooden causeway, two miles long, with l)ridges over the beds of the rivers. Hereward frequently interrupted these operations, and in a manner so murderous, sudden, and mysterious, that the affrighted workmen and soldiers became firmly convinced that he was leagued with the devil, and aided by some necro- mancer. William, whose philosophy in these matters was not in advance of his age, and who had brought over with him from Normandy a con- juror and soothsayer as an essential part of his army of invasion, was readily induced by Ives Taille-Bois, the persecutor of the monks at Spald- ing, to employ a sorceress on the side of the Normans, in order to neutralise or defeat the spells of the English. This sorceress was placed with much ceremony on the top of a wooden tower at the head of the works ; but Hereward, the " cunning captain," watching his opportunity, set fire to the dry reeds and rushes, — the flames were rapidly spread by the wind, and tower and sorceress, workmen and soldiers, were consumed. When the Isle of Ely had been blockaded three months provisions became scarce there. Those whose profession and vowed duties included fre- quent fasting were the first to become impatient under privation. The monks of Ely sent to the enemy's camp offering to show a safe passage across the fens if the king would only promise to leave them in undisturbed possession of their houses and lands. The king agreed to the condition, and two of his barons pledged their faith for the execution of the treaty. Under proper guides the Normans then found their way into the Isle of Ely, and took possession of the strong monastery which formed part of Hereward's line of defence. They killed a thousand Englishmen that either occupied an ad- vanced position or had made a sortie ; and then closing round the " camp of refuge," they finally obliged the rest to lay down their arms. Some of these brave men were liberated on payiiig heavy fines or ransoms ; some were put to death ; sorhe deprived of their sight ; some maimed ftnd rendered unfit for war by having ft right hand or a foot cut ttff; some were condemned to perpetual imprisonment j and in this last category were earl Morcar and thg bishop of Durham. Hereward, the soul of the confederacy, wovild not submit, but malting an effort which appeared desperate to all, he tushetl from the beleaguered camp, and escaped by thfolv- ing himself into the marshes where the Normans would not venture to follow him. Passing ftom fen to fen, he gained the low, swampy lands in Lincolnshire, near his own estate, where h^ was joined by some friends, and renei<'ed a partisan ot guerilla warfare, which cost the Normans many lives, but which could not, under existing circum- stances, produce any great political result. At last, seeing the hopelessness of the struggle, he listened to terms from William, who was anxious to pacify an enemy his armies could never reach, and who probably admired, as a soldier, his wonderful courage and address. Hereward made his peace, took the oath of allegiance, and was permitted by the Conqueror to preserve and enjoy the estates of his ancestors. The exploits of the la&t hero of Anglo-Saxon independence formed a favourite theme of tradition and poetry ; and long after his death the inhabitants of the Isle of Ely showed with pride the ruins of a wooden tower which they called the castle of Hereward. After the destruction of the camp of refuge in Ely, the Norman forces, naval as well as military, proceeded to the north to disperse some bands which had again raised the standard of independ- ence, and invoked the presence of Edgar Atheling, who was enjoying the tranquillity and obscurity for which he was fitted, in Scotland. After some bloody skirmishes the confederates were driven beyond the Tweed ; and then William crossed that river to seize the English emigrants, and punish Malcolm Caenmore. A Scottish army, which had been so anxiously expected by the English insur- gents at York two years before,, when its weight in the scale might have proved fatal to the Normans, had tardily marched at a moment when the Nor- thumbrians and people of Yorkshire were almost exterminated, and when it could do little more than excite the few remaining inhabitants to a hopeless rising, and burn the houses of such as refused to join in it. The want of provisions in a land laid waste soon made the Scots recross the border. To avenge this mere predatory inroad, however, William now advanced from the Tweed to the Frith of Forth, as if he intended to subdue the whole of the " land of the mountain and flood," taking with him the entire mass of his splendid cavalry, and nearly every Norman foot-soldier he could prudently detach from garrison duty in Eng- land. Some native English, on whose fidelity to himself or dislike of the Scots he could rely, also followed him by land, while others acted as sailors on board his ships, which sailed close in-shore, and co-operated with him as he marched through the Lothians. The emigrants escaped his pursuit ; nor would Malcolm deliver them up ; but, intimidated by the advance of an army infinitely more nume- rous and better armed than his own, the Scottish king, says the Saxon chronicle, " came and agreed with King William, and delivered hostages, and was his man, and the king went home with all his force." On his return from Scotland, William was re- ceived at Durham by the new bishop, Vaulcher or Wftlcher, a Lorrainer by nation, who felt so iu- secilte in his diocese that he entreated the king to etay and build a castle for him. William, who had other business to transact, remained some tim.e, and erected a soft of citadel on the top of the highest hill, in which the prelate taight live without fear of attack. During his stay at Durham the king summoned Cospatric to appear before him, and, on the idle ground of old grievances, which had been Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 379 pardoned when that nobleman surrendered with Edwin and Morcar, he deprived him of the earldom of Nortlmmberknd, for which it appears he had paid a large sum of money. Cospatric fearing worse consequences, abandoning whatever else he had in England, fled to Malcolm Caenmore, who gave him a castle and lands. The earldom of Northumberland was conferred on Waltheof, an Englishman like himself, but now the nephew of the Conqueror by marriage with his niece Judith. The Normans had now been seven years in the land, engaged in almost constant hostilities ; and at length England, with the exception of Wales, might fairly be said to be conquered. In most abridg- ments and epitomes of history the events we have related in not unnecessary detail, are so faintly in- dicated, and huddled together in so narrow a space, as to leave an impression that the resistance of our ancestors after the battle of Hastings was trifling and brief, — that the sanguinary drama of the Con- quest was almost wholly included in one act. No- thing can be more incoiTect than this impression, or more unfair to that hardy race of men who were the fountain-source of at least nine-tenths of the blood that flows in the large and generous vein of the English nation. "The successive contests in which the Conqueror was engaged," says a recent historian, with becoming warmth, ** ought not to be regarded as, on his part, measures to quell rebellion. They were a series of wars, levied by a foreign prince against unconquered and unbending portions of the Saxon people. Their resistance was not a flame casually lighted up by the oppression of rulers, — it was the defensive warfare of a nation who took up arms to preserve, not to recover, their independence. There are few examples of a people who have suffered more for national dignity and legitimate freedom. The Britons are, perhaps, too far from us to admit our fellow-feeling with them. When we stretch out our hands towards their heroes, we scarcely embrace more than a shadow. But let us not distort history by throwing the un- merited reproach of want of national spirit on the Anglo-Saxon, and thus placing an impassable barrier between our sympathy and the founders of our laws and liberties, whose language we speak, in whose homes we dwell, and in whose establish- ments and institutions we justly glory."* Not long after his return from Scotland, circum- stances imperatively Called fof the presence of William in his continental dominions. His talents as a statesman and warrior are indisputable, yet few men have owed more to good fortune. Their wrongs and provocations were the same then as now, and policy would have suggested to the people of Maine to exert themselves a year or two before, when William, engaged in difficult wars in Eng- land, would have been embarrassed by their insur- rection on the continent. But they made their great effort just as England was reduced to the quietude of despair, and when William could pro- ceed against them unincumbered by any other war. • Sir J. Ma/jklutosh. Herbert, the last count or national chief, bequeathed the county of Maine, bordering on Normandy, to Duke William, who, to the displeasure of the people, but without any important opposition, took posse?sion of it several years before he invaded England. Instigated by Fulk, Count of Anjou, and vexed by a tyrannical administration, the people of Maine now rose against William, and expelled the magistrates he had placed over them, and drove out from their towns the officers and garrisons of the Norman race. Deeming it im- prudent to remove his Norman forces from this island, he collected a considerable army among tlie English population, and carrying them over to Normandy, he joined them to some troops levied there, and putting himself at their head, marched into the unfortunate province of Maine. The national valour which so often opposed him was now exerted with a blind fury in his favour. The English beat the men of Maine, burnt their towns and villages, and did as much mischief as the Normans (among whom was a strong contingent from Maine) had perpetrated in England. While these things Avere passing on the con- tinent Edgar Atheling received an advantageous offler of services and co-operation from Philip, king of France, who at last, and too late, roused himself from the strange sloth and indifference with which he had seen the progress made by his overgrown vassal the Duke of Normandy. The events in Maine, the dread inspired in all the neighbouring country, even to the walls of Paris, and William's exhibition of force, were probably the immediate causes that dispelled Phibp's long sleep. He invited Edgar, with whose unpromising character he was probably unacquainted, to come to France and be present at his council, promising him a strong fortress situated on the Channel at a point equally convenient for making descents upon England or incursions or forays into Normandy. Closing with the proposals, Edgar got ready a few ships and a small band of soldiers, being aided therein by his sister, the queen of Scotland, and some of the Scottish nobility, and made sail for France. His usual bad luck attended him : he had scarcely gained the open sea when a storm arose, and drove his ships ashore on the coast of Northumberland, where some of his followers were drowned and others taken prisoners by the Nor- mans. He and a few of his friends of superior rank escaped and got into Scotland, where they arrived in miserable plight, with nothing but the clothes on their backsj some walking on foot, some mounted on sorry beasts. After this misfortune, his brother-in-law. King Malcolm, advised him to seek a reccfficiliation with William, and Edgar accordingly sent a messenger to the Conqueror, who at once invited him to Normandy, where he protnised ptopfet and honourable treatment. In- stead of sailing direct from Scotland, the Atheling, whose feelings were as obtuse as his intellect, took his way through England, the desolated kingdom of his ancestors, feasting at the castles of the Nor- 380 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book 111. man invaders as he went along. Insignificant as he was, the English people still loved his name ; it was therefore deemed expedient to secure his person, and this was done under a decent semblance by the sheriff of Yorkshire, who met him with a numerous escort at Durham, and accompanied him until he embarked. William received him with a show of kindness, and allotted him an apartment in the palace of Rouen, with a pound of silver a-day for his maintenance ; and there the descendant of the great Alfred passed eleven years of his life, occupying himself with dogs and horses. The king, who had gone to the continent to quell one insurrection, was recalled to England by another of a much more threatening nature, planned, not by the English, but by the Norman barons, their conquerors and despoiler:;, who were either dissatisfied with the rewards they had received, or disgusted by the imperious character, the over- bearing, and intermeddling of the king. William Fitz-Osborn, the prime favourite and counsellor of the Conqueror, had died a violent death in Flanders, and had been succeeded in his English domains and the earldom of Hereford by his son Roger Fitz- Osborn. This young nobleman negociated a mar- riage with Raoul or Ralph de Gael, a Breton by birth, and Earl of Norfolk in England by the right of the sword. For some reason not explained, this alliance was displeasing to the king, who sent from Normandy to prohibit it. The parties were en- raged at this prohibition, which, however, they de- termined not to obey, and on the day which had been previously fixed for the ceremony Emma, the affianced, was conducted to Norwich, where a wedding-feast was celebrated that was fatal to all who were present at it.* Among the guests who had been invited, rather for the after-act than to do honour to the bride and bridegroom, were Waltheof, the husband of Judith, sundry barons and bishops of the Norman race, some Saxons who were friends to the Normans, and even some chieftains I'rom the mountains of Wales, with whom their neighbour, the Earl of Hereford, the brother of the bride, had thought proper to cultivate amicable relations. A sumptuous feast was followed by copious libations ; and when the heads of the guests were heated by wine, the Earls of Hereford and Norwich, who were already committed by carrying the forbidden marriage into efiect, and who knew the implacable temper of William, opened their plans with a wild and energetic eloquence. They inveighed against the arbitrary conduct of the king, — his harsh and arrogant behaviour to his noblest barons, — and his apparent intention of reducing the Normans to the same condition of misery and servitude as the English, whose wrongs and misfortunes they af- fected to commiserate. Hereford complained of his conduct with regard to the marriage, saying it was an insult ottered to the memory of his "father, Fitz-Osborn, the man to whom the Bastard incon- testably owed his crown. By degrees the excited • Chron. Sax. Nonv.":CH Casti.e. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS : A. D. 1066—1216. 381 assembly broke forth in one general curse against the Conqueror. The old reproach of his birth was revived over and over again. " He is a bastard, a man of base extraction," cried the Normans; " it is in vain he calls himself a king ; it is easy to see he was never made to be one, and that God hath him nut in his grace." — " He poisoned our Conan, that brave Count of Brittany," said the Bretons. " He has invaded our noble kingdom, and mas- sacred the legitimate heirs to it, or driven them into exile," cried the English. " He is ungrateful to the brave men who have shed their blood for him, and raised him to a higher pitch of greatness than any of his predecessors ever knew," said the foreign captains ; " and what has he givtn to us conquerors covered with wounds? Nothing but lands naturally steril or devastated by the war; and then, as soon as he sees we have improved those estates, he takes them from us, or diminishes their extent." The guests cried out tumultuously that all this was true, — that William the Bastard was in odium with all men, — that his death would gladden the hearts of many.* The great object of the Norman conspirators was to gain over Earl Waltheof, whose warlike qualities and great popularity with the English were well known to them ; and,when they proceeded to divulge the particulars of their plan, the Earls of Hereford and Norwich allured him with the promise of a third of England, whicli was to be partitioned into the old Saxon kingdoms of VVessex, Mercia, and Northumberland. With the fumes of wine in his head, and a general ardour and enthusiasm around him, Waltheof, it is said, gave his approval to the conspiracy, which he thouglit held out a prospect of relief to his own countrymen ; but, according to one version of the story, the next mornhig, " when he had consulted with his pillow, and awaked his wits to perceive the danger whereunto he was drawn, he determined not to move in it," and took measures to prevent its breaking out. A more generally-received account, however, is, that Wal- theof, seeing from the first the madness of the scheme, and the little probability it offered of bene- fiting the English people, refused to engage in it, and only touk an oath of secrecy. The whole pro- ject, indeed, was insane; the discontented barons had scarcely a chance of succeeding against the esta- blished authority and the genius of William ; and their success, had it been possible, would have proved a curse to the country, — a step fatally retrograde, — a going back towards the time of the Saxon Heptarchy, when England was fractured into a number of petty, hostile states. It is quite certain that Waltheof never took up arms, nor did any overt act that could be construed into treason ; but in his uneasiness of mind, and his confidence in so dear a connexion, he disclosed to his wife Judith all that had been done in Norwich Castle ; and this confidence is generally believed to have been one of the main causes of his ruin. Roger Fitz-Osborn and Ralph de Gael, the real heads of * Will. Malm.— Matt. Paris.— Ordcri?. the confederacy, were hurried into action before their scheme was ripe, for their secret was betrayed by some one. The first of these earls, who had returned to his government, and collected his fol- lowers and a considerable number of Welsh, was checked in his attempt to cross the Severn at Wor- cester ; nor could he find a passage at any other point, as Ours, the Viscount of Worcester, and Wulfstan, the bishop, occupied the left bank of that river with a great force of Norman cavalry. Egelwin, the abbot of Evesham, who, like Wulf- stan, was an Englishman, induced the population of Gloucester to rise and co-operate with the king's officers; and Walter de Lacy, a great baron in those parts, soon brought up a mixed host of English and Normans, that rendered the Earl of Hereford's project of crossing the Severn, to co- operate with his brother-in-law in the heart of England, altogether hopeless. Lanfranc, the Italian Archbishop of Canterbury, who acted as viceroy during William's absence, proceeding with the greatest decision, also sent troops from London and Winchester to oppose Fitz-Osl)orn, at whose head he hurled, at the same time, the terrible sen- tence of excommunication. In writing to the king in Normandy, the Primate said, "It would be with pleasure, and as envoy of God, that we would wel- come you among us; but," added the energetic old priest, " do not hurry yourself to cross the sea, for it would be putting us to shame to come and aid us in destroying such traitors and thieves." The Earl of Hereford fell back from the Severn ; and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Norfolk, left to himself, and unable to procure in time assistance for which he had applied to the Danes, was sud- denly attacked by a royal army of very superior force, led on by Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, Geoffrey, bishop of Coutance, and Richard de Bienfait and \Villiam de AV'arenne, the two justi- ciaries of the kingdom, who obtained a complete victory, and cut off the right foot of every prisoner they made. The earl retreated to Norwich, garri- soned his castle with the most trusty of his fol- lowers, and, leaving his bride to defend it, passed over to Brittany, in hopes of obtaining succour from his countrymen. The daughter of William Fitz-Osborn defended Norwich Castle with great bravery ; and when, at the end of three months, she capitulated, she obtained mild terms for her gar- rison, which was almost entirely composed of Bretons. They did not suffer in life or limb, but were shipped off to the continent within the term of forty days. The Bretons generally had rendered themselves unpopular at \V illiam's court. With the true character of their race, they were irascible, tur- bulent, factious, and much more devoted to the head of their clan than to the king. W hen they were embarked, Lanfranc wrote to his master, " Glory be to God, your kingdom is at last purged of the filth of tliese Bretons." The king invaded Brittany in the hope of exterminating the fugitive Earl of Norwich in his native castle, and reducing that province to entire subjection ; but, after laying 382 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. an unsuccessful siege to the town of Dol, he was obliged to retire before an army of Bretons, who were supported by the French king.* William then crossed the Channel to suppress the insurrec- tion in England ; but by the time he arrived there was little left for him to do except to punish the principal offenders. The Earl of Hereford had been followed, defeated, and taken prisoner ; and many of his adherents, Welsh, English, and Nor- mans, hanged on high gibbets, or blinded or muti- lated. At a royal court, De Gael was outlawed, and his brother-in-law, Fitz-Osborn, condemned to perpetual imprisonment and the forfeiture of his 23roperty. Scarcely one of the guests at the ill- augured marriage of Emma Fitz-Osborn escaped with life ; and even the inhabitants of the town of Norwich felt the weight of royal vengeance. The last and most conspicuous victim was Waltheof, who had been guilty at most of a misprision of treason. His secret had been betrayed by his wife Judith, who is said, moreover, to have accused him of inviting over the Danish fleet, which now made its appearance on the coast of Norfolk. The motive that made this heartless woman seek the death of her brave and generous husband was a passion she had conceived for a Norman nobleman, whom slie hoped to marry if she could but be made a widow. Others, however, althovigh acting under different impulses, were quite as urgent as the Conqueror's niece for the execution cf the English earl. These were Norman barons who had cast the eyes of affection on his honours and estates, — " his great possessions being his greatest enemies. " The judges were divided in opinion, as to the proper sentence ; some of them maintaining that, as a revolted English subject, Waltheof ought to die ; others, that as an officer of the king, and according to Norman law, he ought only to suffer the minor punishment of perpetual imprisonment. These differences of opinion lasted nearly a whole year, during which the earl was confined in the royal citadel of Winchester. At length his wife and other enemies prevailed ; the sentence of death was pronounced, and confirmed by the king, Avho is said to have long wished for the opportunity of putting him out of his way. The unfortunate son of that great and good earl, Siward, whom Shak- speare has immortalised, was executed on a hill, a short distance from the town of Winchester, at a very early hour in the morning,'and in great haste, lest the citizens should become aware of his fate, and attempt a rescue, f His body was thrown into a hole dug at a cross-road, and covered with earth in a hurry ; but the king was induced to permit its removal thence, and the English monks of Croy- land, to whom the deceased earl had been a bene- factor, took it up and carried it to their abbey, where they gave it a more honourable sepulture. The patriotic superstition of the nation soon con- verted the dead warrior into a saint, and the uni- versal grief of the English people found some con- • Daru, Hist, do la Bretagne. t Orderic gives some curious particulars respecting the execution. solation in giving a ready credence to the miracles said to be performed at his tomb. The Anglo- Saxon hagiology seems to have abovuided beyond that of most other nations in unfortunate patriots and heroes who had fallen in battle against the invaders of the country. We may excuse the superstition for the sake of the patriotism ; but it was of course far otherwise with the Conqueror, who took harsh measures against the English abbot of Croyland for publishing the miraculous facts, and preaching about them to those who visited his house to weep and pray over Waltheof's grave. A council of Norman bishops and barons assembled at Ijondon accused the abbot of idolatry, degraded him from his dignity, and sent him as a simple monk or recluse, to be shut up in Glaston- bury abbey, which was far away from Croyland, and governed by Toustain, a Norman, noted as being " cruentissimus abbas" (a most cruel abbot). But, in spite of the decisions of the Norman council, the ecclesiastical chief of Croyland was still a true man in the eyes of the English, and Earl Waltheof remained a saint in their estimation. Even when forty years had passed, and the government of the abbey, which had been held by a succession of foreigners, fell to a certain Geoffrey, a native of Orleans, the miracles began again at the tomb of the English chief, and the people flocked thither in great numbers, heedless of the mockery and insults of the Norman monks of Croyland, Avho- maintained that Waltheof was a felon and a traitor, who had justly merited his fate.* And what became of the widow of the brave son of Siward, — of the " in- famous Judith," as she is called by nearly all tlie chroniclers ? So far from permitting her to marry the man of whom she was enamoured, her unc)e William, who was most despotic in these matters, and claimed as part of his prerogative the right of disposing of female wards, insisted on her giving her hand to one Simon, a Fienchman of Senlis, a very brave soldier, but lame and deformed ; and when the perverse widow rejected the match with insulting language, he drove her from his presence, deprived her of all Waltheof's estates, and gave them to Simon without the incumbrance of such a wife. Cast from the king's favour, and reduced to poverty, she became almost as unpopular with the Normans as she was with the English; and the wretched woman, hated by all, or justly contemned, passed the rest of her life in wandering in different corners of England, seeking to hide her shame in remote and secluded places, f The Normans had been gradually encroaching on the Welsh territory, both on the side of the Dee and on the side of the Severn, and now William in person led a formidable army into Wales, where he is said to have struck such terror that the native princes performed feudal homage to him at St. David's, and delivered many hostages and Norman and English prisoners, with which he returned as * Orderic. Vital. — Florent. Wigorn. — Ingulpli. \ Odio omnibus habita, et digue despicta, per diversa loca ct iatibala erravit, — Ingulph. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 383 " a victorious conqvieror." In the north of Eng- land he made no farther progress, and had con- siderable difficulty in retaining the land he had occupied. The Scots again crossed the Tweed and the Tyne, and much harassed the Norman barons. At the approach of a superior army they retired ; but William's officers did not follow them, and the only result of the expedition, on the king's side, was the founding of the city of Newcastle-upon- Tyne. The impression made upon Scotland by the Conqueror, when he had marched in person, must have been of the slightest kind, and his circum- stances never permitted him to return. A.D. 1077-9. He was now wounded by the sharp tooth of filial disobedience, and obliged to be frequently, and for long intervals, on the con- tinent, where a fierce and unnatural war was waged between father and son. When William first received the submission of the province of Maine (the subsequent and unfortunate insurrec- tion of which we have mentioned), he had pro- mised the inhabitants to make his eldest son, Robert, their prince ; and before departing for the conquest of England he stipulated, that in case of succeeding in his enterprise, he would resign the duchy of Normandy to the same son. So confident was he of success, that he permitted the Norman chiefs who consented to, and legalised the appoint- ment, to swear fealty and render homage to young Robert as their future sovereign. But all this was done to allay the jealousy of the king of France and his other neighbours, uneasy at the prospect of his vastly extending power ; and when he was firmly seated in his conquest, and had strength- ened his hands, William openly showed his deter- mination of keeping and ruling both his insular kingdom and his continental duchy. Grown up to man's estate, Robert claimed Avhat he consi- dered his right. " My son, I wot not to throw off my clothes till I go to bed," was the homely but decisive answer of his father. Robert was brave to rashness, ambitious, impatient of command; and a young prince in his circumstances was never yet without adherents and counsellors to urge him to those extreme measures on which they found their own hopes of fortune and advancement. He was suspected of fanning the flames of discontent in Brittany as well as in Maine, and to have had an understanding with the king of France, when that monarch frustrated William's attempt to seize the fugitive Breton Raoul de Gael, and forced the king of England to raise the siege of Dol. Some circumstances which added to the number of the unnatural elements already engaged made Robert declare himself more openly. In person he was less favoured by nature than his two younger brothers William and Henry, who seemed to engross all their father's favour, and who probably made an improper use of the nickname of Courte-heuse* which was given to Robert, on account of the shortness of his legs. One day, when the king • Literally " short-hose,'' or " short-boot" — Brevit Oerea. Orderio. Vitttl. and his covirt were staying in the little town of L'.\igle, William and Henry went to the house of a certain Roger Chaussiegue, which had been allotted to their brother Robert for his lodging, and installed themselves, without his leave, in the upper gallery or balcony. After playing for a time at dice, " as was the fashion with military Dice Plating,— From an Engraving in Strutt's Sports. men,"* they began to make a great noise and up- roar, and then they finished their boyish pranks by emptying a pitcher of water on the heads of Robert and his comrades, who were passing in the court below. Robert, naturally passionate, pro- bably required no additional incentive; but it is stated, that one of his companions, Alberic de Grantmesnil, a son of Hugh de Grantmes- nil, whom King William had formerly de- prived of his estates in England, instigated the prince to resent the action of his brotliers as a public aifront, which could not be borne in honour. Robert drew his sword and ran up stairs, vowing he wovild wipe out the insult with blood. A great tumult followed, and the king, who rushed to the spot, had much difficulty in quelling it. That very night Robert fled with his companions to Rouen, fully determined to raise the standard of revolt. He failed in his first attempt, which was to take the castle of Rouen ; and soon after, some of his warmest partisans were surprised and made prisoners by the king's officers. The prince escaped across the frontiers of Normandy into the district of Le Perche, where Hugh, nejjhew of Aubert le Ribaud, welcomed him, and sheltered him in his castles of Sorel and Reymalard. By the mediation of his mother, Avho seems to have been fondly attached to him, Robert was reconciled to his father ; but the reconciliation did not last long, for the prince was as impatient for authority as ever; and the young counsellors who sur- rounded him found it unseemly and altogether abominable that he should be left so poor, through the avarice of his father, as not to have a shilling to give his faithful friends who followed his for- tunes.f Thus excited, Robert went to his father, and again demanded possession of Normandy ; but the king again refused him,^ exhorting him at the • " Ibique super solarium (sicut militibus mos est) tesseris ludero ccEperunt." — Ibid, f Orderic. 384 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. same time to change his associates for serious old men like the royal counsellor and prime minister, Archbishop Lanfranc. " Sire," said Robert, bluntly, " I came here to claim my right, and not to listen to sermons — I heard plenty of them, and tedious ones too, when I was learning my gram- mar;'' and then he added, that he insisted on a positive answer to his demand of the duchy. The king wrathfuUy replied that he would never give up Nurmandy, his native land, nor share with another any part of England, which he had won with his own toil and peril. "Well, then," said Robert, " I will go and bear arms among strangers, and perhaps I shall obtain I'roin them what is re- fused to me by my father."* He set out accord- ingly, and wandered through Flanders, Lorraine, Gascony, and other lands, visiting dukes, counts, and rich burgesses, relating his grievances, and asking assistance ; but all the money he got on these eleemosynary circuits he dissipated among minstrels and jugglers, parasites and prostitutes, and was thus obliged to go again a begging, or borrow money at an enormous interest. Queen Matilda, whose maternal tenderness was not estranged by the follies and vices of her son, con- trived to remit him several sums when he was in great distress. William discovered this, and sternly forbade it fur the future. But her heart still yearning for the prodigal, the queen made further remittances, and her secret was again be- trayed. The king then reproached her in bitter terms for distributing among his enemies the trea- sures he gave her to guard for himself, and ordered the arrest of Samson, her messenger, who had carried the money, and whose eyes he vowed to tear out as a proper punishment. Samson, who was a Breton, took to flight, and became a monk " for the salvation both of body and soul.'*t After leading a vagabond life for some time, Robert repaired to the French court; and King Philip, still finding in him the instrument he wanted, openly espoused his cause, and established him in the castle of Gerberoy, on the very con- fines of Normandy, where he supported himself by plundering the neighbouring country, and whence he corresponded with the disaffected in the ducliy. Kniglits and troops of adventvirers on horseback flocked to share the plunder and the pay he now had to offer them : in the number were as many Norman as French subjects, and not a few men of King William's own household. Burning with rage, the king crossed the Channel with a formid- able English army, and came in person to direct the siege of the strong castle of Gerberoy, where he lost many men in fruitless operations, and from sorties made by the garrison. With all his faults, Robert had many good and generous qualities, which singularly endeared him to his friends when living, and which, along with his cruel misfortunes, caused him to be mourned when dead. Ambition, passion, and evil counsel had lulled and stupified, • Oidprie. + Pro salTatione corporis et aiiimoc— Ordcric. Vital. but had not extirpated his natural feelings. One day, in a sally from his castle, he chanced to enc;age in single combat with a stalwart warrior clad in mail, and concealed, like himself, with the visor of his helm. Both were valiant and well skilled in the use of their weapons, but, after a fierce combat, Robert wounded and unhorsed his antagonist. In the voice of the fallen warrior, who shouted for assistance, the prince, Avho was about to follow up his advantage with a death-stroke, recognised his father, and, instantly dismoimting, fell on his knees, craved forgiveness with tears, and helping him to his saddle, saw him safely out of the melee which now thickened. The men who were coming up to the king's assistance, and bringing a second horse for him to mount, were nearly all killed. W illiam rode away to his camp on Robert's horse, smarting with his wound, and still cursing his son who had so seasonably mounted him.* He relinquished the siege of Gerberoy in despair, and went to Rouen, where, as soon as his temper permitted, his wife and bishops, with many of the Norman noble?, laboured to reconcile him again to Robert. For a long time the iron-hearted king was deaf to tlieir entreaties, or only irritated by them. " Why," cried he, " do you solicit me in favour of a traitor Avho has seduced my men,— my very pupils in war, whom I fed with my own bread, and invested with the knightly arms they wear ?"t At last he yielded, and Robert, having again knelt and wept before him, received his father's pardon, and accompanied him to England. But even now the reconciliation on the part of the unforgiving king was a mere matter of policy, and Robert, finding no symptoms of returning affection, and fearing lor his life or liberty, soon fled for the third time, and r.ever saw his father's face again. His departure was followed by another paternal malediction, which was never revoked. A.D. 1080. We have seen in the course of this, as we shall see in several succeeding reigns, that bishops Avere soldiers as well as priests, — as ready to wield the lance as the crosier, — and especially ambitious of temporal commands. Walcher de Tiorraine, installed in the bishopric of Durham and his strong cas-tle " on the highest hill," soon united to his episcopal functions the political and military government of Northumberland. The admirers of the earl-bishop boasted that he was equally skilful in repressing rebellion with the edge of the sword and reforming the morals of the English by elo- quent discourse.} The plain truth, however, seems to be, that the Lorrainer was a harsh task-master to the English, layhig heavy labours and taxes upon them, and permitting the officers under him and his men-at-arms to plunder, insult, and kill them with impunity. § Liulf, an Englishman of noble birth, and endeared by his good qualities to •Chron. Sax. — I-'loient Wigoru. — Tliestory is told somewhat difler- , t-ntly ill the Cliron. Lambardi. + Tirones meos, quos alai et armis militaribus decoiavi, abduxit— Ordi'ric. Vital. X Frainaret rebellionem gentis gladio et reformaret mores eloquio.— ' Will. Malms. i 5 Mat. Paris. — Auglia Sacra. S Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 385 the whole province, ventured, on being robbed by some of Walcher's satellites, to lay his complaint before the bishop. Shortly after making this ac- cusation, Liulf was murdered by night in his manor- house, near the city of Durham, and it was well proved that one Gilbert, and others in the bishop's service, were the perpetrators of the foul deed. " Hereupon," says an old writer, " the malice of the people was kindled against him, and when it was known that he had received the murderers into his house and favoured them as before, they stomached the matter highly." Secret meetings were held at the dead of night, and the Northumbrians, who had lost none of their old spirit, and were absolutely driven to madness, because, among other causes of endearment, Liulf had married the widow of Earl Siward,the mother of the unfortunate Earl Waltheof, resolved to take a sanguinary vengeance. Both parties met by agreement at Gateshead;* the bishop, who protested his innocence of the homicide, in the pomp of power, surrounded by his retainers ; the Northumbrians, in humble guise, as if to peti- tion their lord for justice, though every man among them carried a sharp weapon hid under his gar- ment. The bishop, alarmed at the number of English that continued to flock to the place of ren- dezvous, retired with all his retinue into the church. The people then signified in plain terms that, unless he came forth and showed himself, they would fire the place where he stood. As he did not move the threat was executed. Then, seeing the smoke and flames arising, he caused Gilbert and his accomplices to be thrust out of the church. The people fell with savage joy on the murderers of Liulf, and cut them to pieces. Half suffbcated by the heat and smoke, the bishop himself wrapped the skirts of his gown over his face and came to the threshold of the door. There seems to have been a moment of hesitation, but a voice was heard among the crowd, saying, " Good rede, short rede ! Slay ye the bishop !" and the bishop was slain accordingly, f The foreigners had nothing left but the alternative of being burnt alive or perishing by the sword. The bishop's chaplain seemed to give a preference to the fonner death, for he lingered long in the burning church ; but, in the end, he was compelled by the raging fire to come out, and was also slain aiid hacked to pieces — " as he had well de- served," adds an old historian, " being the main promoter of all the mischief that had been done in the country."t Of all who had accompanied the bishop to the tragical meeting at Gateshead, only two were left alive, and these were menials of English birth. Above a hundred men, Normans and Flemings, perished with Walcher.§ The con- spirators attacked the castle at Durham ; but find- ing it well defended by a numerous garrison, and altogether too strong for them, they gave up the siege the fourth day, and dispersed. A.D. 1082. William intrusted to one bishop the * The name means " Goat's Head ;" " ad caput caprae."— Florent. Wigorn. + Matt. Tar. t Uolinshed. { Chron. Sax. office of avenging another. His half-brother, Odo, the fierce bishop of Bayeux, marched to Durham with a numerous army. He found no force on foot to resist him, but he treated the whole country as an insurgent province, and making no distinction of persons, and employing no judicial forms, he be- headed or mutilated all the men he could find in their houses. Some persons of property bought their lives by surrendering everything they pos- sessed. By this exterminating expedition Odo obtained the reputation of being one of the greatest " dominators of the English ; " but it seems to have been the last he commanded, and disgraced with cruelty, during the reign of William. This church- man, besides being bishop of Bayeux in Normandy, was Earl of Kent in England, and held many high oflices in this island, where he had accumulated enormous wealth, chiefly by extortion, or a base selling of justice. For some years a splendid dream of ambition, which he thought he could realise by means of money, increased his rapacity. There were many instances in those ages of kings becoming monks, but not one of a Catholic priest becoming a king. Profane crowns being out of his reach, Odo aspired to a sacred one, — to the tiara, — that triple crown of Rome which gradually obtained, in another shape, a homage more widely extended than that paid to the Ceesars. His dream was cherished by the predictions of some Italian astro- logers, who, living in his service, and being well paid, assured him that he would be the successor of Gregory VII., the reigning pope. Odo opened a correspondence with the eternal city by means of English and Norman pilgrims, who were constantly flocking thither, bought a palace at Rome, and sent rich presents to the senators. His project was not altogether so visionary as it has been considered by most writers, and we can hardly understand why his half-brother, William, should have checked it, unless indeed his interference proceeded from his desire of getting possession of the bishop's wealth. Ten years before the Conqueror invaded England, Robert Guiscard, one of twelve heroic Norman brothers, had acquired the sovereignty of the greater part of those beautiful countries that are now included within the kingdom of Naples. The Norman lance was dreaded in all the rest of Italy, and, with a Norman pope established at Rome, the supremacy of that people miglit have been extended from one end of the Peninsula to the other. The bishop of Bayeux had some reason for counting on the sympathy of his powerful country- men in the south, the close neighbours of Rome ; and the influence of gold had been felt before now in the college of cardinals and the elections of popes. It is quite certain that a considerable number of the Norman chiefs entered into Odo's views, and when he made up his mind to set out for Italy in person, a brilliant escort was formed for him. " Hugh the AVolf," the famous Earl of Chester, who had a long account of sin to settle if he considered the butchering of English and Welsh as crimes, was anxious to go to Rome, and joined 386 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book III. the bishop, with some considerable barons, his friends, and much money. The king was in Normandy when he heard of this expedition, which had been prepared in great secrecy, and being resolute in his determination of stopping it, he instantly set sail for England. He surprised the aspirant to the popedom at the Isle of Wight, seized his treasures, and summoned him before a council of Norman barons hastily assembled at that island. Here the king accused his half- brother of "untruth and sinister dealings," — of having abused his power both as viceroy and judge, and, as an earl of the realm, of having maltreated the English beyond measure, to the great danger of the common cause, — of having robbed the churches of the land, — and, finally, of having seduced and attempted to carry out of England, and beyond the Alps, the warriors of the king, who needed their services for the safe keeping of the kingdom. Having exposed his grievances, William asked the council what such a brother deserved at his hands ? No one durst answer : " Arrest him, then !" cried the king, " and see that he be well looked to !" If they had been backward in pronouncing an opinion, they were still more averse to lay hands on a bishop : not one of the council moved, though it was the king that ordered them. William then advanced himself, and seized the prelate by his robe. "I am a clerk, — a priest," cried Odo. " I am a minister of the Lord : the pope alone has the right of judging me!" But his brother, without losing his hold, replied, " I do not arrest you as bishop of Bayeux, but as Earl of Kent." * Odo was carried forthwith to Normandy, and, instead of crossing the Alps and the Apennines, was shut up in the dungeon of a castle. Some of the worst crimes imputed to Odo had been committed at the order and for the service of his brother, but William probably found a relief in laying as much of the guilt as he could on another's shoulders ; and the bishop was so universally detested by the English people, that the king became almost popular among them by the punishment he awarded. Soon after imprisoning his brother, William lost his wife, Matilda, whom he tenderly loved; and after her death, it was observed, or fancied, he became more suspicious, more jealous of the au- thority of his old companions in arms, and more avaricious than ever. The coming on of old age is, however, enough in itself to account for such a change in such a man. After a lapse of ten years, the Danes were again heard of. The fleet and army which had co-operated so badly with Edgar Athel- ing and the Northumbrians, and so shamefully deserted them in the hour of need, when the Con- queror marched upon York, returned to Denmark a shattered and dishonoured wreck, having been assailed by tempests on their way. Sueno Estrid- sen disgraced and banished Osbern, the com- mander-in-chief of the expedition, who was his own brother, charging him with corrupt and faith- less conduct. He then assembled a second fleet • Chion. Su. — Florent. — Malmsb. — Orderic. for the assistance of the English confederates, who maintained the struggle in the fen country with Hereward; but when these ships reached our eastern coast, those on board found that AVilliam was provided with a maritime force quite sufficient to prevent their landing or assisting the patriots. The fleet then returned to Denmark with no more success, but with less dishonour, than the one that had preceded it. In a short space of time both Sueno and his legitimate son Harold departed this life. Canute the Dane, who was illegitimate, like William the Norman, then ascended the throne, and though he ended it as a saint he began his reign like a warrior, and laid claim to England as successor of his name- sake Canute the Great. Not relying wholly on the strength of Denmark, he applied to the Norwegians for assistance, after the fashion of old times, not for- getting to remind them of the glory their forefathers had obtained in England. Olaf, or Olave, sur- named the Peaceful, was then king of Norway. A meeting between the two kings took place upon the river Gotha-Elf, near Konungahella (or Kong- hell), at that time the capital of the Norwegian kingdom. Olave approved of the enterprise as a just one, and promised to furnish sixty ships, but declined taking any further part in it, affirming that Norway could no longer furnish such an ar- mament as had foUoAved his father Hardrada to the Humber ; and that he, Olave, was far from being such a general as Hardrada. Olave must have remembered the fearful catastrophe of Stam- ford-bridge, the generosity he experienced from Harold when a captive in his hands, and the vow he took to that unfortunate king to maintain con- stant faith and friendship with the English.* It is probable, however, that he would not consider a war made on the Normans in England as a breach of that vow ; and that the narrow scale of his co- operation was really owing to the cause he assigned to Canute, — namely, that the strength of Norway had been exhausted by Hardrada's fatal expedition. In another quarter to which he applied Canute received more liberal promises ; his father-in-law, Robert, Earl of Flanders, engaging to join him with six hundred ships. The united armament, it was calculated, would amount to a thousand sail. Olave sent his sixty ships with sufficient promptitude ; but we have not discovered the state of preparation of the Earl of Flanders, who possibly had promised more than he could perform. Delays of various kinds arose ; and when Canute had fixed the day for sailing, he discovered that his own brother, the governor of Sleswic, who was engaged to accom- pany him to England, had secretly withdrawn from the fleet to his government, intending to take ad- vantage of his absence, and seize the Danish throne. He was apprehended, and sent in chains to Flan- ders, there to be kept in safe prison ; but all this caused still further delay, and the traitor left many partisans in the fleet. These men, among whom it appears were some officers of high rank, reported « See ante, p. 209. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 387 among the mariners and soldiers that the provisions for the voyage would be found insufficient ; and many left their ships from the dread of being starved at sea. There was also the discouragement of bad weather, contrary winds, and inauspicious omens ; and the gold of the wealthy king of Eng- land is said to have been again employed in Denmark. Desertion at last took place to such an extent that Canute, abandoned by his own, was left with only the Norwegian fleet ; and thus the last invasion from the Baltic with which England was threatened was wholly frustrated.* The intention of Canute, his alliances and preparations, — of all of which he was well informed, — kept William in a state of anxiety for nearly two whole years, and were the cause of his laying fresh burdens upon his English subjects. He revived the odious Dane-gelt ; and because many lands and manors which had been charged with it in the time of the Anglo-Saxon kings had been specially exempted from this tax when he granted them in fief to his nobles, he made up the deficiency by raising it upon the other lands to the rate of six shillings a hide. The money he thus obtained, with part of the treasures he had amassed, was employed in hiring and bringing over foreign auxiliaries ; for though he could rely on an English army when fighting against Frenchmen, or the people of Normandy, Maine, and Brittany, he could not trust them at home ; and he well knew that many of them on the eastern and north-eastern shores would join the Danish invaders heart and hand, instead of opposing them. He therefore col- lected, as he had done before, men of all nations; and these came across the Channel in such numbers that, according to the chroniclers, people began to wonder how the land could feed so many hungry bellies. These hordes of foreigners sorely op- pressed the natives, for William quartered them throughout the country, to be paid as well as sup- ported. They were mostly foot-soldiers, which imp.lies that they were men of a very low and rude condition ; for at this period soldiers of fortune of any pretension served only on horseback. One of the bands which he thus engaged belonged to Hugh, a brother of the French king ; but this was prol)ably of a class superior to the rest. To complete the miseries inflicted upon England at this time, William ordered all the land lying near the sea-coast to be laid waste, so that, if the Danes should land, they would find no ready supply of food or forage. t The Conqueror had often felt the want of a naval force, but he had not the same genius for maritime as for military affairs; and it requires more time to make good sailors than to make good soldiers. Knowing, however, that to encourage commerce was the best means of fostering a navy, he repeatedly invited foreigners to frequent his ports, promising that they and their property should be perfectly secure. But he did not live to possess • Southey, Naval. Hist.— Snorre, Antiq. Celto-Scand. t Saxon Chron. a navy of his own. The spirit of Englishmen, who were more prone to the sea than his Normans, was depressed under his iron rule ; nor did this country make any approach towards her naval supremacy until several reigns after. Another domestic calamity afflicted the latter years of the Conqueror, — for he saw a violent jealousy growing up between his favourite sons, William and Henry. Robert, his eldest son, con- tinued an exile or fugitive; and Richard, his second son in order of birth (but whom some make ille- gitimate), • had been gored to death by a stag* some years before, as he was hunting in the New Forest; and he was noted by the old English annalists as being the first of several of the Con- queror's progeny that perished in that place, — " the justice of God punishing in him his father's dispeopling of that country." Perhaps no single act of the Conqueror inflicted more misery within the limits of its operation, and, certainly, none has been more bitterly stigma- tised than his seizure and wasting of the lands in Hampshire, to make himself a hunting-ground. Like most of the great men of the time, who had few other amusements, William was passionately fond of the chase. The Anglo-Saxon kings bad the same taste, and left many royal parks and forests in all parts of England, wherein he might have gratified a reasonable passion ; but he was not satisfied with the possession of these, and resolved to have a vast hunting-ground " for his insatiate and superfluous pleasure" in the close neighbourhood of the royal city, Winchester, his favourite place of residence. In an early part of his reign he therefore seized all the south- western part of Hampshire, measuring thirty miles from Salisbury to the sea, and in circumference not much less than ninety miles. This wide dis- trict, before called Ytene or Ytchtene (a name yet partially preserved), was to some extent unin- habited, and fit for the purposes of the chase, abounding in sylvan spots and coverts ; but it included, at the same time, many fertile and culti- vated manors, which he caused to be totally ab- sorbed in the surrounding wilderness, and many towns or villages, with no fewer than thirty-six mother or parish churches, all which he demo- lished, and drove away the people, making thera no compensation. According to the indisputable authority of Domesday-Book, in which we have an account of the state of this territory both before and after its " afforestation," the damage done to private property must have been immense. In an extent of nearly ninety miles in circumference, one hundred and eight places, manors, villages, or hamlets suffered in a greater or less degree. t Some melancholy traces of these ancient abodes of the Anglo-Saxons are still to be found in the recesses of the New Forest, and have been de- • other accounts say he was killed by a "pestilent blast" which crossed him while hunting ; but we believe all fix the scene of his death in the New Forest. + Warner, Topographical Remarks on the South- Western parts of Hampsliire. 388 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book 111. scribed by a gentleman * wbo has passed much of his life in and near those woods, and who is the successor in office to Sir Walter Tyrrell, as bow- bearer to the king. In many spots, though no ruins are visible above ground, either the line of erections can be traced by the elevation of the soil, or fragments of building materials have been dis- covered on turning up the surface. The traditional names of places still used by the foresters, such as ** Church-place," " Church-moor," " Thomson's Castle," seem to mark the now solitary spots as the sites of ancient buildings where the English people worshipped their God, and dwelt in peace, before they Avere swept away by the Conqueror ; and the same elegant writer we have last referred to sug- gests that the termination of ha7n and ton, yet annexed to some woodlands, may be taken as evi- dence of the former existence of hamlets and towns in the forest.f We have entered into these slight details because some foreign writers, at the head of whom is Vol- taire, have professed a disbelief of the early history of the New Forest, and because some native writers, including even Dr. Warton, who was " naturally disposed to cling to the traditions of antiquity," fancying there were no existing ruins or traces of such desolation, have doubted whether William destroyed villages, castles, and churches, though that demolition is recorded by chroniclers who wrote a very short time after the event, and is proved beyond the reach of a doubt by Domesday- Book. If any other proof were necessary, it ought to be found in the universal tradition of the people in all ages, that on account of the unusual crimes and cruelties committed thcTe by William, God made the New Forest the death-scene of three princes of his own blood. The seizure of a Avaste or wholly uninhabited district would have been nothing extraordinary : it was the sufferings of the people, who were driven from their villages, — the wrongs done the clergy, whose churches were destroyed, that made the deep and ineffaceable impression. J At the same time that the Conqueror thus enlarged the field of his own pleasures at the expense of his subjects, he enacted new laws, by which he prohibited hunting in any of his forests, and rendered the penalties more severe than ever had been inflicted for such offences. At this period the killing of a man might be atoned for by payment of a moderate fine or composition : but not so, by the New Forest laws, the slaying of • William Stewart Rose, Esq. The office of bow-bearer for tlic New Forest is now, of course, a sinecure, and it is almost purely honorary, — the salary beinj; forty shillings in the yenr and one buck in the season. In his oath of office the bow-bearer swears " to be of good beh.iviour towards his Majesty's wild beasts." + See notes to "Til!! Red Kin;,','' a spirited poem, in which the manners and costume of the period are carefully preserved. Mr. Rose justly observes, "That this cannot be considered as one of those 'historical doubts,' the solution of which involves nothing beyond the rat-re disentanglement of an intricate knot. It m.-iy bo considered as making one of a series of acts of tyranny, unvarnished with any plea which might palliate or disguise its enormity, and, as such, forming a curious feature in the history of manners." X According to most of the <ild writers some monasteries were also destroyed. As the Saxon buildings were chiefly of wood, it is natural that the traces left of them should be slight. one of the king's beasts of chase. " He ordained," says the Saxon chronicle, " that whosoever should kill a stag or a deer should have his eyes torn out : wild boars were protected in the same manner as deer, and he even made statutes equally severe to preserve the hares. This savage king loved wild beasts as if he had been their father.'" These forest laws, which were executed with rigour against the English, caused great misery, for many of them depended on the chase as a chief means of subsistence. By including in his royal domain all the great forests of England, and insisting on his right to grant or refuse permission to hunt in them, William gave sore offence to many of his Norman nobles, who were as much addicted to the sport as himself, but who were prohibited from keeping; sporting dogs, even on their own estates, luiless they subjected the poor animals to a mutilation of the fore-paws, that rendered them unfit for hunting. From their first establishment, and through their diflerent gradations of " forest laws" and " game laws," these jealous regulations have constantly been one of the most copious sources of dissension, litigation, violence, and iDloodshed. Towards the end of the year 1086, William summoned all the chiefs of the army of the Con- quest, the sons of those chiefs, and every one to whom he had given a fief, to meet him at Salis- bury. All the barons and all the abbots came, attended with men-at-arms and part of their vas- sals ; the whole assemblage, it is said, amounting to 60,000 men. The chiefs, both lay and church- men, took again the oath of allegiance and homage to the king ; but the assertion, that they rendered the same to Prince William, as his successor, seems to be without good foundation. Shortly after receiving these new pledges, William, accom- panied by his two sons, passed over to the conti- nent, taking with him " a mighty mass of money fitted for some great attempt," and being followed by the numberless curses of the English people. The enterprise he had on hand was a war with France, for the possession of the city of Mantes, with the territory situated between the Epte and the Oise, which was then called the country of Vexiu. William, at first, entered into negotiations for this territory, which he claimed as his right ; but Pliilip, the French king, after amusing his rival for a while with quibbles and sophisms, marched troops into the country, and secretly authorised some of his barons to make incursions on the frontiers of Normandy. During the negotiations William fell sick, and kept his bed. As he ad- vanced in years he grew excessively fat, and, spite of his violent exercise, his indulgence in the plea- sures of the table had given him considerable rotun- dity of person. On the score of many grudges, his hatred of the French king was intense ; and Philip now drove him to frenzy, by saying, as a good joke among his courtiers, that his cousin William was a long while lying in, but that no doubt there would be a fine churching when he was delivered. On hear- ing this coarse and insipid jest, the conqueror of Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 389 England swore by the most terrible of his oaths — by the splendour and birth of Christ — that he would be churched in Notre Dame, the cathedral of Paris, and present so many wax torches, that all France should be set in a blaze.* It was not until the end of July (1081) that he was in a state to mount his war-horse, though it is asserted by a contemporary that he was conva- lescent before then, and expressly waited that season to make his vengeance the more dreadful to the country. The com was almost ready for the sickle, the grapes hung in rich, ripening clusters on the vines, when William marched his cavalry through the corn-fields, and made his sol- diery tear up the vines by the roots, and cut down the pleasant trees. His destructive host was soon before Mantes, which was either taken by surprise and treachery, or offered but a feeble resistance. At his orders, the troops fired the unfortunate town, sparing neither church nor monastery, but doing their best to reduce the whole to a heap of ashes. As the Conqueror rode up to view the ruin he had made, his horse put his fore-feet on some embers or hot cinders, which caused him to swerve or plunge so violently, that the heavy rider was thrown on the high pummel of the saddle, and grievovisly bruised. The king dismounted in great pain, and never more put foot in stirrup, f He was carried slowly in a litter to Rouen, and again laid in his bed. The bruize had produced a rupture, and being in a bad habit of body, and somewhat ad- vanced in years, it was soon evident to all, and even to himself, that the consequence would be fatal. Being disturbed by the noise and bustle of Rouen, and no doubt desirous of dying in a holy place, he had himself carried to the monastery of St. Gervas, outside of the city walls. There he lingered for six weeks, surrounded by doctors who could do him no good, and by priests and monks, who, at least, did not neglect the opportunity of doing much good for others. Becoming sensible of the approach of death, his heart softened for the first time ; and though he preserved his kingly de- corum, and conversed calmly on the wonderful events of his life, he is said to have felt the vanity of all human grandeur, and a keen remorse for the crimes and cruelties he had committed. He sent money to Mantes, to rebuild the churches he had burned, and he ordered large sums to be paid to the churches and monasteries in England ; " in order," says an old chronicler, " that he might obtain remission for the robberies he had committed there." It Avas represented to him, that one of the best means of obtaining mercy from God was to show mercy to man ; and at length he consented to the instant release of his state-prisoners, some of whom had pined in dungeons for more than twenty years. Of those that were English among these captives, the most conspicuous were. Earl Morcar, Beorn, and Ulnoth, or Wulnot, the brother * Cliron. cle Normand. — Brompton. — It was the custom for women, Rt tlii'ii- churchius;, to curry lighted tapers in their hands. ■t Ordelic. — AujfUa Sacra. of Harold : of the Normans, Roger Fitz-Osborn, formerly Earl of Hereford, and Odo, bishop of Bayeux, his own half-brother. The pardon which was wrung from him with most difficidty was that of Odo, whom, at first, he excepted in his act of grace, saying he was a fire-brand, that would ruin both England and Normandy if set at large. His two younger sons, William and Henry, were assiduous round the death-bed of the king, waiting impatiently for the declaration of his last will. A day or two before his death, the Con- queror assembled some of his chief prelates and barons in his sick chamber, and declared in their presence that he bequeathed the duchy of Nor- mandy, with Maine and its other dependencies, to his eldest son, Robert, whom, it is alleged, he could not put aside in the order of succession, as the Normans were mindful of the oaths they had taken, with his father's consent, to that unfortunate prince, and were much attached to him. " As to the crown of England," said the dying monarch, " I bequeath it to no one, as I did not receive it, like the duchy of Normandy, in inheritance from my father, but acquired it by conquest and the shedding of blood with mine own goodsAvord. The succession to that kingdom I therefore leave to the decision of God, only desiring most fervently that my son William, who has ever been dutiful to me in all things, may obtain it, and prosper in it." " And what do you give unto me, O my father ?" impatiently cried Prince Henry, who had not been mentioned in this distribution. " Five thou- sand pounds' weight of silver out of my treasury," was his answer. " But what can I do with five thousand pounds of silver, if I have neither lands nor a home?" " Be patient," rej^lied the king, " and have trujt in the Lord ; suffer thy elder b.rothers to precede thee — thy time will come after their's."* Henry went straight, and drew the silver, which he weighed with great care, and then furnished himself with a strong coffer, well pro- tected with locks and iron bindings, to keep his treasure in. William leit the king's bed-side at the same time, and, without waiting to see the breo,th out of the old man's body, hastened over to England to look after his crown. About sunrise, on the 9th of September, the Conqueror was for a moment roused from a stupor into which he had fallen by the sound of bells : he eagerly inquired what the noise meant, and was answered that they were tolling the hovu- of prime in the church of St. Mary. He Ufted his hands to heaven, and saying, " I recommend my soul to my Lady Mary, the holy mother of God," instantly ex- pired. The events which folloAved his dissolution not only give a striking picture of the then un- settled state of society, but also of the character and affections of the men that waited on princes and conquerors. William's last faint sigh was the signal for a general flight and scramble. The knights, priests, and doctors who had passed the night near him, put on their spurs as soon as tbey • Orderic. 890 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. saw him dead, mounted their horses, and galloped off to their several homes, to look after their pro- perty and their own interests. The king's servants and some vassals of minor rank, left behind, then proceeded to rifle the apartment of the arms, silver vessels, linen, the royal dresses, and everything it contained, and then were to horse and away like the rest. From prime to tierce,* or for about three hours, the corpse of the mighty conqueror, aban- doned by all, lay in a state of almost perfect naked- ness on the bare boards. The citizens of Rouen were thrown into as much consternation as could have been excited by a conquering enemy at their gates : tliey either ran about the streets asking news and advice from every one they chanced to meet, or busied themselves in concealing their movables and valuables. At last the clergy and the monks thought of the decent duties owing to the mortal remains of their sovereign ; and, forming a pro- cession, they went with a crucifix, burning tapers, • The chroniclers, who were all monks or priests, always count by these and the other canonical hours, an texts, nones, vespers, &c. The church service, called prime, or prima, and which immediately succeeded matins, began about six a.m., and lasted to tierce, or ^frtia, vrhich commenced about nine a.m. and incense, to pray over the dishonoured body for the peace of its soul. The archbishop of Rouen ordained that the king should be interred at Caen, in the church of St. Stephen's, which he had built and royally endowed. But even now it should seem there were none to do it honour; for the minute relator of these dismal transactions, who was living at the time, says that his sons, his brothers, his relations, were all absent, and that of all his offi(?3rs, not one was found to take charge of the obsequies, and that it was a poor knight who lived in the neighbourhood who charged himself with the trouble and expense of the faneral, " out of his natural good nature and love of God." The body was carried by water by the Seine and the sea to Caen, where it was received by the abbot and monks of St. Stephen's ; other churchmen and the inhabitants of the city joining these, a considerable procession was formed; but as they went along after the coffin a fire suddenly broke out in the town ; laymen and clerks ran to extinguish it, and the brothers of St. Stephen's were left alone to con- duct the king to the church. Even the last burial service did not pass undisturbed. The neighbour- Chtjrch op St. Stephen at Caen. Founded by William the Conqueror. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1210. 391 ing bishops and abbots assembled for this cere- mony. The mass had been performed ; the bishop of Evreux had pronounced the panegyric, and the body was about to be lowered into the grave pre- pared for it in the church between the altar and the choir, when a man, suddenly rising in the crowd, exclaimed, with a loud voice, " Bishop, the man whom you have praised was a robber ; the very ground on which we are standing is mine, and is the site where my father's house stood. He took it from me by violence, to build this church on it. I reclaim it as my right ; and in the name of God, I forbid you to bury him here, or cover him with my glebe." The man who spoke thus boldly was Asseline Fitz -Arthur, who had often asked a just compensation from the king in his lifetime. Many of the persons present confirmed the truth of his statement ; and, after some parley, the bishops paid him sixty shillings for the grave alone, engaging, at the same time to procure him the full value of the rest of his land. The body, dressed in royal robes, but without a coffin, was then lowered into the tomb; the rest of the ceremony was hurried over, and the assembly dispersed.* William's management of the affairs of the church, and his dispute with the pope about in- vestitures, — ^liis establishing the feudal system in England, of which, however, he found a ground- • Orderic. — Wace, Roman de Rou. — Chron.de Normand. Orderic givei further details respecting the lowering of the body into the grave, but they are too revolting to be translated. work already laid by the Anglo-Saxons, — his survey and register of Domesday, the greatest civil opera- tion of his reign, — the changes his invasion produced in the language and manners of this country, — will all be discussed under their proper heads. Plis character may be deduced from his deeds — from the details we have given, to which we have little to add. No prince of the time equalled him, either as a general or a politician ; and he surpassed them all in the difficult art of bending men's wills, and achieving great things with a turbulent nobi- lity intractable to every one else. His own temper was naturally fiery ; and when he had nothing to gain by dissimulation, or to fear from those he insulted, he gave the reins to his passion, and com- pletely forgot that dignity and majesty of demea- nour which was in part innate, but still more assumed, to impose upon the herd. A domestic anecdote gives a good notion both of the violence of his temper and his love of good eating. He was so nice and curious in his repasts, that one day when his prime favourite, William Fitz-Osborn, who, as dapifer, or steward of the household, had the charge of the table, served him with the flesh of a crane only half roasted, he was so highly exaspe- rated, that he lifted up his fist, and would have stnick him had not Odo warded off the blow. One of the writers of the Saxon Chronicle, who says he " looked on him, and somewhile lived in his herd," describes him as being a very stern man, and so Statue of William the CoNauEEon. Placed against one of the external Pillars of St. Stephen, Caen. 392 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. hot and passionate, that no man durst gainsay his will ; as one who took money by right and unright, falling into great avarice, and loving greediness withal, not recking how sinfully his officers got money of poor men, or how many vmlawful things they did. He was, however, religiously inclined, after the fashion of the age ; and whatever might be the schemes of ambition, or the butcheries in which he was engaged, he never failed to hear the mass of his private chaplain in the morning, or to say his prayers at night. Dynasties have been changed, and provinces won by war, but William's attem])t against England was the last great and permanent conquest of a whole nation achieved in Europe. The companions of his conquest became one people with those they subdu.ed ; his power was trans- mitted to his posterity ; and after all the changes and revolutions that have happened in the course of seven centuries and a half, the blood of the reigning family is still kindred to his. William II. — surnamed Rufus. GnuAT Seai, op William Rupt's. A.u. 1087. William Rufus, or William the Red, who left his father at the point of death, was informed of his decease as he was on the point of embarking at Wissant, near Calais. The news only made him the more anxious to reach England, that he might, by the actual seizure of the succession, set at defiance the pretensions of any other claimant to the crown. Arriving in England, he secured the important fortresses of Dover, Pevensey, and Hastings, concealing his father's death, and pretending to be the bearer of orders from him. He then hastened to Winches- ter, where, with a proper conviction of the efficacy of money, he claimed his father's treasures which were deposited in the castle there. William de Pont-de-l'Arche, the royal treasurer, readily deli- vered him the keys, and Rufus took possession of sixty thousand pounds in pure silver, with much gold and many precious stones. His next step was to repair to Lanfranc, the primate, in whose hands the destinies of the kingdom may almost be said to have at that moment been. Bloet, a con- fidential messenger, had already delivered a letter from the deceased king, commending the cause and guidance of his son William to the archbishop, already disposed by motives both of affection and self-interest in favour of William, who had been his pupil, and for whom he had performed the sacred ceremonies on his initiation into knight- hood. It is stated, however, that Lanfranc refused to declare himself in favour of Rufus till that prince promised, upon oath, to govern according to law and right, and to ask and follow the advice of the primate in all matters of importance. It appears that Lanfranc then proceeded with as much activity as Rufus could desire. He first hastily summoned a council of the prelates and barons, to give the semblance of a free election. The former he knew he could influence, and of the latter many were absent in Normandy. Some pre- ferred William's claim and character upon prin- ciple, and others were silenced by his presence and promises. Though a strong feeling of opposition existed, none was shown at this meeting ; and Lanfranc crowned his pupil at Westminster on Sunday, the 26th of September, 1087, the seven- teenth day after the Conqueror's death. William's first act of royal authority speaks little in his favour either as a man or a son ; — it was the imprisonment of the unfortunate Englishmen whom his father had liberated on his death-bed. Earls Morcar and Wulnot, who had followed him to Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066— 121G. 393 Rui>-s OF Pevunsey Castle. England in the hope of ohtaining some part of the estates of their fathers, were an-ested at Winchester, and confined in the castle. The Norman state prisoners, however, who had been released at the same time by the Conqueror re-obtained possession of their estates and honours. He then gave a quantity of gold and silver, a part of the treasure found at Winchester, to " Otho, the goldsmith," with orders to work it into ornaments for the tomb of that father whom he had abandoned on his death-bed. When Robert Courtehose heard of his father's death he was living, an impoverished exile, at Abbeville, or, according to other accounts, in Ger- many. He, however, soon appeared in Normandy, and was joyfidly received at Rouen, the capital, and recognised as their duke by the prelates, barons, and chief men. Henry, the youngest brother of the three, put himself and his five thousand pounds of silver in a place of safety, waiting events, and being fully resolved to avail liimself of any means, no matter how dishonourable in themselves, or ruinous to his brothers, that should offer him the chance of gaining either the loyal crown or the ducal coronet. It was not perhaps easy for the Conqueror to make any better arrangement, but it was in the highest degree unlikely, under the division he had made of England and Normandy, that peace should be preserved between the two brothers. Even if ihe unscru])ulous Rufus had been less active, and the personal qualities of Robert altogether different from what they were, causes independent of the two princes threatened to lead to inevitable hosti- lities. The great barons, the followers of the Con- queror, were almost all possessed of estates and fiefs in both countries : they were naturally uneasy at the separation of the two territories, and foresaw tliat it would be impossible for them to preserve their allegiance to two masters, and that they must very soon resign or lose either their ancient patri- monies in Normandy or their new acquisitions in England. A war between the two brothers would at any time embarrass them as long as they held territory under both. The time, also, was not yet come to reconcile them to consider their native Normandy as a separate and foreign land. In short, every inducement of interest and of local attachment made them wish to see the two countries united under one sovereign ; and their only great difference of opinion on this head was, as to which of the two brothers should be that sovereign ; some of them adhering to William, while others insisted that, both by right of birth and the honourableness, generosity, and popularity of his character, Robert was the proper man to have both realms. A deci- sion of the question was inevitable ; and the first step was taken, not in Normandy, to expel Robert, but in England, to dethrone William. Had he been left to himself, the elder brother, from his love of ease and pleasure, would in all probability have remained satisfied with his duchy, but he was 394 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. beset on all sides by men who were constantly repeating how unjust and disgraceful to him it was to see a younger brother possess a kingdom while he had only a duchy, — by Norman nobles that went daily over to him complaining of the present state of affairs in England, — and by his uncle Odo, the bishop of Bayeux, who moved with all his ancient energy and fierceness in the matter, not so much out of any preference of one brother to the other, as out of his hatred of the primate Lanfranc, whom he considered as the chief cause of the dis- grace, the imprisonment, and all the misfortunes that had befallen him in the latter years of the Conqueror, and whose great credit at court, and power in the new government, excited his jealousy. The bishop was a formidable partisan, a man framed to be the leader of a conspiracy : he had many friends among the most powerful of the barons ; but so abhorred was he by all classes of English, that it may be doubted whether he did not rather weaken than strengthen the party he embraced. Robert promised to come over with an army in all haste, and Odo engaged to do the rest. At the Easter festival the Red King kept his court at Winchester, whither he had invited all the great lords. Odo was there with his friends, and took that opportunity of arranging his plans. From the festival he departed to raise the standard of Robert in his old earldom of Kent, while Hugh de Grant- mesnil, Roger Bigod, Robert de Mowbray, Roger de Montgomery, William bishop of Durham, and Geoffi-ey of Coutance, repaired to do the like in their several fiefs and governments Avhich lay in the east, in the west, and the north. A dangerous rising thus took place simultaneously in many parts of England ; but the insurgents lost time, and turned the hearts of the English inhabitants from them by paltry acts of depredation, while the army from Normandy, with which Robert had promised to come over, and which Odo, who was in Kent, was instructed to look out and provide for upon the south coast of England, at a certain time ap- pointed, was slow in making its appearance. The Courtehose, a slave to his habitual indolence and indecision, was, as usual, in great straits for money ; but those who acted for him had raised a consider- able force in Normandy, and but for the adoption, by the new king, of a novel measure, and a confi- dence timely placed in the natives, England would have been again desolated by a foreign army. Rufus, on learning the preparations that were making for this armament, permitted his English subjects to fit out cruisers ; and these adventurers, who seem to have been the first that may be called privateers, rendered him very important service ; for the Normans, calculating that there was no royal navy to oppose them, and that when they landed they would be received by their friends and confe- derates, the followers of Odo and his party, began to cross the Channel in small companies, each at their own convenience,without concert or any regard to mutual support in case of being attacked on their passage ; and so many of them were intercepted and destroyed by the English cruisers, that the attempt at invasion was abandoned in consequence.* But Rufus was also gTcatly indebted to another measure which he adopted at this important crisis. Before the success of the privateering experiment could be fully ascertained, seeing so many of the Normans arrayed against him, he had recourse to the native English : he armed them to fight in their own country against his own countrymen and relatives ; and it was by this confidence in them that he preserved his crown, and probably his life. He called a meeting of the long-despised chiefs of the Anglo-Saxon blood, — of those few men having influence over the national mind, who had survived the slow and wasting conquest of his father : he promised that he would rule them with the best laws they had ever known ; that he would give them the right of hunting in the forests, as their fore- fathers had enjoyed it ; and that he would relieve them from many of the taillages and odious tri- butes his father had imposed.f These promises were indifferently kept in the sequel, but the English people certainly benefited somewhat by the king's difficulties, and commenced from this moment an improvement in condition and consi- deration, which continued, on the whole, progressive under his successors. " Contested titles and u disputed succession," as Sir James Mackintosh has remarked, " obliged Rufus and his immediate suc- cessors to make concessions to the Anglo-Saxons, who so much surpassed the conquering nation in numbers ; and these immediate sources of terrible evils to England became the causes of its final de- liverance."! Flattered by his confidence, the thanes and franklins who had been summoned to attend him zealously promoted the levy ; and when Rufus pro- claimed his ban of war in the old Saxon form, — " Let every man who is not a man of nothing, § whether he live in burgh or ovit of burgh, leave his house and come," — there came thirty thousand stout Englishmen to the place appointed for the muster. Kent, with the Sussex coast, was the most vul- nerable part of the island, and Odo, the king's uncle, the most dangerous of his enemies ; Rufus therefore marched against the bishop, who had strongly fortified Rochester Castle, and then thrown himself into Pevensey, there to await the arrival of the tardy and never-coming Robert. After a siege of seven weeks, the bishop was obliged to sur- render this stronghold, and his nephew granted him life and liberty, on his taking an oath that' he would put Rochester Castle into his hands, and then leave the kingdom for ever. Relying on his solemn vow, Rufus sent the prelate with an inconsiderable escort of Norman horse from Pevensey to Rochester. The strong castle of Rochester Odo had intrusted to the • Soutliey, Naval Hist.— Dr. Campbell. •)■ Cliron. S.ix. — Waverley Annuls, t Hist. England. f In Anglo-Saxon, a "nidering," or "unnithing," — one of the strongest terms of contempt. The expressions of tlie Saxon Chro- nicler are, " Baed thaet aelc man the waere unnithing sceolde cuman to him — Freacisce and Englisco — of porte and of upplande," Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 895 Rochester Castle : the Keep with its Entravce Toweh. care of Eustace, Earl of Boulogne, who was devoted, like himself, to the eldest son. When now reciting the set form of words, he demanded of the earl the surrender of the castle, Eustace, pretending great wrath, arrested both the bishop ^nd his guards as traitors to King Robert. The scene was well acted, and Odo, trusting to be screened from the accusa- tion of perjury, remained in the fortress to continue the struggle. His loving nephew soon embraced him with a close environment, drawing round him a great force of English infantry and foreign ca- valry. But the castle was strong and well garri- soned, for 500 Norman knights, without counting the meaner sort, fought on the battlements; and after a long siege, the place was not taken by assault, but forced to surrender either by pestilential disease or famine, or probably by both. The English, who had shov/n great ardour during the siege, would have granted no terms of capitulation ; but the Norman portion of William's army, who had countrymen, and many of them friends and relations in the castle, entertained very different sentiments, and at their earnest instance, though not without difficulty, the Red King allowed the besieged, without any exceptions, to march out with their arms and horses, and freely depart the land. The unconscionable bishop of Bayeux would have included in the capitulation a proviso that the king's army should not cause their band to play in sign of victory and triumph as the garrison marched out, but this condition was refused, the king saying in great anger he would not make such a concession for 1000 marks of gold. The partisans of Robert then came forth with banners lowered, and the king's music playing the while. As Odo appeared, there was a louder crash ; the trumpets screamed, and the English, scarcely able to keep their hands from his person, shouted as he passed, " Oh ! for a halter to hang this perjured, murderous bishop I" It was with these and still worse imprecations that the priest who had blessed the Norman army at the battle of Hastings departed from England never more to enter it.* Having disposed of Odo, Rufus found no very great difficulty in dealing with the other con- spirators, who began to curse the procrastination of Robert, and to see pretty clearly that he was not the man to re-unite the two countries, or give them security for their estates and honours in both. Roger Montgomery, the powerful Earl of Shrews- bury, was detached from the confederacy by a peaceful negotiation; others were won over by blandishments : the bishop of Durham was de- feated by a division of William's army, and the bishop of Worcester's English tenants, adhering • Thierry.— Chron. Sax.— Orderic. Vital. 396 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. to William, killed a host of the insurgents. The remaining chiefs of the confederacy either sub- mitted on proclamation or escaped into Normandy. A few of them received a pardon, but the greater part were attainted, and Rufus bestowed their English estates on such of the barons as had done him best service. In the course of the following year (1089), Lan- frauc, who was in many respects a great and a good man, departed this life. A change was im- mediately observed in the king, who showed him- self more debauched, tyrannical, and rapacious than he had been when checked by the primate's virtues and abilities. He appointed no successor to the head ofiice in the church, but seized the rich revenues of the archbishopric of Canterbury, and spent them in his unholy revelries. Lanfranc had been, in fact, chief minister as well as primate of the kingdom. As minister, he was succeeded by a Norman clergyman of low birth and dissolute habits, but gifted with an aspiring spirit, great readiness of wit, engaging manners, and an un- hesitating devotion to the king in all things. He had first attracted attention in the English court of the Conqueror as a skilfid spy and public informer. His name was Ralph, to which, in his capacity of minister, and through his violent measures, he soon obtained the significant addition of Ic Flambard, or the destructive torch. His nominal oflfices in the court of the Red King were, royal chaplain, treasurer, and justiciary; — his real duties, to raise as much money as he could for his master's ex- travagant pleasures, and to flatter and share his vices. He was ingeniously rapacious, and seems almost to have exhausted the art of extortion. Under this priest the harsh forest laws were made a source of pecuniary profit; new offences were invented for the multiplication of fines ; another survey of the kingdom was begun, in order to raise the revenues of the crown from those estates which had been underrated in the record of Domesday;* and all the bishoprics and abbeys that fell vacant by death were left so by the king, who drew their revenues and applied them to his own use, racking the tenants and vassals on the church-lands so as they had never been racked before. These latter proceedings could hardly fail to indispose the monastic chroniclers, and the character of the Red King has in consequence come down to us dark- ened with perhaps rather more than its real de- pravity. There is, however, no reasonable ground for doubting that he was a licentious, violent, and rapacious king, nor (as has been well observed) is there either wisdom or liberality of sentiment in excusing his rapacity because it comprehended the * Tlio measmomeiits in Domesday appear to have been made v ith aixfereiice to tlie qviality as well as'llie quantity of the land in eacli case, wliereas Flambavd'is said to have caused the hides to be mea- sured exactly by the line, or without regard to anythins; but their superficial extent. Sir Francis Palgrave believes that a fragment of Klambard's Domesday is preserved in an ancient Lieger or Ke- Rister Book of the Monastery of Evesham, now in the Cottonian Library, in MS. Vespasian, B xxiv. It relates to the county of Gloucester, and must have been compiled between 1096 and 1112. See an account of this curious and hitlierto unnoticed relic, with ex- tracts, in Sir Francis's Rise and Progress of the English Common, wealth, ii. coccxlviil. &c. clergy, who, after all, were the best friends of the people in those violent times.* A.D. 1090. The barons who had given the pre- ference to Robert having failed in their attempts to deprive William of England, the friends of William now determined to drive Robert out of Normandy, which country had fallen into a state of complete anarchy through the imprudent conduct of the new duke. The turbulent barons expelled Robert's troops from nearly all the fortresses, and then armed their vassals and made war with one another on their own private account. Many would have pre- ferred this state of things, which left them wholly independent of the sovereign authority, to any other condition ; but those of the great lords, who chiefly resided in England, were greatly embarrassed by it, and resolved it should cease. By treachery and bribery, possession was obtained of Avimale, or Albemarle, St. Vallery, and other Norman fortresses, which were forthwith strongly garrisoned for Rufus. Robert was roused from bis lethargy, but his coffers were empty, and the improvident grants of estates he had already made left him scarcely anything to promise for future services ; he therefore applied for aid to his friend and feudal superior, the French king, who marched an army to the confines of Nor- mandy as if to give assistance, but marched it back again on receiving a large amount of gold from the English king. At the same time the unlucky Robert nearly lost his capital by a conspiracy ; Conan, a wealthy and powerful burgess, having engaged to deliver up Rouen to Reginald de Warenne for King Rufus. In these difficulties Robert claimed the assistance of the cautious and crafty Henry. Some very singular transactions had already taken place between these tv>'o brothers. While Robert was making his preparations to invade England, Henry advanced him 3000/., in return for which slender supply he had been put in pos- session of the Cotentin country, which compre- hended nearly a tliird part of the Norman duchy. Dissensions followed this unequal bargain, and Robert on some other suspicions, either threw Henry into prison for a short time, or attempted to arrest him. Now, ho>Yever, the youngest brother listened to the call of the eldest, and joined him at Rouen, where he chiefly contributed to put down the conspiracy, to repulse King William's ad- herent, Reginald de Warenne, who came up witli 300 choice knights, and to take Conan, the great burgess, prisoner. The mild and forgivir.g nature of Robert was most averse to capital punishment, and lie condemned Conan to a perpetual imprison- ment ; but Henry, some short time after, t(jok the captive to the top of a high tower on pretence of showing him the beauty of the surrounding scenery, and while the eye of the unhappy man rested on the pleasant landscape, he suddenly seized him by the waist and flung him over the battlements. Co- nan was dashed to pieces by the fall, and the prince coolly observed to those who saw the catastrophe * Mackintosh, Hist, of Eng i. 119.— Sugeri Vit. Ludovic. Grossi.— lugulph. — Malrasb.— Ordericus. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 397 that it was not fitting that a traitor should escape condign punishment.* A.D. 1091. In the following January William Rufus appeared in Normandy, at the head of an army, chiefly English. The affairs of the king and duke would have now come to extremity, hut Robert again called in the French king, by whose mediation a treaty of peace was concluded at Caen. Rufus, however, gained almost as much by this treaty as a successful war could have given him. He retained possession of all the foEtresses he had acquired in Normandy, together with the territories of Eu, Aumale, Fescamp, and other places ; and secured, in addition, the formal renunciation on the part of Robert of all claims and pretensions to the English throne. On his side, William engaged to indemnify his brother for what he resigned in Nor- mandy by an equivalent in territorial property in England, and to restore their estates to all the barons who had been attainted in Robert's cause. It was also stipulated between the two parties that the king, if he outlived the duke, should have Normandy ; and the duke, if he outlived the king, sliould have England; the kingdom and duchy thus in either case to be united as under the Con- queror : and twelve of the most powerful barons on each side swore that they would do their best to see the whole of the treaty faithfully executed— " a strong proof" observes Hume, "of the great independence and authority of the nobles in those ages." ♦ Onleric— Malm*. The family of the Conqueror were not a family of love. No sooner were the bonds of fraternal concord gathered up between Robert and William, than they were loosened between them and their younger brother Henry, whose known abilities and decision of character began to inspire jealous ap- prehensions in the breast of Rufus. The united forces of the duke and king proceeded to take pos- session of his castles ; and Henry was obliged to retire to a fortress on Mount St. Michael, a lofty rock on the coast of Normandy, insulated at high water by the sea. In this almost impregnable position he was besieged by Robert and William. Most of the old historians delight in telling a story to show the difference between the characters of these two kinsmen. Mount St. Michael afforded no fresh water: the besieged had neglected to supply themselves elsewhere, and were reduced to feel the insufferable anguish of thirst. When Robert heard of Henry's distress, he permitted some of his people to go and take water, and also sent him a supply of wine for his own table. Wil- liam reproved him for this ill-timed generosity; but Robert replied, " How can I suffer my brother to die of thirst? Where shall we find another brotlier when he is gone?"* Another anecdote of the same time is told of Rufus. As he was riding one day alone near the fortress, he was attacked by two soldiers in Henry's pay, and dismounted. One of tlie men raised his dagger to dispatch him, when • William of Malmsbury is the first teller of this story amoiis ihc chroniclera; MOUKT St. MlCIIAEL, NOKM.VXDT. 398 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Rufus exclaimed, " Hold, knave ! I am the king of England." The soldier suspended his blow, helped the king to rise and. mount, excusing his own conduct, on the ground of being ignorant of his quality. " Make no excuse," replied Rufus ; " thou art a brave knight, and henceforward wilt fight under my banner." The story, in conclusion, says the man entered the king's service. In the end. Prince Henry was obliged to capitulate and evacuate the strong fortress of Mount St. Michael. He obtained with difficulty permission to retire into Brittany : he was despoiled of all he possessed, and wandered about for two years, with no better attendance than grim poverty, one knight, three squires, and a chaplain. But in this, the lowest stage of his fortvmes, he impressed men with a notion of his political abilities ; and he was invited by the inhabitants of Damfront to take upon him- self the government of that city. Duke Robert accompanied the king to England, to take possession of those territories which were promised by the treaty. During his stay Rufus was engaged in a war with Malcolm Caenraore, who, while William was absent in Normandy, had invaded England, and *' overrun a great deal of it," says the Saxon Chronicle, " until the good men that governed this land sent an army against him and repulsed him." On his return, William col- lected a great force both naval and military, to avenge this insult ; but his ships were all destroyed before they reached the Scottish coast. The Eng- lish and Scottish armies met, however, in Lothian, in England, according to the Saxon Chronicle — at the river called Scotte Uatra (perhaps Scotswater), says Ordericus Vitalis — and were ready to engage, when a peace was brought about by the mediation of Duke Robert on one side, and his old friend Edgar Atheling on the other. " King Malcolm," says the Saxon Chronicle, " came to our king, and became his man, promising all such obedience as he formerly rendered to his father ; and that he confirmed with an oath. And the King William promised him in land and in all things whatever he formerly had under his father." By the same treaty, Edgar Atheling was permitted to return to England, where he received some paltry court ap- pointment, and " exhibited the unseemly sight of the representative of Alfred, fed on the crumbs that fell from the table of a Norman tyrant."* Returning from Scotland, Rufus was much struck with the favourable position of Carlisle ; and, expelling the lord of the district, he laid the foundation of a castle, and soon after sent a strong English colony from the southern counties to settle in the town and its neighbourhood, Carlisle, with the whole of Cumberland, had long been an appa- nage of the elder son of the Scottish kings ; and this act of Rufus was speedily followed by a re- newal of the quarrel between him and Malcolm Caenmore. To accommodate these differences, Malcolm was invited to Gloucester, wliere \Villiam * Sir J. Mackintosh, Hist, Eng. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 399 was keeping his court; but before undertaking this journey the Scottish king demanded and ob- tained hostages for his security — a privilege not granted to the ordinary vassals of the English crown.* On arriving at Gloucester, however, Malcolm was required by Rufus to do him right, that is, to make him amends for the injuries with which he was charged, in his court there, or, in other words, to submit to the opinion and decision of the Anglo-Norman barons. Malcolm rejected the proposal, and said that the kings of Scotland had never been accustomed to do right to the kings of England, except on the frontiers cf the two kingdoms, and by judgment of the barons of both.f He then hurried northward, and, having raised an army, burst into Northumberland, where he soon afterwards fell into an ambush, and was slain, toge- ther with Edward, his eldest son. This double calamity is said to have caused the death of the Scottish queen, Margaret, Edgar Atheling's sister ; she died four days after (16th November, 1093). Duke Robert had returned to the continent in disgust, at having pressed his claims for the pro- mised indemnity in England without any success. He afterwards dispatched messenger after mes- senger from the continent, but still William would give up none of his domains. At last, in 1094, Robert had recourse to a measure deemed very efficacious in the court of chivalry. He sent two heralds, who, having found their way into the pre- sence of the Red King, denounced him before his chief vassals, as a false and perjured knight, with whom his brother, the duke, would no longer hold friendship. To defend his honour, the king fol- lowed the two heralds to Normandy, where, hoping at least for the majority of voices, he agreed to sub-^ mit the matters in dispute to the arbitration of the twenty-four barons, who had sworn to do their best to enforce the faithful observance of the treaty of Caen. The barons, however, decided in favour of Robert; and then William, who would not be bound by an award luifavovirable to himself, ap- pealed to the sword. The campaign which opened went so much in favour of the Red King, that Robert was again obliged to apply for assistance to the king of France ; and Philip once more marched with an army into Normandy. Rufus then sus- tained some serious losses ; and trusting no longer to the appeal of the sword, he resolved to buy off the French king. He sent his commission into England for the immediate levying of 20,000 men. By the time appointed these men came together about Hastings, and were ready to embark, " when suddenly there came his lieutenant with a counter- order, and signified to them, that the king, minding to favour them, and spare them for that jour- ney, would that every of them should give him ten shillings towards the charges of the war, and thereupon depart home with a sufficient safe con- duct ; which the most part were better content to * Allaa's Vindication of the Ancient Index'cndcnce of Scotland. — Fopdera.— Cliron. Sax. I Flor. Wigorn.— Sim, Dun. do than to commit themselves to the fortune of the sea and bloody success of the wars in Normandy."* The king's lieutenant and representative on this occasion was Ralph Flambard; and he and that priest probably shared the ingenuity of the device between them. It seems difficult to conceive that 20,000 soldiers, or half of them, should be able to pay ten shillings a piece ;t but still some consider- able sum was raised, and King Phihp accepted it, and withdrew from the field, leaving Robert, as he had done before, to shift for himself. Rufus would then in all probability have made himself master of Normandy, had he not been recalled to England and detained there by important events. A.D. 1094-5. The Welsh hearing of the va- riance' between the two brothers, " after their accustomed manner," began to invade the English marches, taking booty of cattle, and destroying, killing, and spoiling many of the king's sub- jects, both English and Normans. Laying siege to the castle of Montgomery, which had been erected on a recently occupied part of Wales, they took this castle by assault, and slew all whom they found within it. Before William could reach the scene of action all the Welsh were in arms, and had overrun Cheshire, Shropshire, and Hereford- shire, besides reducing the isle of Anglesea. To chastise them, he determined to follow them, as Harold had done before,^ quite through their own country ; for he saw that the Welsli " Avould not join battle with him in the plain, but kept them- selves still aloof within the woods and marshes, and aloft upon the mountains : albeit, oftentimes when they saw advantage they would come forth, and taking the Normans and the English unawares, kill many, and w^ound no small numbers." § l^ti- mulated, however, by the example of Harold, who had penetrated into the inmost recesses of Wales, the Red King still pursued them by hill and dale; but by the time he reached the mountains of Snow- don, he found that his loss was tremendous, and " not without some note of dishonour," began a retreat, which was much more rapid than his ad- vance. The next summer he entered the moun- tains with a still more numerous army, and was again forced to retire with loss and sliame. He had not imitated the wise generalship of Harold ; and his heavy Norman cavalry was ill suited for such a warfare. He turned from Wales in despair, but ordered the immediate erection of a chain of forts and castles along the frontier. Before he was free from the troubles of this Welsh war his throne was threatened by a for- midable conspiracy in the north of England, the full extent of which was discovered in a curious manner. The exclusive right claimed by Rufus • Holinshed. The old authorities are Matthew P«ris and Simeon Dunelmeusis. f It is said, however, that these particular soldiers were purposely chosen among men " well to pass," or who were in comparatively (food circumstances. Dr. I.ingard, on the other hand, is of opinion that ten sliillings was the sum each man had received from his lord for purchasing victuals during the campaign; but this does not ap- pear probable. i See ante, p. 195. § Holinshed. 400, HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. over all the forests continued to irritate the Nor- man barons, and other causes of discontent were not wanting. At the head of the disaffected was Robert Mowbray, Earl of Northumberland, a most powerful cliief, who possessed 280 English manors. His long-continued absence from court created suspicion, and he is said to have committed several illegal acts in his government, militating against the royal authority. The king published a decree that every baron who did not present himself at court on the approaching festival of Whitsuntide should be outlawed. The festival came and passed without any tidings of the Earl of Northumber- land, who feared he should be cast into prison if he went to the south, his demand for hostages for his safety having been refused, as a privilege to which the earl, as an ordinary vassal of the crown, could not pretend. The king then marched with an army into Northumberland, and after taking several of his less important fortresses, shut up the earl within the walls of Bamborough Castle. Finding he could neither besiege nor blockade this impregnable place, he built another castle close to it, in which, leaving a strong garrison, he returned to the south. The new castle, which was hastily constructed of wood, was called " Malvoisin," (the bad neighbour,) and such it proved to Earl Mow- bray. Being decoyed from his safe retreat by a feigned offer of placing the town of Newcastle- upon-Tyne in his hands, he was attacked by a large party of Normans from Malvoisin, who lay in wait for him. The earl, with thirty horsemen, his only retinue, fled to the Monastery of St. Oswin, at Tynemouth. The sanctuary was not respected ; but Mowbray and his few followers defended it with desperate valour for six days, at the end of which the earl, sorely wounded, was made prisoner. But Bamborough Castle was even more valuable tlian the person of this noble captive, and the Red King, who had laid the snare into which the earl had fallen, had also arranged the plan upon which the captors now acted. They caiTied Mowbray to a spot in front of his castle, and invited his countess, the fair Matilda, to whom he had been married only a few mouths, to a parley. When the countess came to the outer walls, she saw her husband in the hands of his bitter enemies, who told her they would put out his eyes before her face unless she instantly delivered up the castle. It was scarcely for woman to hesitate in such an alternative : Matilda threw open the gates. With- in the walls of Bamborough the king's men found more than they expected, for Earl Mowbray's lieutenant betrayed to them the whole secret of the conspiracy, the object of which was to place upon the throne of England Stephen, Count of Aumale, nephew of the Conqueror and brother to the in- famous Judith. The extensive conspiracy included, among others, William Count of Eu, a relation of the king's, William of Alderic, the king's god- father, Hugh, Earl of Shrewsbury, Odo, Earl of Holderncss, and Walter de Lacey. The fates of these men were various : Earl Mowbray was con- demned to perpetual imprisonment, and died in a dungeon of W^indsor Castle, about thirty years after ; the Count of Eu rested his justification on the issue of a duel, which he fought with his accuser in the presence of the king and court, but being vanquished in the combat, he was convicted, ac- cording to the prevailing law, and condemned to have his eyes torn out, and to be otherwise muti- lated.* William of Alderic, who was much es- teemed and lamented, was hanged; the Earl of Shrewsbury bought his pardon for an immense sum of money ; the Earl of Holderness was de- prived of all he possessed and imprisoned ; the rest escaped to the continent, leaving their estates in England to be confiscated. It appears that part at least of the lands thus forfeited remained for some time without masters, and without culture; but the revenue officers, that the king might not suffer, continued to raise on the town or the district to which the vacant property appertained the whole of the taxes as before. The people of Col- chester rendered most grateful thanks to Eudes Fitz-Hubert, the governor of their town, for his having taken, in his own name, some of the estates of the disinherited Normans, and consented to pay all the fiscal demands made on those lands. A.D. 1096. At a moment when the Red King had successfully, disposed of all his enemies in England, and was in a condition to renew the war in Normandy, his thoughtless brother resigned that duchy to him for a sum of money. The Christians of the v/est, no longer content to appear at Jerusalem as despised and ill-treated pilgrims, with beads and crosses in their hands, resolved to repair thither with swords and lances, and con- quer the whole of Palestine and Syria from the infidels. The subject of the Crusades, one of the most interesting that engages the attention of the historian in the middle ages, will be treated of more appropriately in our account of the religion of the times, which w^as the direct source of those en- thusiastic and long-enduring enterprises. It will suffice here to state, that the preaching of Peter the Hermit, the decisions of the council of Clermont, and the bulls of Pope Urban II., had kindled a warlike flame throughout Europe, and that all classes of men considered taking a part in the holy war as the surest means of obtaining glory in this world and eternal happiness in the next. Duke Robert had early enlisted in the crusade, engaging to take with him a numerous and Avell-armed body of knights and vassals, but, wanting money, " no news to his coffers," he applied to his brother the Red King, who was always as expert in the em- ployment of gold as of arms, and who now readily entered into a bargain, wliich was concluded on terms most advantageous to himself. For the sura of 10,000/. the duke resigned the government of Normandy to his brother. This act is generally considered by historians not as a sale, but as a mortgage, which was to expire in five years. But it is almost idle to talk of conditions in such a • Caicatus et oxtesticulatus est. — MiiliuB. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. lOGG— 121G. strange transaction, which could have left Robert but a slight chance of ever rccovcrhig his dominion from his unscrupulous brother, had Rufus lived. When the bargain was striiclc, William was almost as pcnnyless as Rol;crt, but he was a nuich greater adept in the art of wringing money from his sub- jects. According to an old historian, to make up this sum with dispatch, " he did not only oppress and fleece his poor subjects, but rather with im- portunate exactions, did, as it were, flea oft" their skins. All this was grievous and intolerable, as well to the spirituality as temporality, so that divers bishops and abbots, who had already made away with some of their chalices and churcli jewels to pay the king, made now plain answer that they were not able to help him with any more; unto whom, on the other side, as the report went, the king said again : ' Have you not, I l)cscech you, cofi^ins of gold and silver full of dead mcn'sboncs?' "* meaning the shrines wherein the relics of saints were enclosed. Tiie Red King maintained that such exactions as these were not sacrilegious, in- asmuch as the money so raised was to go to main- tain wars against infidels and enemies of Christ. The pretext Avas specious, but rather transparent, for it was his brother who was to spend the money in tlic lioly war, while he was to receive a most usurious interest for it, even taking nothing into account but the immediate revenue of Normandy. Soon after receiving his 10,000/., Robert de- parted joyfully for Palestine, flattering himself with a splendid futurity ; and then William, indulging in the less fantastic prospect of near and solid ad- vantages, sailed to the continent to take immediate possession of Normandy and its dependencies. He had long held many of their fortresses, his par- tisans among the nobility were numerous and power- ful, and he was received by the Normans without opposition. But it was far otherwise with the people of Maine, who burst into a universal in- surrection, and by rallying round Helie, Lord of La Fleche, a young and gallant adventurer, who had some claim to the country himself, gave Rufus much trouble, and obliged him to carry over an army from England more than once. About three years after Robert's departure the brave Helie was surprised in a wood with only seven knights in company, and made prisoner by one of the English king's officers. Rufus marched into Maine soon after at the liead of a large force of horse ; but the French king and the Count of Anjou interfering, he was induced to negotiate, and Helie obtained liis liberty by delivering up the town of Mans. The people continued to dislike the sway of their new master, and the Lord of La F16che, after ofl"ering his services, was uimecessarily irritated by William. In the following year (1100), as the Red King was hunting in the New Forest, a messenger from beyond sea arrived with intelligence that Helie had surprised the town of Mans, and was besieging the Norman garrison in the castle, being aided therein • Tlolinslicd.— Ppccd.— The old authorities are Eadmcr, Orderic, Matt. }':mH. and \V. Midmsb. VOL. I. 401 by the inhabitants, who had again recognised him as their lawful chief. In bravery, prompt decision, and rapidity of movement, William was little infe- rior to his father, the Conqueror. He instantly turned his horse's head, and set off" for the nearest seaport. The nobles who were hunting with him reminded him that it was necessary to call out troops, and wait for them. "Not so," replied Rufus; " I shall sec who will follow mc; and, if I understand the temper of the youth of this king- dom, I shall have people enough. " Without sto])ping or turning he reached the port, and cm- barked in the first vessel he found. It was l)low- ing a gale of wind, and the sailors entreated him to have patience till the storm should abate. " Weigh anchor, hoist sail, and begone," cried Rufus; " did you ever hear of a king that was drowned?"* An old writer intimates that the mariners might have replied, " Yes, Pharaoh with all his host;" but they were probably not versed in Scripture, and made no such answer, but, obeying their orders, put to sea, and safely landed their royal passenger at Barfleur on the following day. The news of his landing sufficed to raise the siege of the castle of Mans; and Helie, thinking he must have come in force, dismissed his troops and took to flight. The Red King then barbarously ravaged the lands of his enemies ; but being wounded while laying siege to an insignificant castle, he returned suddenly to England, which he was des- tined not to leave again. William's lavish expenditure continued on the increase ; but by his exactions and irregular way of dealing with church property, he still found means for gratifying his extravagance, and enjoyed abroad the reputation of l)eing a rich as well as a powerful king. William, Earl of Poictiers and Duke of Guienne, caught the prevailing passion for the Crusades, and in order to be enabled to carry a respectable force to Palestine, he also offered to mortgage his dominions to the King of England. Rufus, as eager as ever for territorial aggrandise- ment, accepted the ofl'er, and even began to raise the money. But the great creditor, whose demands are often as sudden as they are irresistible, closed this new account before it w^as well opened. Popular superstition had long darkened the shades and solitudes of the New Forest, and peopled its glades with horrid spectres. Tlie fiend himself, it was said and believed, had ap- peared there to the Normans, announcing the punishment he had in reserve for the Red King and his wicked counsellors. Tiie accidents that happened in that chase, which had been so barba- rously obtained, gave strength to the vulgar belief. In the month of May, Richard, an illegitimate son of Duke Robert, was killed while hunting in the forest by an arrow, reported to have been shot at random. This was the second time that the Con- queror's blood had been poured out there, and men said it would not be the last time. On the 1st of August following William lay at Malwood- » Will. Malmsb. Z 402 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. keep, a hunting-seat in the forest,* with a goodly train of knigiits. A reconciliation had taken place between the two brothers, and the astucious Henry, who had been some time in England, was of the gay party. The circumstances of the story, as told by the monkish chroniclers, arc sufficiently remark- able. At the dead of night the king was heard invoking the Blessed Virgin, a thing strange in him ; and then he called aloud for lights in his chamber. His attendants ran at his call, and found him disturbed by a frightful vision, to pre- vent the return of whicli he ordered them to pass the rest of the night by his bedside, and divert him with pleasant talk. As he was dressing in the morning an artisan brought him six new arrows : he examined them, praised the workmanship, and keeping four for himself, gave the other two to Sir Walter Tyrrel, otherwise called, from his estates in France, Sir Walter de Poix, saying, as he presented them, " Good weapons are due to the sportsman that knows hoAv to make a good use of • The Red King lies in Malwood-kccp , To drive tlie deer o'er lawn and steep, He's bound liim witii the morn. His steeds are swift, his liounds arc good; The like, in covert or liigli-wood. Were never chcer'd witli liorn. \V. Stewabt Rose, " Malwood Castle, or Keep, seated upon an eminence, embosomed in wood, at a small distance from the village of Minestead, in the New Forest, was the residence of this prince when he met witli tlie accident which terminated his life. No remains of it exist ; but the circumference of a building is to be traced ; and it yet gives its name to the walk in which it was situated." — Notes to the " Red King." — This spirited and beautiful poem is published in the same volume with " Partcnopex de Blois.'' them." * The tables were spread with an abund- ant collation, and the Red King ate more meat and drank even more wine than he was wont to , do. His spirits rose to their highest pitch ; his companions still passed the wine-cup, whilst the . grooms and huntsmen prepared their horses and hounds for the chase ; and all was boisterously gay in Malwood-keep, when a messenger arrived from Serlon, the Norman Abbot of St. Peter's, at Glou- cester, to inform the king that one of his monks had dreamt a dream foreboding a sudden and awful death to him. " The man is a right monk," cried Rufus, " and to have a piece of money he dreameth such things. Give him, therefore, an hundred pence, and bid him dream of better fortune to our person." Then turning to Tyrrel, he said, " Do they think I am one of those fools that give up their pleasure or their business because an old woman happens to dream or sneeze ? To horse, Walter de Poix!" The king, with his brother Henry, William de Breteuil, and many other lords and knights, rode into the forest, where the company dispersed here and there, after the manner used in hunting; but Sir Walter, his especial favourite in these sports, remained constantly near the king, and their dogs hunted together. As the sun was sink- ing low in the west a hart came bounding by, between Rufus and his comrade, who stood con- cealed in the thickets. The king drew his bow, but the string broke, and the arrow took no effect. • Orderic. Vital. Death of Rufcs. — Burney. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 403 Startled by the sound, the hart paused in his speed and looked on all sides, as if doubtful which way to turn. The king, keeping his attention on the quarry, raised his bridle-hand above his eyes, that he might see clear by shading them from the glare of the sun, which now shone almost horizontally through the glades of the forest ; and at the same time, being unprovided with a second bow, he shouted, " Shoot, Walter ! — shoot, in the devil's name!"* Tyrrel drew his bow, — the arrow de- parted, was glanced aside in its flight by an inter- vening tree, and struck William in the left breast, which was left exposed by his raised arm. The fork-head pierced his heart, and with one groan, ani no word or prayer uttered, the Red King fell and expired. Sir Walter Tyrrel ran to his master's side, but, finding him dead, he remounted his horse, and, without informing any one of the catastrophe, galloped to the sea-coast, embarked for Normandy, whence he fled for sanctuary into the dominions of the French king, and soon after departed for the Holy Land. According to an old chronicler, the spot where Rufus fell had been the site of an Anglo-Saxon church which his father, the Conqueror, had pulled down and de- • " Trahc, trahe arcum e« parte diaboli.''— Hen, Knyghton. stroyed for the enlarging of his chase.* Late in the evening the royal corpse was found, alone, where it fell, by a poor charcoal-burner,t who put it, still bleeding, into his cart, and drove towards Winchester. At the earliest report of his death, his brother Hctiry flew to seize the royal treasury, and the knights and fixvourites who had been hunting in the forest dispersed in several direc- tions to look after their interest, not one of them caring to render the last sad honours to their master. The next day the body, still in the charcoal-maker's cart, and defiled Avith blood and dirt, was carried to St. Swithin's, the cathedral church of Winchester. There, however, it was treated with proper respect, and buried in the centre of the cathedral choir, many persons looking on, but few grieving. A proof of the bad opinion which the people entertained of the deceased monarch is, that they interpreted the fall of a certain tower in the cathedral, which happened the following year, and covered his tomb with its * Walter Hennyngfordc, quoted in Grafton's Chronicle. t " This man's name was I'urkcss. lie is tlic ancestor of a very numerous tribe. Of his lineal descendants it is reported that, living on the same spot, they have constantly been proprietors of a horse and cart, but never attained to the possession of a team," — Notes to the " Red King." Tomb of Bufus. ruins, into a sign of the displeasure of Heaven that he had received Christian burial.* The second king of the Norman line reigned thirteen years all but a few weeks, and was full of health and vigour, and only forty years of age when he died. That he was shot by an arrow in the New Forest, — that his body was abandoned and then hastily interred, — are facts perfectly well authenticated ; but some doubts may be entertained as to the precise circumstances attending his death, notwithstanding their being minutely related by writers who were living at the time, or who flou- • Dr. Miluer, Hist. Winchest. rished in the course of the following century. Sir Walter Tyrrel afterwards swore, in France, that he did not shoot the arrow ; but he was pro- bably anxious to relieve himself from the odium of killing a king, even by accident. It is quite possi- ble, indeed, that the event did not arise from chance, and that Tyrrel had no part in it. The remorse- less ambition of Henry might have had recourse to murder, or the avenging shaft might have been sped by the desperate hand of some Englishman, tempted by a favourable opportunity and the tra- ditions of the place. But the most charitable con- struction is, that the party were intoxicated with 404 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. z<tv^ cf*:: -_-_->%< rCf.^- = -- _ Stone, in the New Forest, marking the site of the Oak-tree against which the Arrow of Sir Walter TyiTcl is said to have glanced. the wine tliey had drunk at Malwood-keep, and that, in the confusion consequent on drunkenness, the king was hit by a random arrow. The Red King was never married ; and his example is said to have induced all his young courtiers to prefer the licentious liberty of a single life. In describing his libertinism, the least heinous charge of the monkish historians is, that he respected not the virtvie of other men's wives, and was " a most especial follower of lem- mans." For the honour of human nature we hope the picture is overcharged ; but there are proofs enough to convince us that but little order or deco- rum reigned in the court of Rufus. On the con- trary, indeed, all writers agree in their accounts of the dissolute manners of his household and adhe- rents. His rapacity is equally unquestionable ; but this charge is partially alleviated by his taste and magnificence, which were beneficial to the nation. He did not spend all his money in his wan?, his foreign schemes, his pleasures and de- baucheries, l)ut devoted large sums to the building of royal palaces, and to some works of great public utility. Henry I. — Surnamed Beauclerk. A.D. 1100. Henry was not unopposed in the first step he took to secure the crownl While he was imperiously demanding the keys of the royal trea- sury, and the officers in wliose charge they were placed were hesitating wliethcr they should deliver them or not, Williani de Breteuil, the royal trea- surer, who had also been of the fatal hunting party, arrived with breathless speed from tl:e forest, and' opposed his demand. " You and I," said lie to Henry, " ought to remember the faith we have pledged to your brother, Duke Robert; he has re- ceived our oath of homage, and, absent or present, he has aright to this money." Henry attempted tO' shake the fidelity of the treasurer with arguments Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 405 Gbeat Srax of Henry I. but William de Breteuil resolutely maintained that Robert was the lawful sovereign of England, to whom, and to no one else, the money in Winchester Castle belonged.* The altercation grew violent, and Henry, who felt he had no time to lose, drew his sword, and threatened immediate death to any that should oppose him. He was supported by some powerful barons who happened to be on the spot, or who had followed him from the forest, and whose favour he had secured beforehand. De Breteuil was left almost single in his honourable opposition, the domestics of the late king taking part against him; and Henry seized the money and crown- jewels before his eyes. Part of the money seems to have been distributed immediately among the barons and churchmen at Winchester; and the Saxon Chronicle says that " the witan who were then nigh at hand chose him to be king." He immediately gave the bishopric of Winchester to Henry Giflbrd, a most influential adherent, and tlien proceeded with all speed to London, where he made a skilfiil use of his treasure?, and was pro- claimed by an assembly of noblemen and prelates, no one challenging his title, but all acknowledging his consummate abilities and fitness for govern- ment. On Sunday, the 5th of August, only three days after the death of Rufus, standing before the altar in Westminster Abbey, he promised God and all the people to annul all the unrighteous acts that took place in his brother's time ; and after this declaration, Maurice, the bishop of London, conse- crated him king, t Ansclm, the archbishop of Canterbury, who, according to ancient rule, should have performed the ceremony of the coronation, had been driven out of the kingdom some tlirce years before ; and the archbishopric of York had been left vacant for some t:#^e. A popular rccom- « Malir.F. t Sax. Cliron. mendation, which had, no doubt, great influence, was, that Henry was an Englishman, born in the country,* and after the Conquest ; and some of his partisans set up this circumstance as being in itself a sufficient title to the crown. But he himself, in a charter of liberties issued on the foUoNving day, and diligently promulgated throughout the land, represented himself as being crowned " by the mercy of God, and by the common consent of the barons of the kingdom." The claims of Duke Robert were not forgotten ; but Henry, who " had aforehand trained the people to his humour and vein, in bringing them to think well of him," had also caused to be reported, as a certain fact, that Robert was already created king of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, and would never leave the Holy Land for an ordinary kingdom. Although the law of succession remained almost as loose as under the Saxon dynasty, and the crown of England was still, in form at least, an elective one, Henry, who, moreover, was bound by oaths to his elder brother Robert, seems himself to have been conscious of a want of validity or security in his title, and to have endeavoured to strengthen his throne by reforms of abuses and by large conces- sions to the nation. Such is almost invariably the course pursued by intrusive kings; and hence usurpations, though they may be productive of war and suffering, are not always to be considered as unmixed evils. The charter of liberties passed by Henry on his accession, as forming an impor- tant feature in our progressive law and govern- ment, will be treated of elsewhere. 1 1 will suffice for the course of this narrative to state, that he re- stored all the rights of the chiirch, promised to require only moderate and just reliefs from his vassals, to exercise his powers in wardships and • Ilcnry was born at Selby, in Yoikshire, a.d. 1070, iu the fourth year ufhis father's reign as king of England. 406 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. marriages with equity and mildness, to redress all the grievances of the former reign, and to restore the laws of King Edward the Confessor, subject only to the amendments made in them by his father. " So general was the confidence in the restoration of the native institutions," says Sir J. Mackintosh, " that it induced a private compiler to draw up a summary of Saxon law, which is still extant under the title of the ' Laws of Henry the First,' probably as, in the writer's opinion, de- riving their validity from his confirmation, and for the purpose of propping Henry's infirm title by resting it on the same basis with this reforma- tion."* Still further to conciliate his Anglo-Saxon sub- jects, and to secure them to his interests in case of a revolt on the part of his Norman barons, Henry, who on all necessary occasions boasted of his Eng- lish birth, determined to espouse an English wife. This marriage is a most important historical event, being a step made towards that intermixture and fusion T)f the two races which destroyed, at a much earlier period than is generally imagined, the odious distinction between English and Normans. It is also exceedingly interesting in some of its details, and particidarly those which have been transmitted by the pen of Eadmer,t who was living at the time, and who, as an Englishman himself, entertained a lively sympathy for the for- tunes of the young princess. The lady of Henry's choice was, to use the words of the Saxon Chro- nicle, " Maud, daughter of Malcolm, king of Scots, and of Margaret, tlie good queen, the rela- tion of King Edward, and of the right kingly kin of England." This descendant of the great Alfred had been sent from Scotland at a very early age, and committed to the care of her aunt Christina, Edgar Atheling's second sister, who was abbess of Wilton, or, as others say, of Rumsey, in Hamp- shire. As she grew up, several of the Norman captains aspired to the honour of her hand. She was asked in marriage by Alan, the lord of Rich- mond ; but Alan died before he could receive any answer from the king. William de Garenne, earl of Surrey, was the next suitor, but the marriage was not allowed by Rufus, to whom, and not to the young lady or her relations, these several demands were made. A contemporary writerj says, he knows not why the marriage with the earl of Surrey did not take place ; but the policy of for- bidding a union between a powerful vassal and a princess of the ancient royal line is evident ; and the Red King, like his father, held it as part of his prerogative to give or refuse the hands of his fair subjects. When proposals were made on the part of King Henry, the fair Saxon, not being dazzled with the prospect of sharing with a Nor- man the throne on which her ancestors had sat for • Hist. Eng. + This historian was the scholar and inmate of Arclibishop An- selm, who celebrated the marriage, and aftei-waids crowned theyouuL' queen. t Ordericus. This chronicler says she Ind formerly gone by the more Saxon name of Edith. centuries, showed a decided aversion to the match. But she was assailed by arguments and induce- ments difficult to resist, ** Oh ! most noble and fair among women," said her Saxon advisers, " if thou wilt, thou canst restore the ancient honour of England, and be a pledge of reconciliation and friendship ; but if thou art obstinate in thy refusal, the enmity between the two races will be everlast- ing, and the shedding of human blood know no end."* When her slow consent was obtained, another impediment was raised by a strong Nor- man party, who neither liked to see an English woman raised to be their queen, nor the power of their king confirmed by means which would endear him to the native race, and render him more and more independent of the Normans. They asserted that Maude, who had been brought up from her infancy in a convent, was a nun, and that she had been seen wearing the veil, which made her for ever the spouse of Christ. Such an obstacle would have been insurmountable ; and as there were some seeming grounds for the report, the celebra- tion of the marriage was postponed, to the great joy of those who were opposed to it.f Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, who had returned from Italy at the pressing invitation of the new king, was a zealous promoter of the mar- riage — for his soul was kind and benevolent, and he was interested in favour of the English people ; but, when he heard the reports which were circu- lated, he declared that nothing could induce him to unite a nun to u carnal husband. The arch- bishop, however, determined to question the maiden herself; and Matilda, or Maude, in reply, denied she had ever taken the vows, or even worn the veil of her free will ; and she offered to give full proof of this before all the prelates of England. A speech which Eadmer puts into her mouth is a curious specimen of naivete, and a proof of the brutality of the Norman soldiers towards the females of the conquered race. " I must confess," she said, " that I have sometimes appeared veiled ; but listen to the cause : in my first youth, when I was living under her care, my aunt, to save me, as she said, from the lust of the Normans, who attacked all females, was accustomed to throw a piece of black stuff over my head ; and when I refused to cover myself with it she treated me very roughly. In her presence I wore that covering, but as soon as she was out of sight I threw it on the ground, and trampled it under my feet in childish anger," To solve this great difficulty, Anselm called a coun- cil of bishops, abbots, and monks, who met in the city of Rochester. Witnesses summoned before this council confirmed the truth of Matilda's words. Two archdeacons, who had been sent to the con- vent where the young lady was brought up, de- posed that public report, and the testimony of t!ie nuns, agreed with her declaration. At the moment when the council was to deliberate on its verdict the archbishop retired, to avoid any suspicion of biassing their decision. This decision, given una- * Matt. Par. fEadmer. Chap. 1.2 CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 407 nimously, was : " We, the bishops, &c., are of opi- nion that the young lady is free, and can dispose of herself; and we have a precedent in a judgment rendered in a similar cause by the venerable Lan- franc, when the Saxon women, who had taken refuge in the convent out of fear of the soldiers of the great William, reclaimed and obtained their liberty." On Sunday, the 1 1th of November, the marriage was celebrated, and the queen was crowned with great pomp and solemnity. But so wisely cautious was the prelate, and so anxious to dissipate all suspicions and false reports, that be- fore pronouncing the nuptial benediction, he mounted on a bench in front of the church-door, and showed to the assembled people the debate and decision of the ecclesiastical council. The Nor- mans, who had opposed the union, now vented their spite in bitter railleries, and in applying nicknames taken from Saxon ballads ; — the king they called Godric, and the queen, Godiva. Henry dissembled his rage till a convenient moment, and in public laughed heartily at the insolent jests. Matilda, who had given her consent to the mar- riage with reluctance, and who found a most un- faithful husband, proved a" right loving and obe- dient wife." She was beautiful in person, and distinguished by a love of learning and great cha- rity to the poor. Her elevation to the throne filled the hearts of the English with a momentary joy. Another proceeding which greatly increased the new king's popularity with the English, and with all who entertained respect for virtue and decency, was his expulsion of his brother's minions. If half of the detestable vices attributed by the churchmen, their contemporaries, to these favourites, were really prevalent among them, they must have been a curse and an abomination to the land. Henry, however, had intimately associated with them all — his life had been as lewd and licentious as the Red King's ; and the outward reformation and the measures he now adopted seem to have been, at the very least, dictated as much by policy as by any virtuous conviction. He felt it expedient to yield a homage to the better feelings of the nation. It was scarcely possible that Ralf Flambard, the obnoxious minister of the late king, should escape in this general purgation. Ralf's great crime, which was his rapacity, had probably put him in possession of wealth, which Henry stood in need of; and the outcries of the people against the fallen minister urged and seemed to justify his being despoiled and otherwise punished. The bishop of Durham — for such was the ecclesiastical promotion Ralf had attained under Rufus — was thrown into the Tower, where he lived most luxuriously, and captivated the affections of his keepers by his con- viviality, generosity, and wit. In the February following Henry's coronation a good rope was con- veyed to the bishop hid in the bottom of a huge wine flagon. His guards drank of the wine until their senses forsook them ; and then Ralf, under favour of the night, and by means of the rope, de- scended from his prison window and escaped. Some friends in attendance put him on board ship, and the active bishop made sail for Normandy, to see what fortune would offer him as the servant of Robert Courthose. When Henry caused the report to be circulated that Robert had obtained the crown of Jerusalem and thought not of returning to England, he knew right well that another than he had been elected sovereign in the Holy Land, and that his brother was actually in Europe, and on his way back to Normandy, in which country he arrived within a month or six weeks after the death of Rufus. The improvident Duke had greatly distinguished him- self in the conquest of Palestine and the taking of Jerusalem, performing prodigies of valour, which were only surpassed, in later times, by Richard Cceur de Lion, and even showing, it is said, great eloquence when called upon to speak in the councils of the crusaders, and admirable military talents when commanding in the field. He was also pre- eminent among the crusading princes and chiefs from his powerful family connexions and from the host of men he led to the holy war ; for besides his subjects of Normandy, Maine, and Brittany, many English and some Irish followed his standard thither, and would obey the direct orders of none but him. " Yea, England," says old Fuller, quaintly, '* the Pope's pack-horse in that age, which seldom rested in the stable when there was any work to be done, sent many brave men under Robert Duke of Normandy ; as Beauchamp, and others whose names are lost. Neither surely did the Irishmen's feet stick in their bogs, though we find no particular mention of their achievements."* Though respected in proportion to his power, and valued for the good qualities he possessed, the crusaders never thought seriously of electing so imprudent a prince to the difficult post of securing and governing the conquests they had made ; nor does Robert appear ever to have fixed his eye on the throne of Jerusalem, which, by universal con- sent, fell to Godfrey of Bouillon, a man " bom for command," and as wise and prudent as a states- man as he was gallant and fearless as a knight, f Soon after the capture of Jerusalem, which hap- pened on the 15th of July, 1099, somewhat more tlian a year before the death of the English king in the New Forest, Duke Robert left the Holy Land covered with holy laurels, and crossed the Medi- terranean to Brundusium, the nearest port of Italy, intending to travel homeward by land through that beautiful and luxurious country. The Norman lance, as we have already mentioned, had won the fairest portion of Southern Italy some years before • Hist. Holy War. Araon;; tlio indopemlent lords who accom- panied Robert weio, Kustacc, Earl of Boulogne, Stephen, Earl of Aubemale or Albcrraarle, and his half-uncle, the notorious Odo, Bishop of Uayeux, and Earl of Kent. •j- Veramente e costui nato all' impero, Si del regnar, del commandar sa Varti : E non minor clie duce e cavaliero; Ma del doppio vulot tutte ha le i)arti. — ■ Tasso, Gerusalommo. Well seems he born to be with honour crown'd, So well the lore he knows of regiment 5 Peerless in light, in counsel grave and sound,— The double gift of glory excellent,— Faiufax. 408 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. the conquest of England; and as Duke Robert advanced into the land, he was everywhere met by Norman barons and nobles of Norman descent, who ruled even more absolutely in Apulia than did their brethren in our island. At every feudal castle the Duke was liailed and welcomed as a coiuitryman, a friend, a hero, a crusader returning with victory, whom it was honourable to honour ; and so mucli was their hospitality to the taste of that thoughtless prince that he lingered long, and well pleased on his way. Of all these noble hosts was none more noble, or more powerful than William Count of Conversano : he was the son of Geofllrey, who was nephew of Robert Guiscard, the founder of the Norman dynasty in Naples : his vast possessions lay along the shores of the Adriatic, from Otranto to Bari, and extended far in-land in the direction of Lucauia and the other sea. He was, in short, the most powerful lord in Lower Apulia. His castle, which stood on an eminence surrounded by olive groves, at a short distance from the Adriatic, had many attractions for the pleasure-loving and susceptible son of the Conqueror. There were minstrels and jongleurs ; there were fine horses and hounds, and hawks, in almost royal abundance; and the vast plains of Apulia, with the forests and inovmtains that encompass them, offered a variety of the finest sport. But there was an attraction even greater than all these in the person of a beauti- ful maiden, the young Sibylla, the daughter of his host the Count of Conversano. Robert became enamoured, and such a suitor, who, besides his other merits, was sovereign Duke of Normandy, with a prospect of possessing the royal crown of England, was not likely to be rejected. Robert received the hand of Sibylla, who is painted as being as good as she was fair, together with a large sum of money as her dowry. Happy in the present, careless of the future, and little thinking that a man so young as his brother the Red King would die, he lingered several months in Apulia, and finally travelled thence without any eagerness or speed, and at the critical moment when the English throne fell vacant his friends hardly knew when they might expect him. On his arrival, however, in Normandy, he appears to have been received with great joy by the people, and to have obtained peace- ful possession of the whole of the country with the exception of the fortresses surrendered to Rufus, and Avhich were now held for Henry. He made no secret of his intention of prosecuting his claim on England ; bvit here again he lost time and threw away his last remaining chance. He was proud of showing his beautiful bride to the Normans, and, with his usual imprudence, he spent her fi>rtune in feasting and pageantry. Ralph Flambard was the first to wake him from this splendid but evanescent dream, and at the earnest suggestion of the fugitive bishop-minister he prepared for immediate war, knowing it was vain to plead to Henry his priority of birth, his treaty with Rufus, or the oaths whicli Henry himself had taken to him. It may be doubted, seeing the character of the factious nobles, whether, had Robert succeeded in his enterprise, his indolence, C'lsy nature, and incurable impru- dence would not have proved as great a curse to England as the harshness and tyranny of any of the Norman line, and whether the nation would not have made a retrograde step instead of advancing, as it (certainly did somewhat, under his crafty and cruel, hut politic rival Henry. Wlicn his ban of war was proclaimed, Robert's Norman vassals showed the utmost readiness to fight under a prince who had won laurels in the Holy Land, and the Norman barons expressed the same discontent at the separation of the duchy and kingdom which had appeared on the accession of William Rufus. If the nobles had been unanimous in their preference of Robert as sovereign of the country, on either side the Channel where they had domains, the dispute about the English throne must have been settled in his favour; but they were divided, and many preferred Henry (as they had formerly done Rufus) to Robert. The friends of the latter, however, were neither few nor powerless : several of high rank crossed the Channel from England to urge him to recover the title which belonged to him in virtue of the agreement formerly concluded between him and the Red King ; and Robert de Belesme, Earl of Shrewsbury and Arundel, William de la Warrenne, Earl of Surrey, Arnulf de Montgomery, Walter Gifford, Robert de Pontefract, Robert de Mallet, Yvo de Grentmesnil, and many others of the principal nobility, pro- mised on his landing to join him with all their forces. Henry, knowing the disafi'ection of the barons, whose secrets were betrayed to him, began to tremble on the throne he had so recently acquired. These fears of the Normans threw liim more than ever on the support of the English people, whom he now called his friends, his faithful vassals, his countrymen, — the best and bravest of men, — though his brother, he insidiously added, treated them witli scorn, and called them cowards and gluttons.* At the same time he paid diligent court to Archbishoj) Anselm, who, by the sanctity of his character and his undeniable virtues and abilities, exercised a great influence in the nation. As Anselm was an Italian and a churchman, it may be believed that he gladly obtained the large concessions made to the Pope by the trembling king ; but from tlie earnestness with which he embraced the cause of Henry we are also entitled to assume that he saw good and laudable reasons for supporting the exist- ing settlement of the crown, and the averting of a civil war is no questionable merit. If anxious to extend the privileges of the church, he was scarcely less so to establish the liberties of the people ; and to him, as the representative of the nation, Henry swore to maintain the charter he had granted a^ his coronation, and faithfully to fuKil all his en- gagements. The effect of all this was, that the bishops, the common soldiers, and the native English, wilii a curious exception, stood firmly on the side of ♦ Matt. Paris. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS j A.D. 1066—1216. 409 Henry, who could also count among the Norman nobility Robert dc Mellent, his chief minister, the Earl of Warwick, Roger Bigod, Richard de Red- vers, and Robert Fitz-Hamon, all powerful barons, as his unchangeable adherents. The exception against him, on the part of the native English, was among the sailors, who, affected by Robert's fame, and partly won over by the fugitive Bishop of Durham, deserted with the greater part of a fleet whicli had been hastily equipped to intercept tlie Duke on his passage, or oppose his landing. Ro- bert sailed from Normandy in these very ships, and, while Henry was expecting him at Pevensey, on the Sussex coast, reached Portsmouth, and tliere landed. Before the two armies could meet some of the less violent of the Normans from both parties had interviews, and agreed pretty well on the necessity of putting an end to a quarrel among countrymen and friends. When the hostile forces fronted each other, there was a wavering among his Normans; but the English continued faithful to Henry, and Ansclm threatened the invaders with excommunication. To the surprise of most men, the duke's great expedition ended in a hurried peace and a seemingly affectionate reconciliation between the two rivals, after which the credulous Robert, who indeed seemed destined to be the dupe of his crafty brothers, returned peaceably to the continent, renouncing all claim to England, and having obtained a yearly payment of 3000 marks, and the cession to him of all the castles which Henry possessed in Normandy. It was also stipulated, that the ad- herents of each should be fully pardoned, and re- stored to all their possessions, whether in Normandy or in England ; and that neither Robert nor Henry shoidd thenceforward encourage, receive, or protect the enemies of the other. There was another clause added, which, even without counting how much older he was than Henry, was not worth to Robert the piece of parchment it was written upon : — it imported that if either of the brothers died without legitimate issue the survivor should be the heir to his dominions. To this clause, as to its counterpart in the former treaty signed at Caen, between Robert and Rufu?, twenty-four barons, twelve on each side, gave the solemn mockery of their oaths. Robert was scarcely returned to Normandy when Henry began to take measures against the barons, his partisans, whom he had promised to pardon ; and liis craft and cunning enabled him to proceed for some time without committing any manifest violation of the treaty. He appointed spies to watch them in their castles, and artfully sowing dis- sensions among them and provoking them to breaches of the law, he easily obtained from the habitual violence of these unpopular chiefs a plausi- ble pretence for his prosecutions. He summoned Robert de Belcsme, Earl of Shrewsbury, to answer to an indictment containing forty-five serious charges. De Belesme appeared, and, according to custom, demanded that he might go freely to consult with his friends and arrange his defence; but he was no sooner out of the court than he mounted his horse and galloped off to one of his strong castles. The king summoned him to appear within a given time under pain of outlawry. The Earl responded to the summons by calling his vassals around him and preparing for open war. This was meeting the wislies of the king, who took the field with an army consisting in good part of Englisli infontry, well disposed to do his will, and delighted at the pro- S])ect of punishing one of their many oppressors. He was detained several weeks by the siege of the castle of Arundel, the garrison of which finally capitulated, and then, in part, escaped to join their Earl de Belesme, who, in tlie mean time, had strongly fortified Bridgenorth, near the Welsh frontiers, and strengthened himself in the citadel of Shrewsbury. During the siege of Bridgenorth the Normans in the king's service showed they were averse to proceeding to extremities against one of the noblest of their countrymen, and some of the earls and barons endeavoured to put an end to the war by effecting a reconcilement between Robert de Belesme and the sovereign. " For," says a cotem- porary writer, " they thought that the victory of the king over Earl Robert would enable him to make them all bend to his will."* They demanded a conference, and an assembly was held in a plain near the royal camp. A body of English infantry posted on a hill close by, who knew what was in agitation among the Norman chiefs, cried out, " Do not trust in them. King Henry ; they want to lay a snare for you. We are here ; we will assist you and make the assault. Grant no peace to the traitor until you have him in your hands alive or dead !"t The attempt at reconciliation failed, — the siege was pressed and Bridgenorth fell. The country between Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury, where the Earl made his last stand, was covered with thick wood, and infested by his scouts and archers. The English infantry cleared the wood of the enemy, and cut a convenient road for the king to the very walls of Shrewsbury, where de Belesme, reduced to despair, soon capitulated. He lost all his vast estates in England, but was permitted to retire into Normandy on taking an oath he would never return to the kingdom without Henry's per- mission. His ruin involved that of his two brothers, Arnulf de Montgomery and Roger, Earl of Lan- caster, and as the king's hands became strengthened, the prosecution and condemnation of all the barons who had been favourable to Robert followed. One by one nearly all the great nobles, the sons of tlie men who had achieved the conquest of England, were driven out of the land as traitors and outlaws, and their estates and honours were given to " new men," to the obscure followers of the new court. So scnipulous was Duke Robert in observing the treaty, that on the first notice of De Belesme's rebellion he ravaged the Norman estates of that nobleman ; considering himself, in spite of former ties of friendship, as bound so to do by the clause which stipulated that neither brother should encou- • Orderic. f Id, 410 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. rage the enemies of the other. He was soon, how- ever, made sensible that the real crime of all the outlaws, in Henry's eyes, was the preference they had given to him ; and following one of those gene- rous impulses to which his romantic nature was prone, he came suddenly over to England, and put himself completely in the power of Henry, to inter- cede in favour of the unfortunate barons. The crafty king received him with smiles and brotherly embraces, and then placed spies over him to watch all his motions. Robert, who had demanded no hostages, soon found he was a prisoner, and was glad to purchase his liberty by renouncing his annuity of three thousand marks. He then re- turned to Normandy, and, in self-defence, renewed his friendship with the barons exiled from England, accepting among others the services of De Belesme, who was still a powerful lord, as he possessed above thirty castles of different kinds in Normandy. Henry now most impudently pretended that Robert was the aggressor, and declared the peace between them was for ever at an end. The simple tmth was, that Robert was completely at his mercy, and he had resolved to unite the duchy to his kingdom. Normandy, indeed, was in a deplorable state, and Robert, it must be said, had given, and continued to give, manifold proofs of his inability to manage a factious and intriguing nobility, or to govern any state as states were then constituted. He was, indeed, " too trusting and mercifvd " for his age ; and liis generous virtues were more fatal to him than the vices or defects which stained his moral character.* He had, however, relapsed into his old irregularities after losing the beautiful Sibylla, who died in 1102, leaving an infant son, the only issue of their brief marriage. His court was again thronged with vagabond jongleurs, loose women, and rapacious favourites, who plundered him of his very attire, — at least this sovereign prince is represented as lying in bed at times from want of proper clothes to put on when he should rise. A much more serious eyil for the country was, that his pettiest barons were suffered to wage war on each other and inflict all kinds of wrong and insult on the people. When Henry first raised the mask he declared himself the protector of Normandy against the bad government of his brother; and there were many, as well nobles as of the common- alty, who were glad to consider him in that light. He called on Robert to cede the duchy for a sum of money or an annual pension. " You have the title of chief," said he ; " but in reality you are no longer a chief, seeing that the vassals who ought to obey you set you at nought. "t The duke indignantly rejected the proposal; on which the king crossed the seas with an army, and, " by large distributions of money carried out of England," won many new partisans, and got possession of many of the fortresses of Normandy. The duke, on the other hand, had now nothing to give to any one, for, in his thoughtless generosity and extravagance, • William of MalmsbuTy gays, "He forgot and forgave too aivich." + Unleiic. he had squandered everything on his return from Italy ; yet still some brave men rallied around him out of affection to his person, or in dread and hatred of his brother, and Henry found it impos- sible to complete his ruin in this campaign. In the following year (1106) the king re-ap- peared in Normandy with a more formidable army and with still more money, to raise which he had cruelly and arbitrarily distressed his English sub- jects ; for by this time his charter had become worthless, and he had broken nearly every promise he made at his coronation. About the end of July he laid siege to Tenchebray, an important place, the garrison of which, incorruptible by his gold, made a faithful and gallant resistance. Robert, when informed that his friends were hard pressed, promised to march to their relief, ensue what might, and on the appointed day, most true to his word, as was usual with him in such matters, he appeared before the walls of Tenchebray, where Henry had concentrated his whole army. As a soldier Robert was far superior to his brother, but his forces were numerically inferior, and there was treachery in the camp. As brave, however, as when he fought the Paynim and mounted the breach in the Holy City, he fell upon the king's army, threw the English infantry into disorder, and had nearly won the victory, when De Belesme basely fled with a strong division of his forces, and left him to inevitable defeat ; for a panic spread among the troops that remained, and all men thought they were betrayed. After a last and most brilliant display of his valour as a soldier, and his conduct as a commander, the duke was taken prisoner, with four hundred of his knights. "This battle," observes old John Speed, "was fought, and Normandy won, upon Saturday, being the vigil of St. Michael, even the same day forty years that William the Bastard set foot on Eng- land's shore for his conquest ; God so disposing it (saith Malmsbury) that Normandy should be sub- jected to England that very day, wherein England was subdued to Normandy." The fate of the captives made at Tenchebray, or taken after that battle, or who voluntarily surren- dered, was various : some received a free pardon, some were allowed to be ransomed; and a few, among whom were the Earl of Mortaigne and Robert de Stuteville, were condemned to perpetual impri- sonment. The ex-earl of Shrewsbury, the false De Belesme, was gratified with a new grant of most of his estates in Normandy ; and the ex- bishop-minister Ralph Flambard, who had been moving in all these contentions, obtained the re- storation of his English see, by delivering up the town and castle of Lisieux to King Henry. A remarkable incident in the victory of Tenchebray is, that the royal Saxon, Edgar Atheling, was among the prisoners. Duke Robert had on many occasions treated him Avith great kindness and liberality ; and, as in some of their qualities the two princes resembled each other, there seems to have been a lasting sympathy and affection between Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. lOGG— 121G. 411 them. According to some accounts Edgar had followed Robert to the Holy Land ; * but this is at the least doubtful, and the Saxon Chronicle re- presents him as having joined the duke only a short time before the battle of Tenchebray, where he charged with the Norman chivalry. This was his last public appearance. He was sent over to England, where, to show the Norman king's con- tempt of him, he was allowed to go at large. At the intercession of his niece, the Queen Maud, Henry granted him a trifling pension ; and this sur- vivor of so many changes and sanguinary revo- lutions passed the rest of his life in an obscure but tranquil solitude in the country. So perfect was the oblivion into which he fell, that not one of the chroniclers mentions the place of his residence or records when or how he died. The fate of his friend Duke Robert, who had much less apathy, was infinitely more galling from the beginning, and his captivity was soon accompanied with other atrocities. He was committed a prisoner for life to one of his brother's castles. At first his keepers, appointing a proper guard, allowed him to take air and exercise in the neighbouring woods and fields. One day he seized a horse, and breaking from his guard, did his best to escape; but he was pre- sently pursued, and taken in a morass, wherein his • In 1086, the last year of the Conqueror's reign, Edgar Atheliug obtained permission to conduct two hundred knights to Apulia, and thence to Palestine ; but we are not informed what progress he made in this journey, and Duke Robert did not set out for the Holy Land until 1096> or ten years after. horse had stuck fast. Upon hearing of this attempt the king not only commanded " a greater restraint and harder durance," but ordered that his sight should be destroyed, in order to render him inca- pable of such enterprises, and unapt to all royal or martial duties for the future. This detestable order was executed by a method which had become horribly common in Italy* during these ages, and which was not unknown in other countries on the continent. A basin of copper or iron, made red- hot, was held close over the victim's eyes till the organs of sight were seared and destroyed. The wretched prince lived twenty-eight years after this, and died in Cardiff Castle in 1135, a few months before his brother Henry. He was nearly eighty years old, and had survived all the chiefs of name who rescued Jerusalem from the Saracens. Matthew of Paris tells a touching anecdote of his captivity. One day, when some new dresses were brought to him from the king, in examining them by his touch he found that one of the garments was torn or rent in the seam : the people told him that the king had tried it on and found it too tight for him. Then the prisoner threw them all far from him, and • The punishment was usually applied to captive princes, fallen ministers, and personages of the highest rank and political influence. Tiie Italians liad even a verb to express it — Abbadnare, from barAno, a basin. " L' abbacinare e il medesimo che I'accecare ; e perche si faceva con un bacino rovcnte, che avvicinato agli occhi tenuti aperii per forza, concontrandosi il calore strnggeva que' panicelli, e risec- caval'umidita, che, come un' uva e intorno alia pupilln, e la ricopriva di una cotal nuvola, che gU toglicva la vista, si aveva preso questo nome d'abbacinare." Such is the formal explanation of the horrid verb in the Dictionary Delia Crusca. Caedipp Castle, as it appeared in 1775. 412 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. exclaimed, " How, then, my brother, or rather my traitor, that craven clerk who has deprived me of my all, imprisoned me, blinded me, now holds me at so mean a rate — I, who had so much honour and renown, that he makes mc alms of his old clothes, as if I were his valet." It seems to have been an established custom for kings to give dresses to their state prisoners at certain festivals in the year ; and it is related of Fitz-Osborn that he lost his only chance of enlargement by treating a suit sent him by the Conqueror with disrespect. As another trait of manners we may mention here, that Duke Robert was made prisoner at Tenchebray by Galdric, King Henry's chaplain, who Avas promoted to the bishopric of Llandaff for this clerical piece of service, Tliis martial prelate's end was, however, in keeping with the circum- stances of his promotion ; for, having exasperated the people of Llandaff with his tyranny and violence, they set upon him in a field and killed him, with five of his canons. In getting possession of Robert's person Henry became master of all Normandy. Rouen, the capital, submitted to the conqueror, and Falaise surrendered after a short resistance. At the latter place William, the only son of Sibylla and Duke Robert, fell into his hands. When the child, who was then only five years old, was brought into the l^resence of his uncle, he sobbed and cried for mercy. It could not escape the king's far-reaching calculations that this boy's legitimate claims might cause him future trouble ; but Henry, as if making a violent effort to rid himself of evil thoughts, sud- denly commanded that he shovdd be removed from him, and given in custody to Helie de St. Saen, a Norman noble, on whom, tliough he had married an illegitimate daughter of Duke Robert, he thought he could rely. He soon, however, repented of this arrangement, and sent a force to surprise the castle of St. Saen, and secure the person of young William. Helie fled with his pupil, and they were both ho- nourably received at all the neighbouring courts, where the beauty, the innocence, the early misfor- tunes, and claims of the boy, gained him many protectors. The most powerful of these friends were Louis the Sixth, commonly called Le Gros, and Fulk, Earl of Anjou, who were reasonably ap- prehensive of the increasing power of his uncle on the continent. As William Fitz-Robert, as he was called, grew up, and gave good promise of being a valiant prince, they espoused his cause more deci- dedly, Louis engaging to grant him the investiture of Normandy, and Fulk to give him his daughter Sibylla in marriage as soon as he should be of proper age. Before that period an-ived circumstances occur- red ( A.D. 1 113) that hurried them into hostUities, and the Earl of Flanders having been induced to sanc- tion, if not to join their league, Henry was attacked at every point along the frontiers of Normandy. He lost towns and castles, and was alarmed at the same time by a report, true or false, that some friends of Duke Robert had formed a plot against his life. So great was his alarm, that for a long time he never slept without having a sword and buckler by his bed-side. When the war had lasted two years Henry put an end to it by a skilful treaty in which he regained whatever he had lost in Nor- mandy, and in which the interests of William Fitz-Robert were overlooked. These advantages were obtained bv giving the estates and honours of the faithful Helie de St. Saen to Fulk, Earl of Anjou, and by stipulating a marriage between his only son. Prince William of England, and Matilda, another daughter of that earl. The previous con- tract between Fitz-Robert and Sibylla was broken off, and the Earl of Anjou agreed to give no more aid or countenance to that young prince. These arrangements, so advantageous for Henry, were not made without great sacrifices of money on the part of the English people ; and some years before they were concluded the nation was made to bear another burden. By the feudal customs the king was entitled to levy a tax for the marrying of his eldest daughter; and (a.d. 1110) Henry affianced the Princess Matilda, a child only eight years old, to Henry V., Emperor of Germany. The high nominal rank of the party, and the gene- ral poverty of the German emperors in those days, would alike call for a large dowry ; and Henry V. drove a hard bargain with his brother (and to-be father-in-law) of England. The marriage portion seems to have been principally raised by a tax laid upon land at the rate of three shillings per hide ; and the contemporary histories abound in com- plaints of the harsh manner in which instant pay- ment was exacted. The stipulated sum was at length placed in the hands of the emperor's am- bassadors, who conducted the young lady into Ger- many, where she was to be educated. If the English people suftered, they were regaled by a fine spectacle ; for it is said that never was sight seen more splendid than Matilda's embarkation. The graver of the impressions, however, remained, and it was remembered to her disadvantage, many years after, how dear her espousals had cost the nation. About this time Henry checked some incursions of the Welsh, the only wars waged in the interior of England during his reign, and, causing a strong army to follow them into their fastnesses, he gained several advantages over the mountaineers. He despaired, however, of reducing them to his obe- dience, and was fain to content himself with build- ing a few castles a little in advance of those erected by the Conqueror and the Red King. He also collected a number of Flemings who had been driven into England by the misfortunes of their own country, and gave them the town of Haver- fordwest, with the district of Ross, in Pembroke- shire. They were a brave and industrious people, skilled in maimfacturing woollen cloths ; and, in- creasing in wealth and numbers, they maintained themselves in their advanced post, in spite of the long efforts of the Welsh to drive them from it. But a subject which occupied the mind of the English king much more than the cou- Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 413 quest of Wales was the securing the succession of all liis dominions to his only legitimate son William, to whom he confidently and proudly looked as to one who was to perpetuate his lineage and power. Having already made all the barons and prelates of Normandy swear fealty and do homage to the boy, he exacted the same oaths in England at a great council of all the bishops, earls, and barons of the kingdom, held at Salisbury; and being still pursued by the dread of the growing popularity on the continent, and the just claims, of his nephew Fitz-Robcrt, lie artfully laboured to get him into his power, making use, among other means, of the most enticing promises, — such as the immediate possession of three great earl- doms in England. But that prince would never trust the gaoler of his father ; and his cause was again supported by powerful friends, whose appre- hensions were anew excited by the ambition of the English king. (a.d. 1118.) At a moment when the most for- midable confederacy that ever threatened him was forming on the continent, Henry lost his excellent consort, Maud the Good, who must indeed have " died with the sad reflection that she had sacri- ficed herself for her race in vain ;" * and in about a month after he suffered a loss, which he probably felt much more, in the death of the Earl of Mellent, the ablest instrument of his ambition, the most skilful of all his ministers, who had so managed Ills foreign politics as to obtain the reputation of being the greatest statesman in Europe. Henry's want of good faith had hurried on the storm which now burst upon him. He had secretly assisted his nephew Theobald,f Earl of Blois, in a revolt against his feudal superior and liege lord, the French king, — he had broken off the match agreed upon between his son William and the Earl of Aujou's daughter Matilda, — and he had belied many of the promises made to the Norman barons in his hour of need. The league that was formed against him, therefore, included many of his own disaffected Norman subjects, Louis of France, Fulk of Anjou, and Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, — the last-mentioned having fewer interested motives, and a purer affection for the gallant son of Duke Robert, than any of the others. The beginning of the war was altogether unfavourable to the allies, and King Louis, at one time, was forced to beg a suspension of hostilities. Then fortune veered, and King Henry lost ground ; but, after a suc- cession of reverses, his better star prevailed, and he was made happy by the death of Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, the soul of the confederacy, who died of a wound received at the siege of Eu. Being thus relieved from one of his formidable enemies, he proceeded to detach another by means as pre- valent as sword, or lance, or arrow-shot. He sent a large sum of money to the venal Earl of Anjou, and agreed that the marriage between his son and • Mackinlos'i, Ilisf. Eng. j Elder broUier of Stephen, who seized the English crown on Henrys death. the earl's daughter should be solemnized forthwith. Fulk took the bribe, and, abandoning his allies, went to prepare for the wedding. At the same time Henry gained over most of the disaffected Norman barons with rich presents or new promises ; and after two more years of a war of petty. sieges and of skirmishes scarcely deserving the name of battles, the French king saw himself deserted by all his allies. As before, the real sufferers in these campaigns were the people of Normandy and the neighbouring countries, whose lands were wasted and houses burned, and the people of England, who were taxed and harried to furnish the money i'or Henry. As for the chief warriors themselves, what with the impenetrable armour in which they now encased themselves, and a system of ransoming one another, and holding all knights, on whatever side they fought, as forming part of a brotherhood, every member of which, except in certain predi- caments, was to be tre<ited with respect, they suf- fered little more than if they had been engaged in jousts and tournaments. The engagement which closed this war, and which was more decisive than any fought during the course of it, is an amusing specimen of these knightly encounters. On the 20th of August, a.d. 1119, King Louis, with four hundred knights, and King Henry, with five hundred knights, met, more by accident than by any design on either side, in the vicinity of the town of Noyon. Vizors were lowered, trumpets sounded, lances couched, and a brilliant charge made by the French chivalry headed by Fitz- Robert, or, as he was now generally called, " William of Normandy." This young prince broke through Henry's first rank, and penetrated to his uncle, who was struck twice on the head by William Crispin, Count of Evreux, a valiant knight, but, as the king wore a steel helmet of the best quality, he received little injury. After a gallant contest the French were defeated, leaving the royal standard and one hundred and forty knights in the hands of the victors. When the dead were counted they were found to amount to tlu'cc knights ! The king of France and young William of Normandy had their horses killed under them, but they escaped on foot. This boasted battle, which deserves to be remembered, was called the battle of Brenville. The French excused their overthrow by saying that King Henry set upon King Louis "when he was not axcarc, and his knights were all out of order and array ;" adding, also, " that King Henry had a far greater number than the French king had." The Anglo-Normans or English (for the latter designation was already common) maintained that the victory had been won " in the open field royally ;" but their superiority in number seems unquestionable. The battle was followed by a display of chivalrous courtesies. Henry sent King Louis a war-horse splendidly caparisoned, and his son made presents to William of Normandy : the prisoners were hospitably enter- tained, and dismissed on the payment of jiropcr knightly ransoms. All this, though it only included 414 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. the higher classes, was an immense improvement on the savage practices of earlier times ; but the civilization of chivalry was at all times somewhat superficial and uncertain in its operation, and during this very war atrocities were committed which make us shudder. Henry had married Juliana, one of his illegitimate children, to Eustace of Breteuil, of whose fidelity he afterwards doubted. He exacted as hostages two children, the daughters of Juliana and Eustace, and, as a pledge on his own part, ordered Harenc, one of his officers, to place his son in the hands of Eustace. In a moment of rage the brutal lord of Evrcux tore out the eyes of the son of Harenc, and sent him back to his father. Harenc demanded justice, and Henry coolly told him he might retaliate on the daughters of Eustace and Juliana, the king's own grandchildren ; and this the barbarian did forth- with, by putting out their eyes and cutting off their noses. In this horrid wreck of the strongest affections and feelings of human nature, Juliana attempted the life of her own father, by dis- charging an arrow at his breast with her ov/n hands.* Soon after the battle of Brenville an end was put to the war, now only maintained on one side by Louis, through the praiseworthy mediation of the Pope,t who, however, laboured in vain to pro- cure a mitigation of the severity exercised on Duke Robert, and a proper settlement for his son William. By this treaty of peace Henry was to preserve undisturbed and unquestioned possession of Nor- mandy ; and his pride was saved by Louis consent- ing to receive the homage due to him for the duchy from the son instead of the father. This son, who was in his eighteenth year, had received the oaths of the Norman nobles, as also the hand of his bride, a child only twelve years old, whose father, Fulk of Anjovi, had given her a considerable dower. King Henry, elated by success, now resolved to return triumphantly to England. The place of embarkation was Barfleur, where Rufus had landed after his stormy passage and impious daring of the elements. J The double retinue of the king and prince royal was most numerous, and some delay was caused by the providing of accommo- dation and means of transport for so many noble personages; among whom were counted we scarcely know how many illegitimate children and mistresses of the king. On the 25th of November (a .d. 1 1 20), however, all was ready, and the sails were joyously bent as for a short and pleasant voyage. Thomas Fitz-Stephen, a mariner of some repute, presented himself to the king, and tendering a golden mark, said, — " Stephen, son of Evrard, my father, served yours all his life by sea, and he it was who steered the ship in which your father sailed for the conquest • Oidcric. — Hen. Hunt. + Calixtus II. He was rcliited by marriage 1o King Henry, and personally visited that soveroi<,'n, who, among other signal falselioods, assured liini that his brother Robert was not a prisoner, but enter- tained in a sumptuous manner in one of the royal castles, where he enjoyed as much liberty and amusement as he desired. X See ante, p. 401. Most of the old historians are of opinion that the drowning of the nephew was a judgment provoked by the pre- sumption of the uncle. of England. Sire King, I beg you to grant me the same office in fief : I have a vessel called the Blanche-Ncf, well equipped, and manned with fifty skilful mariners." The king replied that he had already chosen a vessel for himself, but, that in order to accede to the prayer of Fitz-Stephen, he would confide to his care the prince, with his com- panions and attendants. Henry then embarked, and setting sail in the afternoon with a favourable and gentle wind from the south, reached the English coast in safety on the following morning. The prince was accompanied in the Blanche-Nef, or White Ship, by his half-brother Richard, his half-sister the Lady Marie,* Countess of Perche, Richard earl of Chestei', with his wife, who was the king's niece, her brother, the prince's governor, with a host of gay young nobles, both of Normandy and of England, one hundred and forty in number, eighteen being ladies of the first rank ; all these and their retinues amounting, with the crew, to about three hundred persons. On such occasions it was usual to regale the mariners with a little wine, but the prince and the young men with him imprudently ordered three whole casks of wine to be distributed among the men, who " drank out their wits and reason." The captain had a sailor's pride in the speed of his craft and the qualities of his crew, and, though hours passed away, he ]no- mised to overtake every ship that had sailed before him. The prince certainly did not press his de- parture, for he spent some hours on deck in feasting and dancing with his company. A few prudent persons quitted the disorderly vessel, and went on shore. Night had set in before the Blanche- Nef started from her moorings, but it was a bright moon-light, and the wind, though it had freshened somewhat, was still fair and gentle. Fitz-Stephen, proud of his charge, held the helm ; every sail was set, and, still to increase the speed, the fifty sturdy mariners, encouraged by their boyish passengers, plied the oar with all their vigour. As they proceeded coastwise they got engaged among some rocks at a spot called Ras dc Catte (now lias de Catteville), and the White Sliip struck on one of these with such violence on her larboard side, that several planks were started, and she instantly began to fill. A cry of alarm and horror was raised at once by three hundred voices, and was heard on board some of the king's ships that had gained the high sea, but nobody there sus- pected the cause. Fitz-Stephen lowered a boat, and putting the prince with some of his companions in it, advised them to row for the shore, and save themselves. This would not have been difficult, for the sea was smooth, and the coast at no great distance; but his sister Marie had been left behind in the ship, and her shrieks touched the heart of the prince, — the best or most generous deed of whose life seems to have been his last. He ordered the boat to be put back to take her in ; but such • By some writers this lady is called Maud, and by others Adclo or Adela. The name of her mother is not mentioned. Kicliard was the son of an En"Ush mistress, who is called '• the widow of Anslvill, a nobleman that lived near the monastery of Abingdon." Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 415 numbers leaped into it at the same time as the lady, that it was upset or swamped, and all in it perished. The ship also went down with all on board. Only two men escaped by rising and clinging to the main-yard, which floated, and was probably detached from the wreck : one of these was a butcher of Rouen, named Berold, the other a young man of higher condition, named Godfrey, the son of Gilbert de I'Aigle. Fitz-Stephen, the unfortunate captain, seeing the heads of two men clinging to the yard, swam towards them. " And the king's son," said he, "what has happened to him ?" " He is gone ! neither he, nor his brother, nor his sister, nor any person of his company, has appeared above water." " Woe to me," cried Fitz-Stephen ; and then plunged to the bottom. The night was cold, and the young nobleman, the more delicate of the two survivors, became ex- hausted, and after holding on for some hours let go the yard, and, recommending his poor com- panion to God's mercy, sunk to the bottom of the sea. The butcher of Rouen, the poorest of all those who had embarked in the White Ship, wrapped in his sheep-skin coat,* held on till morning, when he was seen from the shore, and saved by some fishermen, who took him into their boat ; and from him, being the sole survivor, the circumstances of the fearful event were learned. The tidings reached England in the course of the following day, but no one would venture on com- municating them to the king. For three days the courtiers concealed the fact, and at last they sent in • Qui pauperior erat omnibus, renoiie amictus ex arietinis pelli- bus.....Orderic. '^^■^^N -, Death op Pmnck WnxiAK and his Sisteu.— Eigaud. 41G HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. a little boy, Avho, weeping bitterly with " no coun- terfeit passion," fell at his feet, and told him that the White Ship was lost, and that all on board liad perished. The hard heart of Henry was not proof to this shock, — he sunk to the ground in a swoon ; and though he survived it many years, and indulged again in his habitual ambition, he was never afterwards seen to smile.* The English people were far indeed from partaking in this grief] and if half that is related of him be true, they were well rid of a flagitious and tyrannical prince. He had none of the qualities or English feelings of his Saxon mother, the excellent Maud; and he had even been heard to threaten that, when he became king, he would make the English natives draw the plough, and treat them like beasts of burden. The old chroniclers considered his tragic fate as an act of divine vengeance, — as a just judgment of the Almighty; and they thought this notion was strengthened by the circumstances of the wreck, which happened in no storm or tempest, but in serene weatlier, and on a tranquil sea. f They recalled the threat of the arrogant youth, and liis designs against the English people. Henry of Huntingdon exclaims, " He was thinking of his future reign and greatness ; but God said it shall not be thus, thou impious, it shall not be ; and it so fell out that his brow, instead of being girded with the crown of gold, was beaten against the rocks of the ocean." The horrid accusations made against Rufus and his courtiers are renewed against Prince William and his associates by a startling if not convincing number of contemporary writers ; and we fear no historical scepticism or charity can remove the doubt of his having been a dissolute and depraved youth. As Henry was now deprived of his only legi- timate son, he was cast upon new plans for the securing of his various states in his family. At the same time, the same event seemed to brighten the prospects of his nephew, William of Normandy, whose friends certainly increased soon .after the demise of the heir apparent. A circumstance con- nected with the marriage of the drowned prince hastened and gave a colour of just resentment to one declaration in favour of Fitz-Robert. His former friend Fulk, Earl of Anjou, demanded back from Henry his daughter Matilda, together with the dower he had given to Prince William. King Henry willingly gave up the young lady,t but refused to part with the money ; and upon this, Fulk, who was an adept in these matters, renewed his matrimonial negotiations with the son of Duke Robert, and finally affianced to him his younger daughter Sibylla, putting him, meanwhile, in pos- session of the earldom of Mons. Louis of France continued to favour the young prince, and some of the most powerful of the Norman barons entered into a conspiracy in his favour against his luikind • Orderic— Malmsb — Hen. Hunt.— R. Iloveilcn.— W. Gemet. + It was, of course, not foiyotten that the prince sailed — on a Friday ! t Ten years after Matilda became a nun in the celebrated convent of Fontevraud. uncle Henry. But no art, — no precaution, could conceal these manoeuvres from the English king, who had hpies everywhere, and who fell like a thunderbolt among the Norman lords before they were prepared. It cost him, however, more than a year to subdue this revolt ; but then he made the Norman leaders of it prisoners, and induced the Earl of Anjou once more to abandon tlie cause of his intended son-in-law. Some time before effecting this peace, Henry, in the vain hope of oflspriug, which he thought nuist destroy the expectations of his nephew, espoused Adelais, or Alice, daughter of Geoflrey, Duke of Louvain, and niece to the reigning pope, Ca- lixtusIL This new queen was young, and very beautiful, but the marriage was not productive of any issue ; and after three or four years had passed, the king formed the bold design of settling the crown of England and the ducal coronet of Nor- mandy on his daughter Matilda, who had become a widow in 11 24, by the death of her husband, the Emperor Henry V. We call this design a bold one, because it was opposed to the customs and feelings then prevalent in all Europe, and most especially so in our country and the neighbouring continental states, where a female reign was \xn- known, and a 5/te-king regarded as a preposterous anomaly degrading to the warlike nobles and the chivalry that propped the throne. Accordingly, at the first blush of the business, the Anglo-Norman barons expressed their astonishment and disgust ; but Henry's power was now so absolute in Eng- land, that they durst not then venture to oppose it ; and he purchased the acquiescence of the most formidable among them, with money, lands, and promises. On the solemn day of Christmas (a. d. 1126) there was a general assembly in Windsor Castle, of the bishops, abbots, baroris, and all the great tenants of the crown, who, for the most part acting against their inward conviction, unanimously de- clared the ex-empress Matilda to be the next heir to the throne, in the case (now not problematical) of her father's dying without legitimate male issue. They then swore to maintain her succession — the clergy swearing first, in the order of their rank, and after them the laity, among whom there seems to have been more than one dispute touching prece- dence.* The most remarkable of these disputes, as being an index to hidden aspirations, was that for priority between Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, and Robert, Earl of Gloucester, Stephen was the king's nephew, by the daughter of the Conqueror, Henry's sister, Adela: Robert, on the other side, was the king's own son, but was of illegitimate birth; and the delicate point to be decided was, whether precedence was due to legitimacy of birth or to nearness of Idood — or, in other words, which of the two — the lawfully begotten nephew of a king, or the unlawfully begotten son of a king — * David, king of Scotland, in his quality of English earl, or holder of lands In England, swore first of all to supi)ort Matilda, who was his own niece. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 417 was the greater personage. The shade of the great Conqueror might have been vexed at such a discussion ; but though the reigning family derived its claim from a bastard, the question was decided by the assembly in favovu* of the nephew, Stephen, who accordingly swore first. The question had not arisen out of the small spirit of courtly form and etiquette ; the disputants had higher objects. They contemplated perjury in the very preliminary of their oaths. Feeling, in common with every baron present at that wholesale swearing, that the succession of Matilda was insecure, they both looked forward to the cruwn ; and on that account each was anxious to be declared the first prince of the blood. The same year that brought Matilda to Eng- land, saw Fulk, the Earl of Anjou, depart for the Holy Land, it being his destiny to become a very indifferent king of Jerusalem. Having marked the sign of the sacred cross on his shield, his helmet, and other arms, as also on his saddle and the bridle- rein of his horse,* he renounced the jrovernment of the province of Anjou to his son Geofi'rcy, sur- named Plantagenet, on account of a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broorat in his cap like a feather. Henry had many times felt the hostile power of the earls of Anjou, and various political considerations induced him to conclude a marriage between his daughter Matilda and Geoffrey, the son of Fulk. The ex-empress, though partly against her liking, consented to the match, which was negotiated and concluded with great secrecy. The barons of England and Nor- mandy pretended that the king had no right thus to dispose of their future sovereign without pre- viously consulting them ; they were generally dis- satisfied with the proceeding, and some of them openly declared that it released them from the obligations of the oath they had taken to Matilda. Tijis argument was made more" cogent when death relieved them from the dread of the power and ability of Henry, who disregarded their present murmurs, and congratulated himself on his policy, which united the interests of the house of Anjou with those of his own. The marriage was cele- brated at Rouen, in the octaves of the feast of Whit- suntide, 1127, and the festival was prolonged during three weeks. Henry, somewhat despoti- cally, ordered everybody to be merry. On the first day, heralds, in full costume, went through the streets and squares, crying this singular proclama- tion: "In the king's name, let no man here pre- sent, whether an inhabitant or a stranger, rich or poor, noble or vilai/i, be so bold as to withdraw himself from the royal rejoicings ; for, whosoever taketh not part in the diversions and games will be held guilty of an offence towards his lord the king."t But rejoice as he might, Henry felt that the suc- cession of his daughter could never be secure, if • In clypeo, giilcaipie et in omnibus armis, ct in frjeno sellaque, sncriE criicis signiim. — Ordekic. + In olrt French Oenest (now Qenit'), from tlie L.-it!u genista. j Script. Her. Franc. VOL. I. his nephew survived him ; and he applied himself with all his craft to effect the ruin of that young man, who, at the moment, occupied a position that made him truly formidable. At the late peace, the French king had not abandoned his interests like Fulk, the carl of Anjou; on the contrary, Louis invited him again to his court, and soon after, in lieu of Sibylla of Anjou, gave him the hand of his queen's sister, and with her, as a por- tion, the countries of Pontoise, Chaumont, and the Vexin, on the borders of Normandy. Soon after this advantageous settlement, Charles the Good, earl of Flanders, suc:;essor to Baldwin, the steady friend of the son of Duke Robert, was murdered in a church at the very foot of the altar. The king of France entered Flanders as liege lord, and with the consent of the people, to punish the sacrilegious muiderers ; and having done this, he, in virtue of his feudal suzerainty, conferred the earldom upon William of Normandy, who had accompanied him in the expedition, and who, had such claims been allowed, had a good hereditary right to it as the representative of his grandmother, Matilda, who was daughter of Earl Baldwin of the old legitimate line. The Flemish people offered no opposition to their new earl ; and King Louis, with his army, departed, in the gratifying conviction that he had secured a stable dominion to his gallant young brother-in-law, and placed him in a situation the most favourable for the conquest of Normandy,"* or at least for the curbing of that ambition in the English king, which continued to give uneasiness to Louis. This uneasiness could not fail of being increased by the union between the Norman line and the house of Anjou, which took place at this very time. But the French army had scarcely left the country, when the Flemish people, distin- guished even in that age by their turbulence, broke out into revolt against their new earl, and asked and received assistance from King Henry. A re- spectable party, however, adhered to William, who had many qualities to ensure respect and love. In the field he had a manifest advantage over the ill- directed insurgents, who then invited Thiedrik, or Thierry, landgrave of Alsace, to put himself at their head. Thierry gladly accepted their invita- tion. He advanced a claim to the succession on the ground of his descent from some old chief of the country ; and Henry, who found in him the instrument he wanted, sent him money, and en- gaged to support him with all his might. The treacherous surrender of Lisle, Ghent, and other important ])laces in Flanders, immediately fol- lowed; but William, who had the courage and military skill of his unfortunate father, without any of his indolence, completely defeated his anta- gonist, Thierry, under the w^alls of Alost. Most imfortunatcly, however, in the moment of victory, he received a pike wound in the hand, and this being neglected, or improperly treated by ignorant surgeons, brought on a mortification. He was conveyed to the monastery of St. Omer, where he died on the 27th of Julv, 1128, in the twenty-sixth 2 a 418 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. year of a life which had been subject , to extraordi- nary vicissitudes. In his last moments, he wrote to his unnatural uncle, to implore mercy for the Norman barons who had followed his fortunes. Henry, in the joy of his heart, granted the request of his deceased nephew, who left no children to prolong the king's inquietude, or serve as a rally- ing point to the disaffected nobles. We are not informed whether the tidings of William's brief greatness were conveyed into the dungeon of Car- diff Castle, to solace the heart of his suffering father, or whether the news of his early death, which so soon followed it, was in mercy concealed from the blind old man. To work out his purposes, Henry had hesitated at no treachery, no bloodshed, no crime, and yet the infatuated man fondly hoped to end his days in tranquillity. The winding up of his story is little more than a succession of petty family jars and discords — the very bathos of ambition and worldly grandeur. His daughter Matilda, presuming on the imperial rank she had held, and being natu- rally of a proud, imperious temper, soon quarrelled with her husband : a separation took place ; Ma- tilda returned to England, and her father was occu- pied during many months with these family disputes, and in negotiating a peace between man and wife. At length, a reconciliation was patched up, and Ma- tilda returned to her husband. The oath-breaker, her' father, thought he could never exact oaths enough from others ; and before his daughter left England, he made the prelates and barons again swear fealty to her. Henry, who, in spite of these precautions, well knew the chances to which Matilda would be exposed, ardently longed for a grandson, whom he hoped to see grow up ; but for six years he was kept uneasy and unhappy by the unfruitfulness of the marriage. In March, 1 133, however, Matilda was delivered, at Mans, of her first child, Henry, styled Fitz-Empress, who was afterwards Henry II. of England. At the birth of this grandson the king again convoked the barons of England and Normandy, and made them recognise as his successors the children of his daughter, after him, and after her. The nobles consented in appearance, and, being accustomed to the taking of oaths which they meant to break, swore fealty afresh, not only to Matilda, but to her infant son, and the rest of her progeny as yet un- born. The ex-empress gave birth to two more princes, Geoffrey and William, in the course of the two following years; but even a growing family failed to endear her husband to her : she quarrelled with him on all possible occasions; and as her father took her part, whether right or wrong, she kept his mind almost constantly occupied with their dissensions. Under these circumstances, it was not natural that Geoffrey Plantagenet should prove a loving and dutiful son-in-law : he de- manded immediate possession of Normandy, which he said Henry had promised him ; and when the king refused, he broke out into threats and insults. Matilda, it is said, exerted her malignant and inge- nious spirit in widening the breach between her own husband and father. The four l^ist years of Henry's reign, which were spent wholly abroad, were troubled with these domestic broils. At length an incursion of the Welsh demanded his presence in England ; and he was preparing for that journey, when death despatched him on a longer one. His health and spirits had been for some time visibly on the decline. On the 25th of November, " to drive his grief away, he went abroad to hunt." Having pursued his sport during the day, in the woods of Lions-la-Foret, in Nor- mandy,* he returned home in the evening " some- what amended," and, being hungry, " would needs eat of a lamprey, though his physician ever coun- selled him to the contrary." The lamprey or lam- preys he ate brought on an indigestion ; and the indigestion a fever : on the third day, despairing of his recovery, he sent for the Archbishop of Rouen, who administered the sacrament and extreme unction ; and, on the seventh day of his illness, which was Sunday, December 1, a.d. 1135, he expired at the midnight hour. He was in his sixty- seventh year, and had reigned thirty-five years and four months, wanting four days. By his will he left to his daughter Matilda and her heirs for ever, all his territories on either side the sea ; and he desired that when his lawful debts were dis- charged, and the liveries and wages of his retainers paid, the residue of his effects should be distii- buted among the poor. He seems to have died in anger with his son-in-law, for the name of Geoffrey Plantagenet was not mentioned in his will. They kept the royal bowels in Normandy, and deposited them in the church of St. Mary, at Rouen, which, his mother had founded; but the body was conveyed to England, and interred in Reading Abbey, which Henry had built himself. The best circumstances attending his long reign were, the peace he maintained in England, and a partial respect to the laws which liis vigorous government imposed on his haughty and ferocious barons. If regard is had only to success, and no attention paid to the wickedness of the means, he was certainly a great politician. Considering the times, extraordinary care had been taken of his education : his natural abilities were excellent ; and so great was his progress in the philosophy and literature of the age, that his contemporaries honoured him with the name of Beau-clerc, or the fine scholar. Henry of Huntingdon, who knew him well, calls him the murderer of many men, the violator of his oaths ; and regards him as one of those princes who cause royalty to be considered as a crime. The same contemporary writer has left us his character as differently painted by his friei^ds and by his enemies. According to the first, • Lions-la-Foret, now a town, is at a short distance frpra Rouen, and is approached through the remains of a forest, to which it owes its surname. To this forest, once of great extent, the Norman princes eagerly resorted for the diversion of tlie chase. So early as 920, William I., duke of Normandy, built a huntinjf-box there, which afterwards became a castle important from its strength. The forest was the scene of many of the adventures recorded in the old chro- nicles and romances. — Tour in Normandy, by Gaily Knight, Esq. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 419 Rttws or Ueadino Abbey, the Burial-place of Hcnrj* I., as they appeared In l72l. he Avas commendable for the three glorious quali- ties of. wisdom, valour, and wealth ; according to the latter, he was to he condemned for the three especial vices of covetousness, cruelty, and lust. If we unite the good and the evil, and add the qua- lities of craft, treachery, and an implacable re- venge, we shall come to a pretty just estimate of his moral worth. Some minor details may be added, partly from the insight they afford into character, and in part for the naivete with which they are recorded by the old writers. He was proud of his learning, and in the habit of saying that he considered an un- learned king as nothing better than a crowned ass. He was very fond of men of letters, and of wild beasts ; and, to enjoy both, he often fixed his resi- dence between them ; or, in the words of one of the chroniclers, " He took chief pleasure to reside in his new- palace, which himself built at Oxford, both for the delight he had in learned men — himself being very learned — and for the vicinity of his new park at Woodstock, wdiich he had fraught with all kinds of strange beasts, v.herein he much delighted, as lions, leopards, lynxes, camels, porcupines, and the like."* His love of letters, however, did not interfere with his revenge. In the last war in which he was personally engaged on the continent, Luke de Barre, a knightly poet, who had fought against him, was made prisoner, and barbarously sentenced to lose his eyes. Charles the Good, earl of Flanders, who was present, remonstrated • Rossus., quoted in Speed's Chion. against the punishment, urging, among other things, that it was not the custom to inflict bodily punishment on men of the rank of knights, who had done battle in the service of their immediate superior. Henry replied, " This is not the first time that Luke de BaiTe has borne arms against me ; but he has been guilty of still worse things — for he has satirized me in his poems, and made me a laughing-stock to mine enemies. From his example, let other verse-makers learn what they have to expect when they oftend the king of Eng- land." The cruel sentence was wholly or partly executed, and the poet, in a paroxysm of agony, burst from the savage hands of the executioners, and dashed out his brains against the wall * The next anecdote is of a pleasantcr kind, but it will not give an advantageous idea of the devotion of w'luch Henry was accustomed to make frequent profession. Early in life, he chose his cha])lain by the rapidity with which he got through a mass, saying, that no man could be so fit a mass-priest for soldiers as one who did his work with such dispatch. While serving under his brother Wil- liam in Normandy, Henry chanced to enter this priest's church, as it lay on his road, near Caen. " And when the royal youth," says William of Newbury, " said, follow me, he adhered as closely to him as Peter did to his heavenly Lord, uttering a similar command ; for Peter, leaving his vessel, followed the King of kings — he, leaving his church, followed the prince, and being appointed • Orderic. 420 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book TII. chaplain to liim and his troops, became a blind leader of the blind." In some Avorldly respects, at least, the censure was too severe. The speedy chaplain, who will re-appear under the reign of Stephen, and whose achievements in architecture will be noticed in the proper place, was Roger, afterwards the famous bishop of Sarnm, and trea- surer and favourite minister to Henry, who inva- riably made such elections from among the most able and quick-sighted of men.* Another anecdote which is told of him, displays at once Henry's * During Ilcnry's frequent and long absences from En^hind, Roger seems almost invariably to have been loril-licuteiiant or regent of the kingdom. malignity of disposition and his profound dissimu- lation. When Bloet, bishop of Lincoln, one of his principal judges, his steady friend for many years, and who was supposed to be at the moment in the greatest favour, was told that the king had spoken of him in terms of the warmest praise, he exclaimed, " Then I am a lost man — for I never knew him praise any one whom he had not re- solved to ruin." The bishop was ruined very soon after, for having said that the monastery which he was building at Eynsham should be as fine an edifice as the abbey which Henry had built at Reading. Stephen. Great Skal of Stephen. A.D. 1135. Henry Be auclerk was fcarccly dead when events proved how fruitless were all his pains and precautions to secure the succession to his daughter, and how utterly valueless weie unanimous oaths which were rather the offspring of fear than of inward conviction and good-will. Passing over the always questionable obligation of oaths of this nature, there were several capital obstacles to bar the avenues of the tlirone to Matilda. The first among these was her sex. Since the time of the ancient Britons Englar.d had never obeyed a female sovereign, and the Saxons for a long time had even a marked aversion to the name and dignity of queen when applied only to the reigning king's wife.*' In the same manner the Normans had never known a female re-gn, the notion of which was most repugnant to the whole course of their habits and feelings. To hold their fiefs "under the distaff" (as it was called) was considered humiliat- ing to a nobility whose business was war, and whose king, according lo the feudal system, was little else than the first of many warriors, —a chief expected to be in the saddle and at the head of his chivalry * See ante, pp. 150, 153. whenever occasion demanded. We accordingly find that a loud and general cry was raised by the Anglo-Norman and Norman barons, that it would be most disgraceful for so many noble knights to obey the orders of a woman. In certain stages of society, and in all the earliest, the Salic law, or that portion of it excluding females from the throne, to which we have limited its name and meaning, is a natural law. These all but insur- mountable objections would not hold good against her son Henry, but that prince was an infant not yet four years old, and regencies under a long minority were as incompatible with the spirit and condition of the times as a female reign. Queens governing in their own right and by themselves, and faith- fully guarded minorities, are both the product of an age much more civilized and settled than the twelfth century, and the approach to them was slow and gradual. It was something, however, to have confined the right of succession to the legitimately born ; for if the case had occurred a little earlier in England, the grown-up and experienced natural son of the king, standing in the position of Robert Earl of Gloucester, might possibly have been elected with- Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 421 out scruple, as had happened to Edmund Iron- side, Athelstane, and others of the Saxon line. This was a great step made by the clergy (through their enforcing the canons of the church) towards the establishment of that royal legitimacy which has been the idol of more modern times ; but still it was only a step, and the system to which it tended was not completed and thoroughly esta- blished until long after. No one was better acquainted with the spirit of the times and the obstacles raised against Matilda and Earl Robert than the ambitious Stephen, who had taken many measures beforehand, who was encouraged by the irregularity of the succession ever since the Conquest, and who would no doubt give the widest interpretation to whatever of elective character was held to belong to the English crown. His perjury, his ingratitude for the benefits re- ceived from Henry, belong to quite another view of the subject, and were precisely such as might be ex- pected from his circumstances and the time in which ne lived. Henry had indeed been unusually bounti- ful to tliis nephew^ He married him to Maud, daughter and heir of Eustace Count of Boulogne, who brought him, in addition to the feudal sove- reignty of Boulogne, immense estates in England, which had been conferred by the Concjueror on the family of the Count. By this marriage Stephen also acquired another close connexion with the royal family of England and a new hold upon the sympathies of the English, as his wife Maud was of the old Saxon stock, being the only child of Mary of Scotland, sister to David the reigning king, as also to the good Queen Maud, the first Stephen. Enlarged from a unique Silver Coin in the Collection of Sir Henry Ellis. wife of Henry, and mother of the Empress Matilda. Still further to aggrandize this favourite nephew, Henry conferred upon him the great estate for- feited by Robert Mallet in England, and that for- feited by the Earl of Mortaigne in Normandy. He also brought over Stephen's younger brother Henry, who, being a churchman, was created Abbot of Glastonbury and Bishop of Winchester. Stephen had resided much in England, and had rendered himself exceedingly popular both to the Normans and the people of Saxon race. The barons and knights admired him for his undoubted bravery and activity, — the people for his generosity, the beauty of his person, and his affable, familiar manners. Tlie king might not know it, but he was the po- pular favourite in the already important and fast- rising city of London before Henry's death. When that event happened, he was nearer England than Matilda, whose rights he had long determined to dispute. Taking advantage of his situation, he crossed the Channel immediately, and though the gates of Dover and Canterbury were shut against him, he was received in Ijondon with enthusiastic joy, the populace saluting him as king without waiting for the formalities of the election and con- secration. The first step to the English throne in those days, as we have seen in the cases of Rufus and Henry, was to get possession of the royal treasury at Winchester. Stephen's o\<rn brother was Bishop of Winchester, and by his assistance he got the keys into his hands, but whether before or immediately after the election is not quite clear. The treasure consisted of 100,000^. in money, be- sides plate and jewels of great value. His epis- copal brother was otherwise of the greatest use, being mainly instrumental in winning over Roger, Bishop of Sarum, then chief justiciary and regent of the kingdom, and William Corboil, Archbishop of Canterbury, without whose consent the corona- tion would have been informal. Bishop Roger, he who had been the speedy mass-priest of King Henry, was easily gained through his constant craving after money ; but the primate was not assailable on that side, being a very conscientious though weak man : it was therefore thought ne- cessary to practise a deception upon him, and Hugh Bigod, steward of the late household, made oath before him and other lords of the land, that the king on his death-bed had adopted and chosen his nephew Stephen to be his heir and successor, because his daughter the empress had grievously offended him by her recent conduct. This was a most disgraceful measure ; and those men were more honest, and in every sense occupied better ground, who maintained that the great kingdom of England was not a descendible property, or a thing to be willed away by a dying king, without the con- sent and against the customs of the people. After hearing Bigod's oath, the Archbishop seems to have floated quietly with the current without ofier- ing either resistance or remonstrance. But there were other oaths to be considered, for the whole bjdy of the clergy and nobility had repeatedly 422 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. sworn fealty to Matilda. We have already sliown how the oaths were considered by the mass ; and now the all-prevalent Bishop of Sarum openly de- clared that those vows of allegiance were null and void, because, without the consent of the lords of the land, the empress was married out of the realm ; whereas they took their oath to receive her as their queen upon the express condition that she should never be so married without their concurrence.* Some scruples may have remained, but no opposi- tion was offered to his election, and on the 26th of December, being St. Stephen's day, Stephen was hallowed and crowned at Westminster by the primate, William Corboil. Immediately after his coronation he went to Reading to attend the burial of the body of his uncle, and from Reading Abbey he proceeded to Oxford, where he summoned a great council of the prelates, abbots, and lay-barons of the kingdom, that he might receive their oaths of allegiance and consult with them on the affairs of the state. When the assembly met he allowed the clergy to annex a condition, which, as they were sure to assume the right of interpretation, rendered their oaths less binding even than usual. They swore to obey him as their king so long as he should preserve their church liberties and the vigour of discipline, and no longer. This large con- cession, however, had the effect of conciliating the bishops and abbots, and the confirmation of the Pope soon followed. The letter of Innocent II., which ratified Stephen's title, was brief and clear : " We have learnt," said the pontiff, " that thou hast been elected by the common voice and unani- mous consent as well of the lords as the people, and that thou hast been hallowed by the prelates of the kingdom. Considering that the suffrages of so great a number of men cannot have met in thy person without a special co-operation of the divine grace, and that thou, besides, art a near relation of the deceased king, we are well pleased with all that hath been done in thy favour, and adopt thee with paternal affection a son of the blessed apostle Peter and of the holy Roman church. "t Stephen weakened his right instead of strengthen- ing it, by introducing a variety of titles into his charter, which, in imitation of his predecessor Henry, he issued at this time ; but particular stress seems to have been laid on his election as king, " with the consent of the clergy and people," and on the confirmation granted him by the Pope. In this same charter he promised, as his uncle had done before him, to redress all grievances, and grant to the people all the good laws and good customs of Edward the Confessor. Whatever were his natural inclinations, (and we are inclined to believe they were not bad or ungenerous,) the circumstances in which he was placed, and the villanous instruments with which he had to work, from the beginning to the end of his troubled • Matt. Par.— Gesta Steph. + Scrip. Rer. Franc. The letter of the Pope has been preserved by Richard of Hexham. It may be possible, though it appears scarcely probable, tliat the Pope knew nothing of the oaths pre- viously taken to Matilda and her children. reign, put it wholly out of his power to keep the promises he had made, and the condition of the English people became infinitely worse under him than it had been under Henry or even under Rufus. A concession which he made to the lay barons con- tributed largely to the frightful anarchy whicli ensued. To secure their affections and to strengthen himself, as he thought, against the empress, he granted them all permission to fortify their castles and build new ones ] and these, almost without an exception, became dens of thieves and cut-throats. At the same time he made large promises to the venal and rapacious nobles, to engage them the more in support of his title to the crown, and gave them strong assurances that they should enjoy more p7-ivileges and offices under him than they had possessed in the reigns of his Norman predecessors. The keeping of these engagements with the barons would of itself render nugatory his promises to the English people, whose greatest hardships arose out of the already extensive privileges of the nobles ; and the non-performance of them was sure to bring down on Stephen's head the vengeance of a warlike body of men, who were almost everything in the nation, and far too much, when united, for any royal authority, however legitimately founded. At first, and probably on account of the large sum of money he had in hand to meet demands, all went on in great peace and harmony ; and the court the new king held in London during the festival of Easter, in the first year of his reign, was more splendid, and better attended in every respect, than any that had yet been seen in England. The quantity of gold and silver and precious gems, and the costly dresses displayed at the royal banquets, are described as being most imposing.* Nor were the prelates and barons in Normandy more averse to the succession of Stephen than their brethren in England. The old reasons for desiring a continuance of their union with our island were still in force with many of them ; and there was an liereditary animosity between the nobles and people of Normandy and those of Anjou, so that when Geoffrey Plantagenet, Earl of Anjou, marched into the duchy to assert the lights of his wife Matilda, he and his Angevins met with a determined op- position, and he was, soon after, glad to conclude a peace or truce for two years with Stephen on con- dition of receiving during that time an annual pen- sion of 5000 marks. When Stephen appeared on the continent he met with nothing to indicate that he was considered as an unlawful usurper : the Normans swore allegiance, and the French king (Louis VII.), with whom he had an interview, formed an alliance by contracting his young sister Constance with Eustace, Stephen's young son, and, as suzerain, granted the investiture of Normandy to Eustace, who was then a mere child. During the first year of Stephen's reign England was disturbed only by the revolt of the Earl of Ex- eter, who was discontented with his share in the new king's liberalities ; and by a Scottish incursion made • Henry Hunting. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 1066—1216. 423 into the northern counties in support of Matilda by her uncle King David,* who, however, was bought off, for the present, by the grant of the lordship of Huntingdon and the castle of Carlisle, with a few other concessions. Robert Earl of Gloucester, the late king's natural son, who had so vehemently dis- puted the question of precedence with Stephen, merged his own pretensions to the crown in those of his half-sister Matilda, whose cause he resolved to promote in England conjointly with his own immediate advantages. He was a soldier of good repute, though by no means so brilliant a one as Stephen ; he was also a man of political ability and of consummate craft. Pretending to be reconciled to his rule, he came over from the continent (a.d. 1137) and took the oaths of fealty and homage to Stephen, by the performance of which ceremony he obtained instant possession of his vast estates in England, together with more power and opportunity of promoting the cause he had embraced than a more straightforward line of conduct or a con- scientious exile would ever have afforded him. It is said that, in imitation of the clergy, he made his allegiance conditional, stating, when he took his oaths, that they were to be binding only as long as the king kept his engagements with him ; but this, if true, will hardly excuse his conduct, for the first use he made of the advantages the oaths procured him, and before Stephen had time to break any part of his contract, Avas to intrigue with the nobles in favour of his half-sister, and lay the ground- work of plots against the king de facto. The happy calm in which England lay did not last long after the Earl of Gloucester's arrival. Several of the barons, alleging their services had not met with meet reward, began to seize, by force of arms, dif- ferent parts of the royfil demesne, which they said Stephen had promised them in fief, either at his coronation or at the council held at Oxford. Hugh Bigod, who had sworn that King Henry had ap- pointed Stephen his successor, and who probably put a high price on hia perjury, was foremost among the disaffected, and seized Norwich Castle. Other royal castles were besieged and taken, or were treacherously surrendered. They were nearly all soon retaken by the king, but the spirit of revolt was rife among the nobles, and the sedition, suppressed on one spot, burst forth on others. Stephen was lenient and merciful beyond all precedent to the vanquished ; and if, on one occasion, in a moment of passion he ordered a baron who had instigated several revolts to be hanged, with a number of his associates, as felons (which they w^ere), the sentence was only in part executed, and he repented of his purpose. It is some relief to humanity to find, amidst all the horrors perpetrated by others during his reign, no torturing and mutilating of prisoners performed by royal command ; no tearing out of eyes, no lopping off of hands and feet, and none of those atrocities in • Tho Scottish king was equally uncle to Stephen's wife, but he Vrobubly remembered the oaths he had taken to the mother of ilcnry. which the vindictive spirit of his Norman prede- cessors had indulged. The earl of Gloucester having settled with his friends the plan of a most extensive insurrection, and induced the Scottish king to promise another invasion of England, withdrew beyond sea, and sent a letter of defiance to Stephen, in which he formally renounced his homage. Other great barons — all pleading that Stephen had not given them enough, nor extended their privileges as he had promised — fell from his side, and withdrew to their castles, which, by his permission, they had already strongly fortified. He was abandoned, like Shakspeare's Macbeth, but his soul was as high as that usurper's. " The traitors !" he cried, " they themselves made me a king, and now they fall from me ; but, by God's birth, they shall never call me a deposed king !"* At this crisis of his fortunes he displayed extraordinary activity and valour ; but having no other politic means of any efficacy with such men, who were all grasping for estates, honours, and employments, he trenched on the domains of the crown, and besides had again recourse to his old system of promising more than he could possibly perform to the nobles who remained faithful, or who came over to him with- out putting him to the trouble of besieging them in their castles. The history of those petty sieges, wherein Stephen was almost invariably successful, is singularly uninteresting ; but the campaign against the Scots has some remarkable features. While he was engaged with the revolted barons in the south. King David, true to his promise, but badly supported by the earl of Gloucester and Matilda, who did not arrive in England to put themselves at the head of their party till a year later, gathered his forces together from every part of his dominions — from the Lowlands, the Highlands, and the Isles — from the great promontory of Gallo- way, the Cheviot Hills, and from that nursing- place of hardy, lawless men, the border-land be- tween the two kingdoms — and crossing the Tweed (March, 1138), advanced boldly into Northumber- land, riding with Prince Henry, his son and heir, at the head of as numerous, as mixed, and, in the main, as wild a host as ever trode this ground. These "Scottish ants," as an oldwriter calls them, f overran the whole of the country that lies between the Tweed and the Tees. " As for the king of Scots himself," says the anonymous author of Gesta Stephanie " he was a prince of a mild and merciful dispo- sition ; but the Scots were a barbarous and impure nation, and their king, leading hordes of them from the remotest parts of that land, was unable to re- strain their wickedness." Another contemporary, Orderic Vital, whose powerful descriptions we have so often quoted, says, they exercised their barbarity in the manner of wild beasts, sparing neither age nor sex, nor so much as the child in the womb. We fear there is much truth in this fright- ful picture ; but the national prejudices and ani- mosity between the Scots and the English were old • Malmsh. \ Matt. Par. 424 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. and confirmed feelings; and the chroniclers we refer to were Englishmen, not likely to give the most favovirable account, while it seems certain that the Normans of the time purposely exagge- rated the barbarous excesses, committed chiefly by the Gallowegians, the Highlanders, and the men of the Isles, in order to make the English fight more desperately on their side ; for had they relied solely on their chivalry and the men-at-arms and mercenaries in the service of their northern barons, their case would have been hopeless. At the same time, they conciliated the English people of the north by a strong appeal to the local superstitions — they invoked the names of the saints of Saxon race whom they had been wont to treat with little respect ; and the popular banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham (or, according to some, of St. Peter of York), St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrid of Ripon, which had long lain dust-covered in the churches, were reproduced in the army, as the pledges and means of victory. So rapid was the advance of King David, that Stephen had not time to reach the scene of hostilities ; and the defence of the north was, in a great measure, left to Toustain, or Thurstan, archbishop of York, an infirm, de- crepit old man, but whose warlike energies, ad- dress, and cunning were not affected by age and disease. It was lie who mainly organized the army of defence which was got together in a hurry. He eloquently exhorted the men to fight to the last, for God and their country, telling them victory was certain, and Paradise the meed of all who should fall in battle against the Scots : he made them swear never to desert each other ; he gave them his blessing and the remission of their sins ; he sent forth all his clergy, bishops, and chaplains, and the curates, who led their parishioners " the brave&t men of Yorkshire;" and though sickness prevented him from putting on his own coat of mail, he sent Raoul, or Ranulf, the bishop of Dur- ham, to represent him on the field of battle. Each lay baron of the north headed his own vassals ; but a more extensive command of divisions was entrusted by the archbishop to William Piperel, or Peverel, and Walter Espec of Nottinghamshire, and Gilbert de Lacy and his brother Walter, of Yorkshire. As the Scots were already upon the Tees, the Anglo-Norman army drew up between that river and the Humber, choosing their own battle-field at Elfer-tun, now Northallerton, about equidistant from York and Durham. This was the spot where the soldieis of the Conqueror, marching to avenge the catastrophe of Durham, were saint-struck or panic-seized ; bvit now St. Cuthbert was on the Norman side. Here they erected a remarkable standard, from which the battle has taken its name. A car upon four wheels, which will remind the reader of Italian history of the carroccio of the people of Loirrba.dy,* was drawn to the centre of the position ; the mast of a vessel was strongly fastened in the car ; at the top of the mast a large crucifix was displayed, having in its centre a silver box containing the consecrated wafer or sacrament ; and, lower down, the mast was decorated with the banners of the three Eng- lish saints. Around this sacred standard many of the English yeomanry aird peasants from the plains, • Tlie c.irroccio, or great standard car, is said to have been in- vented or fast used by Kribert, arclibislioi) of Milan, in the year 1033. It was a car upon lour wheels, painted red, and so heavy "that it was drawn by four pair of oxen. In the centre of the car was fixed a mast, which supjiorled a golden ball, an image ofour Saviour, and the lianner of the republic. In front of the mast were placed a fett- of the most valiant warriors — in the tear of it a band of warlike music. Feelings of religion, of military glory, of local attachniint of patriotism, were all associated with the carroccio, the idea of wliicb is supposed to have beei" derived from the Jewisli ark of the cove- nant. It was from the platform of the car that the priest adminis- tered the oflices of religion to the army. No disjjrace was so into lerable among the free citizens of Lombardy as that entailed by the suffering au enemy to take the carroccio. Staki>ard of tiik English at the Battle or NoRTHAi.LEUTOK.-From Ailred de Bello Standardi, in Twisden's Scriptores Decern, p. 339. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 425 wolds, and woodlands of Yorkshire, Nottingham, and Lincolnshire, gathered of their own accord. These men were all armed with large bows and arrows two cubits long : they had the fame of being excellent archers, and the Normans gladly assigned them posts in tlie foremost and most ex- posed ranks of the army. The Scots, whose standard was a simple lance, with a sprig of the " blooming heather" wreathed round it, crossed the Tees in several divisions. Prince Henry commanded the first corps, whicli consisted of men from the Lowlands of Scotland, armed with cuirasses and long pikes ; of archers from Teviotdale and Liddesdale, and all the val- leys of the rivers that empty their waters into tlie Tweed or the Solway Frith ; of troopers from the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, mounted on small but strong and active horses ; and of the fierce men of Galloway, who wore no defensive armour, and carried long thin pikes as their chief if not sole weapon of war. A body-guard of knights and men-at-arms under the command of Eustace Fitz-John, a nobleman of Norman de- scent, rode round the prince. The Highland clans and men of the Isles came next, carrying a small round shield, made of light wood covered with leather, as their only defensive armour, and the claymore or broad-sword as their only weapon : some of the island tribes, however, wielded the old Danish battle-axe instead of the claymore. After these marched the king, with a strong body of knights, who were all either of English or Norman extraction ; and a mixed corps of men from the Moray Frith and various other parts of the land, brought up the rear. With the excei)tion of the knights and men-at-arms who were clad in com- plete mail, and aimed uniformly, the host of the Scottish king presented a disordered variety of weapons and dresses. The half-naked clans were, however, as forward to fight as the warriors clad in steel ; and a hot dispute arose for the honour of beginning the action between the natives of Gallo- way and the well-appointed men-at-arms. " Why sliould we trust so much to these foreigners ?" said Malise, earl of Strathern. " I wear no armour, but there is not one among them that will advance so far as I will do this day." The king was obliged to decide the dispute in favour of the men of Gallo- way, who accordingly had the post of honour, and led the van, when they came in presence of the enemy. The rapid advance of the Scottish forces was covered and concealed by a dense fog, and they would have taken tlie Anglo-Norman army by surprise, had it not been for Robert de Bruce and Bernard de Baliol, two barons of Norman descent,, who held lands both in Scotland and England, and who were anxious for the conclusion of an imme- diate peace. Having in vain argued with David, and hearing themselves called traitors by William, the king's nephew, they renounced the Scottisli part of their allegiance, bade defiance to the king, and putting spurs to their horses, galloped off to the camp at Northallerton, which they reached in good time to tell that the Scots were coming. At the sight and sound of their headlong and tumul- tuous approach, the bishop of Durham read the prayer of absolution from the standard-car, the Normans and the English kneeling on the ground the while, and rising to their feet and shouting " Amen," when it was finished. The representa- tive of the energetic old Thurstain then delivered a speech for the further encouragement of the army : it was long, and seems to have been interrupted by the onslaught of the Scots; but the opening of it ought to be preserved : " Illustrious chiefs of Eng- land," said the bishop, " by blood and race Nor- mans, before whom bold France trembles, — to whom fierce England has submitted, — under whom Apulia has been restored to her station, — and whose names are famous at Antioch and Jeiusalem, — here are the Scots, who have done homage to you, undertaking to drive you from your estates."* The Scots came on with the simple war-cry of " Alban ! Alban !"t which was shouted at once by all the Celtic triles from the Highlands. The desperate charge of the men of Galloway drove in the English infantry, and broke, for a moment, the Norman centre. " They burst the enemy's ranks," says old Brompton, " as if they had been but spiders' webs." Almost immediately after, both flanks of the Anglo-Normans were assailed by the mountaineers and the men of Teviotdale and Lid- desdale ; but these charges were not supported in time, and the Norman horse formed in an impene- trable mass round the standard-car, and repulsed the Scots in a fierce charge they made to penetrate there. During this fruitless effort of the enemy, the English bowmen rallied, and took up good positions on the two wings of the Anglo-Norman army ; and when the Scots renewed their attack on the centre, they harassed them with a double- flank flight of arrows, while the Norman knights and men-at-arms leceived them in front on the points of their couched lances. The long thin pikes of the men of Galloway were shivered against the armour of the Normans, or broken by their heavy swords and battle-axes. The Highland clans, still shouting "Alban! Alban!" wielded their claymores, and fighting hand to hand, tried to cut their way through the mass of iron-cased chivalry. It was the first time these Normans of England had come in contact with the claymore of the North, and they had good reason to bless the protection of their well-bound shields, their hau- berks of mail, and their cuisses of steel plate. For full two hours did the Scots maintain the fight in front of the Norman host ; and at one moment the gallant Prince Henry had nearly penetrated to the elevated standard; but, at last, with broken spears and swords, they ceased to attack — paused, retreated, and then fled in confusion. The king, however, retained near his person, and in good order, his guards and some other troops, which covered the retreat, and gave several bloody checks to the Anglo-Normans wlio pursued. Three days • Alatt. Par. f Ibid, 426 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. after, he rallied -within the walls of Carlisle, and employed himself in collecting his scattered troops, and organizing a new army. He is said to have lost 1 2,000 men at Northallerton. The Normans were not left in a situation in which they could pursue their advantages to any extent; and the Scots soon re-assumed the offensive, by laying siege to Wark Castle, which they reduced by famine. The famous battle of the Standard, which was fought on the 22nd of August, a.d. 1138, was, however, the great event of this Scottish war, which was concluded in the following year by a treaty of peace, brought about by the intercessions and prayers of Alberic, bishop of Ostia, the pope's legate in England, and Stephen's wife, Maud, who had an interview with her uncle King David at Durham. Though he left the Scots in pos- session of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and invested Prince Henry with the earldom of Nor- thumberland, the issue of the war dispirited the malcontents all over England, and miglit have given some stability to Stephen's throne, had he not, in an evil moment, roused the powerful hosti- lity of the church. Roger, bishop of Sarum, though no longer trea- surer and justiciary, as in the former and at the beginning of the present reign, still possessed great influence in the nation, both among clergy and laity, — an influence not wholly arising out of his great wealth and political abilities, but in part owing to the noble use he made of his money, to his taste and munificence, and the superior learning of his family and adherents. Among other works of the same kind he rebuilt the cathedral at Sarum, which had been injured by fire, and the storms to which its elevated position exposed it, and he beautified it so greatly that it yielded to none in England at that time ; and some respect is still due to the memory of a man who greatly raised the architectural taste of this country, and whose genius affected the age in which he lived. " He erected splendid mansions on all his estates," says William of Malmsbury, " with unrivalled magni- ficence, in merely maintaining which his successors will toil in vain. His cathedral he dignified to the utmost with matchless adornments, and build- ings in which no expense was spared. It was wonderful to behold in this man what abundant authority attended, and flowed, as it were, to his hand. He was sensible of his power, and some- what more harshly than beseemed such a character abused the favour of Heaven." He was indeed little scrupulous about the manner in which he obtained his resources ; . and we learn from the same contemporary that, while he was in power, his hand was as grasping in one direction as it was open and liberal in another. " Was there anything adjacent to his possessions which he desired, he would obtain it either by treaty or purchase ; and if that failed, by force." But other powerful barons, both ecclesiastical and lay, equalled his rapacity without having any of his taste and elevation of spirit; for he was in all things a most magni- ficent person, and one who extended his patronage to men of learning as well as to architects and other artists. He obtained the sees of Lincoln and Ely for his two nephews, Alexander and Nigel, who were men of noted learning and industry, anil were said at the time to merit their promotion by virtue of the education which he had given them. Alexander, the bishop of Lincoln, who, thougli called his nephew, is significantly said to have been something nearer and dearer, had the same taste for raising splendid buildings ; he nearly rebuilt the cathedral of Lincoln, and built the castle of Newark : but Nigel, on the contrary, is said to have wasted his wealth on hawks and hounds. Bishop Roger, next to his own brother, the bishop of Winchester, had contributed more than any churchman to his elevation, and Stephen's consequent liberality for a long time knew no stint. It should appear, however, that his gifts were not the free-ofterings of gratitude, and that he treated the bishop as one does a sponge which is permitted to fill before it is squeezed. He is reported to have said more than once to his familiar companions, — " By God's birth, I would give him half England if he asked for it : till the time be ripe, he shall tire of asking before I tire of giving." Roger was one of the castle-builders of that turbulent period, being, as he thought, licensed therein by the per- mission granted by Stephen at his coronation : all his stately mansions were in fact strongly fortified places, well garrisoned, and provided with warlike stores. Besides Newark Castle, Alexander had built other houses, which were also fortified ; and, when abroad, uncle and nephews were accustomed to make a great display of military force. The pomp and power of this family had long excited the envy of Stephen's favourites, who had no great difficulty in persuading their master that Bishop Roger was on the point of betraying him, and espousing the interests of Matilda. Stephen was threatened by an invasion from without, and no longer knew how to distinguish his friends from his foes within : his want of money, to pay the foreign mercenary troops he had engaged, and to satisfy his selfish nobles, now drove him into all kinds of irregular courses, and he probably consi- dered that the bishop's time was rijic. The king was holding his court at Oxford : the town was crowded with prelates and barons, with their nume- rous and disorderly attendants; a quarrel, either accidental or preconcerted, arose between the bishop's retainers and those of the Earl of Brittany concerning quarters, and swords being drawn on both sides, many men were wounded, and one knight was killed.* Stephen took advantage of the circumstance, and ordered the arrest of the bishop and his nephews. Roger was seized in the king's own hall, and Alexander, the Bishop of Lincoln, at his lodging in the town ; but Nigel, the Bishop • It appears tliat Bishop Uot'or set out nii his jomney to Oxford with reluctance. " For," says William of Malnislnu y. •' 1 heard him speaking to the following purpose : ' By my lady St. Mary, I know not wherefore, but my lieart revolts at this journey : this I am sure of, that I shall be of much the same service at court as a fool in battle 1'" Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 427 of Ely, who had taken up his quarters in a house outside the town, escaped, and threw himself into Devizes, the strongest of all his uncle's castles. The two captives v/ere confined in separate dun- geons : — the first charge laid against them was a flagrant violation of the king's peace within the precincts of his court ; and for this they were assured that Stephen would accept of no atone- ment less than the unconditional surrender to him of all their castles. They at first refused to part with their houses, and offered " a reasonable com- pensation " in money ; but moved by the dreadful threats of their enemies and the entreaties of their friends, they at length surrendered the castles which Roger had built at Malmsbury and Sher- borne, and that which he had enlarged and Remains of Oi.u Sauvm. The bUc of the Castle is marked hy the Bushes in the Central Mound. strengthened at Sarum. Newark Castle, the work of the Bishop of Lincoln, seems also to have been given up. But the Castle of Devizes, the most important of them all, remained ; and, relying on its strength, the warlike Bishop of Ely was pre- pared to bid defiance to the king. To overcome this opposition Stephen had recourse to a measure which was not at all inconsistent with the spirit of the times — ^lie ordered Roger and the Bishop of Lincoln to be kept without food till the castle should be given up. In case of a less direct appeal the defenders of Devizes might have been obstinate, or incredulous of the fact that Stephen was starving two bishops ; but Roger himself, already pale and emaciated, was made to state his own hard fate, in front of his own castle, to his own nephew, whom he implored to surrender, as the king had sworn most solemnly to keep his purpose of famishing him and the Bisliop of Lin- coln to death unless he submitted. Stephen, though far less cruel by nature than most of his contemporaries, was yet thought to be a man to keep his word in such a case as the present : this was felt by the Bishop of Ely, who, overcoming his own haughty spirit out of affection to his uncle, surrendered to save the lives of the captives, after they had been three whole days in a " fearful fast. " * At these violent proceedings the whole body of the dignified clergy, including even his own brother Henry, the Bishop of Winchester, who was now armed with the high powers and juris- diction of Papal Legate for all England, turned against Stephen, accusing him of sacrilege in laying violent hands on prelates, whose persons were held to be holy, no matter what the tenor of their lives, and whose deeds were not to be sub- jected to a lay tribunal or the operations of kingly or civil law. The Legate Henry summoned his brother, the king, to appear and answer for his conduct before a synod of bishops assembled at Winchester. Stephen would not attend in person, but finding it absolutely necessary so to do, he sent Aubrey or Alberic de Vere as his counsel to plead for him. Alberic exaggerated the circum- stances of the riot at Oxford, and laid all the blame of that disgraceful bloodshedding upon Roger and his insolent nephews, whom, moreover, he directly charged with a treasonable correspond- ence with the Empress Matilda, The legate an- swered that the three bishops, uncle and nephews, • Malmsb. — Orderic— Gesta Steph. 428 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. were ready to abide their trial before a proper tri- bunal ; but demanded, as of riglit, and according to usage, that their houses and property should be previously restored to them. Alberic said that they had voluntarily surrendered their castles and trea- sures as an atonement for their offences; and it was insisted, moreover, on the same side, that the king had a right to take possession of all fortified places in his dominions whenever he considered, as circumstances now obliged him to do, that his throne was in danger. On the second day of the debate the Archbishop of Rouen, the only prelate that still adhered to the king, took a more apostolic and simple view of the case, and boldly affirmed that the three bishops were bound by their vows at consecration to live humbly and quietly ac- cording to the canons of the church, which prohi- bited them from all kinds of military pursuits whatsoever ; that they could not claim the restitu- tion of castles and places of war, which it was most unlawful for them, as churchmen, to build or t:) hold ; and that, consequently, they had merited the greatest part of the punishment they had suf- fered. The points of canonical law thus laid down were undeniable ; but the bishops there assembled were not accustomed to their practice, and every one of them might have said that, without making his house a castle, there was no living in it in those lawless times. As their temper was stern and uncompromising, Alberic de Vere appealed to the pope in the name of the king, and dissolved the council, the knights with him drawing their swords to enforce his orders if necessary.* The assembly broke up in wrath and confusion, and the effects of this confirmed rupture were soon made visible. But Bishop Roger did not live to see the humi- liation of Stephen ; he was heart-broken ; and when, in the following month of December, as the horrors of a civil war were commencing, he died at an advanced age, his fate was ascribed, not to the fever and ague, from which, in Malmsbury's words, he escaped by the kindness of death, but to grief and indignation for the injuries he had suffered. The plate and money which had been saved from the king's rapacity he devoted to the completion of his church at Sarum, and he laid them vqion the high altar, in the hope that Stephen might be restrained, by fear of sacrilege, from seizing them. But these were not times for deli- cate scruples, and they were carried off, by the orders of Stephen, even before the old man's death. Their value was estimated at forty thousand marks. Bishop Roger was the Cardinal Wolsey of the twelfth century, and his fate, not less tragic than the cardinal's, made a deep impression on the rninds of his contemporaries, even in the midst of the many tragedies, domestic as well as public, by which they were constantly surrounded. " To me," says William of Malmsbury, "it seems that God exhibited him to the rich as an example of the instability of fortune, in order that men should not trust in uncertain riches But the height • Malmsb. — William of Malmsbury was present at tliis council. of his calamity even I cannot help commiserating, that, wretched as he appeared to many men, there were very few who pitied him, — so much envy and hatred had his excessive power drawn on him, and undeservedly, too, from some of the very persons whom he had advanced to honour." It has been hinted that he must have regretted . in his last hours that irreligious haste in saying mass, which gained him the favour of Henry Beauclerk : this is very probable even in a worldly view, and in his season of sickness and fallen greatness he may have thought that his life would have been, in all senses, a happier one, had he remained a quiet, devout curate in his little church near Caen. His nephew, or son, Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, and his nephew Nigel, Bishop of Ely, having the advantage of a younger age, did not resign them- selves to despair, but, intent on taking vengeance, they openly joined Matilda, and were soon up in arms against Stephen. The synod of bishops held at Winchester was dissolved on the first day of September (a.d. 1139), and towards the end of the same month Matilda landed in England with her half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and one hundred and forty knights. Some Normans who went out to meet her, on finding she came with so insignificant a force, and brought no money, returned to the other side ; and Stephen, by a rapid movement, pre- sently surprised her in Arundel Castle, where Alice, or Adelais, the queen-widow of Henry I., gave her shelter and encouragement. Stephen had both these dames absolutely in his power, but refining on the chivalrous notions which were becoming more and more in vogue, and to which he was inclined by nature more perhaps than suited good policy, he left Queen Alice undisturbed in her castle, and gave Matilda permission to go free and join her half-brother Robert, who imme- diately after their landing had repaired by bye- roads, and with only twelve followers, to tlie west country, where, at the very moment of these generous concessions, be was collecting his friends to make war upon Stephen. The king's brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, escorted Matilda from Arundel Castle to Bristol, and delivered her safely to Earl Robert. It was soon seen that those who had declined joining Matilda on her first landing had taken a narrow view of the resources of her jiarty, for most of the chiefs in the north and the west renounced their allegiance to Stephen, and took fresh oaths to the empress. There was a moment of wavering and hesitation, during which many of the barons in other parts of the kingdom weighed the chances of success, or tried both parties, to ascertain which would grant the more ample recompense to their venal swords. While this state of indecision lasted men knew not v/ho were to be their friends or who their foes in the coming struggle; — "the neighbour could put no faith in his nearest neighbour, nor the friend in his friend, nor the brother in his own brother; " * • Gervase of Canterbury. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 429 AauNDEL Castle. I)ut at last the more active chiefs chose their sides, ' the game was made up, and the horrors of civil war, which were to decide it, were let loose upon the land. Still, however, many of the barons kept aloof, and strongly garrisoning their own castles, took the favourable opportunity of setting all laws at defiance, and despoiling, torturing, and murdering their weak neighbours. The whole war was conducted in a frightful manner ; but the greatest of the atrocities seem to have been com- mitted by these separationists, who cared neither for Stephen nor Matilda, and who rarely or never took the field for either party. They waged war against one another, and besieged castles, and racked farms, and seized the unprotected traveller, on their own account, and for their own private spite or advantage. There was scarcely a corner of the land exempt from these insupportable evils ; for castles had been built everywhere, and nearly every castle was the scene of lawlessness and crime. At first the fortune of the greater war inclined in favour of Stephen ; for though he failed in an attempt to take Bristol, which had become the head-quarters of Matilda and Earl Robert, he gained many advantages over their adherents in the west, and defeated a formidable insurrection in the east, headed by Nigel, the bishop of Ely, who built a stone rampart among the bogs and fens of his diocese, on the very spot, it is said, where the brave Earl Ilereward had raised his fortress of wood against the Conqueror. To reach the war- like and inveterate nephew of old Bishop Roger, Stephen had recourse to the same skilful measures which had been employed by the Conqueror at the same difficult place. Defeated at Ely, Nigel fled to Gloucester, whither Matilda had transferred her standard ; and while Stephen was still on the eastern coast, the flames of war were rekindled in all the west, and the fugitive bishop distinguished himself among the men who were literally of the church militant. The Norman prelates had no scruples in taking an active j)art in these military operations ; and the garrisons of their castles are said to have been as cruel to the defenceless rural population, as eager after plunder, and altogether as lawless as the retainers of the lay barons. The bishops themselves were seen, as at the time of the Conquest, mounted on war-horses, clad in armour, directing the siege or the attack, and drawing lots, with the rest, for the booty.* No exceptions are named ; but we are inclined, in cha- rity, to believe there were several, and tliat there were many churchmen who deplored, at the same time, the woful diminution of their peaceful reve- nues, and the miseries of the people, whose labours, in happier times, made their wealth and plenty. The cause of Stephen was never injured by any want of personal courage and rapidity of move- ment. From the east he returned to the west, and from the west marched again to the county of fens, • Gesta StepU. 430 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. on learning that Alexander, the bishop of Lincoln, had got together the scattered forces of the bishop of Ely in those parts, and, in alliance with the earls of Lincoln and Chester, was making himself very formidable. The castle of Lincoln was in the hands of his enemies; but the townspeople were devoted to Stephen, and assisted him in lay- ing siege to the fortress. On the 2nd of February, A.D. 1141, as Stephen was prosecuting this siege, the earl of Gloucester, who had got together an army 10,000 strong, and Avho had hoped, by rapid marches, to take his adversary by surprise, swam across the Trent, and appeared in front of Lincoln. Stephen, however, was prepared to receive him ; he had drawn out his forces in the best position, and, dismounting from his war-horse, he put himself at the head of his infantry. But his army was unequal in number, and contained many traitors : the Avhole of his cavalry deserted to the enemy, or fled at the first onset; and after he had fought most gallantly, and broken both his sword and battle-axe, Stephen was taken prisoner by the earl of Gloucester. Matilda was hicapable of imitating his generosity; but her partisans lauded lier mercy, because she only loaded him with chains, and threw him into a dungeon in Bristol Castle. Many of the time-serving nobles now made their submission to the empress, and she does not appear to have encountered much difficulty in persuading the bishop of Winchester wholly to abandon his un- fortunate brother, and acknowledge her title. The price paid to the bishop was the promise, sealed by an oath, that he should have the chief direction of her aff'airs, aiid the disposal of all vacant bishoprics and abbacies. The scene of the bargain was on the downs, near Winchester, and tlie day on which it was concluded (the 2nd March) was dark and tempestuous, as if, says Malmsbury, the elements themselves portended the calamities that followed. The next day, accompanied by a great body of the clergy, the brother of Stephen conducted the em- press in a sort of triumph to the cathedral of Win- chester, within which he blessed all who should be obedient to her, and denounced a curse against all who refused to submit to her authority. As legate of tlie pope, this man's decision had the force of law with most of the clergy ; and several bishops, and even Theobald, the new archbishop of Canter- bury, followed his example.* It is said, in order to excuse the breach of their former oaths to Ste- phen, that they previously obtained a release from their allegiance from their captive king ; but the very circumstance of his being a captive must de- prive such a release of validity. At Winchester, Matilda took possession of the royal castle, the crown, with other regalia, and such treasure as Stephen had not exhausted. On the 7 th of April, she, or the legate acting for her, convened an assembly of churchmen to ratify her accession. • Malmsb.— Gesta Steph.— Gorvase. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 431 The members of this synod were divided into three classes — the bishops, the abbots, and the archdea- cons. The legate conferred with each class sepa- rately and in private, and his arguments prevailed with them all. On the following day they sat together, and the deliberations were public. Wil- liam of Malmsbury, who tells us he was present, and heard the opening speech with great attention, jirofesses to give the very words of the legate. The brother of Stephen began by contrasting the turbulent times they had just witnessed with the tranquillity and happiness enjoyed under the wise reign of Henry I. ; he glanced slightly over the r(;peated vows made to Matilda, and said the absence of that lady, and the confusion into which the country Avas thrown, had compelled the prelates and lords to crown Stephen; — that he blushed to bear testimony against his own brother, but that Stephen had violated all his engagements, particu- larly those made to the church ; — that hence God lad pronounced judgment against him, and placed hem again under the necessity of providing for the tranquillity of the kingdom by appointing some one to fdl the throne. " And now," said the legate, in conclusion, " in order that the kingdom may not be without a ruler, we, the clergy of Eng- land, to whom it chiefly belongs to elect kings and ordain them, having yesterday deliberated on this great cause in private, and invoked, as is fitting, the direction of the Holy Spirit, did, and do, elect Matilda, the daughter of the pacific, rich, glorious, good, and incomparable king Henry, to be sovereign lady of England and Normandy." Many persons present listened in silence — but silence, as usual, was interpreted into consent ; and the rest of the assembly hailed the conclusion of the speech with loud and repeated acclamations. It is curious to observe, that the citizens of London had risen to such importance, that, if not actually consulted in the disposal of the crown, they were called upon to confirm the election. We learn from Malmsbury, that they formed a body of great weight ; that the members of the municipality were considered as barons, and that they also admitted barons into their body. The preceding deliberations of the synod, and the proclamation of Matilda, were hur- ried over before the deputation from the city of London could reach Winchester ; but such was the respect they imposed, that it was deemed expedient to hold an adjourned session on the following morning. When the decision of the council was announced to them, the deputies said they did not come to debate, but to pe- tition for the liberty of their king ; that they had no powers to agree to the election of this new sovereign ; and that the whole community of Lon- don, with all the barons lately admitted into it, earnestly desired of the legate, the archbishop, and all the clergy, the immediate liberation of Stephen. When they ended, Christian, the chaplain of Ste- phen's queen, rose to address the meeting. The legate endeavoured to impose silence on this new advocate; but, in defiance of his voice and autho- rity, the chaplain read a letter from his royal mistress, in which she called upon the clergy, by the oaths of allegiance they had taken to him, to rescue her husband from the imprisonment in which he was kept by base and treacherous vassals. But Stephen's brother was not much moved by these measures : he repeated to the Londoners the arguments he had used the day before ; — the depu- ties departed with a promise, in which there was probably little sincerity, to recommend his view of the case to their fellow-citizei:s ; and the legate broke up the council with a sentence of excommu- nication cm several persons who still adhered to his brother, not forgetting a certain William Martel, who had recently made free on the roads with a part of his (the legate's) baggage. If popvdar opinion can be counted for anything in those days, and if the city of London, together with Lincoln and other large towns, may be taken as indexes of the popular will, we might be led to conclude that Stephen was still the sovereign of the people's choice, or, at least, that they preferred him to his competitor. The feelings of the citizens of London were indeed so decided, that it was not until some time had passed, and the Earl of Glou- cester had soothed them with promises and flatter- ing prospects, that Matilda ventured among them. She entered the city a few days before Midsummer, and made preparations for her immediate coro- nation at Westminster. But Matilda herself, who pretended to an indefeasible, sacred, hereditary right, would perform none of the promises made by her half-brother ; on the contrary, she imposed a heavy tallage or tax on the Londoners as a punishment for their attachment to the usurper, and arrogantly and insolently rejected a petition they presented to her praying that the laws of Edward the Confessor might be restored, and the changes and usages introduced by the Normans abolished. Indeed, whatever slight restraint she had formerly put on her haughty, vindictive temper, was now entirely removed ; and in a surprisingly short space of time she contrived not only to irritate her old opponents to the very utmost, but also to convert many of her best friends into bitter enemies. Wlien the legate desired that Prince Eustace, his nephew and Stephen's eldest son, should be put in possession of the earldom of Boulogne and the other patrimonial rights of his father, she gave him a direct and insulting refusal. In dethroning his brother this prelate, who Avas perhaps the most extraordinary character of the period, had not bar- gained for the impoverishment of all his family, and an insult was what he never could brook. When Stephen's wife, who was her own cousin, and a kind-hearted, amiable woman, appeared before her, seconded by many of the nobility, to petition for the enlargement of her husband, she showed the malignancy and littleness of her soul by personal and most unwomanly upbraidings. The acts of this tragedy, in which there was no small mixture of farce, passed almost as rapidly as those of a drama on the stage ; and before the coro- 1 432 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. nation clothes could be got ready, and the bishops assembled, Matilda was driven from London without having time to take with her so much as a change of raiment. One fine summer's day, " nigh on to the feast of St. John the Baptist," and about noon-tide, the dinner hour of the court in those times, a body of horse bearing the banner of Queen Maud (the wife of Stephen), who had kept together many partisans in Kent and Surrey, appeared on the southern side of the river opposite the city : on a sudden all the church bells of London sounded the alarm, and the people ran to arms. From every house there went forth one man at least with whatever weapon he could lay his hand upon. They gathered in the streets, says a con- temporary, like bees rushing from their hives.* Matilda saved herself from being made prisoner by rushing from table, mounting a horse, and gal- loping off with headlong speed. She had scarcely cleared the western suburb when some of the populace burst into her apartment, and pillaged or destroyed whatever they found in it. Such was her leave-taking of London, which she never saw again, and which remained unusually firm on the side of Stephen during the rest of the long and destructive contest. Some few of her friends accompanied her to Oxford, but others left her on the route, and fled singly by cross-country roads • (iesta Stephani. and unfrequented paths towards their respective castles.* Matilda had not been long at Oxford when she conceived suspicions touching the fidelity of the bishop of Winchester, whom, in the insolence of success, she had offended beyond redress, and who had taken his measures accordingly, absenting himself from court, and manning the castles which he had built within his diocese, — as at Waltham, Farnham, and other places. He had also an interview with his sister-in-law, Maud, at the town of Guilford, where he probably arranged the plans in favour of his brother Stephen which were so soon carried into execution. Matilda sent him a rude order to appear before her forthwith. The cunning churchman told her messenger that he was "getting himself ready for her;" whicli was true enough. She then attempted to seize him at Winchester ; but having well fortified his epis- copal residence, and set up his brother's standard on its roofs, he rode out by one gate of the town as she entered at the other, and then proceeded to place himself at the head of his armed vassals and the friends who had engaged to join him. Matilda was admitted into the royal castle of Winchester, whither she immediately summoned the carls of Gloucester, Hereford, and Chester, and her uncle David, king of Scots, who had been for some time • Ma'.mslj.— Gesta Steph. — Biompton. — Flor. Wig. Tower of Oxiord Castle. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 433 in England vainly endeavouring to make her follow mild and wise counsel. While these personages were with her she laid siege to the eyjiscopal palace, which was in every essential a castle, and a strong one. The legate's garrison made a sortie, and set fire to all the neighbouring houses of the town that might have weakened their position, and tlien, being confident of succour, waited the event. The bishop did not make them wait long. Being re- inforced by Queen Maud and the Londoners, who, to the number of a thousand citizens, took the field for Stephen, clad in coats of mail, and wear- ing steel casques, like noble men of war,* he turned rapidly back upon Winchester, and actually besieged the besiegers there. By the 1st of August he had invested the royal castle of Winchester, where, besides the empress-queen, there were slmt up the king of Scotland, the Earls of Gloucester, Hereford, and Chester, and many other of the noblest of her partisans. Sallies were made by the besieged, splendid achievements in arms took place on either side, and, between them, the good people of Winchester were made very wretched, for nearly the whole of the town was plundered and burned at different times. When the siege had lasted six weeks all the provisions in tlie castle were exhausted, and a desperate attempt at flight was resolved upon. By tacit consent the belli- gerents of those times were accustomed to suspend their operations and relax their vigilance on the great festivals of the church. The 14th of Sep- temljcr was a Sunday, and (what was then far more important) the festival of the Holy Rood or Cross. At a very early hour of the morning of that day Matilda mounted a swift horse, and accompanied ])y a strong and well-mounted escort, crept as secretly and quietly as was possible out of the castle : her half-brother, the Earl of Gloucester, followed at a short distance with a number of knights who had engaged to keep between her and her pursuers, and risk their own liberty for the sake of securing the queen's. These movements were so well timed and executed that they broke through the beleaguer- ers with little difliculty, and got upon the Devizes road before the legate's adherents, who were thinking of their mass and prayers, covdd mount and follow them. Once in the saddle, however, they made hot pursuit, and at Stourbridge the Earl of Gloucester and his gallant knights were overtaken. To give Matilda, who was only a short distance in advance, time to escape, they formed in order of battle and offered an obstinate resistance. In the end they were nearly all made prisoners ; but their self-devotion had the desired effect, for the queen, still pressing on her steed, reached the castle of Devizes in safety. That fortress, the work of Bishop Roger, was, we know, very strong, but it is said that, not finding herself in security even there, Matilda almost immediately resumed her journey, and, the better to avoid danger, feigned herself to l)e dead, and being placed on a bier like a corpse, caused herself to be drawn in a hearse •Gest.Stoi'h. vol.. I. from Devizes to Gloucester.* This part of the story, however, rests on a single authority, and is not alluded to by any other contemporary writer. Her adventures, so romantic in themselves, seem to require no exaggeration, and the probability is, that if she went from Devizes to Gloucester at all, she travelled in a horse-litter. Of all who formed her strong rear-guard on her flight from Winchester, the Earl of Hereford alone reached Gloucester castle, and he arrived in a wretched state, being almost naked. The other barons and knights who escaped from the field of Stourbridge threw away their arms, disguised themselves like peasants, and made for their own homes. Some of them, betrayed by their foreign accent, were seized by the English peasantry, who bound them with cords, and drove the proud Normans before them with whips, to deliver them up to their enemies. As this un- happy and uncivilized class suffered so cruelly in these wars between foreign lords and princes, it is not surprizing that they at times took a cruel ven- geance on the persons chance threw in their way. Though, if anything, rather more inclined to Ste- phen than to his opponent, they seem in general to have been impartial in their spite, and to have killed or stripped both parties alike whenever the opportunity offered. t The king of the Scots, Matilda's uncle, got safely back to his own king- dom ; but her half-brother, the Earl of Gloucester, who was by far the most important prisoner that could be taken, was conveyed to Stephen's queen, who secured him in Rochester Castle. According to one account, she ' caused him to be hardly handled ' in retaliation for the carl's harsh treat- ment of her husband, who was still in a dungeon in his castle of Bristol; J but another statement, which is better authenticated and more in accordance witli what we know of the amiable character of Maud, is, that she treated the earl generously, and so far from loading him with chains, granted liim every indulgence compatible with captivity. § Both parties were now, as it were, without a head, for Matilda was nothing in the field in the absence of her half-brother. A negotiation was therefore set on foot, and, on the 1st of November, it was finally agreed that the Earl of Gloucester should be exchanged for King Stephen. The in- terval had been filled up by unspeakable misery to the people; but, as far as the principals were con- cerned, the two parties now stood as they did pre- viously to the battle of Lincoln. The clergy, and particularly the legate who had alternately sided with each, found themselves in an embarrassing position ; but the brother of Stephen had an almost unprecedented strength of face and impudence, and seems never to have blushed at anything. He summoned a great ecclesiastical conned, which met ut Westminster on the 1th of December, and he • Conlin. Wi{,'. f At (lifforeiit timos llie Arclibisliop of C.inteibury and sovrr.-il of llie Norman bisUops jiiiil abbots wi-iu stii|)pi'd ty tin? ICiij^lis'i peasauts,— " equis ct vcstibus ah istis captis, ab illis horrende abttraclu." Gcsta Stepli. I Matt. Paris. § Malmslj.-Gesta Stepb.— Urompt. 2n 434 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. there produced a letter from the Pope, ordering him to do all in his power to effect the liberation of his brother. This letter was held as a sufficient justi- fication of all the measures he had recently adopted ; and tlie presence of Stephen, who was there to speak for himself, only showed how successfully the legate had obeyed the orders of his spiritual chief, who claimed the right of binding and loosen- ing all mortal ties. Stephen then addressed the assembly, briefly and moderately complaining of the wrongs and hardships he had sustained from his vassals, unto whom he had never denied justice when they asked for it ; and adding, that if it would please the nobles of the realm to aid him with men and money, he trusted so to work as to relieve them from the fear of a shameful submission to the yoke of a woman ; a thing which at first they seemed much to mislike, and which now, to their great grief, they had by experience found to be intoler- able. At last the legate himself rose to speak, and as he had with a very few exceptions the same audience as in the synod assembled at Winchester only nine months before, when he pronounced the dethronement of his own brother, and hurled the thunders of excommunication against his friends and adherents, his speech must have produced a singular eff"ect. He pleaded that it was through force, and not out of conviction or good-will, that he had supported the cause of Matilda, who subse- quently had broken all her engagements with him, and even made attempts against his liberty and life. He was thus, he maintained, freed from his oaths to the Countess of Jnj'ou, for he no longer deigned to style her by a higher title. The judgment of heaven, he said, was visible in the punishment of her perfidy, and God himself now restored the rightful King Stephen to his throne. Though there were some jealousies already existing between him and the archbishop of Canterbury, the council went with the legate, and no objection was started save by a solitary voice, which boldly asserted, in the name of Matilda, that the legate himself had caused all the calamities which had happened, — that he had invited her into England, — that he bad planned the expedition in which Stephen was taken, — and that it was by his advice that tlie empress had loaded his brother with chains. This orator concluded with prohibiting him, by the faith he had sworn to his queen, from publishing any decision against her rights and dignity. The im- perturbable legate heard these open accusations, which contained some portion of truth, without any apparent emotion either of shame or anger, and with the greatest composure proceeded to excom- municate all those who remained attached to the party he had quitted. The curse and interdict were extended to all who should build new castles, or invade the rights and privileges of the church, and (a most idle provision!) to all who should wrong the poor and defenceless. * • Gervase. — Malmsb. The honest and judicious tnnnk of Malms- bury says, " J. cannot relate the transactions of this council with that exact veracity with which I did the former, as I was not present at it," He tells us that the legate " commandedi therefore, on the No compromise between the contending parties was as yet thought of; the smouldering ashes of civil war were raked together, and England was tortured as if with a slow fire ; for the flames were not brought to a head in any one -place, and no decisive action was fought, but a succession of skirmishes and forays, petty sieges, and the burning of defenceless towns and villages kept people on the rack in nearly every part of the land at once. " All England," says a contemporary, "wore a face : of woe and desolation. Multitudes abandoned their beloved country to wander in a foreign land : others, forsaking their own houses, built wretched huts in the churchyaixls, hoping that the sacredness of the place would afford them some protection."* This last miserable hope was generally vain, for the belligerents no more respected the houses of God than they did the abodes of humble men. Tliey seized and fortified the best of the churches ; and the belfry towers from which the sweet sounds of the church-bells were wont to proceed were converted into fortresses and furnished with engines of war :f they dug fosses in the very cemeteries, so that the bodies of the dead were brought again to light, and the miserable remains of mortality trampled upon and scattered all about. At an early period of the contest both parties had engaged foreign mercenaries, and, in the absence of regular pay and provision and of all discipline, bands of Brabanters and Flemings prowled through the land, satisfying all their appetites in the most brutal manner. So general was the discouragement of the suffering people, that when- ever only two or three horsemen were seen ap- proaching a village or open burgh, all the inhabit- ants fled to conceal themselves. So extreme were their sufferings that their complaints amounted to impiety, for, seeing all these crimes and atrocities going on without check or visible judgment, men said openly that Christ and his saints had fallen asleep. J (a. d.- 1142.) During Stephen's captivity, Matilda's husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, reduced nearly the whole of Normandy, and prevailed upon the majority of the resident nobles to acknowledge Prince Henry (his son by Matilda) as their legiti- mate duke. The king's party thus lost all hope of aid and assistance from beyond sea ; but, as they were masters of the coasts of the island, they were able to prevent the arrival of any considerable re- inforcement to their adversaries. Matilda pressed her husband to come to her assistance with all tlie forces he could raise ; but Geoffrey's dislike of his wife's society was more prevalent with him than ambition, and the past might have instructed liim that such a war would not be without its dangers and costly sacrifices : he declined the invitation on the ground that he had not yet made himself sure part of God and the Pope, that they should strenuously assist the king, anointed by the u-ill of the nation and uith the approbation of llie Noll/ See ; and that such as disturbed the peace in favour of the Countess of Anjou should be excommunicated, with the exception of herself, — who was sovereign of the Ang/.-vins. * Gosta Steph. + Id. t Chrou. Sax Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 435 of Normandy, but he offered to send over Prince Henry. Even on this point he showed no great readiness, and several months w^ere lost ere he would intrust his son to the care of the Earl of Glou- cester, whom Matilda had sent into Normandy. Meanwhile Stephen, who had recovered from a long and dangerous illness, marched in person to Oxford, where the empress had fixed her court, and invested that city, with a firm resolution of never moving thence until he had got his troublesome rival into his hands. At his first approach the garrison came out to meet him : these enemies he put to flight, and pursued them so hotly that he entered the city pell-mell with them. Matilda then retired into the castle, and the victor's troops set fire to the town. Stephen invested the citadel, and persevered in the operations of the siege or blockade through the horrors of a winter of extra- ordinary severity; and so intent was he on his purpose that he would, not permit his attention to be distracted even when informed that the Earl of Gloucester and Prince Henry had. landed in Eng- land. The castle was strong, but like all such places at the period, insufficiently stocked with pro- visions for a considerable force ; a proof, perhaps, not merely of the thoughtlessness and improvidence of the two parties, but of the general poverty and actual distress of the country. When the siege had lasted some three months, Matilda again found herself in danger of starvation, to escape which she had recourse to another of her furtive flights. On the 20th of December, a little after midnight, she dressed herself in white, and accompanied by three knights in the same attire, stole out of the castle by a postern gate. The ground being covered with deep snow, the party passed unobserved, and the Thames being frozen over, aff"orded them a safe and direct passage. Matilda, who had the strength and courage of her male ancestors, pursued lier course on foot as far as the town of Abingdon, where, finding horses, the party mounted, and she rode on to Wallingford, at or near to which place she was soon after joined by the Earl of Gloucester and her young son, who were at the head of a con- siderable force, though at their first landing many who had gone out to meet him, on finding the prince had stolen into the land with a very incon- siderable force and but little money, turned their backs upon him as they had done upon his mother under the same circumstances, and resumed their allegiance to King Stephen. The day after Ma- tilda's flight Oxford Castle surrendered to tlie king ; but the king himself was defeated by the Earl of Gloucester at Wilton in the following month of July, and, with his brother the legate, narrowly escaped being made prisoner. After the affair of Wilton, no military operation deserving of notice occurred for three years, during which Stephen's party prevailed in all the east; Matilda's maintained their ground in the west; and the young prince was shut up for safety in the strong castle of Bristol, where, at his leisure moments, his uncle, the Earl of Gloucester, who enjoyed — ^like his father, Henry Beauclerk — the reputation of being a learned person, attended to his education. The presence of the boy in England was of no use whatever to his mother's or his own cause, and, about the feast of Whitsuntide, 1147, he returned to his father Geoffrey in Normandy. Gloucester died of a fever, " the natural conse- quence of an alternate succession of excess and privation," in the month of October; and thus deprived of son and brother, and depressed also by the loss of the Earl of Hereford and other staunch partisans, who fell the victims of disease, the masculine resolution of Matilda gave way, and, after a struggle of eight years, she qu.itted England and retired to Normandy. After her departure Stephen endeavoured to get possession of all the baronial castles, and to reduce the nobles to a pro- per degree of subordination ; but the measures he adopted were, in some instances, characterized by craft if not treachery ; and his too openly avowed purpose of curbing the power and license of the nobility was as unpalatable to his own adherents as to the friends of Matilda. At the same time he involved himself in a fresh quarrel with the church, and that too at a moment when his brother, the legate and bishop of Winchester, had lost his great authority through the death of the Pope who pa- tronizefl him, and the election of another Pope, who took away his legatine office and espoused the quarrel of his declared enemy Theobald, Arch- bishop of Canterbury. For attending the council of Rheims against the express orders of the king the archbishop was exiled. Caring little for this sentence, Theobald went (a.d. 1148) and put himself under the protection of Bigod earl of Norfolk, who was of the Angevin faction, and then published a sentence of interdict against Stephen's party and all that part of tlie kingdom that acknowledged the rule of the usta-per. Instantly, in one half of the kingdom, all the churches were closed, and the priests and monks either withdrew, or refused to perform any of the offices of religion. From their conduct we might have expected the contrary ; but this was a state of things which men could not bear, and Stephen was actually compelled to seek a reconciliation with the archbishop. About two years after this reconciliation a general council of the high clergy was held at London ; and Stephen, who, in the in- terval, had endeavoured to win the hearts of the bishops and abbots with donations to the church, and promises of much greater things when tlie kingdom should be settled, required them to recog- nize and anoint liis eldest son Eustace as his successor. This the Archbishop of Canterbury resolutely and most unceremoniously refused to do. He had consulted, he said, his spiritual master, and the pope had told him that Stephen was a usurper, and, therefore, could not, like a legitimate sovereign, transmit his crown to his posterity. It was quite natural, and perhaps excusable that Ste])hen, on thus hearing his rights called in ques- tion by a man who had sworn allegiance to him, 436 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. should be" overcome by a momentary rage (and it was not more in effect), and order his guards to arrest the bishops and seize their temporalities ; but putting aside the question of right, and how- ever much they may have failed in the respect due to one who was their king at the time, the prelates, in acting as they did, indubitably took a most prudent and wise view of the case, and adopted a system which was calculated to narrow the limits of civil war. As long as the contest lay between Stephen on the one side, and a woman and boy on the otlier, it was likely to be, on the whole, favourable to the former ; but time had worked its changes ; — Prince Henry was no longer a boy, but a handsome, gal- lant young man, capable of performing all the duties of a knight and soldier, and gifted with pre- cocious abilities and political acumen. He had also become, by inheritance and marriage, one of the most powerful princes on the continent. When Henry Plantagenet left Bristol Castle he was about fourteen years of age. In a.d. 1 149, having attained the military age of sixteen, he recrossed the seas, and landed in Scotland with a splendid retinue, in order to receive the honour of knight- hood at the hands of his mother's uncle, king David. The ceremony was performed with great pomp in " merry Carlisle," where the Scottish king then kept his court : crowds of nobles from most parts of England, as well as from Scotland and Normandy, were present, and had the oj)por- tunity of remarking Henry's many eminent quali- ties ; and as that prince had only been returned to the continent some twelve months when Stephen assembled the council lor the anointing of his son, the impressions made by the fortunate Plantagenet were still fresh, and ids character was naturally contrasted witli that of Prince Eustace, who was about his own age, but who does not appear toi have had one of his high endowments. Shortly after his return from Carlisle Henry was put in full possession of the government of Normandy ; by the death of his father Geofl'rey, who died in the course of the same year (1 150), lie succeeded to the earldom of Anjou; and in 1152, together! with the hand of Eleanor, the divorced queen of] Louis VII. of France, he acquired her rights over the earldom of Poictou and the vast duchy ofi Guyenne, or Aquitaine, which had descended to heri from her fiither. The Plantagenet party in Eng- land, which had been for some time in a state of I depression, recovered their spirits at the prospect i of this sudden aggrandizement, and, thinking no i more of the mother, they determined to call in the ; son to reign in his own right. The Earl of Chester i passed over to Normandy, to express what he called i the unanimous will of the nation ; but the king of] France, becoming jealous of the great power of] Henry, formed an alliance with King Stephen, Theobald Earl of Blois, and Geoffrey of Anjou, j Henry's younger brother, who had good reason to i be dissatisfied, and marched a French army to the : confines of Normandy. This attempt occasioned i some delay ; but as soon as Henry had convinced ' the French king that his design of overrunning tht duchy was hopeless, he obtained a truce, and forth^ Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 10G6— 1216. 437 with sailed for England with a small fleet. The army he brought over with him did not exceed 140 knights and 3000 foot ; hut it wr.s well ayjpointed and disciplined ; and as soon as he landed in Eng- land most of the old friends of his family flocked to join his standard. It was unexpectedly found, however, that Stephen was still strong in the affec- tions and devotion of a large party. The armies of the competitors came in sight of each other at Wallingford ; that of Stephen, who had marched from London, occupying the left bank of the Thames, and that of Henry, who had advanced from Marlborough, the right. They lay facing eacli other during two whole days, and were hourly expecting a sanguinary engagement ; but the pause had given time for salutary reflection ; and the Earl of Arundel had the boldness to say, that it was an unreasonable thing to prolong the calamities of a whole nation on account of the ambition of two princes.* Many lords of both parties, who were of the same opinion, or wearied at length with a struggle which had already lasted fifteen years, laboured to persuade botli princes to come to an amicable arrangement. The two chiel's consented ; and in a short conversation which they carried on with one another across a narrow part of the Thames, Stephen and Henry agreed to a truce, during which each expressed his readiness to negotiate a lasting peace. On this. Prince Eustace, who was probably well aware that the first article of the treaty would seal his exclusion from the throne, burst away from his father in a paroxysm of rage, and went into Cambridgeshire to get up a war on his own account. The rash young man took forcible possession of the abbey of St. Edmunds- bury, and laid waste or plundered the country round about, not excepting even the lands of the abbot. His licentious career was very brief; for as he was sitting down to a riotous banquet, he was suddenly seized with a irenzy, of which he soon died. It has been supposed that this sudden frenzy and decease were in all likelihood owing to an inflammation of the brain, the fruit of habitual intemperance and of frantic passions. According to the monks, his fate was a sudden judgment of tlie Almighty, provoked by his imjjiety in ravaging the sanctuary of the blessed St. Edmund ; and as this was one of the capital favourites in their hagiology, the English people feem generally to have accounted for his death in this way. We nowhere find it hinted that he died of poison, though the circumstances which made his death most desirable, and the apposite moment at which it took place, tend almost to excite a suspicion.! The principal obstacle to concession from Stephen was thus removed, for though he had another legitimate son, Prince William, he was but a boy, and was docile and unambitious. Ti.c principal negociators, who with great ability and address • liesUi Steph.— GiTViiso. t Wtiterg of a later period iiitioihiced some confusion in tliia matter liy aecouutinfj lor tiis death in dilTerent ways. Some of thtm tuid Eustace was drowuod. reconciled the conflicting interests of the two fac- tions, were Theobald, the archbishop of Canter- bury, and Henry, bishop of Winchester, Stephen's brother, who played so many parts in this long and chequered drama. On the 7th of November, 1153, a great council of the kingdom was held at Winchester, where a peace was finally adjusted on the following conditions : — Stephen, who was to retain undisturbed possession of the crown during his life, adopted Henry as his son, appointed him his successor, and fjave the kingdom, after his own death, to Henry and his heirs for ever. In return, Henry did present homage, and swore fealty to Stephen. Henry received the homage of the king's surviving son William, and, in retui n, gave that young prince all the estates and honours, whether in England or on the continent, which his father Stephen had er.joyed before he ascended the throne ; and Henry promised, as a testimonial of his own affection, the lionour of Pevensey, together with some manors in Kent. There then followed a mighty interchange and duplication of oat'is among the earls, barons, bishops, and abbots of both factions ; all swearing present allegiance to Stephen and future fealty to Henry. A clause, for which there were several precedents under former reigns, was introduced, and the earls and barons swore that if either of the two princes broke his engagements they would instantly abandon him, and support the cause of the other. It is curious, and a consoling proof of the advance made by the popular body, notwithstanding the horrors of this reign, to observe that the different boroughs of England were taken into account, and swore fealty to Henry in the same terms as those employed by the great nobles. In a minor article the oliicers of Stephen who held the Ti.wer of London, and the castles of Winchester, Windsor, Oxford, Lincoln, and Southampton, gave hostages to Henry for tlie immediate surrender to him of those fortresses in the event of Stephen's death. The whole arrange- ment was narrated and drawn up in the form of a charter, which purported to be oclroye, or granted, by King Stephen, and witnessed by the prelates and barons.* W'hen the time came in which he incurred no danger or risk in so doing, Henry treated his adoption by Stephen with scorn ; and while some of his partisans, in relating his history, impudently omitted the fact altogether, others considered it as an idle form, giving no right, and others agaiu maintained that King Stephen him?elf, and the whole nation, were fain to acknowledge the personal claims of Matilda's son, who consequently was called to reign through a legitimate, hereditary riglit. The treaty, however, stands recorded as we have given it above, and remains an incontrovertible evidence of the real nature of the transaction. Stephen did not long survive the arrangement by which he renounced all hope of keeping the royal crown in his liireage. After signing the treaty he and Henry visited together the cities of • Uymcr's Focdera. 438 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [EOOK III. Winchester, London, and Oxford, in which places solemn processions were made, and both princes were received with acclamations by the people. At the end of Lent they parted with expressions of mutual friendship. Henry returned to the continent, and on the fol- lowing 25th of October (11.54) Stephen died at Dover, in the fiftieth year of his age. He was buried by the side of his wife Maud, who died three years before him, at the monastery of Faversham, in the pleasant county of Kent, which she had loved so much while living.* " In this king's time," says the Saxon chronicler, " all was dissension, and evil, and rapine. The great men soon rose against him. They had sworn oaths, but maintained no truth. They built castles, which they held out against him. They cruelly op- pressed the wretched people of the land with this castle work. They filled their castles with devils and evil men. They seized those whom they supposed to have any goods, and threw them into prison for • At the {.'enoral suppression of abbeys, under Henry VIII., Sleplien's tomb was rifled, and his bones were cast into the sea. their gold and silver,, and inflicted on them unut- terable tortures. Some they hanged up by the] feet, and smoked with foul smoke ; some by thel thumbs or by the beard, and hung coats of heavy mail on their feet. They threw them into dun- geons with adders, and snakes, and toads. . . . They made many thousands perish with hunger. They laid tribute after tribute upon towns and cities, and this in their language they called ten- serie.* When the townsmen had nothing more to give, they set fire to all the towns. Thou mightest go a whole day's journey and not find a man sitting in a town, nor an acre of land tilled. The poor died of hunger, and those who had been men well to do begged for bread. Never was more mischief done by heathen invaders. ... To till the ground was to plough the sands of the sea. This lasted the nineteen years that Stephen was king, and it grew continually worse and worse." • Tenser, or Tanser, is a verb in old French equivalent to the modern chdticr — to chastise or punish. The Saxon Chronicle contains a long description of the tortures in use. Men of rank employed their inventive faculties in tliis direction; and Philip Gay, a relation of the Earl of Gloucester, had the merit of inventing one of the most horrid of the instruments of torment, called a aachentage. Henry II. — Surnamed Plantagenet. Great Seat, of Henky II. A.D. 1154. — When Henry Plantagenet received the news of Stephen's death he was engaged in the siege of a castle on the frontiers of Normandy. Rely- ing on the situation of affairs in England, and the dis- position of men's minds in his favour, he prosecuted the siege to a successful close, and reduced some turbulent continental vassals to obedience, before he went to the coast to embark for his new kingdom. He was detained some time at Barfleur by storms and contrary winds ; and it was not till six weeks after the death of Stephen that he landed in Eng- land, where he was received with enthusiastic joy. He brought with him a splendid retinue, and Eleanor, his wife, whose inheritance had made him BO powerful on the continent, and whose stern cha- racter was to influence so many events of his reign. This marriage proved, that if the young Henry had the gallantry of his age and all the knightly ac- complishments then in vogue, he was not less dis- tinguished by a cool, calculating head, and tlie faculty of sacrificing romantic or delicate feelings for political advantages. The lady he esi)ouscd was many years older than himself, and the re- pudiated wife of another. Eleanor, familiarly called in her own country Aanor, was daughter and heiress of William IX.,* Earl of Poictou and Duke of Aquitaine ; that is to say, of the sovereign chief of all the western coast * This Duke William was a troubadour of high renown, and the most ancient of tliat class of poets whose works have been preserved. Chap. I.]] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 1066—1216. 439 of France, from the mouth of the Loire to the foot of the Pyrenees. She was married in 1137 to Louis VII., king of France, who was not less en- clianted with her beauty than with the fine pro- vinces she brought him. When the union had lusted some years, and the queen had given birth to two daughters, the princesses Marie and Alix, Louis resolved to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and to take along with him his wife, whose uncle, Raymond, or Raymond, was duke of An- tioch. The general morality of the royal and noble crusaders and pilgrims is represented in no very favourable light by contemporary writers ; and it is easily understood how camps and marches, and a close and constant association with soldiers, should not be favourable to female virtue. Suspi- cion soon fell upon Eleanor, who, according to her least unfavovirable judges, was guilty of great coquetry and freedom of manners ; and her conduct in the gay and dissolute court of Antioch at last awakened the indignation of her devout husband. She was very generally accused of an intrigue with a young and handsome Turk, named Saladin ;* and though, in the notions of the age, it made an im- mense difference in the weight of her guilt, we should now scarcely waste time in considering whether her paramour was converted and baptized, as asserted by some, or was an unredeemed Maho- medan, as maintained by others. In 1152, about a year after their return from the Holy Land, Louis summoned a council of prelates at Bau- genci-sur-Loire, for the express purpose of di* vorcing him from a womati who had publicly dis- honoured him. The Bishop of Langres, pleading for the king, gravely announced that his royal master " no longer placed faith in his wife, and could never be sure of the legitimacy of her pro- geny" — (she had not borne him an heir male) — and grounded his claim to a divorce on facts proving her flagitiousness. But the Archbishop of Bordeaux, desirous that the separation should be effected in a less scandalous manner, proposed to treat tlie whole question on very different grounds — namely, on the consanguinity of the parties, which might have been objected by the canonical law as an insuperable barrier to the marriage when it was contracted fifteen years before, but which now seemed to be remembered by the clergy somewhat tardily. This course, however, relieved them from a delicate dilemma, in which they were placed by the rules of the church, which, if fairly interpreted, rendered divorce on any other ground most difficult, and by their anxious desire to avoid going to the extremity of proof against a royal per- sonage ; and as Eleanor, who considered Louis to be " rather a monk than a king,"t voluntarily and readily agreed to the dissolution of the marriage, tho council dissolved it accordingly — on the pre- text that the consciences of the parties reproached them for living as man and wife when they were • Some old writers confound tliis Suladin with tlie Great Saladin, the heroic opponent of Eleanor's son, Richard ; but this is a, great mistake] involvin<; an anachronism. + Mdzerai. Hist, de Krauce. cousins within the prohibited degree. This de- cent colouring, however, deceived nobody ; but the good, simple Louis wonderfully deceived himself, when he thought that no prince of the time — no, not a private gentleman, — would be so wanting in delicacy, and regardless of his own honour, as to marry a divorced wife of so defamed a reputation. According to a contemporary authority, Eleanor's only difficulty was in making a choice, and escaping the too forcible addresses of some of her suitors. Immediately after the dissolution of her marriage, she set off for the capital of her own hereditary states, and on the way met with the following ad- ventures, if we are to give credit to the chronicler. At the city of Blois, Thibaud, or Theobald, earl of Blois, and brother to King Stephen of England, " more from ambition than love," made her the offer of his hand, and not tolerating her refusal, secretly resolved to make her a prisoner in his castle, and marry her by force. Suspecting his design, she stole out of the castle by night, and descended the Loire in a boat to the city^ of Tours, which was then included in the duchy of Anjou. Here Henry's younger brother, Geoffrey of Anjou, conceived the same sort of project which had been entertained by Theobald of Blois, and lay in am- bush to intercept her and seize her person ; but Eleanor being " warned by her good angel," sud- denly took a different road, and escaped to Poic- tiers, where the more courteous and more fortunate Henry soon presented himself, and, " with more policy than delicacy," wooed and won, and mar- ried lier too, within six weeks of her divorce.* King Louis's conduct was directly the opposite of Henry's; for he had been more delicate than politic j and, however honourable to him indivi- dually, his delicacy was a great misfortune to FraiKC, for it dissevered states which had been united by the marriage, — retarded that fusion and integration which alone could render the French kingdom respectable, and threw the finest terri- tories of France into the hands of his most dan- gerous enemies. If he could have freed himself of his wife, without resigning her states, the good would have been unmixed ; but this was impos- sible ; and though he retained the two daughters Eleanor had borne him, and who were by these measures deprived of their appanages and fortune on the mother's side, he found himself obliged to withdraw all the troops he had in the fortresses of Guyenne, or Aquitaine, and Poictou, and resign those countries wholly and immediately to his dis- carded wife, who seems to have been dear to the people, in spite of her irregularities, and to have encountered little or no difficulty in inducing them to admit the garrisons of her new husband, the young and popular Henry. When it was too late, Louis saw the great error in policy he had com- mitted, and made what efforts he could to prevent the by him most unexpected marriage. He pro- hibited Henry, as his vassal for Normandy and Anjou, to contract any such union without the • Script. Uer. l'"rauc. 440 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. consent and authority of his suzerain lord, the king of France ; but the obligations of the vassal or liege-man towards the suzerain, even where the parties liad expressly contracted and avowed them, were little binding between two princes of equal power; and Henry, who was soon by far the more powerful of the two, cared little for the prohibition, and Louis, in the end, was obliged to content himself with receiving the empty oaths of allegiance which the fortunate Plantagenet tendered for Guyenne and Poictou, in addition to those he had already pledged for Anjou and Normandy. The old French historians, who cannot relate these transactions without losing their temper, give it as their opinion that they would not have happened had those two wise statesmen, the Abbot Suger and the Count de Vermandois, been alive to counsel and direct the king ; but the abbot and the count had both died the preceding year ; and Louis, who had depended so entirely on them (particularly on Suger), that he was scarcely capable of thinking or acting for himself, was be- wildered, like a man who had lost his guide in a wild and unknown country, and stumbled on the divorce which cost France so dear.* The sacrifice was indeed immense. Tlie French kingdom almost ceased to figure as a maritime state on the Atlantic ; and when Eleanor's posses- sions were added to those Henry already possessed on the continent, that prince occupied the whole coast-line from Dieppe to Bayonne, with tlie excep- tion only of the great promontory of Brittany, where a race of semi-independent princes were esta- blished that had sometimes supported the interests of the French kings, and at others allied themselves with the Anglo-Norman sovereign s.f Henry, in fact, was master of one-fifth of the territories now • C« qui nous couta ion. Hrantomo. Mezerai and Larrey (^lleretlire de Ouienne) agree in attiibuling Louis's t-rrorto the want of the wise counsels of Suger. Larrey and Boucfiet t^Annales d'Jquitaine), with some oilier writers, natives of Aquitaine. or Poictou, maintained that Eleanor was unjustly calumniated ; but the weight of contemporary evidtjuce is on the other side. + Charles the Simple appears to have granted to Rollo, the founder of the duchy of NoinLindy, whatever supremacy the kings of France claimed over the country of the Bretons; so that the princes ot Brittunv were considered as immediale vassals of the Normun dukes, uuJ only thiough lliem feudally connected with the French erown. IIenhy II.— Drawn from the Tomb at Fontevraud. included in the kingdom of France, and, deducting other separate and independent sovereignties, Louis, driven back from the Atlantic and cooped up between the Loire, the Saone, and the Meuse, did not possess half s-o mucli land as his rival, even leaving out of the account the kingdom of England, to which he succeeded about two years after his marriage. Eleanor was sojn as jealous of Henry as Louis had been of her. The Plantagenet had not married with a view to domestic happiness, but he was probably far from expecting the wretched- ness to which the union would condemn his latter days. At their first arrival in England, however, everything wore a bright aspect. The queen rode by the king's side into the royal city of Winchester, where they both received the homage of the nobi- lity ; and when, (m the 19th of December, Hcmy took his coronation oaths, and was crowned at Westminster by Theobald, archbishop of Canter- bury, Eleanor was crowned with him, amidst the acclamations of the peo})le. Not a shadow of oppo- sition was offered : the English, still enamoured of Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 106G— 1216. 441 tlieir old dynasty or traditions, dwelt with compla- cency on the Saxon blood, which from his mother's side (a bad Saxon herself!) flowed in the veins of the youthful, the liandsome, and brave Henry ; and all classes seemed to overlook the past history of the queen in her grandeur and magnificence, and pre- sent attachment to their king. The court pageantries were splendid, and accompanied by the spontaneous rejoicings of the citizens. Henry did not permit his attention to be long occupied by these pleasures and flattering demonstrations, but proceeded to lousiness almost as soon as the crown was on his head, thus giving his subjects assurance of tlie busy, active reign they had to expect. He assem- bled a great council, appointed t!ie crown officers, issued a decree promising his subjects all the rights and liberties they had enjoyed under his grand- father, Henry I., whose reign, however tyraimical, was a blessed state compared to the anarchy which had followed ; and he made his barons and bishops swear fealty to his infant children, his wife Eleanor having already made him the happy father of two sons.* Henry then turned his attention to the correcting of those abuses which had rendered the reign of Stephen a long agony to himself and a curse to the nation. His reforms were not completed for several years, and many events of a foreign nature intervened during their progress ; but it will render the narrative clearer to condense our account of these transactions in one general statement. Henry appointed the Earl of Leicester grand justiciary of the kingdom, and feeling that the office had hitherto been insufficiently supported by the crown, he attached to it more ample powers, and provided the means of enforcing its decisions. As happened in all seasons of trouble and distress in those ages, the coin had been alloyed and tam- pered with under Stephen ; and now Henry issued an entirely new coinage of standard weight and purity. The foreign mercenaries and companies of adventure tliat came over to England during the long civil war between Stephen and Matilda had done incalculable mischief. Many of these adven- turers had got possession of the castles and estates of the Anglo-Norman nobles who adhered to Matilda, and had been created earls and barons by Stephen ; but, treating all these as acts of usur- pation, Henry determined to drive every one of them from the land, and their expulsion seems to heve afi^orded almost as much joy to the Saxon population as to the Normans, who raised a shout of triumph on the occasion. " We saw them," says a contemporary, " we saw these Brabancjons and Flemings cross the sea, to return from the camp to tlie plough-tail, and become again serfs, after having been lords. "f They were, in fact, all commanded to quit the kingdom by a certain day, under penalty of death, and it is not likely that the Normans allowed them to carry much away with them. Up to this point the operations were easy, and the king, unopposed by the conflicting • Williani and Heiirv. William died to his childliood. t U. deDiceto. interest of any important party in the state, or by claims on his own gratitude, was carried forward on the high tide of popular opinion ; but in what there still remained to do there were great and obvious difficulties, and feelings of a private nature, which might have overcome a less determined and politic prince, for, in the impartial execution of his measures he had to despoil those who fought his mother's battles and supported his own cause when he was a helpless infant. The generous, romantic virtues natural to youth might have been fatal to him ; but Henry's heart in some respects seems never to have been young, and his head was cool and calculating. In a treaty made at Win- chester, shortly after his pacification with Stephen, it was stipulated that the king (Stephen) should resume all such royal castles and lands as had been alienated to the nobles or usurped by them, with the exceptions only of what Stephen had granted to his son William, or had bestowed on the church; the two last classes of donations to remain to their possessors. Among the resumable gifts were many made by Matilda ; for she, too, acting as a sovereign, had followed Stephen's example in alienating parts of the demesne of the crown to reward her adherents. Stephen, poor as he was, had neglected this resumption, or made no progress in it during the few months that he sur- vived the treaty. But Henry was determined not to l)c a pauper king, or to tolerate that widely- felretched aristocratic power which at once ground the people and bade fair to reduce royalty to an empty shadow. In the absence of other fixed revenues the sovereigns of that time depended almost entirely on the produce of the crown lands, and Stephen had allowed so much of these to slip from him, that there remained not sufficient for a decent maintenance of royal dignity. Besides the numerous castles which had been built by the tur- bulent nobles, royal fortresses and even royal cities had been granted away ; and these could hardly be permitted to remain in the hands of the feudal lords without endangering the peace of the king- dom. Law was brought in to the aid of policy, and it was established as a legal axiom that the ancient demesne of the crown was of so sacred and inalienable a nature that no length of time, tenure, and enjoyment could give a right of prescription to any other possessors, even by virtue of grants from the crown, against the claim of succeeding princes, who might (it was laid down) at any time resume possession of what had formerly been alienated.* Foreseeing, however, that this step would create much discontent in those who were to be affected by it, and who (counting both of the old parties) were numerous and powerful, Henry was cautious not to act without a high sanction ; and he therefore summoned a great council of the nobles, who, after hearing the urgency of his necessities, concurred pretty generally in the justice of his immediately * Lord liyttelton's Henry II. Contemporary details are found in Gcrvase of Canterbury, W^illiam of Newbury, and Roger of lloveden. 442 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III, resuming all that had been hekl by his grandfather Henry I., with the exception of the alienations or grants to Stephen's son and the church, as already mentioned. The cause assigned for these resump- tions was not any inherent defect in the title of the grantor, nor any unworthiness in the grantee, but the indispensable necessity of providing for the crown. As soon as he was armed Avith this sanc- tion the young king put himself at the head of a formidable army, knowing right well that there were many who would not consider themselves bound by the voices of the assembly of nobles, and who would only cede their castles and lands by force. In some instances the castles, on being closely beleaguered, surrendered without bloodshed ; in others, they were taken by storm or reduced by famine. In nearly all cases they were levelled to the ground, and about 1100 of these "dens of thieves," as they are usually called, were blotted out from the fair land they defaced, to the inex- pressible relief and contentment of the poor people. At the siege of the castle of Bridgenorth, in Shrop- shire, which Hugh de Mortimer held out against the king, Henry's life was preserved by the affec- tion and self-devotion of one of his followers. He was commanding in person, and occupying an exposed position, when his faithful vassal Hubert de St. Clair, seeing one of Mortimer's archers aiming point-blank at him, threw himself before his person and received the arrow in his own breast. The wound proved mortal, and St. Clair expired in Henry's arms, recommending his daugh- ter, an only child and an infant, to the care of his prince, who, to his honour, did the duty of a father to the orphan. After many arduous toils, and not a few checks and delays, Henry completed his purpose : he drove the Earl of Nottingham and some other dangerous nobles out of the kingdom ; he levelled with the ground the six strong castles of Stephen's brother, the famous Bishop of Win- chester, who, placing no confidence in the new king whom he had helped to make, fled with his treasures to Clugny : he reduced the Earl of Albe- marle, who had long reigned like an independent sovereign in Yorkshire, to the proper state of vassal- age and allegiance ; and he finally obliged Mal- colm, king of Scots, to resign the three northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, for the bona fide possession of the earldom of Huntingdon, which the Scottish princes claimed as descendants of Earl Walthcof. In driving the nobles from the royal lands and houses they held, no distinction was made between the grants of Stephen and Matilda, for Henry was not less eager to recover everything than wisely anxious to avoid the appearance of acting from motives of party revenge ; and by his equal and impartial proceeding, he left the adherents of Stephen no more reason to complain than his mother's or his own partisans. Among the latter were several who lost their all by these resumptions ; but, steady to his purpose, the king would make no exceptions, not even in favour of those who had succoured his mother in the hour of need and made the greatest sacrifices for his family. He evaded the most earnest applications by a courtesy of demeanour, and a prodigality of promises for the future, which seldom lay heavy on his conscience ; and whenever craft or subterfuge could avail him, he did not scruple to employ them. Before these measures were completed Henry's active and ambitious mind was occupied by the affairs of the continent, for his younger brother Geoflfrey, advancing a title to Anjou and Maine, had invaded those provinces. A short time after his marriage, which made him Duke of Aquitaine and Earl of Poictou, Henry became Earl of Anjou by the death of his father, but under the express condition, it is said, of resigning that earldom to his younger brother if he ever should become king of England. It is even added that the dying Geoffrey had exacted an oath from the barons and bishops who attended him, that they would not suffer his body to be buried till his son Henry should solemnly swear to fulfil the dispositions of his will. Henry hesitated ; but the nobles and prelates, firm to their vow, kept the corpse above grovmd until, ashamed of preventing the Christian interment, he took tlie oath required in a most solemn manner, swearing over the dead body of his father, which was then committed to the grave. The king of England, however, showed no disposition to relinquish the earldom of Anjou ; and, it is said, he solicited the Pope to absolve him from liis oath, and that the Pope complied on the ground that he had been made to swear under improper influences.* This story, though scarcely more romantic than others of the same period, has generally been condemned as fabulous, and it does not rest on the authority of any contem])orary narrator writing on the continent, or in the scene of the events. Henry, it is true, sent three bishops to Rome, but the ostensible reason was probably the true one, and should seem to be motive sufficient in itself for such a mission. Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman that ever wore the tiara, had just been elected, and the three bishops were said to be sent to congratulate the new Pope in the name of the king and the people of England. The king's father, however, may have wished to leave some proper provision for his younger son, and may even have made a will tp that effect; and Geoffrey, seeing his brother in possession of so many states, would naturally consider it most unjust that he himself should have none. That young prince, moreover, was encouraged by the French court, which was still smarting under the injuries received from Henry's marriage ; and he seems to have had a strong party in his favour in the provinces of Maine and Anjou. The king of England crossed the seas in 1 1 56, and again did homage to Louis VII., for Normandy, Aquitaine, Poictou, Auvergne, the Limousin, Anjou, Touraine, and a long train of dependent territories ; and by this and other means, the nature of wliich is not explained, he induced the Freaich king to • W. Ncwbr. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 443 !ibaiidon the cause of his younger brother. He then threw himself into the disputed territory, at the head of an army consisting almost entirely of native English, who soon reduced Chinon, Loudon, jVIirabeau, and the other castles which held for his brother. The people returned to their allegiance U) Henry, and Geoffrey was soon obliged to resign all his claims for a pension of 1000 English and 2000 Angevin pounds. Having triumphed over every opposition, as much by policy as by force of iixnas, he made a magnificent progress through Aquitaine and the other dominions he had obtained l)y his marriage, and received the fealty of his chief vassals in a great council held in the city of Bor- deaux. Wherever he appeared he commanded respect, and no sovereign of the time in Europe could equal the power and splendour of this young king. On his return to England, in 1157, he engaged in hostilities with the Welsh, who still fought furiously for their independence. Feeling over- confident in the number and quality of his army, he crossed Flintshire, and threw himself among the mountains. The Welsh let him penetrate as far as the difficult country about Coleshill Forest, when, issuing from their concealment, and pouring down in torrents from the uplands, they attacked Henry in a narrow defile where his troops could not form. The slaughter was prodigious. Eustace Fitz- John and Robert de Courcy, men of great honour and reputation, together with several other nobles, were dismounted and cut to pieces ; the king him- self was in the greatest danger, and a rumour was raised that he had fallen. Henry, Earl of Essex, the hereditary standard-bearer, threw down the royal standard and fled. The panic was now universal ; but the king rushed among the fugi- tives, showed them he was imhurt, rallied them, and finally fought his way through the mountain- pass. The serious loss he suffered made him cautious, and instead of following Owen Gwynned, who artfully tried to draw him into the defiles of Snowdon, he changed his route, and gaining the open sea-coast, marched along the shore closely attended by a fleet. He cut down some forests, or opened roads through them, and built several castles in advantageous situations. There was no second battle of any note, and, after a few months, the Welsh were glad to purchase peace by resign- ing such portions of their native territ;;ry as they had retaken from Stephen, and giving hostages and doing feudal homage for what they retained. The homage cost them little : the giving of hostages did not prevent them from renewing hostilities whenever times and circumstances seemed favourable to them, and the hardy moun- taineers gave many a subsequent check to the Anglo-Norman chivalry. Six years after the battle of Coleshill, the Earl of Essex was publicly accused of cowardice and treason by Robert de Montfort. The standard-bearer appealed to the trial of arms, and was vanquished in the lists by his accuser. By the law of the times, death should have followed, but the king, qualifying the rigour of the judgment, granted him his life, ap- pointing him to be a shorn monk in Reading Abbey, and taking the earl's possessions into his hands as forfeited to the crown.* Geoffrey did not live long to exact payment of his annuities from his brother. Soon after con- cluding the treaty with Henry, which left him without any territory, the citizens of Nantes, in Lower Brittany, spontaneously offered him the government of their city, just as the people of Domfront had done by Henry Beauclerk when under similar circumstances. Lower Brittany was then occupied in unequal proportions by two po- pulations of different races, the one speaking the ancient Armoric, the other the language of France and Normandy. The latter were the more civilized, and had the greater weight in the towns and cities, some of which, like Nantes, were exclusively oc- cupied by them. There was a constant enmity between the two races, and the chiefs of the country, the counts or dukes, were sure to be unpopular with one party in proportion to their popularity with the other. The people of Nantes, which with its dependent territory formed the most opulent part of the great promontory of Brittany, thought to detach their fortunes from those of the native race by electing young Geoffrej'^ Plantagenet ; and during his short life they maintained a separate ad- ministration, and a government almost wholly in- dependent of the Armoricau princes. But Geoffrey died in 1158, and the citizens of Nantes, returning to their old connexion with the rest of the country, were governed by Conan, who was Earl of Rich- mond in England, as well as the hereditary Count or Duke of Brittany. To the surprise of every- body, King Henry, setting forth the most novel and groundless pretensions, claimed the free city of Nantes as hereditary property, devolved to him by his brother's death. It was in vain the citizens represented that they had not, by choosing Geoffrey to be their governor, resigned their independence or converted themselves into a property to be descend- ible in his family. Henry wanted to fill up the only great gap in his continental territories, and, careless of right or appearances, he resolved to seize Nantes, hoping that if once he gained a firm footing there he should soon extend his absolute dominion over the rest of Brittany. The stake indeed was most tempting, and Henry was seldom very scrupulous as to the game he played. He affected to treat the men of Nantes as rebels, and Coaan as an usurper of his rights ; he confiscated his earldom of Richmond, in Yorkshire, and cross- ing the Channel with a formidable army, spread such terror that the people submitted, and, re- nouncing Conan, admitted his garrison within the walls of Nantes.f He then quietly took possession of the whole of the country between the Loire and the Vilaine, relying on his art and address for • Diceto. t Newbrig. — Script. Rer. Franc. 444 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. quieting the alarms these encroachments could not fail to create in the French court. He dispatched Thomas a Bccket, then the most slcilful and accom- modating of all his ministers, to Paris, the volatile inhabitants of which ca])ital were dazzled and delighted by the ambassador's magnificence. Henry soon followed in person, and, between them, these two adroit negotiators completely won over tlie obtuse French king. Tlie price paid for liis neutrality was, Henry's affiancing his eldest son to Margaret, an infant daughter Louis had had by his wife Constance of Castile, who succeeded Eleanor. The young lady was delivered over to one of Henry's Norman barons ; and her dower, consisting of three castles in the Vexin, was consigned to the keeping of tlie illustrious order of the Knights of the Temple, who were to deliver up their charge to Henry's son when the marriage should be com- pleted, or restore it to King Louis in case of tlie affair being broken off by death or other accidents. Henry then prosecuted his viev/s on the rest of Brittany, and concluded with Conan, whom he had driven from Nantes, a compact which threatened the independence of the whole country, whether occupied by the wild original population or the burghers and nobles of the other race. He affianced his then youngest son Geofirey to Constantia, an infant daughter of Conan, the latter engaging to bequeath to his daughter all his rights in Brittany at his death, and Henry engaging to support him in his present power during his life, taking up arms for him against his turbulent subjects, and all others that might attack him, whenever called upon so to do.* If this treaty was kept secret for a time from King Louis, Henry's ambition hurried him into other schemes, which interrupted their good un- derstanding before it had lasted a year. Not satis- fied with the tranquil enjoyment of the states he had procured by his marriage, he advanced fresh claims, in right of his wife, to territories which neither she nor her father had ever enjoyed, and, by obtaining the great earldom of Toulouse, he hoped to spread his power across the whole of the broad isthmus that joins France to Spain, and to range along the French coast on the Mediterranean as he alrendy did along the whole Atlantic sea- board. William, Duke of Aquitaine, grandfather of Queen Eleanor, Henry's wife, and a contem- porary of the Conqueror, married Philippa, the only child of William, the fourth Earl of Toulouse. As a female succession was contrary to the laws or usages of the country, the Earl William, Philippa's father, conveyed the principality, by a contract of sale, to his brother Raymond de St. Gilles, who succeeded at his death, and transmitted it to his posterity in the male line, who had held it many years, not without cavil on the part of the house of Aquitaine, but without any successful challenge of their title. Eleanor conveyed her rights, such as they were, and which she was determined not to leave dormant, to Louis VII. by her first marriage ; • CLion. Norm.— Newbrig.— Daru, Hist, de la Bret igtie. and during their union the French king sent forth an army for the conquest and occupation of Tou- louse. But the expedition ended in a treaty, and Raymond de St. Gilles, the grandson of the first earl of that name, was confirmed in ])ossession of the country, and released from all claims to it, whether on the part of the French king or his wife Eleanor, by marrying Constance, the sister t.f Louis. Henry now urged, that by her subsequent divorce from Louis, Eleanor was restored to her original rights ; and after some curious correspond- ence and ransacking of dusty archives, he de- manded the instant surrender of the earldom of Toulouse upon the same grounds as Louis had done before him. The Earl Raymond raised his banner of war and applied for aid to his brother-in-law of France. By most of the historians the will of the people is passed over as a point of no importance, but that will was decidedly against Hemy, and there were free institutions in Toulouse at the time to give legitimate weight and effect to the popular inclina- tion. " The common council of the city and suburbs," for such was the title borne by the mu- nicipal government of Toidouse,* seconded Rav- moiid's negotiations with the French court, and raised their banner as a free and incorporated com- munity. On this occasion Louis broke through the fine meshes of Henry's and Becket's diplomacy, and roused himself to a formidable exertion in order to check the new encroachment. Perceiving that the struggle would be serious, and that suc- cess could only be obtained by the keeping on foot a large army very different in its constitution and terms of service from his feudal forces, Henrv resolved, by the advice of Becket, to commute the personal services of his vassals for an aid in money,t with which he trusted to procure troops that would serve like modern soldiers for their dailv pay, obey his orders directly without the often troublesome intermission of feudal lords, and have no objection either to the distance of the scene of hostilities or the length of time they were detained from their homes. The term of forty days, to which the services of the vassals was limited, w ould have been in good part consumed in the march alone from England and the north of France to Toulouse. He began l>y levying a sum of money in lieu of their presence and services upon his vassals in Nor- mandy, and other provinces remote from the seat of action : the commutation was agreeable to most of them ; and when it was proposed in England it was still more acceptable on account of the greater distance, and the laudable anxiety of many of the nobles to take care of their estates, which had suffered so much during the intestine wars of tlie preceding reign. The scutagc, as it is called, was levied at the rate of three pounds in England, and of forty Angevin shillings in the continental dominions, for every knight's fee. There were 60,000 knight's fees in England alone, which • Commune concilium uibis Tholosic et subuibii. Script, licr. Viatic. ■|- Tliis seems to biive been Uie first introduction of a practice which tendfil gradually to the overthrow of the whole feudal sybtem. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 445 would produce 180,000/. — a sum so prodigious in th(jse days, that doubts are entertained as to the correctness of the account, though it is given by a contemporary. But, whatever was tlie sum, it sufficed Henry for the raising of a strong mercenary force, consisting chiefly of bodies of tlie famous infantry of the IjOw Countries. With these marched Malcolm, king of Scotland, who courted the close alliance of Henry; Raymond, king of Arragon (to Avhose infant daughter Henry had , affianced his infant son Richard) ; one of the Welsh princes, and many English and foreign barons who voluntarily engaged to follow the king to Toulouse. Thomas a Becket, now Chancellor of England, and the inseparable companion of his royal master, attended in this war, and none went in more warlike guise. He marched at the head of 700 knights and men-at-arms, whom he had raised at his own expense ; and, when they reached the scene of action, he distinguished himself by his activity and gallantry, not permitting the circum- stance of his being in holy orders to prevent him from charging with the chivalry or mounting the deadly breach. After taking the town of Cahors, Henry marched upon the city of Toulouse. But the French king, crossing Berry, which belonged to him in good part, and the Limousin, which granted him a free passage, threw himself with reinforcements into the threatened city, where he was received with extreme joy by Earl Raymond and the citizens. The latter meeting in solemn assembly, voted Louis a letter of thai.ks, in which they expressed their obligations for his having succoured them " like a father,"* — a touching ex- pression of gratitude, which did not imply any civil or feudal submission on the part of the citi- zens. The force which Louis brought with him was small, and the energetic Becket advised Henry to make an immediate assault, in which the church- man judged he could hardly fail of reducing the town and taking prisoner the French king, whose captivity might be turned to incalculable advantage. But Henry was cool and cautious even in the midst of his greatest successes : he did not wish to drive the French nation to extremities, — he was so woven up in the complicated feudal system, and so de- pendent himself on tlie faithful observance of its nice gradations, that he wished to avoid outraging the great principles on which it rested ; and being himself vassal to Louis, and, in his quality of Earl of Anjou, hereditary Seneschal of France, he declared he could not show such disrespect to his superior lord as to besiege him. While he hesi- tated a French army marched to the relief of their king. Henry then transferred the war to another part of the earldf>m, and soon after, leaving the supreme command to Becket, returned with part of his army to Normandy. The clerical Ciianceilor continued to appear as if in his proper clement : he fortified Cahors, took three castles which had been deemed impregnable, and tilted with a French * "Quod eorum poriculis more paterno provideat." Script. Ker. I'ranc. knight, whose horse he carried away as the proof of his victory. But Henry could not do without his favourite ; and a French force having made a diversion on the side of Normandy, Becket also returned thither, leaving only a few insignificant garrisons on the banks of the Garonne and pleasant hills of Languedoc. The political condition, how- ever, of that favoured region declined from that hour. The habit of imploring the protection of one king against another became a cause of dependence ; and with the epoch when the King of England, as Duke of Aquitaine and Earl of Poictou, obtained an influence over the aflairs of the south of France, commenced the decline and misery of a most inte- resting population. Thenceforward, placed between two great powers, the rivals of each other, and both equally ambitious and encroaching, they sought the protection, now of the one, and now of the other, according to circumstances, and were alternately supported and abandoned, betrayed and sold, by both. Their only chance was when the kings of France and England were engaged in open war elsewhere ; and the Troubadours were accustomed to sing the joys that arose when the truce between the Stirlings and the Torncs (the Easterlings and the people of Touraine), as they called the French and English, was l^roken. * They had the advantages of an earlier civilization, but state policy and worldly wisdom seem to have been incompatible with the character of a people so devoted to pleasure and the pursuits of poetry and romance. There was also wanting a good substratum of national morals ; for the code of love and gallantry, which was almost the only one in vogue, did not make the best of citizens. They were turbulent, restless, and passionately fond of change. They were divided by a thousand rival- ries; not merely one province being jealous of another, but town of town, and village of village. They were brave, and passionately fond of war ; but they loved it rather for its excitement, and its poetical and picturesque accompaniments, than from any noble impulse of patriotism. They were always more ready to run at the word of a fair lady to the wars of Palestine, or some other distant and romantic enterprise, than to keep steady watch and ward for the defence of their own fair land. They were a people of a light character and lively ima- gination ; they had a taste for the arts and all delicate enjoyments ; they were ingenious and in- dustrious, and their soil was rich and glowing. Nature had given them everything except stea- diness of character, political prudence, and the spirit of union ; and from the want of these they lost their independence, their riches, their civili- zation, their ])octr3-, and even their beautiful lan- guage, — the first that spread the melody of re- created verse through Europe. Our Plantagcnet race of kings contributed to all this ruin, and a short digression may be excused in favour of an • !■; m'plai qunn la trega es fracta Dels listeilius e doU Tonics. Poesie des Troubadours. 446 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. intellectual people, to whom our early literature had great obligations. In the brief war which ensued after the expe- dition to Toulouse, on the frontiers of Normandy, Becket maintained 1200 knights, with no fewer than 4000 attendants and foot soldiers ; and when the King of France was induced to treat, the elo- quent and versatile churchman was charged with the negotiations on the part of his friend and master. A truce was concluded at the end of the year, and a few months after, when the rival kings had an interview, the truce was converted into a formal peace (a. d. 1160), Henry's eldest son doing homage to Louis for the duchy of Normandy, and Henry being permitted to retain the few places lie had conquered in the earldom of Toulouse. This precious peace did not last quite one month. Constance, the French queen, died without leaving any male issue ; and Louis, anxious for an heir, as his daughters could not succeed, in about a fortnight after her decease married Adelais, niece of the late English king Stephen, and sister of the three earls of Blois, Champagne, and Sancerre. This union with the old enemies of his family greatly trovibled Henry, who, foreseeing a disposi- tion in the French court to break off the alliance with him, which might give his progeny a hold upon France, secretly secured a dispensation from the Pope, and solemnized the contract of marriage between his son Henry, who was seven years old, and the daughter of Louis, the Princess Margaret, who had been placed in his power at the conclusion of the original treaty, and who had attained the matronly age of three years. Becket, the prime mover in all things, brought the royal infant to London, where this strange ceremony was per- formed. As soon as it was finished, Henry claimed the infant's dower, according to the express terms of the treaty, and the Knights Templars, without objecting to the irregular manner in which he had precipitated the marriage, delivered up to him the three castles and towns. Louis instantly raised his banner of war, and exiled the Templars. It was said at the time that Henry had bribed the grand master ; and this disservice to the French crown was probably not forgotten a hundred and fifty years after, when the order was suppressed in France with unexampled cruelties. The French king, however, was no match for the powerful and politic English monarch ; and as Henry was averse to hazardous enterprises likely to be accompanied by great cost and little solid advantage, the war presented nothing more important than the shiver- ing of a few lances and the besieging of a few castles, and another peace was soon concluded through the mediation of the Pope. At this time, as at several other periods in tlie middle ages, there were two popes, each calling the other anti-pope and anti-christ. Victor IV. was established at Rome under the patronage of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa; and Alex- ander in., whose election is generally recognised as more legal and canonical, was a fugitive and an exile north of the Alps, where both Louis and Henry bowed to his spiritual authority, and rivalled each other in their offers of an asylum and suc- cour, and in their reverential demeanour. When the two kings met him in person at Couraj sur Loire, they both dismounted, and holding each of them one of the bridle-reins of his mule, walked on foot by his side, and conducted him to the castle.* A short period of happy tranquillity both in England and Henry's continental dominions fol- lowed this reconciliation; and v/hen it was dis- turbed, the storm proceeded from a most unex- pected quarter — from Thomas a Becket, the king's bosom friend. Further particulars of the history of this extraordinary man, and of the ecclesiastical quarrel which troubled the reign and embittered ten years of the life of Henry, will be given in the next chapter, and we shall here merely handle a few of the great connecting links of the narrative. Becket was born at London, in, or about, the year 1117. His father was a citizen and trader, of the Saxon race — circumstances which seemed to exclude the son from the career of ambition. The boy, however, was gifted with an extraordinary intelligence, a handsome person, and most en- gaging manners ; and his father gave him all the advantages of education that were within his reach. He studied successively at Merton Abbey, London, Oxford, and Paris, in which last city he applied to civil law, and acquired as perfect a mastery and as pure a pronunciation of the French language as any, the best educated of the Norman nobles and officers. While yet a young man, he was employed as an under-clerk in the office of the sheriff of London, where he attracted the attention of Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, who sent him to complete his study of the civil law to the then famous school of Bologna. After profiting by the lessons of the learned Gratian, Becket recrossed the Alps, and staid some time at Auxerre, in Burgundy, to attend the lectures of another celebrated law professor. On his return to London, he took deacon's orders,t and his power- ful patron, the archbishop, gave him some valuable church preferment, which neither necessitated a residence, nor the performance of any church duties ; and he soon afterwards sent him, as tlie best qualified person he knew, to conduct some im- portant negotiations at the court of Rome. The young diplomatist (for he was then only thirty-two years old) acquitted himself with great ability and complete success, obtaining from the pope a prohi- bition that defeated the design of crowning Prince Eustace, the son of Stephen — an important service, which secured the favour of the Empress Matilda and the house of Plantagenet. On Henry's ac- cession, Archbishop Theobald had all the autho- rity of prime-minister, and being old and infirm, he delegated the most of it to the active Becket, who Avas made Chancellor of the kingdom two years after, being the first Englishman since the Con- • Newbrig. — Chron. Norm. i IIo never took the major orders till he became archbishop. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 447 quest that had reached any eminent office. As if to empty the lap of royal bounty, Henry at the same time appointed him preceptor of the heir to the crown, and gave him the wardenship of the Tower of London, the castle of Berkhamstead, and the honour of Eye, with 340 knights' fees. His revenue, flowing in from many sources, was im- mense; and no man ever spent more freely or magnificently. His house was a palace, both in dimensions and appointments. It was stocked with vessels of gold and silver, and constantly fre- quented by numberless guests of all goodly ranks, from barons and earls to knights and pages, and simple retainers — of which he had several hun- dreds, who acknowledged themselves his imme- diate vassals. His tables were spread with the choicest viands; the best of wines were poured out with an unsparing hand; the richest dresses allotted to his pages and serving-men ; but with all this costly magnificence, there were certain capital wants of comfort, which show the imperfect civilization of the age ; and his biographer re- lates, among other things, that as the number of guests was often greater than could find place at table, Becket ordered that the floor should be every day covered with fresh hay or straw, in order that those who sat upon it might not soil their dresses.* The chancellor's out-door appear- ance was still more splendid, and on great public occasions was carried to an extremity of pomp and magnificence; though here again there are circumstances that would seem discordant and grotesque to a modern eye. When he went on his embassy to Paris, he was attended by two hundred knights, besides many barons and nobles, and a complete host of domestics, all richly armed and attired, the chancellor himself having four-and- twenty changes of apparel. As he travelled through France, his train of waggons and sumpter- horses, his hounds and hawks, his huntsmen and falconers, seemed to announce the presence of a more than king. Whenever he entered a town, the ambassadorial procession was led by 250 boys singing national songs ; then followed his hounds, led in couples ; and these were succeeded by eight waggons, each with five large horses, and five drivers in new frocks. Every waggon was covered with skins, and guarded by two men and a fierce mastiff. Two of the waggons were loaded with ale, to be distributed to the people ; one carried the vessels and furniture of his chapel, another of his bed-chamber ; a fifth was loaded with his kitchen apparatus; a sixth carried his abundant plate and wardrobe ; and the other two were devoted to the use of his household servants. After the waggons came twelve sumpter-horses, a monkey riding on each, with a groom behind on his knees. Then came the esquires, carrying the shields, and leading the war-horses of their respec- tive knights ; then other esquires (youths of gentle birth), falconers, officers of the household, knights • Fit«-Stephen. This amusing biographer was Beeket's secre- tary. and priests ; and last of all appeared the great chancellor himself with his familiar friends. As Becket passed in this guise, the French were heard to exclaim, " W^hat manner of man must the king of England be, Avhen his chancellor travels in such state!"* Henry encouraged all this pomp and magnificence, and seems to have taken a lively en- joyment in the spectacle, though he sometimes twitted the chancellor on the finery of his attire. All such offices of government as were not per- formed by the ready and indefatigable king him- self were left to Becket, who had no competitor in authority. Secret enemies he had in abundance, but never even a momentary rival in the royal favour. The minister and king lived together like brothers ; and according to a contemporary, f who knew more of Henry than any other that has written concerning him, it was notorious to all men that they were cor unum et animam imam (of one heart and one mind in all things). With his chancellor Henry gave free scope to a facetious frolicsome humour, which was natural to him, though no prince could assume more dignity and sternness when necessary. The amusing bio- grapher of Becket tells the following well-known story. One day as the king and his chancellor were riding together through the streets of Lon- don in cold and stormy weather, the king saw coming towards them a poor old* man in a thin coat worn to tatters. " Would it not be very praiseworthy to give that poor man a good warm cloak?" said the king. " It would, surely," re- plied the chancellor ; " and you do well, Sir, in turning your eyes and thoughts to such objects." While they were thus talking, they came near to the poor man, and the king, turning to the chan- cellor, said, " You shall have the merit of this good deed of charity :" then suddenly laying hold of Beeket's fine new cloak, which was of scarlet cloth, lined with ermine, he tried to pull it from his shoulders. The chancellor defended himself for some time, and pulling and tugging at one ano- ther, they had both of them like to have fallen off their horses in the street ; but, in the end, Becket let go his cloak, which the king gave to the beggar, who went his way not less pleased than surprised ; while the courtiers in the royal train laughed, like good courtiers, at the passing pleasantry of their master. The chancellor was an admirable horse- man, and expert in hunting and hawking, and all the sports of the field. These accomplishments, and a never-failing wit and vivacity, made him the constant companion of the king's leisure hours, and the sharer (it is hinted) in less innocent plea- sures — for Henry was a very inconstant husband, and had much of the Norman licentiousness. At the same time Becket was an able minister, and his administration was not only advantageous to the interests of his master, but, on the whole, extremely beneficial to the nation. Most of the useful mea- sures which distinguished the early part of the • Fitz-Steph., t Petrus Blesensis, or Peter of Blois. See his Letters. 1 448 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. king's reign have been attributed to his advice, his discriminating genius, and good intentions. Such were the restoration of internal tranquillity, the curbing of the baronial power, the better ap- pointment of judges, the reform in the currency, and the encouragement given to trade, the pro- lection of which in foreign countries now became an object of great attention to tlie government. He certainly could not be accused of entertaining a low notion of the royal prerogative, or of any iuke- warmness in exacting the rights of the king. He humbled the lay aristocracy whenever he could, and more than once attacked the extravagant privileges, immunities, and exemptions claimed by the aris- tocracy of the church. He insisted that the bishops and abbots should pay the scutage for the war of Toulouse like the lay vassals of the crown, and this drew upon him the violent invectives of many of the hierarchy, Gilbert Foliot, the Bishop of Here- ford, among others, accusing him of plunging the sword into the bosom of Mother Church, and threatening him with excommunication. One day in his synod, when some bishops exalted the in- dependence of the church at the expense of the royal authSrity, the chancellor openly contradicted their pretensions, and reminded them in a tone of severity that they, as men of tlie church, were bound to the king by the same oath as the men of the sword, — by the oath ta preserve him in life, limbs, dignity, and honours.* All this tended to convince Henry that Becket was tlie proper person to name primate, as one who had already given proofs of a spirit greatly averse to ecclesiastical encroachments, and of aii aflection and devotion to his own interests that promised to be of the greatest service to him in a project which, in common with other European sovereigns, he had much at heart, namely, to check the growing power of Rome and curtail the privdeges of the priesthood. Although his conduct had not been very priest-like, he was popular : the king's favour and intentions were well known, and accordingly, in 1161, when his old patron Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, died, the public voice designated Becket as the man who nuist inevitably succeed him ; and after a vacancy of about thirteen months, during which Henry drew the revenues, he was appointed Pri- mate of all England. From that moment Becket was an altered man : the soldier, statesman, hunter, courtier, man of the world, and man of pleasure, became a rigid and ascetic monk, renouncing even the innocent enjoyments of life, together with the service of his more friend than master, and resolving to perish by a slow martyrdom rather tlian suffer the king to invade the smallest privilege of the church. Although he then retained, and after- wards showed a somewhat inconsistent anxiety to preserve, certain other worldly honours and ])laccs of trust, he resigned the chancellorship in spite of the wishes of the king, — he discarded all his former companions and magnificent retinue, — he • Wilkins, Concilia. threw off his splendid attire, — he discharged his choice cooks and his cup-bearers, to surround him- self with monks and beggars (whose feet he daily washed), to clothe himself in sackcloth, to eat the coarsest food, and drink water, rendered bitter by the mixture of unsavoury herbs. The rest of Iris penitence, his prayers, his works of charity in hos- pitals and pest-houses, which soon caused his name to be revered as that of a saint, and his per- son to be followed by the prayers and acclamations of the people, would lead us from our present pur- pose. With the views the king was known to entertain in church matters, the collision was in- evitable, yet it certainly was the archbishop who began the contest, and it is most unfair to attempt to conceal or slur over this fact. In 1 1G3, about a year after his elevation, Becket raised a loud complaint on the usurpations by the king and laity of the rights and property of the church. He claimed houses and lands which, if they ever had been in- cluded in the endowments of the see of Canterbury, had been for generations in the possession of lay families. It is curious to see castles and places of war figuring in his list. From the king himself he demanded the strong, and then most important, castle of Rochester, which he said was his, as Archbishop of Canterbury. From the Earl of Clare, whose family had possessed them in fief ever since the Conquest, he demanded the strong castle and the barony of Tunbridge; and from other barons, possessions of a like nature. But to com- plete the indignation of Henry, who had laid it down as an indispensable and unchangeable rule of government, that no vassal who held in capitc of the crown should be excommimicated without his previous knowledge aird consent, he hurled the thunders of the church at the head of William de Eynsford, a military tenant of the crown, for forci- bly ejecting a priest collated to the rectory of that manor by the archbishop, and for pretending, as lord of the manor, to a right over that living. When Henry ordered him to revoke the sentence, Becket told him that it was not for the king to inform him whom he should absolve and whom ex- communicate — a right and faculty appertaining solely to the church. The king then resorted from remonstrances to threats of vengeance; and Becket, bending for awhile before the storm, absolved tlic knight, but reluctantly and with a bad grace.* In the course of the following year, the king matured his project for subjecting the clergy to the authority of the civil courts for murder, felony, and other crimes; and to this reform, in a council held at Westminster, he formally demanded the assent of the archbishop and the other prelates. Tiie leniency of the ecclesiastical courts to offenders in holy orders seemed almost to give an iumiunity to crime, and a recent case, in which a clergyman had l)een but slightly punished for the most atrocious of offences, called aloud for a change of court and practice, and lent unanswerable arguments to the • Gorvasn of Cauteibuiy. — Diccto. — Fit/.-Slfpli. K)>ist. St. Tliora — Hist. Quad. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 449 ministers and advocates of the king. The bishops, liowever, with one voice, rejected the proposed in- novations, upon which Henry asked them if they ^vould merely promise to observe the ancient customs of the realm. Becket and his brethren, with the exception only of Hilary, Bishop of Chi- chester, answered that they would observe them, " saving their order." On this the king imme- diately deprived the archbishop of the manor of Eye and the castle of Berkhampstead, which he had hitherto been allowed to retain. Finding, however, that the bishops fell from his side instead of supporting his quarrel, and being on one side menaced by the king and lay nobles, and on the other, it is said, advised to submit by the Pope himself, Becket shortly afterwards, at a great council held at Clarendon, in Wiltshire (25th January, 1164), consented to sign a series of enactments embodying the several points insisted upon by the king, and hence called the ' Constitu- tions of Clarendon ;' but he refused to put his seal to them, and immediately after withdrew from the court, and even from the service of the altar, to subject himself to the harshest penance for having acted contrary to his invvard conviction. Subsequently the Pope rejected the ' Constitutions of Clarendon,' with the exception only of six articles of minor importance ; and the archbishop was then encouraged to persist by the only superior he ac- knowledged in this world. The king being now determined to keep no measures, nor restrict himself to a purely legal course, assembled a great council in the town of Northampton, and summoned the archbishop to appear before it. He was charged, in the first place, with a breach of allegiance and acts of con- tempt against the king. He offered a plea in excuse, but Henry swore, " by God's eyes,"* that he would have justice in its full extent, and the court condemned Becket to forfeit all his goods and chattels ; but this forfeiture was immediately com- muted for a fine of 500/. The next day the king required him to refund 300/. which he had received as Warden of Eye and Berkhampstead, and 500/. which he (the king) had given him before the walls of Toulouse ; and, on the third day, he was required to render an account of all his receipts from vacant abbeys and bishoprics during his chancellorship, the balance due thereon to the crown being set down at the enormous sum of 44,000 marks. Becket now perceived that the king was bent on his utter ruin. For a moment he v/iis overpowered ; but, recovering his firmness and self-possession, which never forsook him for long intervals, he said he was not bound to plead on that count, seeing that, at his consecration as archbishop, he had been publicly released by the king from all such claims. He demanded a conference with the bishops ; but these dignitaries had already declared for the court, and the majority of them now ad- • This was Henry's usual oath when much excited. The oaths of all these kings would make a curious collection of blasphemy. The chronicler* have been careful to preserve thera.and, according to their records, nearly every king had his distinctive oath. VOL. I. vised him to resign the primacy as the only step which could restore peace to the church and nation. His health gave way under these troubles, and he was confined to a sick-bed for the two following days. His indomitable mind, however, yielded none of its firmness and (we must add) its pride. He considered the bishops as cowards and time- servers, and resolved to retain that post from which, having once been placed in it, it was held, by all law and custom, he could never be deposed by the temporal power, or by any authority except that of the Pope. It is said that he thought of going bare- foot to the palace, and throwing himself at the king's feet, to appeal to his pity and the remem- brance of their old and dear friendship, — a course \yhich would probably have effected a reconcilia- tion, for the king was not of a harsh or unforgiving disposition, and his pride would have been con- ciliated by the outward semblance of submission. But, in the end, Becket adopted a line of conduct much more natural to his character, resolving to deny the authority of the court and brave the king in his wrath. On the morning of the decisive day (October 1 8th, 1164), he celebrated the mass of St. Stephen, the first Martyr, the office of which begins with these words : — " Sederunt principes et adversum me loquebantur," (Princes also did sit and speak against me. Ps. cxix. 23). After the mass, he set out for the court, arrayed as he was in his pontifical robes. He went on horseback, bear- ing the archiepiscopal cross in his right hand, and holding the reins in his left. When he dismoimted at the palace, one of his suffragans would have borne the cross before him in the usual manner, but he would not let it go out of his hands, saying, " It is most reason I should bear the cross myself; under the defence thereof I may remain in safety ; and, beholding this ensign, I need not doubt under what prince I serve." — " But," said the Archbishop of York, an old rival and enemy of Becket, " it is defying the king our lord to come in this fashion to his court ; — but the king has a sword, the point of which is sharper than that of thy pastoral staff." As the primate entered, the king, enraged at his unexpected manner of presenting himself, rose from his seat and withdrew to an inner apartment, whither the barons and bishops soon followed him, leaving Becket alone in the vast hall, or attended only by a few of his clerks or the inferior clergy, the whole body of which, unlike the dignitaries of the church, inclined to his person and cause. These poor clerks trembled and were sore dis- mayed ; but not so Becket, who seated himself on a bench, and still holding his cross erect, calmly awaited the event. He was not made to wait long : the Bishop of Exeter, terrified at the exces- sive exasperation of the sovereign, came forth from the inner apartment, and throwing himself on his knees, implored the primate to have pity on himself and his brethren the bishops, for the king had vowed to slay the first of them that should attempt to excuse his conduct. "Thou fearest," replied Becket ; " flee then ! thou canst not understand the 2c 1 450 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. things that are of God !" Soon afterwards, the rest of the bishops appeared in a body, and Hilary of Chichester, speaking in the name of all, said, " Thou wast our primate, but now we disavow thee, because, after having promised faith to the king, our common lord, and sworn to maintain his royal customs, thou hast endeavoured to destroy them, and hast broken thine oath. We proclaim thee, then, a traitor, and tell thee we will no longer obey a perjured archbishop, but place ourselves and our cause under the protection of our lord the Pope, and summon thee to answer us before him." — " I hear," said Becket, and he deigned no further reply. According to Roger of Hoveden, the archbishop was accused in the council chamber of the im- possible crime of magic; and the barons pro- nounced a sentence of imprisonment against him. The door of that chamber soon opened, and Robert, Earl of Leicester, followed by the barons, stepped forth into the hall to read the sentence, beginning in the usual old Norman French form, — " Oyez-ci." The archbishop rose, and, interrupting him, said, *' Son and earl, hear me first. Thou knowest with how much faith I served the king, — with how much reluctance, and only to please him, I accepted my present charge, and in what manner I was declared free from all secular claims whatsoever. Touching the things which hap- pened before my consecration, I ought not to answer, nor will I answer. You, moreover, are all my child- ren in God, and neither law nor reason permits you to sit in judgment upon your father. I forbid you therefore to judge me; — I decline your tribunal, and refer my quarrel to the decision of the Pope. To him I appeal : and now, under the holy pro- tection of the Catholic church and the apostolic see, I depart in peace." After this counter-appeal to the power which his adversaries had been the first to invoke, Becket slowly strode through the crowd towards the door of the hall. When near the threshold, the spirit of the soldier, which was not yet extinguished by the aspirations of the saint, blazed forth in a withering look and a few hasty but impassioned words. Some of the courtiers and attendants of the king threw at him straw or rushes, which they gathered from the floor, and called him traitor and false perjurer. Turning round and drawing himself up to his full height, he cried, " If my holy calling did not forbid it, 1 would make my answer with my sword to those cowards who call me traitor." * He then mounted his horse amidst the acclamations of the lower clergy and common people, and rode in a sort of triumph to his lodg- ings, the populace shouting, " Blessed be God who hath delivered his servant from the hands of his enemies." The strength of Becket's party was in the popular body ; and it has been supposed, with some reason, that his English birth and Saxon • FHz.-Steph.— Gervase, Grym. — Diceto.— Diceto, we know, was at this meeting, and, what gives singular interest to the accounts of it IS, that it is probable the other three chroniclers, who were all closely connected with Becket, were also present. descent contributed, no less than his sudden sanc- tity, to endear him to the people, who had never before seen one of their race elevated to such dignities. He seems, indeed, to have been very popular, even when nothing more than a profane chancellor, and at this critical moment he resorted to means that could hardly fail of giving enthusiasm to the feelings of the multitude. The stately bishops, as we have said, had fallen from his side, ■ — the lordly abbots remained aloof in their houses, — the mass of his own clerical followers had for- saken him, — the lay nobles of the land were almost to a man his declared enemies : his house was empty, and in a spirit of imitation which some will deem presumptuous, he determined to fill it with the paupers of the town and the lowly wayfarers from the road-side. " Suffer," said he, " all the poor people to come into the place, that we may make merry together in the Lord." " And having thus spoken, the people had free entrance, so that all the hall and all the chambers of the house being furnished with tables and stools, they were con- veniently placed, and served with meat and drink to the full, " * the archbishop supping with them and doing the honours of the feast. In the course of the evening he sent to the king to aski leave to retire beyond sea, and he was told thai he should receive an answer on the followins morning. The modern historians, who take the: most unfavourable view of the king's conduct in these particulars, intimate more or less broadly that a design was on foot for preventing the, archbishop from ever seeing that morrow; but the circumstances of time and place, and the cha« racter of Henry, are opposed to the belief that secret assassination was contemplated ; nor does any contemporary writer give reasonable grounds for entertaining such a belief, or indeed say more than that the archbishop's friends were sorely frightened, and thought such a tragical termination of the quarrel a highly probable event.- Becket, however,; took his departure as if he himself feared violence.; He stole out of the town of Northampton at the dead of night, disguised as a simple monk, and^ calling himself Brother Dearman ; and being fol- lowed only by two clerks and a domestic servant, he hastened towards the coast, hiding by day and pursuing his journey by night. The season was " far advanced, and the stormy winds of November swept the waters of the Channel when he reached the coast ; but Becket embarked in a small boat, and after many perils and fatigues, landed at Gravelines, in Flanders, on the fifteenth day after his departure from Northampton. From the sea-port of Gravelines he and his com- panions walked on foot, and in very bad condition, to the monastery of St. Berlin, near to Namur, where he waited a short time the success of his applications to the King of France, and the Pope Alexander III., who had fixed his residence for a time in the city of Sens. Their answers were most favourable ; for, fortvmately for Becket, the • Holingshed. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 451 jealousy and disunion between the kings of France and England disposed Louis to protect the ob- noxious exile, in order to vex and weaken Henry ; aad the Pope, turning a deaf ear to a magnificent embassy dispatched to him by the English sove- reign, determined to support the cause of the primate as that of truth, of justice, and the church. The splendid abbey of Pontigny, in Burgundy, was assigned to him as an honourable and secure asylum ; and the Pope reinvested him with his archiepiscopal dignity, which he had surrendered into his hands, notwithstanding the urgent wish of Hf)me of the cardinals that Alexander would keep his resignation, which would allow of a new pri- mate being appointed for England, and so put an Olid to a dangerous controversy. Encouraged by the countenance he thus received from the Pope, Becket now declared that Christ was again tried in his case before a lay tribunal, and crucified afresh in the person of himself, the servant of Christ. As soon as Henry was informed of these parti- culars he issued writs to the sheriffs of England, commanding them to seize all rents and possessions of the primate within their jurisdictions, and to detain all bearers of appeals to the Pope till the king's pleasure should be made known to them. He also commanded the justices of the kingdom to detain in like manner all bearers of papers, whether from the Pope or Becket, that purported to pro- nounce excommunication or interdict on the realm, — all persons, whether lay or ecclesiastic, who should adhere to such sentence of interdict, — and all clerks attempting to leave the kingdom without a passport from the king. The primate's name was struck out of the Liturgy, and the revenues of every clergyman who had either followed him into France, or had sent him aid and money, were seized by the crown. If Henry's vengeance had stopped here it might have been excused, if not justified ; but, irritated to madness by the tone of defiance his enemy assumed in a foreign country, he proceeded to further vindictive and most dis- graceful measures, issuing one common sentence of banishment against all who were connected with Becket, either by the ties of relationship or those of friendship. The list of proscription contained four hundred names, for the wives and children of Becket's friends were included ; and it is said that they were all bound by an oath to show themselves in their miserable exile to the cause of their ruin, that his heart might be wrung by the sight of the misery he had brought down upon the heads of all those who were most dear to him. It is added that his cell at Pontigny was accordingly beset by these exiles, but that he finally succeeded in reliev- ing their immediate wants by interesting the King of France, the Queen of Sicily, and the Pope, in their favour. In 1165, the year after Becket's flight, Henry sustained no small disgrace from the result of a campaign, in which he personally commanded, against the Welsh. That hardy people had risen once more in arms in 1163, but had been defeated by an Anglo-Norman army, which subsequently plundered and wasted with fire the county of Car- marthen. SomeAvhat more than a year later a nephew of Rees-ap-Gryffiths, prince or king of South VV ales, was found dead in his bed, and the uncle asserting he had been assassinated by the secret emissaries of a neighbouring Norman baron, col- lected the mountaineers of the south, and began a fierce and successful warfare, in which he was pre- sently joined by his old allies, Gwynned, the prince of North Wales, and Owen Cyvelioch, the leader of the clans of Powisland. One Norman castle fell after another, and, when hostilities had conti- nued for some time, the Welsh pushed their incur- sions forward into the level country. The king, turning at length his attention from the church quarrel, which had absorbed it, drew together an army " as well of Englishmen as strangers," and hastened to the Welsh marches. At his approach the mountaineers withdrew " to their starting holes," their woods, and strait passages. Henry, without regard to difiiculties and dangers, followed them, and a general action was fought on the banks of the Cieroc. The Welsh were defeated, and fled to their uplands. Henry, still following them, penetrated as far as the lofty Berwin, at the foot of which he encamped. A sudden storm of rain set in, and continued until all the streams and torrents were fearfully swollen, and the valley was deluged. Meanwhile the natives gathered on the ridges of the mountain of Berwin ; but it appears to have been more from the war of the elements than of man that the king's army retreated in great dis- order and with some loss. Henry had hitherto showed himself remarkably free from the cruelty of his age, but his mind was now embittered, and in a hasty moment he resolved to take a barbarous vengeance on the persons of the hostages whom the Welsh princes had placed in his hands, seven years before, as pledges for their tranquillity and allegiance. The eyes of the males were picked out of their heads, and the noses and ears of the females were cut off. The old chroniclers hardly increase our horror (which they intended to do) when they tell us that the victims belonged to- the noblest families of Wales* This reverse in England was soon followed by successes on the continent. A formidable insurrec- tion broke out in Brittany against Henry's subservient ally Conan, who applied to him for succour accord- ing to the terms of the treaty of alliance subsisting betvveen them. The troops of the. king entered by the frontier of Normandy, under pretext of defend- ing the legitimate earl of the Bretons against his revolted subjects. Henry soon made himself master of Dol and several other towns, which he kept and garrisoned with his own soldiers. Conan had shown himself utterly incapable of managing the fierce Breton nobles, by whose excesses and cruelties the poor people, who were the victims of them, were ground to the dust. Henry's power * Gervase. — Newbrig. — Girald. Camb. ItJn.— Diceto. 452 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book II] and abilities were well known to the sutfering Bretons, and a considerable party, including the priests of the country, rallied round him, and hailed him as a deliverer* Submitting in part to the force of circumstances and the wishes of Henry, and in part, perhaps, following his own indolent inclinations, Conan resigned the renmant of his authority into the hands of his protector, who governed the state in the name of his son Geoffrey and Conan's heiress Constantia, the espousals of these two children being prematurely solemnized. Another insurrection ensued ; but, though the dis- affected barons of Brittany formed a life and death league with the dissatisfied people of Maine, and were assisted, at first secretly and then openly, by the King of France, they could never make head against the power of Henry, who, in the end, levelled most of their castles, and disarmed and disheartened the turbulent Bretons. In the course of this petty war Henry is accused by more than one French chronicler of making a jest of the virtue of his female prisoners and hostages ; but it is fair to remark that, though this is touching one of his known vices, these accounts are from a prejudiced source ; and it is acknowledged, even by the same writers, that he gave to Brittany tranquillity, regular courts of law, and prosperity, — blessings which were certainly worth more to the mass of the people than the stormy national independence they had before enjoyed. In the month of Decem- ber, 1166, Henry kept his court in the famed old castle on Mount St. Michael, whence his eye could range over the long and extending land of Brittany, and there he was visited by William the Lion, who had recently ascended the Scottish throne, on the death of his brother, Malcolm IV. While still abroad he ordered a tax to be levied on all his subjects, whether English or foreign, for the support of the war in the Holy Land, which was taking a turn more and more unfavourable to the Christians ; but at the very time his peace was broken by his own war with the church and the unremitting hostility of Becket. . In the month of May the banished archbishop went from Pontigny to Vezeley, near Auxerre, and encouraged by the Pope, who intimated that he might proceed without any fear of giving offence to the see of Rome, he repaired to the church on the great festival of the Ascension, when it was most crowded with people, and mounting the pulpit there, " with book, bell, and candle," solemnly cursed and pronounced the sentence of excommunication against the defenders of the Constitutions of Clarendon, the detainers of the sequestrated property of the church of Canter- bury, and those who imprisoned or persecuted either laymen or clergy on his account. This done, lie more particularly excommunicated by name Richard de Lucy, Joycelin Baliol, and four other of Henry's courtiers and prime favourites.f The king was at Chinon, in Anjou, ;when he was startled by this new sign of life given by his ad- • Script. Rer. Franc— Daru, Hist, de la Bretagne. t Kpist. St. TliomiE. — Rog. Hove. — Gervase, versary. Though in general a great master of hia feelings and passions, Henry was subject to ex-j cesses of ungovernable fury, and on this occasion] he seems fairly to have taken leave of his senses. He cried out that they wanted to kill him body and' soul — that he was wretched in being surrounded by cowards and traitors, not one of whom thought of delivering him from the insupportable vexations caused him by a single man. He took off his cap and dashed it to the ground, undid his girdle, threw his clothes about the room, tore off the silk coverlet from his bed and rolled upon it, and gnawed the straw and rushes, — for it appears that this mighty and splendid monarch had no better bed.* His resentment did not pass away with this paroxysm, and after writing to the Pope and the King of France, he threatened that, if Becket should return and continue to be sheltered at the Abbey of Pontigny, which belonged to the Cister- cians, he would seize all the estates appertaining to that order within his numerous dominicms. The threat was an alarming one to the monks, and we find Becket removing out of Burgundy to the town of Sens, where a new asylum was appointed him by Louis, who continued to support him for his own views, but who was unable or unwilling to make any great sacrifice for him. A paltry war was begun and ended by a truce all within a few months : it was followed the next year by another war equally short and still more inglorious for the French king ; for, although he had excited fresh disturbances in Brittany and Maine, and leagued himself with some of Henry's revolted barons of Poictou and Aquitaine, he gained no advantage whatever for himself, was the cause of ruin to most of his allies, and was compelled to conclude a peace at the beginning of the year 1169. Nothing but an empty pride could have been gra- tified by a series of feudal oaths ; but the desig- nations given to his sons on this occasion by the English king contributed to fatal consequences which happened four years later. Prince Henry of England, his eldest son, did homage to his father-in-law, the King of France, for Anjou and Maine, as he had formerly done for Normandy; Prince Richard, his second son, did homage for Aquitaine ; and Geoffrey, his third son, for Brit- tany : and it was afterwards assumed that these ceremonies constituted the boys sovereigns and absolute masters of the several dominions named. At the same time the two kings agreed upon a marriage between Prince Richard of England and Alice, another daughter of the King of France, the previous treaty of matrimony with the King of Arragon being set aside. Sixteen months before these events Henry lost his mother, the Empress Matilda, who died at Rouen, and was buried in the celebrated Abbey of Bee, Avhich she had enriched with the donations of her piety and penitence. Her adventurous, busy, restless life ceased with the accession of her able • Script. Rer. Franc. Henry seems to have acted in this mad way on more than onu occasioo. Chap. I.^ CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 453 son to the throne of England ; but from the lionoured retirement of Normatidy, to which he wisely condemned her, she continued to take a lively interest in the affairs of courts and govern- ments, and it is said of her that she foresaw Becket's character, and highly disapproved of his elevation to the primacy. To that extraordinary man we must now return, for his fate is so inter- woven with that of Henry that it is difficult to separate them for any length of time until the crave closes over the priest ; and then his ashes. Ills name, and writings, will be found exercising an influence iiot only over this king hut over his successors. About this time Henry was prevailed upon by i the Pope, the King of France, and by some of his own friends, to assent to the return of Becket and his party. The kings of France and England met at Montmirail, in Perche, and Becket was admitted to a conference. Henry insisted on qualifying his agreement to the proposed terms of accommodation by the addition of the words, " saving the honour of his kingdom," — a salvo which Becket met by another on his part, say- ing that he was willing to be reconciled to the king, and obey him in all things, " saving the honour of God and the church. " Upon this, Henry, turning to the King of France, said, — *' Do you know what would happen if I were to admit this reservation ? That man would interpret everything displeasing to himself as being contrary to the honour of God, and would so invade all my rights : but to show that I do not withstand God's honour, I will here ofi'er him a concession ; — what the greatest and holiest of his predecessors did unto the least of mine, that let him do unto me, and I am contented therewith." All present ex- claimed that this was enough — that the king had humbled himself enough. But Becket still insisted on his salvo; upon which the King of France said, he seoned to wish to be " greater than the saints, and better than St. Peter;" and the nobles present murmured at his unbending pride, and said he no longer merited an asylum in France. The two kings mounted their horses and rode away -without saluting Becket, who retired much cast down. No one any longer offered him food and lodging in the name of Louis, and on his journey back to Sens he was reduced to live on the charity of the common people.* In another conference the obnoxious clauses on either side were omitted. The business now seemed in fair train ; but when Becket asked from the king the kiss of peace,t which was the usual termination to such qviarrels, Henry's irritated feelings prevented him from granting it, and he excused himself by saying it was only a solemn oath taken formerly, in a moment of passion, never to kiss Becket, that hindered him from giving this sign of perfect reconciliation. The • Vita S. Thomie. — Script. Rer. Franc— Gervase. — Epist. S. Tliomsc. t See a curious discourse on kisses of peace in Ducange, Gloss, in DOC, Oiculum Pads. primate must have known kings too well to attach much value to their kisses, but he was resolute to wave no privilege and no ceremony, and this con- ference was also broken off in anger. Another brief quarrel between the two kings, and an impotent raising of banners on the part of Louis, which threatened at first to retard the reconciliation between Henry and his primate, were in fact the cause of hastening that event ; for hostilities dwindled into a truce, the truce led to another conference between the sovereigns, and the con- ference to another peace, at which Henry, who was apprehensive that the Pope would finally con- sent to Becket's ardent wishes, and permit him to excommunicate his king by name, and pronounce an interdict against the whole kingdom, slowly and reluctantly pledged his word to be reconciled forthwith to the dangerous exile. On the 22nd of July, 1170, a solemn congress was held in a spacious and most pleasant meadow,* -between Freteval and La Ferte-Bemard, on the borders of Touraine. The king was there before the arch- bishop, and as soon as Becket appeared, riding leisurely towards the tent, he spurred his horse to meet him, and saluted him cap in hand. They then rode apart into the field, and discoursed together for some time in the same familiar manner as in by-gone times. Then returning to his attendants, Henry said that he found the archbishop in the best possible disposition, and that it would be sinful in him to nourish rancour any longer. The quarrel had been still further complicated by the coronation of Henry's eldest son, a ceremony which had been performed in the preceding month of June by the Archbishop of York, in defiance of the rights of Becket as primate. But Henry softened his rancour on this account in the course of his private conversation with him. The primate came up accompanied by the Archbishop of Sens and other priests, and the forms of reconciliation were completed ; always, however, excepting the kiss of peace, wliich, ac- cording to some, Henry promised he would give in England, where they would soon meet, t The king, however, condescended to hold Becket's stirrup when he mounted. By their agreement Becket was to love, honour, and serve tlie king, in as far as an archbishop could "render in the Lord" service to liis sovereign ; and Henry was to restore immediately all the lands, and livings, and privi- leges of the church of Canterbury, and to furnish Becl\et with funds to discharge his debts and make the journey into England. These terms weie certainly not kept : the lands were not released for four months ; and, after many vexatious delays, Becket was obliged to borrow money for his journey. While tarrying on the French coast he was several times warned tliat danger awaited him on the opposite shore. This was not improbable, as many resolute men had been suddenly driven from the church lands, on which they had fattened for • In praio amcenissimo. S< ript. Rer. Franc, i Fitz Stephen. — Epist. S. Thontae. 454 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [;book hi. years, and as he was known to carry about his person letters of excommunication from the Pope against the Archbishop of York and the Bishops of London and Salisbury, whom he held to be his chief enemies, and who were men likely to adopt strong measures to prevent his promulgating the terrible sentence. He was even assured that Ranulf de Broc, a knight of a family who all hated him to the death, and who had himself boasted that he would not let the archbishop live to eat a single loaf of bread in England, was lying with a body of soldiers, between Canterbury and Dover, in order to intercept him. But nothing could move Becket, who said seven years of absence were long enough both for the shepherd and his flock, and that he would not stop though he were sure to be cut to pieces as soon as he landed on the opposite coast. The only use he made of the warnings he received was, to confide the letters of excommunication to a skilful and de- voted messenger, who, preceding him some short time, stole into England without being suspected, and actually delivered them publicly to the three bishops, who were as much startled as if a thunder- bolt had fallen at their feet. This last measure seems to have had as much to do with Becket's death as any anger of the king's. As he was on the point of embarking, a vessel arrived from England. The sailors were asked what were the feelings of the good English people towards their archbishop ? They replied, that the people would hail his return with transports of joy. This was a good omen, and he no doubt relied much more on the popular favour than on the protection of John of Oxford, one of the royal chaplains, and some others whom Henry had sent to accompany him. He sailed from France in the same gloomy month of the year on which he had begun his exile, and, avoiding Dover, landed at Sandwich, on the 1 st of Decem- ber. At the news of his arrival, the mariners, the peasants, the working people generally, and the English burgesses flocked to meet him ; but none of the rich and powerful welcomed him ; and the first persons of rank he saw presented themselves in a menacing attitude. These latter were a sheriff of Kent, Reginald de Warenne, Ranulf de Broc (who had ridden across the country from Dover), and some relatives and allies of the three excom- municated bishops, who carried swords under their tunics, and drew them when they approached the primate. John of Oxford conjured them to be quiet, lest they should make their king pass for a traitor ; but it is probable that the determined countenance of the English multitude made more impression on them than his peaceful words. They retired to their castles, and spread a report among their feudal compeers that Becket was libe- rating the serfs of the country, who were marching in his train drunk with joy and hopes of vengeance. At Canterbury the primate was received with ac- clamations ; but still it was only the poor and lowly that welcomed him. A few days after, he Bet out for Woodstock, to visit the king's eldest son, Prince Henry, who had formerly been his pupil. Becket counted much on his influence over the young prince ; but the party opposed to him succeeded in preventing his having an op- portunity to exert that influence. A royal mes- senger met him on his journey, and ordered him, in the name of the prince, not to enter any of the royal towns or castles, but to return and remain within his own diocese. The pri- mate obeyed, and, returning, spent some days at Harrow-on-the-Hill, which belonged to the church of Canterbury a considerable time before the Nor- man conquest. During his stay at Harrow, Becket kept great hospitality ; but this virtue was pro- bably exercised in regard to persons of a condition resembling those whom he had bidden to his me- morable feast at Northampton; and the only ecclesiastic of rank mentioned as doing him honour was the abbot of the neighbouring monas- tery of St. Alban's. Two of his own clergy, Nigellus de Sackville, who was called "the usurp- ing rector of Harrow," and Robert de Broc, the vicar, a relation of his determined foe, Ranulf de Broc, treated him with great disrespect, and when he was departing maimed the horse which carried his provisions — an offence which was not forgotten by one who presumed to hurl the thunderbolts of damnation. Becket returned to Canterbury escorted by a host of poor people armed with rustic targets and rusty lances. On Christmas day he ascended the pulpit in the great cathedral church, and deli- vered an eloquent sermon on the words, Venin ad vos mori inter vos (I come to you to die among you). He told his congregation that one of their arch- bishops had been a martyr, and that they would probably soon see another; "but," he added, " before I depart hence, I will avenge some of the wrongs my church has suffered during the last seven years ;" and he forthwith excommunicated Ranulf and Robert de Broc, and Nigellus, the rector of Harrow.* This was Becket's last public act. As soon as his messengers had delivered his letters, the three bishops excommunicated by them hastened to Prince Henry, to complain of his in- satiate thirst of revenge, and to accuse him of a fixed plan of violating all the royal privileges and the customs of the land ; and almost immediately after they crossed over to the continent, to demand redress from the king. " We implore it," said they, " both for the sake of royalty and the clergy — for your own repose as well as ours. There is a man who sets England on fire ; he marches with troops of horse and armed foot, prowling round the fortresses, and trying to get himself received within them."t The exaggeration was not needed; Henry was seized with one of his most violent fits of fury. " How," cried he, " a fellow that hath eaten my bread, — a beggar that first came to my court on a lame horse, dares insult his king and the royal family, and tread upon the whole king- • Fitz-Steph.— Vita S, Thorn. — Gervase.—Rog. Hove.— Matt. Paris, t Script Rer. Franc. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 1066—1216. 455 dom, and not one of the cowards I nourish at my table — not one will deliver me from this turbulent priest."* There were four knights present, who had probably injuries of their own to avenge, and who took this outburst of temper as a sufficient death-warrant, and, without communicating their sudden determination to the king (or, at least, there is no evidence that they did), hurried over to England. Their names were Reginald Fitzurse, William Tracy, Hugh de Morville, and Richard Brito ; and they are described by a contemporary as being barons, and servants of the king's bed- chamber. Their intention was not suspected, nor was their absence noticed; and while they were riding with loose rein towards the coast, the king was closeted with his council of barons, who after some discussion, which seems to have occupied more than one day, appointed three commissioners to go and seize, according to the forms of law, the person of Thomas a Becket, on the charge of high treason. But the conspirators, who had bound themselves together by an oath, left the commis- sioners nothing to do. Three days after Christmas day they arrived secretly at Saltwood, in the neigh- bourhood of Canterbury, where the De Broc family had a house ; and here, under the cover of night, they arranged their plans — for precautions were necessary, in proceeding against the object of the people's veneration. On the 29th of Decem- ber, having collected a number of adherents to quell the resistance of Becket's attendants and the citizens, in case any should be offered, they pro- ceeded to the monastery of St. Augustine's, at Can- terbury, the abbot of which, like nearly all the supe- rior churchmen, was of the king's party. From St. Augustine's, they went to the archbishop's palace, and entering his apartment abruptly, about two hours after noon, seated themselves on the floor without saluting him, or offering any sign of re- spect. There was a dead pause — the knights not knowing how to begin, and neither of them liking to speak first. At length, Becket asked what they wanted ; but still they sat gazing at him with haggard eyes. There were twelve men of the party, besides the four knights. Reginald Fitzurse, feigning a commission from the king, at last spoke. " We come," said he, " that you may absolve the bishops you have excommunicated; re-establish the bishops whom you have suspended ; and answer for your own offences against the king.'' Becket replied with boldness and with great warmth, not sparing taunts and invectives. He said, that he had published the papal letters of excommunication with the king's consent; that he could not absolve the archbishop of York, whose heinous case was reserved for the pope alone, but that he would re- move the censures from the two other bishops, if they would swear to submit to the decisions of Rome." " But of whom, then," demanded Regi- nald, " do you hold your archbishopric — of the king or the pope ?" " I owe the spiritual rights to God and the pope, and the temporal rights to * Vita Quadripart. the king." " How, is it not the king that hath given you all?" Becket's decided negative was received with murmurs, and the knights furiously twisted their long gloves. Three out of the four cavaliers had followed Becket in the days of his prosperity and vain glory, and vowed themselves his liege men. He reminded them of this, and observed, it was not for such as they to threaten him in his own house; adding also, that if he were threatened by all the swords in England, he would not yield. " We will do more than threaten," replied the knights, and then departed. When they were gone, his attendants loudly ex- pressed their alarm, and blamed him for the rough and provoking tone by which he had inflamed, in- stead of pacifying his enemies ; but the prelate silenced the latter part of their discourse by telling them he had no need of their advice, and knew what he ought to do. The Barons, with their ac- complices, who seem to have wished, if they could, to avoid bloodshed, findingthatthreatswere ineffec- tual, put on their coats of mail, and taking each a sword in his hand, returned to the palace, but found the gate had been shut and barred by the terrified servants. Fitzurse tried to break it open, and the sounds of his ponderous axe rang through the building. The gate might have offered some considerable resistance, but Robert de Broc showed them the way in at a window. The people about Becket had in vain urged him to take refuge in the church; but at this moment the voices of the monks singing vespers in the choir striking his ear, he said he would go, as his duty now called him thither ; and, making his cross-bearer precede him with the crucifix elevated, he traversed the cloister with slow and measured steps, and entered the church. His servants would have closed and fastened the doors, but he forbade them, saying that the house of God was not to be barricaded like a castle. He had passed through the north tran- sept, and was ascending the steps which lead to the choir, when Reginald Fitzurse appeared at the other end of the church, waving his sword, and shouting, " Follow me, loyal servants of the king." The other conspirators followed him closely, armed like himself from head to foot, and brandishing their swords. The shades of evening had fallen, and in the obscurity of the vast church, which was only broken here and there by a lamp glimmering before a shrine, Becket might easily have hid him- self in the dark and intricate crypts under ground, or beneath the roof of the old church. Each of these courses was suggested by his attend- ants, but he rejected them both, and turned boldly to meet the intruders, followed or preceded by his cross-bearer, the faithful Edward Gryme, the only one who did not flee. A voice shouted, " W^here is the traitor ?" Becket answered not ; but when Reginald Fitzurse said, " Where is the arch- bishop?" he replied, " Here am I, an archbishop, but no traitor, ready to suffer in my Saviour's name." Tracy pulled him by the sleeve, saying, " Come hither, thou art a prisoner." He pulled 456 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IILI back his arm in so violent a manner, that he made Tracy stagger forward. They advised him to flee, or to go with them ; and, on a candid consideration, it seems to us that the conspirators are entitled to a doubt as to whether they really intended a murder, or were not rather hurried into it by his obstinacy and provoking language. Addressing Fitzurse, he Rjiid, " I have done thee many pleasures ; why comest thou with armed men into my church?" They told him that he must instantly absolve the bishops. " Never, until they have offered satis- faction," was his answer ; and he applied a foul vituperative term to Fitzurse. " Then die,'' ex- claimed the latter, striking at his head. The faithful Gryme interposed his arm to save his master ; the arm was broken, or nearly cut off, and the stroke descended on the primate's head, and slightly wounded him. Then another voice cried, " Fly, or thou diest ;" but still Becket moved not, but, with the blood running down his face, he clasped his hands, and bowing his head exclaimed, '" To God, to St. Mary, to the hoW patrons of this church, and to St. Denis, I com-" mend my soul and the church's cause." A second stroke brought him to the ground, close to the foot of St. Bennet's altar ; a third, given with such force that the sword was broken against the stone pavement, cleft his skull, and his brains were scat- tered all about : one of the conspirators put his foot on his neck, and cried, " Thus perishes a traitor !"* The conspirators then withdrew, without encoun- tering any hindrance or molestation; but when the fearful news spread through Canterbury and the neighbouring country, the excitement was pro- digious ; and the then inevitable inference was drawn that Becket was a martyr, and miracles would be wrought at his tomb. For some time, however, the superior orders rejected this faith, • Gervase.— Fitz-Stoph. — Gryme (wlio was present, and sufleieil on the occasion). — Newbrig. — Rog. Hove. MuBDKR OP Becket.— From an ancient Painting hung at the head of the Tomb of Henry IV. in Canterbury Cathedral. Engraved and described in Carter's Ancient Sculptures and Paintings. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 457 and made efforts to suppress the veneration of the common people. An edict was published, pro- hibiting all men from preaching in the churches or reporting in the public places that Becket was a martyr. His old foe, the Archbishop of York, ascended the pulpit to announce his death as an infliction of divine vengeance, saying that he had perished in his guilt and pride, like Pharaoh.* Other ecclesiastics preached that the body of the traitor ought not to be allowed to rest in conse- crated ground, but thrown into a ditch, or hung on a gibbet. An attempt was even made to seize the body, but the monks, who received timely warn- ing, concealed it, and hastily buried it in the sub- terranean vaults of the cathedral. But it was soon found that the public voice, echoed, for its own purposes, by the court of France, was too loud to be drowned in this manner. Louis, whom Henry had so often humbled, wrote to the pope, imploring him to draw the sword of St. Peter against that horrible persecutor of God, who surpassed Nero in cruelty, Julian in apostasy, and Judas in treachery. He chose to believe, and the French bishops Ije- • Epist. Joan. Sarisb. lieved with him, that Henry had ordered the mur- der. Attempts have been made in modern times to lower the character of a faulty man, but who was one of the greatest of our sovereigns, and to revive this belief, which is certainly unsupported by any good evidence of contemporary history. If Henry had been addicted to cruelty and assassination — which he certainly was not — his consummate pru- dence and foresight would have prevented his ordering such a deed ; for he must have felt what would be the inevitable effect of it, and have known that Becket, so disposed of, would be a greater thorn in his side, when dead, than he had ever been while living. On receiving the intelligence, he expressed the greatest grief and horror, shut himself up in his room, and refused to receive either food or consolation for three days ; and if he took care to have a touching detail of his distressed feelings transmitted to the pope, in which he de- clared his innocence in the strongest terms, and entreated that censure might be suspended till the facts of the case were examined, such a measure is not to be taken, in itself, as indicating the insincerity Penance op Henry II. before the Sbrine of Becket at Canterbury.— From an ancient Painting on Glass. Engraved and described In Carter's Ancient Sculptures and Paintings of England. 458 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III, of his grief and horror. Tenderness for Becket he could scarcely feel, yet as he was not formed of harsh materials, he may have been greatly shocked at the manner of death of one who had been his bosom friend, and he would grieve sincerely for the foul suspicions cast upon him, and the incal- culable mischief the event might do to himself and his family. The extremity of his penance at the tomb of Becket three years and a half later, has been attributed to his remorse — to his conscious- ness of being guilty of the murder ; but he might well feel remorse at the hasty words he uttered, and which were supposed to have led to the deed, although he had used expressions equally violent on former occasions, without their being taken at the letter, or producing any evil consequences. It should be remembered, too, that at the time of his pilgrimage to Becket's shrine, Henry had to over- come a mighty prejudice which had been care- fully nourished, and spread by his enemies, and that he was depressed and troubled in spirit by the rebellion of his own children. Like his bishops, who found it much easier to venerate a dead martyr than obey a living and rigid arch- bishop,* he may have entered into the view of Becket's sanctity, in spite of his familiarity with his frailties in the flesh ; and the suddenness of Becket's conversion was in accordance with the spirit of the times, and not to be set down unhesi- tatingly as a piece of hypocrisy. We have rea- soned here as if admitting Henry's sincerity, which is doubted altogether by many writers. When Henry's envoys first appeared at Rome — for the pope was no longer a dependent exile — they were coldly received, and everything seemed to threaten that an interdict would be laid upon the kingdom, and the king excommunicated by name. In the end, however, Alexander rested satisfied with an excommunication in general terms of the murderers and the abettors of the crime. It is said that Henry's gold was not idle on this occasion; but the employment of it is rather a proof of the notorious rapacity of the cardinals, than of his having a bad cause to plead. In the month of May, 1172, in a council held at Avranches, at which two legates of the pope attended, Henry swore, on the holy gospels and sacred relics — a great concourse of the clergy and people being present — that he had neither ordered nor desired the murder of the archbishop. This oath was not demanded from him, but taken of his own free will. As, however, he could not deny that the assassins might have been moved to the deed by his wrathful words, he consented to maintain two hundred knights during a year, for the defence of the Holy Land ; and to serve himself, if the pope should require it, for three years against * We learn, from the letters of Peter of Blois, how Becket was considered by churchmen previously to his tragical death. He says in one of his letters, written after Becket's canonization, " We fools counted his life folly^ &c. ; and whatever he did was then misinter- preted and turned to matter of hatred and envy. If, therefore, the bishop elect did at one time, as was the case with us all, hold the blessed martyr in derision, it ought not to be charged against him," &c., &c. the infidels, either the Saracens in Palastine or the Moors in Spain, as the church should appoint. At the same time, he engaged to restore all the lands and possessions belonging to the friends of the late archbishop ; to permit appeals to be made to the pope in good faith, and without fraud, re- serving to himself, however, the right of obliging such appellants as he suspected of evil intentions to give security that they would attempt nothing abroad to the detriment of him or his kingdom. To these conditions he made an addition too vague to have any practical effect — that he would relinquish such customs against the church as had been introduced in his time. The legates then fully absolved the king ; and thus terminated this quarrel, less to Henry's disadvantage than might have been expected.* In the short interval he had added a kingdom to his dominions. The year that followed tlie death of Becket was made memorable by the con- quest of Ireland. In the preceding Book, the sketch of Irish his- tory was brought down to the reign of Turlogh, the commencement of which is assigned to the year 1064. Turlogh, however, like his uncle Donchad, whom he had succeeded, and Donchad's father, the great Brien, is scarcely acknowledged by the old annalists as having been a legitimate king, not being of the blood of the O'Niells of Ulster, in which line the supreme sceptre had been trans- mitted, with scarcely any interruption till its seizure by Brien, from the time of O'Niell, or Nial, of the Nine Hostages, who flourished in the beginning of the fifth century. The long acquies- cence of the other provincial regal houses in the superiority thus assumed by that of Ulster was broken by the usurpation of the Munster O'Briens, and we shall find that ere long both the O'Con- nors of Connaught and the MacMurroghs of Lein- ster make their appearance on the scene as com- petitors for the prize of the chief dominion along with the other two families. The whole history of the country from this date is merely the history of these contests for the crown, the course of which will be made sufiiciently intelligible by a few sen- tences of explanation taken along with the tabular view of the succession at the head of the present Chapter. Turlogh, who kept his court in the palace of his ancestors, the kings of Munster, at Kinkora, in Clare, died there in Jvily, 1086. His second son, Murtach, or Murkertach, soon after acquired the sole possession of the throne of Munster by the death of one of his two brothers and the banish- ment of the other ; but his attempt to retain the supreme monarchy in his family was resisted by the other provincial kings, who united in support- ing, against his claims, those of Domnal Mac- Lochlin, or Donald MacLachlan, the head of the ancient royal house of O'Niell. At last, after much fighting, it was arranged, at a solemn con- vention held in 1094, that the island should be • Bog. Hove. — Epist. S. Thomae.— Epist. Joan. Sarisb.— Gervase. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 459 divided between the two competitors, the southern lialf, called Leath Mogh, or Mogh's Half, remain- ing subject to Murtach, and the northern, called Leath Cuinn, or Conn's Half, being resigned to the dominion of MacLochlin. This was a well- known ancient division, which in former times, even when the nominal sovereignty of the whole country was conceded to the kings of Ulster, had often left those of Munster in possession not only of actual independence but of a share of the supre- macy over both Connaught and Leinster ; for the line of partition was drawn right across the island from the neighbourhood of the town of Galway to Dublin, and consequently cut through each of these provinces. With this real equality in extent of dominion and authority between the two houses, one circumstance chiefly had for a long period held in check the rising fortunes of that of Munster, the law or custom, namely, of the succession to the crown in that province, which was divided into two principalities, Desmond or South Munster, and Thomond or North Munster, the reigning families of which, by an arrangement somewhat similar to that which has been already described as anciently subsisting in the Scottish monarchy,* enjoyed the supreme sovereignty alternately. The two lines of princes derived this right of equal participation from the will of their common ancestor Olill OUum ; those of Desmond, which comprehended the pre- sent counties of Kerry, Cork, and Waterford, being descended from that king's eldest son Eogan, whence the people of that principality were called Eogan- acths, or Eugenians ; while the princes of Thomond, which consisted of Clare, Limerick, and the greater part of Tipperary, were sprung from his second son Cormac Cas, whence their subjects took the name of Dalgais, or Dalcassians. ButBrien Boru, him- self of the Dalcassian family, had begun his course of inroad upon the ancient institutions of his country by setting at defiance the rights of his Eugenian kindred, and had possessed himself, by usurpation, of the provincial throne of Munster before he seized, by a like violation of the law, upon the supreme power. The Munster kings had ever since continued to be of his race. The compact between MacLochlin and Mur- tach did not put an end to their contention. Se- veral more battles were fought between them, till at length, in 1103, Murtach sustained a defeat at Cobha, in Tyrone, which so greatly weakened his power as to prevent him from ever after giving his adversary any serious annoyance. They continued to reign, however,MacLochlinat AileachorAlichia, in Donegal, Murtach at Cashel, till the death of the latter, in 1119, after he had spent the last three or four years of his life in a monastery, the manage- ment of aff"airs having been meanwhile left in the hands of his brother Dermot. From the date of the death of Murtach, MacLochlin is regarded as having been sole monarch; but he also died in 1121. Fifteen years of confusion followed, during which • See pp. 219, 220. a contest between various competitors for the supreme authority spread war and devastation over every part of the country. At last, in 1136, Tur- logh, or Tordelvac, O'Connor, King of Connaught, was acknowledged monarch of all Ireland ; the ancient sceptre of the O'Niells thus passing a second time into a new house. O'Connor, how- ever, had to maintain himself on the throne he had thus acquired by a great deal of hard fighting with his neighbours and rivals. Connor O'Brien, the king of Munster, who had vigorously opposed his elevation, and his successor Turlogh O'Brien, did not cease to dispute his power, till the overthrow of the latter at the great battle of Moinmor, fought in 1151, placed Munster for the moment completely under the tread of the victor. O'Brien was driven from his kingdom, and the territory was again divided into two principalities, over which O'Connor set two princes of the Eugenian House that had some time before joined him in his contest with the Dalcassians. A few years after, however, the expelled king was restored by the interference of Murtogh O'Lochlin, or Murtach Mac Lachlan, O'Niell, the king of Ulster, and the legitimate heir of the ancient mo- narchs of Ireland, who now also took arms to re- cover for himself the throne of his ancestors. With this new rival, O'Connor, for whom his martial reign has procured from the annalists the title of The Great, continued at war during the remainder of his life; and at his death, in 1156, O'Lochlin was acknowledged supreme king. Some opposition was made to his accession by Roderick O'Connor, the son of the late king, and his suc- cessor in the provincial throne of Connaught ; but he also, at last, as well as the princes of Munster and Leinster, acquiesced in the restoration of the old sovereign house, and submitted to O'Niell. The rule of Murtogh O'Lochlin was distin- guished by vigour and ability ; but its close was unfortunate. He was killed, along with many of his nobility, in 1166, in a battle with some insur- gent chiefs of his own province of Ulster, to whom he had given abundant cause for taking up arms against him, if it be true that, after having been professedly reconciled to one of them with whom he had had a quarrel, and sealing the compact by the acceptance of hostages, he had suddenly seized the unfortunate chief, together with three of his friends, and caused his eyes to be put out, and them to be put to death. On his decease the sovereignty of Ireland devolved upon his rival, Roderick O'Connor, of Coimaught, the son of its former possessor, O'Connor the Great. Up to this time, almost the only connexion be- tween England and Ireland was that of the com- merce carried on between some of the opposite ports ; scarcely any political intercourse had ever taken place between the two countries. Her church, indeed, attached Ireland to the rest of Christendom; and some correspondence is still preserved, that passed between her kings and pre- lates and the English archbishops Lanfranc and Anselm, relating chiefly to certain points in which 460 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. the latter conceived the ecclesiastical discipline of the neighbouring island to stand in need of refor- mation. One of Lanfranc's letters is addressed to O'Connor the Great, under the designation of " Tirdelvac, the Magnificent King of Hibernia." The bishops also of the Danish towns in Ireland appear to have been usually consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But almost the single well-autlienticated instance of any interference by the one nation in the civil aifairs of the other since the Norman Conquest, was in the rebelhon of Robert de Belesme, in the beginning of the reign of Henry I., when that nobleman's brother, Ar- nulph de Montgomery, is said by some of the Welsh chroniclers to have passed over tj Ireland, and to have there obtained from King Murtach O'Brien, both supplies for the war and tlie hand of his daughter for himself. It is said, indeed, that both the Conqueror and Henry I. had meditated the subjugation of Ireland; and Malmsbury affirms that the latter Englith king had Murtach and his successors so entirely at his devotion, that they wrote nothing but adulation of him, nor did any thing but what he ordered. But no facts are spe- cified in support of these vague assertions. It is, at all events, certain that no actual attempt had yet been made by any of the Anglo-Norman kings to extend their dominion over Ireland. It would appear, however, that such a project had been entertained by Henry II., from the very commencement of his reign. The same year in which he came to the throne, witnessed the ele- vation to the popedom of the only Englishman that ever wore the triple crown — Nicholas Breakspear, who assumed the name of Adrian IV. Very soon after his coronation, Henry sent an embassy to Rome, at the liead of which was the learned John of Salisburv, ostensibly to congratulate Adrian on his accession, but really to solicit the new pope for his sanction to the scheme of tlie conquest of Ire- land. Adrian granted a bull, in the terms or to the effect desired — declaring that inasmuch as all islands which had received the light of the gospel of Christ undoubtedly appertained of right to St. Peter and the holy Roman church, he gave full per- mission to the English king to make a descent upon Ireland, and charged the people of that land to re- ceive him and submit to him as their sovereign lord. Before the end of the same year, the matter was submitted by Henry to a great council of his barons ; but the undertaking was opposed by many of those present, and especially by his mother, the empress ; and in consequence it was for the pre- sent given up. The pope's bull appears to have been laid aside without having been prorhulgated. Henry's attention was not recalled to the subject till many years after. The course of the story now carries us back again to Ireland, and to another of the provincial kings of that country of whom we have yet said nothing, Dermond MacMurrogh, or Dermot Mac Murchad, king of Lagenia, or Lein- ster. This prince had early signalized himself by his sanguinary ferocity, even on a scene where all the actors were men of blood and violence. So far back as the year 1140, he had, in order to break the power of his nobility, seventeen of the chief of them seized at once, all of whom that he did not put to death he deprived of their eyes. His most noted exploit, however, was of a different character. Dervorgilla, a lady of great beauty, was the wife of Tiernan O'Ruarc, the lord of Breffny, a district in Leinster, and the old enemy of MacMurrogh. The sworn ibe of her husband, however, was the object of Dervorgilla's guilty passion; and, at her own suggestion, it is said, when her husband was absent on a military expe- dition, the King of Leinster came and carried her off from an island in Meatli, where she had been left. This happened in the year 1153, when the supreme sovereignty was in the possession of Turlogh O'Connor. To him O'Ruarc applied for the means of avenging his wrong, and received from him such effective assistance as to be enabled to recover both his wife and the property she had carried off with her. But from this time, as may well be supposed, Mac Murrogh and O'Ruarc, that had little love for each other before, were worse friends than ever. They kept up a spiteful con- test, with alternating fortunes, for many years. So long as Turlogh lived O'Ruarc had a steady ally in the common sovereign, and the king of Leinster was effectually kept in check by their united power. The succeeding reign of O'Loglilin, on the other hand, was, for the whole of the ten years that it lasted, a period of triumphant revenge to MacMurrogh. But the recovery of the supre- macy, on O'Loghlin's death, by the House of O'Connor, at last put an end to the long and bitter strife. A general combination was now formed against the King of Leinster ; King Roderick, the lord of Breffny, and his father-in-law, the Prince of Meath, united their forces for the avowed pur- pose of driving him from his kingdom ; they were joined by many of his own subjects, both Irish and Danish, to whom his tyranny had rendered him odious ; and O'Ruarc put himself at the head of the whole. MacMurrogh made some effort to defend himself, but fortune was now against him ; he could not long keep his grovnid against his old enemy thus formidably supported ; his few remain- ing adherents gradually fell away from him ; and at last, finding himself deserted by all, he sought safety in flight, and left his kingdom for the pre- sent to the disposal of his conquerors. They set another prince of his own famdy on the vacant throne. Meanwhile the deposed and fugitive king had embarked for England. This is the account of the Irish chroniclers, who have in general taken part very strongly against MacMurrogh, and painted his character in the darkest colours. The story of tlie conquest of Ireland, however, has been most fully told by an English writer, Gerald Barry, commonly called Giraldus Cambrensis (that is, Gerald the Welsh- man), who was not only nearly related to some of the chief actors in it, but was in Ireland during a Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 461 considerable part of the time that the events he relates were passing in that country. His narrative, though he may have fallen into some mistakes, is likely to be as unprejudiced as that of any native annalist, at least in the view it gives us of some of the most remarkable of the personages that figure on the scene. Against MacMurrogh, in particular, his countrymen may be supposed to have had some prejudices from which the Welshman would be free. Of the affair of O'Ruarc's wife, Giraldus gives substantially the common version, only that he is very emphatic in pointing out that the lady was herself the principal mover in the business ; she yielded herself to be carried off, he says, because she wovild be carried off; " for, by her own procurement and enticings, she became and would needs be a prey unto the preyer;" " such," he ungallantly adds, " is the variable and fickle nature of a woman, by whom all mischiefs in the world (for the most part) do happen and come."* He acknowledges, too, that MacMurrogh, " from his very youth and first entry into his kingdom, was a great oppressor of his gentlemen, and a cruel tyrant over his nobles, which bred unto him great hatred and malice." But the full-length picture that he draws of him in another place, though rather sombre upon the whole, is not entirely un- relieved : — " Dermond MacMurrogh was a tall man of stature, and of a large and great body, — a valiant and bold warrior in his nation; and by reason of his continual hallooing and crying, his voice was hoarse ; he rather chose and desired to be feared than to be loved ; a great oppressor of his nobility, but a great advancer of the poor and weak. To his own people he was rough and grievous, and hateful unto strangers ; he would be against all men, and all men against him." Mac- Murrogh, we may add, had been a great founder of churches and religious houses, however indifferently it may be thought some other parts of his conduct woidd sort with such show of piety. His purpose in setting sail for England was to seek the aid of King Henry, to enable him to recover his kingdom, in return for which he was ready to acknowledge himself the vassal of the English monarch. On landing at Bristol, some time in the summer of 1167, he found that Henry was on the continent, and thither he immediately proceeded. Henry, when he came to him in Aquitaine, was " busied," says Giraldus, " in great and weighty affairs, yet most courteously he received him and liberally rewarded him. And the king, having at large and orderly heard the causes of his exile, and of his repair vmto him, he took his oath of allegiance and swore him to be his true vassal and subject, and thereupon granted and gave him his letters patent in manner and form as foUoweth : ' Henry, king of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Earl of Anjou, vmto all his sub- jects. Englishmen, Normans, Scots, and all other nations and people being his subjects, sendeth greeting. Whensoever these our letters shall come * Translation by Hooker, 1587- unto you, know ye that we have received Dermond, Prince of Leinster, into ovir protection, grace, and favour ; wherefore, whosoever within our jurisdic- tion will aid and help him, our trusty subject, for the recovery of his land, let him be assured of our favour and license in that behalf. ' " It woidd scarcely appear, from the tenor of these merely permissive letters, that Henry, in granting them, looked forward to the application of MacMur- rogh leading to any result so important as the conquest of Ireland ; the other " great and weighty affairs" in which he had been engaged, had long withdrawn his thoughts from that project ; and embarrassed both by his war with the French king, and his more serious contest with Becket at home, he was at present as little as ever in a condition to resume the serious consideration of it. MacMurrogh, how- ever, returned to England well satisfied Avith what he had got. " And by his daily journeying," proceeds Giraldus, " he came at length unto the noble town of Bristow (Bristol), where, because ships and boats did daily repair, and come from out of Ireland, he, very desirous to hear of the state of his people and country, did, for a time, sojourn and make his abode ; and whilst he was there, he would oftentimes cause the king's letters to be openly read, and did then offer great entertainment and promised liberal wages to all such as would help or serve him ; but it served not." At length, however, he chanced to meet Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, sur- named Strongbow (sometimes also called Earl of Chepstow, or of Strighul, from a castle belonging to his family in the neighbourhood of that town), with whom he soon came to an agreement. Strongbow, on the promise of the hand of Der- mond's eldest daughter, Eva, and the succession to the throne of Leinster, engaged to come over to Ireland with a suiUcient military force to effect the deposed king's restoration in the following spring. A short time after this, Dermond having gone to the town of St. David's, to re-embark for his native country, there made another engagement with two young noblemen, Maurice Fitzgerald and Robert Fitzstephen, both sons of the Lady Nesta, a daughter of one of the Welsh princes, who, after having been mistress to Henry I., married Gerald, governor of Pembroke Castle, and Lord of Carew, and finally became mistress to Stephen de Marisco, or Maurice, constable of the castle of Cardigan : Fitzgerald was her son by her marriage, and Fitz- stephen by her last-mentioned connexion. To these two half-brothers, in consideration of their coming over to him with a certain force at the same time with Strongbow, Dermond engaged to grant the town of Wexford, witli two cantreds (or hundreds) of land adjoining, in fee for ever. These arrange- ments being completed, " Dermond," continues the historian, " being weary of his exiled life and distressed estate, and therefore the more desirous to draw homewards for the recovery of his own, and for which he had so long travelled and sought abroad, he first went to the church of St. David's to make his orisons and prayers, and then, the 462 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book III. weather being fair and wind good, he adventured the seas about the middle of August, and having a merry passage, he shortly landed in his ungrate- ful country ; and, with a very impatient mind, hazarded himself among and through the middle of his enemies ; and coming safely to Ferns, he was very honovu-ably received of the clergy there, who after their ability did refresh and succour him. But he for a time dissembling his princely estate, continued as a private man all that winter following among them." It would appear, however, that he was rash enough to come out of his concealment and show himself in arms in the beginning of the year 1169, before any of his promised English succours had arrived ; and the result of this pre- mature attempt was, that he was again easily reduced by King Roderick and O'Ruarc, who, however, now consented to allow him to retain ten cantreds of his former territory on condition of his holding the land as the immediate vassal of Ro- derick. He accepted these terms, of course, with no intention of observing them. His allies in England meanwhile did not forget him. Robert Fitz-Stephen was the first to set out about the beginning of May, accompanied with thirty gentlemen of his own kindred, sixty men in coats-of-mail, and three hundred picked archers; they shipped themselves in three small vessels, and sailing right across from St. David's Head, landed at a creek now called the Bann, about twelve miles to the south of the city of Wexford. Along with them also came the paternal uncle of Strongbow, Hervey de Montemarisco, or Mountmaurice, " a man," according to Giraldus, " unfortunate, un- armed, and without all furniture," and intended to act rather as a commissioned agent for his nephew than as a soldier. On the day following, two more vessels arrived at the same place, bearing Maurice of Prendergast, " a lusty and a hardy man, born about Milford, in West Wales," with ten more gentlemen and sixty archers. It seems to have been immediately spread abroad that the armed foreigners were come to aid MacMurrogh. He himself was not long in hearing of their arrival, on which he instantly sent 500 men to join them under his illegitimate son Donald, and " very shortly after he himself also followed with great joy and gladness." It was now determined, without further delay, to march upon the town of Wexford. " When they of the town," proceeds the narrative, " heard there- of, they being a fierce and unruly people, but yet much trusting to their wonted fortune, came forth about 2000 of them, and were determined to wage and give battle." On beholding the imposing armour and array of the English, however, they drew back, and, setting the suburbs on fire, took refuge within the walls of the town. For that day all the efforts of the assailants to effect an entrance were vain ; as they crowded into the ditches and endeavoured to mount the walls, great pieces of timber and stones were thrown down upon them, and many of them having been wounded, they at length retired to the sea-shore, and satisfied them- selves in the meantime with setting fire to such ships and boats as they found lying there. Among them, Giraldus mentions, was " one merchant-ship lately come out of England laden with wines and corn." The next morning, after the solemn cele- bration of masses through the whole camp, they made ready to renew the assault upon the town ; but the besieged, seeing this, lost heart, and saved them further trouble by offering to surrender. Four of the chief inhabitants were given up to MacMurrogh as pledges for the fidelity of their fellow-citizens ; and he, on his part, immediately performed his promise to his English friends by making over to Fitz-Stephen and Fitz-Gerald the town that had thus fallen into his hands, with the territories thereunto adjoining and appertaining. To Hervey of Mountmaurice he also gave two cant- reds, lying along the sea-side between Wexford and Waterford, This first successful exploit was followed up by an incursion into the district of Ossory, the prince of which had well earned the enmity of MacMur- rogh by having some years before, on some suspicions he had formed against the young man, seized his eldest son, and put out his eyes. The Ossorians at first boldly stood their ground, and as long as they kept to their bogs and woods, the invading force, though now increased by an accession from the town of Wexford to about 3000 men, made little impression upon them ; but at last, in a moment of precipita- tion, they were imprudent enough to allow them- selves to be drawn into the open country, when Robert Fitzstephen immediately fell upon them with a body of horse, and threw down the ill-armed and unprotected multitude, or scattered them in all directions : those that were thrown to the ground the foot-soldiers straight dispatched, cutting off their heads with their battle-axes. Three hundred bleeding heads were brought and laid at the feet of MacMurrogh, " who, turning every of them, one by one, to know them, did then for joy hold up both his hands, and with a loud voice thanked God most highly. Among these there was the head of one whom especially and above all the rest he mortally hated ; and he, taking up that by the hair and ears, with his teeth most horribly and cruelly bit away his nose and lips !" So nearly in some respects did an Irish king of the twelfth century resemble a modern savage chief of New Zealand. After this disaster, the people of Ossory made no further resistance ; they suffered their invaders to march across the whole breadth of their country, murdering, spoiling, burning, and laying waste wherever they passed; and at last their prince sued for peace, and was glad to be allowed to swear fealty to the king of Leinster, and to acknowledge him for his lawful and true lord. All this had taken place before anything was heard of a movement on the part of MacMurrogh's old enemies. King Roderick and O'Ruarc, whom surprise and alarm seem to have deprived at first of the power of action. But news was now brought Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 463 that the monarch was at last levyhig an army, and also that the princes and nobility of the land were, at his call, about to meet in a great council at the ancient royal seat of Tara, in Meath. On receiving this intelligence, MacMurrogh and his English friends, withdrawing from Ossory, took up a po- sition of great natural strength in the midst of the hills and bogs in the neighbourhood of Ferns, and after having made it still more secure by the addi- tion of such artificial defences as the time and cir- cumstances permitted, there awaited what might happen. Their small force was speedily surrounded by the numerous army of King Roderick, and it would seem that, if they could not have been at- tacked in their inaccessible stronghold, they might have been starved into a surrender, at no great expense of patience on the part of those who had them thus imprisoned. But notwithstanding the inferiority of their numbers, Roderick appears to have been a good deal more afraid of them than they were of liim : it is said that disunion had broken out in the council, which, after assembling at Tara, had adjourned to Dublin; and the Irish king had probably reason to fear that, if he could not in some way or other bring the affair to a speedy termination, he would soon be left in no condition to keep the field at all In this feeling he first attempted, by presents and promises, to seduce Fitzstephen ; failing in that, he next tried to persuade MacMurrogh to come over and make common cause with his countrymen against the foreigners; at last, when there was reason to apprehend that the enemy, encouraged by these manifestations of timidity or conscious weakness, were about to come out and attack him, he actually sent messengers to sue for peace ; on wliich, after some negotiation, it was agreed that Mac Murrogh should be reinstated in his kingdom, which should be secured to him and his heirs, on condition only of his consenting, like the other pro- vincial kings, to acknowledge the general sove- reignty of Roderick, and giving his son as a hos- tage for the performance of his engagements. Roderick also promised to give him his daughter in marriage. It does not appear what terms MacMurrogh professed to make in his treaty for his English allies. It is affirmed, indeed, that it was agreed between him and Roderick by a secret article, that he should send them all home as soon as he had restored his kingdom to order, and in the mean time should procure no more of them to come over. But whatever was the intention with which the King of Leinster made these new engagements, he was too far involved in the consequences of those of another kind he had previously made, to have it in his power to abide by them, even if such had been his wish. His English confederates, whose valour and exertions had replaced him on his I throne, would not, we may be sure, after such a service, and such assurance of their importance, be so easily shaken off as both his countrymen and he himself may have desired. This was soon proved by the arrival at Wexford of two more ships, bringing over Maurice Fitzgerald, with an addi- tional force of ten gentlemen, thirty horsemen, and about a hundred archers and foot soldiers. On receiving this accession of strength, Mac Murrogh immediately cast his recent engagements and oaths to the winds. His first movement was to march with his new auxiliaries against the city of Dublin, which had not fully returned to its submission : he soon compelled the citizens to sue for peace, to swear fealty to him, and to give hostages. He then sent a party of his English friends to assist his son-in-law, the Prince of Limerick, whose ter- ritory had been attacked by King Roderick ; and the royal forces were in consequence speedily de- feated, and forced to return home. From this time MacMurrogh and the English adventurers, encouraged by the uniform and extra- ordinary success that had hitherto attended them, seem to have raised their hopes to nothing short of the conquest of the whole country. The supreme sovereignty had already been enjoyed successively by the kings of Ulster, of Munster, and of Con- naught ; and the King of Leinster might naturally enough think that the turn of his own house was now come. To whatever extent his foreign associates may have sympathized with him in this ambition, they professed, when he opened his mind to them, to enter into his views. By their advice, he dispatched messengers to England to urge the Earl of Pembroke to come over with his force immediately. His letter, if we must suppose it to have run in the words given by Giraldus, was a somewhat highflown composition. " We have already," he wrote, " seen the storks and swallows, as also the summer birds are cx)me, and with the westerly winds are gone again ; we have long looked and wished for your coming, and albeit the winds have been at east and easterly, yet hitherto you are not come unto us ; wherefore now linger no longer,"&c. All Leinster, it was added, was already completely reduced, and there could be no doubt that the earl's presence, with the force he had engaged to bring with him, would soon add the other provinces to that. Strongbow still deemed it prudent, before he took any decided step, to inform King Henry of the proposal that had been made to him, and to ask his leave to engage in the enterprise. Henry, with his usual caution and deep policy, would only answer his request evasively; but the earl ven- tured to understand him in a favourable sense, and returned home with his mind made up to make the venture. As soon as the winter was over, accord- ingly, he sent to Ireland, as the first portion of his force, ten gentlemen and seventy archers, under the command of his relation, Raymond Fitzwilliam, surnamed, from his corpulency, Le Gros, or the Gross, an epithet which afterwards, in the dis- guised form of Grace, became the distinguished family name of his numerous descendants. Ray- mond Le Gros was the nephew of Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen, being the son of William, lord of 7^ or THE UNIVERSITY 464 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Carew, Ihe elder brother of the former. He and his company landed at a rock about four miles east from the city of Waterford, then called Dundonolf, afterwards tlie site of the castle of Dundorogh, in the beginning of May, 1170. They had scarcely time to cast a trench and to build themselves a temporary fort of turf and twigs, when they were attacked by a body of 3000 of the citizens of Waterford ; but this mob, although, at first, they made their assault with such fierceness as to com- pel the handful of foreigners to retire to their fort, took to flight as soon as Raymond and his men, having gained their entrenchments, turned round upon them, and were then pursued and scattered with frightful slaughter. Five hundred of them were cut down in the pursuit; and then, as Gi- raldus asserts, the victors being weary with killing, cast a great number of those whom they had taken prisoners headlong from the rocks into the seas and so drowned them. A still more disgraceful atrocity — because done with more deliberation, and in colder blood, as well as with additional circum- stances of cruelty — followed this. In the general destruction of their prisoners they had saved seventy of the principal citizens of Waterford, for the sake of what they might receive for their ran- som ; and Raymond himself, on considerations of humanity, as well as of policy, strenuously advised that they should be given up ; but Harvey of Mountmaurice, who with three of his comrades had joined them, opposing this counsel, his arguments were at last vmanimously acquiesced in ; " where- upon," says the historian, " the captives, as men condemned, were brought to the rocks, and after their limbs were broken, they were cast headlong into the seas, and so drowned." The Earl of Pembroke did not set sail till the beginning of September. He then embarked at Milford Haven with a force of two hundred gentle- men and a thousand inferior fighting men, and on the vigil of St. Bartholomew landed in the neigh- bourhood of the city of Waterford, which still re- mained unreduced. On the following day, Ray- mond le Gros came with great joy to welcome him, attended by forty of his company. " And on the morrow, upon St. Bartholomew's day, being Tues- day, they displayed their banners, and in good array they marched to the walls of the city, being fully bent and determined to give the assault." The citizens, however, defended themselves with great spirit ; their resolution to die rather than surrender, wa?, no doubt, strengthened and made sterner by the experience they had already had of the merciless character of their enemy, and the memory of the fate of their friends and relations a few months before so barbarously butchered ; and the assailants were twice driven back from the walls. But Raymond, who, by the consent of all, had been appointed to the command, now " having espied," continues the narrative, " a little house of timber standing half upon posts without the walls, called his men together, and encouraged them to give a new assault at that place; and having hewed down the posts whereupon the house stood, the same fell down, together with a piece of the town wall ; and then, a way behig thus opened, they entered into the city, and killed the people in the streets without pity or mercy, leaving them lying in great heaps ; and thus, with bloody hands, they obtained a bloody victory." MacMurrogh arrived along with Fitzgerald and Fitzstephen while the work of plunder and carnage was still proceeding ; and it was in the midst of the deso- lation, misnamed the restoration of quiet and order, which followed the sacking of the miserable city, that, in fulfilment of his compact with Strongbow, the marriage ceremony was solemnized between his da\ighter Eva, whom he had brought with him, and that nobleman. Immediately after this they again spread their banners, and set out on their march for Dublin. The inhabitants of that city, who were mostly of Danish race, had taken the precaution of stationing troops at different points along the common road from Waterford, so as to make it impassable to a hostile force; but MacMurrogh led his followers by another way among the mountains, and to the consternation of the citizens made his appearance before the walls ere they were aware that he had left Waterford. A negotiation was attempted, but, while it was still going on, Raymond and his friend Miles, or Milo, de Cogan, " more desirous," as Giraldus after his fashion expresses it, " to fight under Mars in the field than to sit in council under Jupiter, and more willing to purchase honour in the wars than gain it in peace, with a company of lusty young gentlemen suddenly ran to the walls, and giving the assavilt, brake in, entered the city, and obtained the victory, making no small slaughter of their enemies." These Norman knights seem to have held themselves entitled in the contest they were now waging to lay aside not only all the courtesies of civilized warfare, but even all honour and fair play ; they treated the people whom they had come to rob of their country as at once a race to whom no mercy was to be shown, and with whom no faith was to be kept. Leaving Dublin in charge of Milo de Cogan, Strongbow next pro- ceeded, on the instigation of MacMurrogh, to invade the district of Meath, anciently considered the fifth province of Ireland, and set apart as the peculiar territory of the supreme sovereign, but which King Roderick had lately made over to his friend O'Ruarc. The English chief, although he seems to have met with no resistance from the in- habitants, now laid it waste from one end to the other with fire and sword. While all this was going on, the only effort in behalf of his crown or his country that Roderick is recorded to have made, was the sending a rhetorical message to Mac Murrogh, commanding him to return to his alle- giance and dismiss his foreign allies, if he did not wish that the life of his son, Avhom he had left in pledge, should be sacrificed. To this threat Mac Murrogh at once replied that he never would desist from his enterprise until he had not only subdued Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066— 1216. 465 all Connaught, but won to himself the monarchy of all Ireland. Infuriated by this defiance, the other savage instantly gave orders to cut off Mac Murrogh's son's head. About this time, according to Giraldus, a synod of the clergy was held at Armagh, at which it was unanimously agreed that the English invasion was a just punishment by Heaven for the sins of the people, and especially for the practice, of which they had long been guilty, of buying English cap- tives from pirates and merchants, and making slaves of them. It was therefore ordered that all the English slaves throughout the land should be immediately set at liberty. It does not appear what authority the syn,od had to issue such a decree as this, or what obedience was paid to it ; laudable as a general liberation of the English slaves may have been, the measure was certainly not very well timed, and regarded as the only expedient tlie reverend assembly could think of for saving the country, it must be considered a somewhat curious one. There was something suspicious or not easily intelligible in the part taken by the clergy through- out the whole of these transactions. But now the adventurers were struck on a sudden with no little perplexity by the arrival of a proclamation from King Henry strictly prohibiting the passing of any more ships from any port in England to Ireland, and commanding that all his subjects now in the latter country should return from thence before Easter, on pain of forfeiting all their lands and being for ever banished from the realm. A consultation being held as to what ought to be done in this emergency, it was resolved that Raymond le Gros should be immediately dis- patched to the king, who was in Aquitaine, with letters from Strongbow reminding Henry that he had taken up the cause of Dermond MacMurrogh (as he conceived) with the royal permission ; and acknowledging for himself, and his companions, that whatever they had acquired in Ireland, either by gift or otlierwise, they considered not their own but as held for him their liege lord, and as being at his absolute disposal. While they thus sought, however, to protect themselves against its more re- mote consequences, the immediate effect of the pro- clamation was to deal a heavy blow at their cause, both by the discouragement and alarm it spread among their adherents, and especially by cutting off the supplies both of men and victuals they had counted upon receiving from England. Things were in this state when a new enemy suddenly appeared — a body of Danes and Norwe- gians brought to attack the city of Dublin by its former Danish ruler, who had made his escape when it was lately taken, and had been actively employed ever since in preparing and fitting out this armament. They came in sixty ships, and as soon as they had landed proceeded to the assault. "They were all mighty men of war," says the description of them in Giraldus, " and well ap- pointed after the Danish manner, being harnessed with good brigandines, jacks, and shirts of mail; VOL. I. their shields, bucklers, and targets v/ere round, and coloured red, and bound about with iron ; and as they were in armour, so in minds also they were as iron strong and mighty, " The attack was made upon the east gate of the city, and Milo de Cogan soon found that the small force under his command could make no effective resistance. But the good fortune that had all along waited upon him and his associates was still true to them. His brother, seeing how he was pressed, led out a few men by the south gate, and, attacking the assailants from behind, spread such confusion and dismay through their ranks, that after a short convulsive effort to recover themselves, they gave way to their panic and took to flight. Great numbers of them were slain, and their leader himself, being taken pri- soner, so exasperated the English commander when he was brought into his presence by the bold ex- pressions in which he gave vent to his feelings, "in the open sight and audience of all the people," that Milo de Cogan ordered his head to be struck off on the spot. It would appear to have been not long after this that Dermond MacMurrogh died, on which it is said that Strongbow took the title and assumed the authority of King of Leinster in right of his wife. Raymond le Gros had now also returned from Aquitaine ; he had delivered the letter with which he was charged, but Henry had sent no answer, and had not even admitted him to his presence. Meanwhile, on the side of the Irish, there was one individual, Laurence, Archbishop of Dublin, who saw that the moment was favourable for yet ano- ther effort to save the country. Chiefly by his patriotic exertions a great confederacy was formed of all the native princes, together with those of Man and the other surrounding islands, and a force was assembled around Dublin, with King Roderick as its commander-in-chief, of the amount, it is affirmed, of thirty thousand men. Strongbow, and Raymond, and Maurice Fitzgerald had all thrown themselves into the city, but their united forces did not make twice as many hundreds as the enemy numbered thousands. For the space of two months, however, the investing force appears to have sat still in patient expectation. Their hope, no doubt, was that want of victuals would in course of time compel the garrison to surrender. And at length a message came from Strongbow, and a negotiation was opened ; but, before any arrangement was concluded, an extraordinary turn of fortune suddenly changed the whole position of affairs. While the besieged were anxiously deliberating on what it would be best for them to do in the difficult and perilous circumstances in which they v/ere placed, Donald Kavenagh, the son of the late king MacMurrogh, contrived to make his way into the city, and informed them that their friend Fitz-Stephcn was closely besieged by the people of Wexford in his castle of Carrig, near that place, and that, if not relieved within a few days, he would assuredly, with his wife and children, and tlie few men who were with him, fall 2 D 466 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. into the hands of the enemy. At another time this intelligence might have confovmded and dis- mayed them ; in their present circumstances it gave them the courage of desperation. Fitzgerald pro- posed, and Raymond seconded the gallant coun- sel, that, rather than seek to preserve their lives with the loss of all beside, they should, small as their force was, make a hold attempt to cut their way to their distressed comrades, and, at the worst, die like soldiers and knights. The animating appeal nerved every heart. With all speed each man got ready and buckled on his armour, and the little band was soon set in array in three divisions ; the first led by Le Gros, the second by Milo de Cogan, the last by the Earl and Maurice Fitzgerald. All things being thus ar- ranged, about the hour of nine in the morning they suddenly rushed forth from one of the gates, and threw themselves impetuously upon the vast throng of the enemy, whom their sudden onset so bewil- dered and confounded, that, while many were killed or thrown to the ground, and elsewhere the disor- dered masses ran against and struggled with each other, encumbered by their own numbers, the bold assailants scarcely encountered any resistance, and in a short time the scattered host was flying before them in all directions. King Roderick himself escaped with difficulty, and almost undressed, for he had been regaling himself with the luxury of a bath when this sudden destruction came upon him. Great store of victuals, armour, and other spoils was found in the deserted camp, with which the victors returned at night to the city, and there set everything in order, and left a sufficient garrison, now well provided with all necessaries, before setting out the next morning to the relief of their friends at Wexford. The Earl and his company marched on unop- posed on the road to that place till they came to a narrow pass in themidstofbogs, in a district called the Odronc or Idrone. Here they found the way blocked up by a numerous force under the com- mand of the prince of the district ; but after a sharp action, in which the Irish leader fell, they succeeded in overcoming this hindrance, and were enabled to pursue their journey. They had nearly reached Wexford when intelligence was received that Fitz-Stephen and his companions were already in the hands of the enemy. After standing out for several days against repeated attacks from the people of Wexford and the surrounding district, whose numbers are said to have amounted to 3000 men, he and those with him, consisting of only five gentlemen and a few archers, had, it appeared, been induced to deliver up the fort on receiving an assu- rance, solemnly confirmed by the oaths of the bishops of Kildare and Wexford, and others of the clergy, that Dublin had fallen, and that the earl, with all the rest of their friends there, were killed. They promised Fitz-Stephen that, if he would surrender himself into their hands, they would conduct him to a place of safety, and secure him and his men from the vengeance of King Roderick, who would otherwise certainly put them all to the sword. But as soon as they had by this treachery got possession of their persons, " some," according to Giraldus, " they killed, some they beat, some they wounded, and some they cast into prison,"— a variety enough of ways, certainly, of disposing of so small a number of cases. Fitz-Stephen himself they carried away with them to an island called Beg-Eri, or Little Erin, lying not far from Wexford, having fled thither, after setting that town on fire, when they heard that Strongbow had got out of Dublin and was on his march to their district. They now also sent to inform the earl, that, if he continued his approach, they would cut off the heads of Fitz-Stephen and his companions, and send them to him. Deterred by this threat, Strongbow deemed it best to turn aside from Wexford, and to take his way to Waterford. Meanwhile, since the return of Raymond le Gros from his unsuccessful mission, it had been determined to make another application to Henry ; and Hervey of Fitzmaurice had been dispatched to England for that purpose. On reaching Water- ford, Strongbow found Hervey there just returned, with the king's commands, that the earl should re- pair to him in person without delay. He and Hervey accordingly took ship forthwith. As soon as they landed, they proceeded to Avhere Henry was, at Newnham, in Gloucestershire. He had returned from the continent about two months be- fore, and had ever since been actively employed in collecting and equipping an army and fleet, and making other preparations for passing over into Ireland. When Strongbow presented himself, he at first refused to see him ; bu.t after a short time he consented to receive his offers of entire sub- mission. It was agreed that the earl should sur- render to the king, in full possession, the city of Dublin, and all other towns and forts which he held along the coast of Ireland ; on which condition he should be allowed to retain the rest of his acqui- sitions for himself and his heirs, under subjection to the English crown. This arrangement being concluded, the king, attended by Strongbow and many other lords, embarked at Milford. His force, which consisted of 500 knights or gentle- men, and about 4000 common soldiers, is said to have been distributed into 400 vessels. He landed at a place which the contemporary historians name Croch, supposed to be that now called the Crook, near Waterford, on the 18th of October, 1171. In the short interval that had elapsed since the departure of Strongbow, another attack had been made upon Dublin by Tiernan O'Ruarc ; but the forces of the Irish prince were dispersed with great slaughter in a sudden sally by Milo de Cogan, in accordance with the uniform fortune of this extra- ordinary contest. O'Ruarc's own son was left among the slain. This proved the last eflbrt, for the present, of Irish independence. When the English king made his appearance in the country, he found its conquest already achieved, and nothing remaining for him to do except to receive the I-] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 467 eagerly-offered submission of its various princes and cliieftains. The first that presented themselves to him were the citizens of Wexford, who had so treacherously obtained possession of the person of I'^'itz-Stephen ; they endeavoured to make a merit of this discreditable exploit — bringing their prisoner along with them as a rebellious subject, whom they had seized while engaged in making war without the consent of his sovereign. Henry entered so far into their views, that for the present he ordered Fitz-Stephen into custody ; but he soon after re- leased him, though he insisted upon his resigning all his claims to the town of Wexford and the ad- joining territory, which had been bestowed upon him by Dermond MacMurrogh. Some of those who had taken part in betraying him were also seized and put to death. Before Henry removed from Waterford, the King of Cork, or Desmond, came to him of his own accord, and took his oath of fealty. From Waterford he proceeded Avith his army to Lismore, and thence to Cashel, near to which city, on the banks of the Suir, he received the homage of the other chief Munster prince, the king of Thomond or Limerick. The prince of Ossory and the other inferior chiefs of Munster hastened to follow the example of their betters ; and Henry, after receiving their submission, and leaving gar- risons both in Cork and Limerick, returned through Tipperary to Waterford. Soon after, leaving Robert Fitz-Bernard in command there, he set out for Dublin. Wherever he stopped on his march, the neighbouring princes and chiefs repaired to him, and acknowledged themselves his vassals. Giraldus gives a list of the names, which we need not copy ; among them is that of Tiernan O'Ruarc. " But Roderick, the monarch," it is added, " came no nearer than to the side of the river Shanon, which dividetli Connaught from Meath, and there Hugh de Lacy and William Fitzaldelm, by the king's commandment, met him, who, desiring peace, submitted himself, swore allegiance, became tributary, and did put in (as all others did) hostages and pledges for the keeping of the same. Thus was all Ireland, saving Ulster, brought in subjec- tion." After this, Henry kept his Christmas in Dublin, the feast being held in a temporary erec- tion, constructed, after the Irish fashion, of wicker- work. " On this occasion," says Giraldus, " many and the most part of the princes of that land re- Borted and made repair unto Dublin to see the king's court ; and when they saw the great abund- ance of victuals, and the noble services, as also the eating of cranes, which they much loathed, being not before accustomed thereunto, they much won- dered and marvelled thereat ; but in the end, they being by the king's commandment set down, did also there eat and drink among them." Henry remained in Ireland for some months longer, and during his stay called together a coun- cil of the clergy at Cashel, at which a number of constitutions or decrees were passed for the re- gulation of the church, and the reform of the ecclesiastical discipline, in regard to certain points where its laxity had long afforded matter of com- plaint and reproach. He is also said, by MatthcAV Paris, to have held a lay council at Lismore, at which provision was made for the extension to Ireland of the English laws, and other enactm.ents were made for the civil government of the con- quered country. He was in the mean time made very uneasy by the non-arrival of any intelligence from England, in consequence of the state of the weather, which was so tempestuous that scarcely u ship, it is said, came to Ireland all the winter from any part of the world. Henry took up his residence at Wexford, and while here he employed all his arts of policy, according to Giraldus, to attach Raymond le Gros and the other principal English adventurers settled in Ireland to his interest, that he might thereby the more weaken the Earl of Pembroke and strengthen himself. At last, about the middle of Lent, ships arrived both from Eng- land and Aquitaine, and brought such tidings as determined the king to lose no time in again taking his way across the sea. So, having appointed Hugh de Lacy to be governor of Dublin, and as such his chief representative in his realm of Ireland ; and having bestowed other high offices, of the same kind with those that were established at the Eng- lish court, upon the other principal noblemen whom he left behind him, all of whom were, besides, amply endowed with lands for the support of their newly created dignities, he set sail from Wexford at sunrise on Easter Monday, the 17th of April, 1172, and about noon of the same day landed at Portfinnan, in Wales. It is probable that Henry's very imperfect occupation of Ireland did not greatly increase his resources, but it added to his reputation both in England and on the continent. The envy that accompanied his successes, and the old jea- lousy of his power, might have failed to do him any serious injury, or touch any sensitive part, but for the dissensions existing in his own family. At this period the king had four sons living — Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John— of the respective ages of eighteen, sixteen, fifteen, and five years. He had been an indulgent father, and had made a splendid, and what he considered a judicious, provision for them all. His eldest son was to succeed, not only to England, but to Nor- mandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine — territories which bordered on one another, and comprised an important part of France ; Richard was invested with the states of his mother, Aquitaine and Poictou ; Geofiirey was to have Brittany, in right of his wife, the daughter of Conan ; and Ireland was destined to be the appanage of John. At the coronation of Prince Henry, which had already occasioned so much trouble, his consort, the daughter of the French king, was not allowed to be crowned with him ; and this omission being re- sented by Louis, led to fresh quarrels. The king at last consented that the ceremony should be repeated ; and Margaret was then crowned as well as her husband. Soon after this ceremony, the 468 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. youBg couple visited the French court, where Louis, though a very devout prince, stimulated the impa- tient ambition of his youthful son-in-law, and in- cited him to an unnatural rebellion against his own father. It had been the practice in France, ever since the establishment of the Capetian dynasty, to crown the eldest son during the father's lifetime, without giving him any present share of the terri- tories or government ; but young Henry was per- suaded by Louis and others equally well acquainted with this practice, that, by being crowned, he ob- tained a right of immediate participation ; and as soon as he returned, he expressed his desire that the king, his father, would resign to him either England or Normandy, " in order," he said, " that he and the queen, his wife, might have the means of sup- porting the dignity he had conferred on them." Henry rejected this strange demand, telling the youth to have patience till his death, when he would have states and power enough. His son expressed astonishment at the refusal, used very undutiful language, and never more exchanged words of real love or sincere peace with his parent. The vindictive Eleanor gave encouragement to her son, and fomented his horrible hatred ; and the " elder kiug,"* as Henry was now called, was punished for the infidelities which had long since alienated the affections of his wife. Being at Limoges, Ray- mond, the Earl of To\ilouse, who had quarrelled with the King of France, and renounced his allegiance, went suddenly to Henry, and warned him to have an eye on his wife and son, and make sure of the castles of Poictou and Aquitaine. Without showing his suspicions to young Henry, who was with him, the king contrived to provision his fortresses, and assure himself of the fidelity of the commanders, On their return from Aquitaine, he and his son stopped to sleep at the town of Chinon ; and during the night the son fled and advanced alone to Alen9on. The father pursued, but could not over- take the fugitive, who reached Argenton, and thence passed by night into the territories of the French king. Henry, whose activity was vmim- paired, then rode along the whole of the frontier of Normandy, inspecting the fortresses, and putting them in the best possible state of defence, to resist the storm which he saw would burst in that di- rection. A.D. 1173 (March). A few days after the flight of Henry, his brothers Richard and Geoffrey also fled to the French court, and Queen Eleanor her- self, who had urged them to the step, absconded from her husband. Though not for any love that he bore her, the king was anxious to re- cover his wife ; and at his orders, the Norman bishops threatened her vvith the censures of the church, unless she returned and brought her sons with her. It is probable that this threat would have had no great weight, but she was seized as she was trying to find her way to the French court (where she must have met her former husband), dressed in man's clothes. Henry, tlie • Ilex Senior. husband of her old age, was not so soft and meek towards her as Louis, the consort of her youthful years. He committed her to the custody of one of his most trustworthy chatelains ; and with the ex- ception of a few weeks, when her presence was necessary for a political object, she was kept in confinement for sixteen years,* and not liberated till after his death. Before matters came to extre- mities, Henry dispatched two bishops to the French Court, to demand, in the name of paternal autho- rity, that his fugitive sons should be delivered up to him. Louis received these ambassadors in a public manner, having at his right hand young Henry, who wore his crown as king of England ; and when they recapitulated, as usual, the titles and style of their employer, they were told that there was no other king of England than the one beside him. In fact, young Henry was rccog" nised as sole king of England in a general assem- bly of the barons and bishops of the kingdom of France — a ceremony as empty as it was unjust in principle. King Louis swore first, and his lords swore after him, to aid and assist the son with all their might to expel his father from his kingdom ; and then young Henry swore first, and his brothers swore after him, in the order of their seniority, that they would never conclude peace or truce with their fatlier without the consent and concur- rence of the barons of France. f The taking and the exacting of such oaths seem destructive of Louis's character for religion and sanctity ; but the measures were clearly urged by the conspiring foreign nobles of the English king, who desired guarantees that they should not be left unprotected by the natural process of a reconciliation between father and sons. A great seal like that of England was manufactured, in order that young Henry might affix that sign of royalty and legality to his treaties and charters. By the feast of Easter, the plans of the rebellious boy and his confederates were ma- tured. The scheme was bold and extensive ; the confederates were numerous, including, besides the King of France, whose reward was not com- mitted to a written treaty, William, king of Scot- land, who was to receive all that his predecessors had possessed in Northumberland and Cumber- land, in payment of his services, and Philip, earl of Flanders, who was to have a grant of the earldom of Kent, with the castles of Dover and Rochester, for his share in the pan'icidal war. The nature of these arrangements betokens as great a want of patriotism as of filial affection, and shows the cun- ' ning and interestedness of his allies, as much as the ignorance, folly, and rashness of the young prince. To these external enemies were added , many of Henry's own vassals — old barons, who re- membered the license of former years, and were impatient of his firm government, — and young ones, eager for novelty and adventure, and natu- rally inclined to take part with the young and pro- digal. Some of these, imitating the royal examples • Iluved.— R. Diceto. — Neub.— Script. Rer. Frauc. + Gcrvaso. CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. Chap. I.] set them, stipulated beforehand for the nature and extent of their rewards. The Earl of Blois, for example, was to have Amboise, Chateau-Reynault, and an allowance in money on the revenues of Anjou. The most powerful of the conspirators in England were the Earls of Leicester and Chester. Like the great Conqueror under similar circum- stances, Henry saw himself deserted even by his favourite courtiers, and by many of the men Avhom he had taught the art of war, and in- vested with the honours of chivalry with his own hands. According to a contemporary, it was a painful and desolating sight for him to see those whom he had honoured with his con- fidence and intrusted with the care of his chamber, his person, his very life, deserting him, one by one, to join his enemies ; for nearly every night some of them stole away, and those who had attended him in the evening did not appear at his call in the morning.* But Henry's strength of character and consummate abilities were quite equal to the dif- ficulties of his situation, and in the midst of his greatest trouble he maintained a cheerful counte- nance and pursued his usual amusements, hunting and hawking, even more than his wont, and was more gay and affable than ever towards the com- panions that remained with him.f His courtiers and knights might flee, but Henry had a strong party^, and wise ministers and commanders, se- lected by his sagacity, in most of his states, and in England more than all : he had also money in abundance, and these circumstances gave him con- fidence without relaxing his precaution and exer- tions. Twenty thousand Braban^ons, who sold their mercenary services to the best bidder, soon ilocked to the standard of the richest monarch of the west of Europe. Not relying wholly on arms, he sent messengers to all the neighbouring princes who had sons, to interest them in his favour ; and, as his case might be their own should encourage- ment and success attend filial disobedience, their sympathy was tolerably complete. In addressing the Pope, he worked upon other feelings, and here his present object hurried him into expressions of submission and vassalage which contributed no doubt to form the grounds of future and dan- gerous pretensions. He declared that the king- dom of England belonged to the jurisdiction of the Pope, and that he, as king thereof, was bound to him by all the obligations imposed by the fevidal law ; and he implored the pontiff to defend with his spiritual arms the patrimonv of St. Peter. The rebellious son applied to the court of Rome as well as his father ; and it may be stated generally, that if the popes meddled largely with the secular affairs of princes, it was not without their being tempted and invited so to do. The letter of the "junior king," as the young Henry was called, was a composition of singular impudence and false- hood. He attributed his quarrel with his father to the interest he took in the cause of Becket, and his desire of avenging his death : — " The villains," he * Gsrvas Borob. t Iloved,— Matt. Tar.— Gerv. Uorob. 469 said, " who murdered within the walls of the temple my foster-father, the glorious martyr of Christ, St. Thomas of Canterbury, remain safe and sound ; they still strike their roots in the earth, and no act of royal vengeance has followed so atrocious and unheard-of a crime. I could not suffer this cri- minal neglect, and such was the first and strongest cause of the present discord ; the blood of the martyr cried to me ; I could not render it the vengeance and honours that were due to him, but at least I showed my reverence in visiting the tomb of the holy martyr in the view and to the astonishment of the whole kingdom. My father was wrathful against me therefore, but I fear not offending a father when the cause of Christ is concerned."* The youthful hypocrite made most liberal offers to the church ; but tlie Pope rejected his application, and even confirmed the sentence of excommunication pro- nounced by the bishops of Normandy against the king's revolted subjects. At the same time the legate was dispatched across the Alps with the laudable object of putting an end to the unnatural quarrel by exhortation and friendly mediation ; but before he arrived, the sword was drawn which it was difficult to sheathe, for national antipathies and popular interests and passions were engaged that would not follow the uncertain movements of pater- nal indulgence on one side or filial repentance on the other. In the month of June, the war began on several points at once. Philip, Earl of Flanders, entered Normandy, and gained considerable advan- tages, but his brother and heir being killed at a siege, he thought he saw the hand of God in the event, and he soon left the country, most bitterly repenting having engaged in such an impious war. Tlie king of France, with his loving son-in-law, Prince Henry of England, were not more success- ful than the Earl of Flanders, and were first checked and then put to rapid flight by a division of the Brabancons. Prince Geoffrey, who had been joined by the Earl of Chester, was equally unfortunate in Brittany, and the cause of the confederates was covered with defeat and shame wherever the king showed himself. King Louis, according to his old custom, soon grew weary of the war, and desired an interview with Henry, who condescended to grant it. This conference of peace was held on an open plain, between Gisors and Trie, under a vene- rable elm of " most grateful aspect," the branches of which descended to the earth,t the centre of the primitive scene where the French kings and the Norman dukes had been accustomed for some gene- rations to hold their parleys for truce or peace. Instead of leading to peace, the present confer- ence embittered the war, and ended in a disgrace- ful exhibition of violence. The Earl of Leicester, who attended with the princes, insulted Henry to his face, and, drawing his sword, would have killed or wounded his king had he not been forcibly pre- vented. Hostilities commenced forthwith ; but * Scrip. Rer. Franc. ■t Ulmus erat visu gratissima, ramis ad terram redeuntibus. Script. Rer. Franc. 470 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. when Louis was a principal in a war against Henry, it was seldom prosecuted with any vigour, and the rest of that year was spent on the continent in insignificant operations. In England, however, some important events took place ; for Richard de Lucy repulsed the Scots, who had begun to make incursions, burnt their town of Berwick, ravaged the Lothians, and, on his return from this victorious expedition, defeated and took prisoner the great Earl of Leicester, who had recrossed the Channel and, in alliance with Bigod, earl of Norfolk, was attempting to light the flames of civil war in the heart of England. It is honourable alike to Henry and his government, and the people of the two countries, that the insurgents never had a chance of success either in England or Normandy. In Maine, Brittany, Poictou, and Aquitaine, which were held by a more questionable tenure, which had probably not been so well governed, and where the people nourished old national prejudices, the case was different. The natural sons of King Henry, of whom there were two in England grown up to man's estate, and occupying important posts, adhered faithfully to their father, and Geoffrey, the more distinguished of the two, fought most gal- lantly for his cause. His faith and prowess caused Henry to exclaim, — " This is my lawful son, — the rest are bastards!"* A .D. 1 1 74. — The allies now showed more resolution than during the preceding year, and acted upon a plan which was well calculated to embarrass Henry. Louis, with the junior king of England, attacked the frontiers of Normandy. Geoffrey tried his fortune again in Brittany. Prince Richard, who began his celebrated warlike career by fighting against his own father, headed a formidable insur- rection in Poictou and Aquitaine. Relying on the Norman barons for the defence of Normandy and Brittany, Henry marched against his son Richard, and soon took the town of Saintes and the fortress of Taillebourg, drove the insurgents from several other castles, and partially restored order to the country. Returning then towards Anjou, he de- vastated the frontier of Poictou, and was preparing to reduce the castles there when the Bishop of Winchester arrived with news which rendered the king's presence indispensable on the other side of the sea. The Scots, as had been preconcerted, were pouring into the northern counties, and had already taken several towns. Roger de Mowbray had raised the standard of revolt in Yorkshire ; Earl Ferrers, joined by David, earl of Huntingdon, brother to the Scottish king, had done the same in the central counties. In the east, Hugh Bigod, with 700 knights, had taken the castle of Norwich ; and at the same time a formidable fleet, prepared by his eldest son and the Earl of Flanders, was ready on the opposite coast to attempt a descent on England, where endeavours were again making to alienate the affections of the people by the old story of the king being guilty of Becket's murder. The great Conqueror himself did not surpass Henry in the rapi- • Angl. Sao. dity of his movements. The bishop had scarcely finished his dismal news ere the king, with his court, was on horseback for the coast, and embark- ing in the midst of a storm, he sailed for England, taking with him, as prisoners, his own wife Eleanor, and his eldest son's wife Margaret, who had not been able to follow her husband to the court of her father. Although he had still main- tained an outward appearance of tranquillity, his heart was aching at the rebellion of his children and the treachery of his nobles and friends. Sorrow disposes the mind to devotional feelings, and Henry's high powers of intellect did not exempt him from the sviperstition of the times. Some sin- cerity may possibly have mingled in the feelings and motives that dictated the extraordinary course he now pursued, though, seeing the political expediency of resorting to a striking measure to remove all doubts from the people, and bring their devotional feelings to his side, we would not venture to affirm that this sincerity was very great or was the sole motive of his conduct. All attempts to depress the fame of Becket had failed, — the Pope had recently in- scribed his name in the list of saints and martyrs, — the miracles said to be worked over his festering body were now recognised by bishops and priests, and reported, with amplifications which grew in proportion to their distance from the spot, by the credulous multitude. The English had not had a native saint for a long time, and they determined to make the most of him. It was on the 8th of July that Henry landed at Southampton. He had scarcely set foot on shore, when, without waiting to refresh himself after the fatigues and discomforts of a rough sea voyage, he mounted his horse and took the nearest road to Canterbury, performing his pilgrimage in a manner far from being so agree- able as those jocund expeditions described by Chaucer a century and a half later. He took no refreshment save bread and water, and rode on his way all night. As the day dawned he came in sight of the towers of Canterbury Cathedral, still at the distance of some miles, and instantly dis- mounting from his horse, he threw off his royal dress, undid his sandals, and walked the rest of his way barefoot like the veriest penitent. The roads were rough, and as the king passed through the gateway of Canterbury his subjects were touched and edified by the sight of his blood, which fell, at every step he took, from his wounded feet. When he arrived at the cathedral he descended at once into the crypt, and, while the bells tolled slowly, he threw himself with sobs and tears upon the grave of Becket, and there remained with his face pressed to the cold earth in the presence of many people, — an attitude more affecting and convincing perhaps than the discourse of the bishop over-head. Gilbert Foliot, formerly Bishop of Hereford, now of London, and tlie same who, three years and a-half before, had ])roposed to throw the body of Becket into a ditch or liang it on a gibbet, but who now, with the rest, acknow- ledged him to be a blessed and glorious martyr, CiiAP. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 1066—1216. 471 ascended the pulpit and addressed the mnlti- tiide. " Be it known to you, as many as are h-cre present, that Henry, king of England, invoking, for his soul's salvation, God and the holy martyrs, solemnly protests before you all that he never ordered, or knowingly caused, or even desired the death of the saint ; but, as possibly the murderers took advantage of some words imprudently pro- nounced, he has come to do penance before the bishops here assembled, and has consented to submit his naked flesh to the rods of discipline." The bishop conjured the people to believe the assertions of their king j and, as he ceased speak- ing, Henry arose like a spectre, and walked through the church and cloisters to the chapter- house, where, again prostrating himself, and throwing off the upper part of his dress, he con- fessed to the minor offence, and was scourged by all the ecclesiastics present, who amounted to eighty persons. The bishops and abbots, who were few, handled the knotted cords first, and then followed the monks, every one inflicthig from three to five lashes, and saying, as he gave them, " Even as Christ was scourged for the sins of men, so be thou scourged for thine own sin." The blows no doubt were dealt with a light hand, but the whole thing was startling, and such as had never before been heard of. Nor was the penance of the king yet over. He returned to the subterranean vault, and again prostrating himself by Becket's tomb, he spent the rest of the day and the following night in prayers and tears, taking no nourishment, and never quitting the spot ; " but as he came so he remained, without carpet or any such thing beneath him." * At early dawn, after the service of matins, he ascended from the vault and made the tour of the upper church, praying before all the altars and relics there. When the sun rose he heard mass, and then, having drunk some holy water blessed by the martyr himself, and having filled a small bottle with the precious fluid, he mounted his horse and rode to London with a light and joyous heart. A burning fever, however, fol- lowed all this fatigue and penance, and confined him for several days to his chamber.! On the fifth night of his malady a messenger arrived from the north, and announced himself to the suflfering monarch, whose presence he had not reached with- out much difficulty, as the servant of Ranulf de Glanville, a name memorable in the history of our laws and constitution, and a most dear friend of Henry: — "Is Glanville in health?" said the king. " My lord is well," replied the servant, " and yovir enemy the king of Scots is his pri- soner," Starting upright, Henry cried, " Repeat those words." The man repeated them, and deli- vered his master's letters, which fully informed the overjoyed king of the fact. On the morning • Gerv. Uorob. f Geivase. — Hen. Hunt. — Girald. — Diceto. — Hoved. — Neub.— Previous to tliis piljjiimage to Canterbury, Henry had done penance for Becket's murder in the cathedral of Avranches in Nor- mandy. The church is now a ruin, but, according to tradition, a flat stone, with a cup engraved upon it, still marks the spot of kingly bumiliatiou.— Stotbaid's Tour in Noimandy. of the 12th of July Glanville had surprised Wil- liam the Lion as he was tilting in a meadow near Alnwick Castle with only sixty Scottish lords near him, and had made the whole party captives. By a remarkable coincidence this signal advantage was gained on the very day (it was said by some on the very hour) on which he achieved his recon- ciliation with the martyr at Canterbury.* Indisposition, and the languor it leaves, soon departed, and Henry was again on horseback and at the head of a numerous and enthusiastic army, for the people of England flocked to his standard and filled the land with an indignant cry against the leaders and abettors of an unnatural revolt. The insurgents did not wait the coming of the king, but dispersed in all directions, their chiefs purchasing their pardon by the surrender of their castles. According to a French chronicler, so many were taken that it was difficult to find prisons for them all.t The Scots, disheartened by the capture of their sovereign, retreated beyond the border, and peace being restored at home, the active Henry was enabled, within three weeks, to carry the army which had been raised to subdue the revolt in England, across the seas to Normandy. When the Earl of Flanders, who was now the soul of the confederacy, had made ready to invade England, he counted on the absence of the king, whose prompt return disconcerted that measure. Changing his plan, therefore, he repaired to Nor- mandy, and joining his forces with those of King Louis and Henry's eldest son, laid siege to Rouen, the capital. But he was scarcely there when the king of England was after him, and surprised all his stores and provisions. In a few days the allied army was not only obliged to raise the siege, but also to retreat out of Normandy. Humbled by the rapidity, the genius, and good fortune of the English monarch, the confederates, following the advice of Louis, who was the very king of confer- ences, requested an armistice and a meeting for the arrangement of a general peace. Of his rebellious children, Henry and Geoffrey offered to submit to these arrangements, but young Richard, who had begun to taste the joys of war and the " raptures of the fight," which were to be his greatest plea- sures till the hour of his death, and who was sup- ported by the restless nobility of Aquitaine, who had again revolted, and was led by the intrigues and councils of the indefatigable lord who held Hautefort,! the famous Bertrand de Born, refused to be included, and persisted in open war against his father. But the rash boy lost castle after castle, and at the end of six weeks was fain to throw himself at the feet of his forgiving parent, and accompany him to the congress or conference. The conditions of the peace were made easy by the mildness and moderation of Henry. He received from the French king and the Flemish • Neub. — Hoved. — Gervase. t Script. Rer. Franc. t " Colui che gia tenne Altaforte." Dante's Inferno. 472 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book III. earl all the. territories they had overrun since the commencement of the war, and he restored to those princes whatever he had conquered or oc- cupied himself. With one important exception, he also set at liberty all his prisoners, to the num- ber of 969 knights. To his eldest son he assigned for present enjoyment two castles in Normandy, and a yearly allowance of 1 5,000/. Angevin money ; to Richard, two castles in Poictou, with half the revenue of that earldom ; to Geoffrey, two castles in Brittany with half the rents of the estates that had belonged to his father-in-law elect (for the marriage was not yet consummated). Earl Conan, with a promise of the remainder. With these con- ditions the impatient youths professed themselves satisfied, and they engaged henceforth to love, honour, and obey their father. Richard and Geof- frey did homage and took the oaths of fealty ; but Henrj', the eldest son, was exempted from these ceremonies. The exception made in liberating the prisoners was in the important person of the Scot- tish king, who had been carried over to the con- tinent and thrown into the strong castle of Falaise, where he was kept vmtil the following month of December, when he obtained his enlargement by kneeling to Henry and acknowledging himself, in the set forms of vassalage, his " liege-man against all men." By the degrading treaty of Falaise, the independence of Scotland was nominally sacrificed ; and from the signing of it in December, 1174, to the accession of Richard I., in December, 1189, when a formal release from all obligations was granted for the sum of 10,000 marks, she may be said to have figured as a dependent province of England.* A.D. 1175. — Henry was still detained on the continent, and a quarrel broke out afresh between him and his eldest son : it did not, however, lead to any immediate consequences ; and in the month of May, father and son, or the Rex Senior and Rex Junior, were again reconciled and sailed together over to England, where for some time they lived on sucJi affectionate terms that they not only fed at the same table but slept in the same bed.t Henry now enjoyed about eight years of profound peace ; but, as active in civil affairs as in those of war, he devoted this time, and all his energies and resources of m.iiid, to the reform of the internal administration of his dominions. His reputation for wisdom, judicial ability, and power, now stood so high in Europe that Alfonso, king of Castile, and his uncle Sancho, king of Navarre, who had been disputing for some years about the boundaries of their respective territories, turning from the uncer- tain arbitrement of the sword, referred their dif- ference to the decision of the " just and im- partial " English monarch, binding themselves in the most solemn manner to submit to his award, be it what it might. And in the month of March, 1177, Henry, holding his court at Westminster, attended by the bishops, earls, barons, and justices, both of England and Normandy, heard and dis- • Allen's Vindication of the Ancient Independence of Scotland. f Diccto. — Denedictus Abbiis. cussed the arguments proposed on the part of King Alfonso by the Bishop of Palencia, and on the part of King Sancho by the Bishop of Pampeluna, and, after taking the opinion of the best and most learned of the court, pronounced a wise and con- ciliating award, with which both ambassadors ex- pressed their entire satisfaction.* We have some curious evidence of Henry's per- sonal activity, as evinced by his rapid change of residence, just at this period of peace and tranquil- lity, in a letter addressed to him, in the most fami- liar terms, by his confidential friend Peter of Blois. Peter, who was not a timid, loitering wayfarer, or a luxurious ease-loving churchman, but a bold and experienced traveller himself, seeing that, in the dis- charge of his duty, he had fought his way more than once across the then pathless Alps, in the heart of winter, braving the snow hurricane and the tremen- dous avalanches, seems to have been lost in amaze- ment at the incessant and untiring progresses of the king. He had just returned from a royal mission to King Louis, the results of which he was anxious to report. He tells Henry, that he has been hunting after him up and down England, but in vain ! — that when Solomon set down four things as being tob hard for him to discover, he ought to have added a fifth, — and that was, the path of the king of Eng- land ! Poor Peter goes on to say, that he really knoweth not whither he is going — that he has been laid up with the dysentery at Newport, from fatigue in travelling after his majesty, and has sent scouts and messengers on all sides to look for him. He proceeds to express an earnest Avish that Henry would let him know where he is to be found, as he really has important affairs to treat of, and the ambassadors of the kings of Spain have arrived with a great retinue, in order to refer the old quarrel of their masters to his majesty. In war, Henry's ubiquity, as we might almost call it, was of course still more conspicuous and astonish- ing — for the field of his exertions extended from the shores of Ireland to the countries at the foot of tlie Pyrenees. Louis of France, whose character Mezerai rather happily describes by the single word mou (soft and sluggish), was bewildered and constantly foiled by his sharp and active rival. He was once heard to exclaim, " The king of England neither rides on land, nor sails on water, but flies through the air like a bird. In a moment he flits from Ireland to England — in another from England into France!" The moment was now approaching, when those energies, as yet undiminished by age or the pre- mature decay which they probably caused in the end, were again to be called into full practice; for foreign jealousies and intrigues, the name and history of his captive wife Eleanor, and the unpo- pularity of the Anglo-Norman rule in the jirovinces of the south, contributed, with their own impa- tience, turbulence, and presumption, to drive liis children once more into rebellion. These princes seem to have passed their time on the continent in • Rymer. — Eog. Hovcd, Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066— 121G. 473 an almost uninterrupted succession of tilts and tournaments and knightly displays, in which they gained, in an eminent degree, the only fame, next to the glory of real war, which was then dear to young men of their condition. Henry rejoiced at the report of their prowess, which was spread from court to court, and from castle to castle, by jongleurs and minstrels, who then performed some of the offices which now fall to our public newspapers. He probably thought that the image of warfare might distract them from its bloody reality, and til at they might allow their sire — the greatest prince in Europe — to descend to the grave in peace. A.D. 1183. Richard, who was the darling of his imprisoned mother, and who, on account of the more general unpopularity of his father in Aqui- taine and Poitou, was stronger than his brothers, was the first to renew the family war. When called upon by his father to do homage to his elder brother, Henry, for the duchy of Aquitaine, which he was to inherit, he arrogantly refused. Upon this young Henry, or the junior king, allied himself with Prince Geoflrey, and marched with an army of Bretons and Brabancons into Aqui- taine, where Richard had published his ban of war, — for these princes were not more affectionate as brothers than they were dutiful as sons. The king flew to put an end to these disgraceful hosti- lities, and having induced his two sons to come into his presence, he reconciled them with one another. But the reconciliation was rather apparent than real, and Prince Geoffrey had the horrible frank- ness to declare, shortly after, that they could never possibly live in peace with one another unless they were united in a common war against their own father. In some respects this was the family of Atreus and Thyestes. Contemporaries seem to have considered it in this light, for they have recorded horrible traditions connected with the whole Plantagenet race. The least revolting of these legends relates to an ancient countess of Anjou, from whom King Henry lineally descended. The husband of this dame having remarked with fear and trembling that she rarely went to church, and, when she did, always withdrew before the celebration of mass, took it into his head olie day to have her seized in church, and forcibly detained there for the whole service by four strong squires. The strong men did as they were ordered, but, at the moment of the consecration of the Host, the coun- tess, slipping off the mantle by which they held her, flew out of a window, disappeared, and was never seen again.* Prince Richard, according to a French chronicler of the time, was wont to repeat this pretty tale of diablerie, and to say it was not astonishing that he and his brothers, issuing from such a stock, should be so fierce and lawless ; adding, that it was quite natural that what came from the devil should return to the devil. The recorded gallantries and the worse whispered offences of Eleanor did not alienate the affections • Script. Rer. Franc. of the people of Poictou and Aquitaine, among whom she had been born and brought up. In their eyes she was still their chieftainess, — the princess of their old native stock ; and Henry had no right over them except what he could claim through her and by his affectionate treatment of her. Now, he had kept her for years a prisoner, and in their estimation it was loyal and right to work for her deliverance, and punish her cruel husband by whatever means they could command, even to the arming of Eleanor's sons against their sire. In the fervid heads and hearts of these men of the south these feelings became absolute pas- sions ; and the graces as well as the ardour of their popular poetry were engaged in the service of their captive princess. The Troubadours, with Bertrand de Born at their head, never tired of this theme; and even the local chroniclers raised their monkish Latin into a sort of poetical prose whenever they touched on the woes and wrongs of Eleanor, — for in Poictou and Aquitaine the manifold provocations she had given her husband were all unknown or forgotten. " Thou wast carried off from thine own land," cries Richard of Poictiers, " and transported to a land thou knewest not of. Thou wast brought up in all abundance and delicacy, and in a royal liberty, living in the lap of riches, enjoying the sports of thy maidens and their pleasant songs to the soft accompaniment of the lute and tabor ; and now thou weepest and lamentest, consuming thy days in grief. Return, poor prisoner, return to thy faithful cities ! Where is now thy court? — where are thy young companions ? — where thy counsellors ? . . . . Thou cryest and no one hears thee, for the northern king keeps thee shut up like a besieged town ; but still cry aloud, and tire not of crying. Raise thy voice like a trumpet, that thy sons may hear thee ; for the day is at hand when thy sons shall deliver thee, and when thou shalt see thy native land again Woe to the traitors that are in Aquitaine, for tlie day of ven- geance is near ! . . . . Fly before the face of bold Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, for he will overthrow the vain-glorit)us, break their chariots, and those that ride in them. Yea, he will armihilate all who oppose him, from the greatest to the least !" * Sentiments like these still more vehemently ex- pressed in their own spoken language, in a deluge of sirventes^ as they called their satirical poems, constantly kept alive and active the hatred of the people to the English monarch ; and Bertrand de Born, with other men of insinuating manners and profound intrigue, could always avail themselves of this passionate feeling, and make tools of the young princes, who (prince-like) considered them their implements. With the exception of Richard, whose fiery nature now and then, for very transi- tory intervals, gave access to the tenderer feelings, the ambitious young men seem to have cared little • Cliron. Ricardi I'ictaviensis. apiid Script. I?er. Franc. Ho cfills Kiiij; Henry Hex aquUunis, or King of tlie Noitli, and his son Bex auitri, or King ol' the South. 474 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. about their mother ; but they could raise no such good excuse for being in arms against one parent as that of their anxiety to procure better treatment for the other ; and Henry, and Geoffrey, and Richard, at times in unison, and at times sepa- rately, continued to take the name of Eleanor as their cri de guerre in the south. These family wars were more frequent, of longer duration, and greater importance than would be imagined from the accounts given of them in our popular English histories. Their details would lead us too far away from our object, but a few brief incidents may be given as conveying a striking notion of the times, when refinement and barbarity, baseness and magnanimity, were mixed and confounded in so strange a manner. The family reconciliation which took place in 1183-4, was speedily interrupted, for Bertrand de Born, nearly indifferent as to which prince he acted with, but who, of the three, rather pre- ferred Henry, on seeing that Richard was in- clined to keep his oaths to his father, renewed his intrigues with the eldest son, and got ready a formidable party in Aquitaine, who pressed Prince Henry, or the Be]/ Jovens, as they called him in their dialect, to throw himself among them, Henry consequently revolted again, and his brother Geoffrey soon followed his example. The French court had no inconsiderable share in all these movements ; and the sovereign openly announced himself as the ally of the junior king and the nobles of Aquitaine. As Richard continued steady for a while, the king of England joined his forces with his, and they marched together to lay siege to Limoges, which had opened its gates to Henry and Geoffrey. Thus the war recommenced under a new aspect ; it being no longer the three sons leagued against the father, but one fighting with the father against two brothers. In little more than a month, however, the younger Henry deserted his partisans of Aquitaine, and submitted to his father, who forgave him as he had forgiven him before, soothed his professed remorse, and once more accepted his oath of fealty. Geoffrey did not on this occasion follow his eldest brother's example ; and the men of Aquitaine and Poictou, now regard- ing him as their chief, confirmed him in his resist- ance, apprehending, not without some reason, that the king of England would not extend the remark- able clemency he had shown to his children to men who were strangers to his blood, and who had incensed him by repeated revolt. Prince Henry kept up a private correspondence with Bertrand de Born and others of the insurgents, and this enabled him to arrange a meeting for the purpose of conciliation. The king of England rode to Limoges, which was still in the hands of the in- surgents, to keep his appointment with his son Geoffrey and the Aquitaine barons : to his surprise he found the gates of the town closed against him, although he had taken only a few knights with him, and when he applied for admittance he was answered by a flight of arrows and quarries from the ramparts, one of which pierced his cuirass, while another of them wounded a knight at his side. This treacherous-looking occurrence w^as explained away as being a mere mistake on the part of the soldiery, and it was subsequently agreed that the king should have free entrance into the town. He met his son Geoffrey in the midst of the market- place of Limoges, and began the conference for peace ; but here, again, he was saluted by a flight of arrows discharged from the battlements of the castle or citadel. One of these arrows wounded the horse he rode in the head. He ordered an attendant to pick up the arrow, and presenting it to Geoffrey with sobs and tears, he said, — " Oh, son ! what hath thy unhappy father done to deserve that thou shouldest make him a mark for thine arrows?" * This foul attempt at assassination is laid by some writers to the charge of Geoffrey himself, but it is quite as probable, and much less revolting to believe, that the bows and cross-bows were drawn without any order from the prince, by some of the fiery spirits of Aquitaine labouring vmder the conviction that their cause and interests were about to be sacrificed in the accommodation between father and son. Prince Henry, who ac- companied his father, expressed horror at the attempt, and disgust at the obstinacy of the men of Aquitaine; and he declared he would never more have alliance, or peace, or truce with them.f Not many days after he once more deserted and betrayed his sire, and went to join the insurgents, who then held their head-quarters at Dorat in Poictou, The Bishops of Normandy, by command of the Pope, fulminated their excommunications ; but as Prince Henry had been excommunicated before this, it was probably not the thunders of the church, but other considerations that induced him to abandon the insurgents at Dorat as suddenly as he had abandoned his father, and to return once more to the feet of the king, who, with unex- ampled clemency or weakness, once more pardoned him, and not only permitted him to go at large, but to meddle again with political affairs. Having persuaded his father to adopt measures which cost him the lives of some of his most faithful followers, this manifold traitor, or veriest wheel-about that ever lived, again deserted his banner, and pre- pared, with his brother Geoffrey and the insurgent barons of the south, to give him battle. A short time after this revolt, which was destined to be his last, and before his preparations for aiming at his father's life or throne, or both, were completed, a messenger announced to the king that his eldest son had fallen dangerously sick at Chateau-M artel near Limoges, and desired most earnestly that his father would forgive him and visit him. The king would have gone forthwith, but his friends implored him not to hazard his life again among men who had proved themselves capable of so much treachery and cruelty ; and they re])resented that the accounts he had received might be all a • Sciipt. Rer. Franc. t HoveiL Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 475 feigned story, got up by the insurgents of Aqui- taine and Poitou, for the worst of purposes. Taking, then, a ring from his finger, he gave it to the Archbishop of Bordeaux, and begged that ])relate to convey it with all speed to his repentant son as a token of his forgiveness and paternal afiection. He cherished the hope that the youth and robust constitution of the invalid would triumph over the disease, but soon there came a second messenger, to announce that his son was no more. Prince Henry died at Chateau Martel, on the 11th of June, 1183, in the twenty-seventh year of his age.* In his last agony he expressed the deepest contrition ; he pressed to his lips his father's ring, which had merciftilly been delivered to him ; he publicly confessed his undutifulness to his indulgent parent and his other sins, and ordered the priests to drag him by a rope out of his bed, and lay him on a bed of ashes, that he might die in an extremity of penance. f The heart of the king was divided between grief at the death of his first-born and rage against the insurgents, whom he held to have been not only the cause of his son's decease, but the impediment which had prevented him from seeing, and em- bracing him in his last moments. The feeling of revenge, however, allying itself with the sense of his immediate interests, soon obtained entire mastery, and he proceeded with all his old vigour and activity against the barons of Aquitaine and Poictou. The very day after his son's funeral he took Limoges by assault ; then castle after castle was stormed and utterly destroyed ; and, at last, Bertrand de Born, the soul of the conspiracy, the seducer of his children, fell into his hands. Never had enemy been more persevering, insidious, and dangerous — never had vassal so outraged his liege lord, or in such a variety of ways; for Bertrand, like Luke de Barrt?, was a poet as well as knight, and had cruelly satirised Henry in productions which were popular wherever the langue d'Ocl was understood. All men said he must surely die, and Henry said so himself. The troubadour was brought into his presence, to hear his sentence : the king taunted him with a boast he had been accustomed to make, namely, that he had so much wit in reserve as never to have occasion to use one half of it, and told him he was now in a plight in which the whole of his wit would not serve him. The troubadour acknowledged he had made the boast, and that not without truth and reason; " And I," said the king,—" I think thou hast lost thy wits." " Yes, Sire," replied Bertrand, mourn- fully ; " I lost them that day the valiant young king died! — then, indeed, I lost my wits, my senses, and all wisdom." At this allusion to his son the king burst into tears, and nearly swooned. • Uog. Hoved. t Rog. Hoved. ; also Diceto. t The dialect spoken in the south of France, where, instead of out (yes) they said oc : hence tlie name of the part of this district, still called I.anguedoc. The rest of France was called Langue-d'oui, or Langue-cToyl, When he came to himself his vengeance had de- parted from him. " Sir Bertrand," said he, " Sir Bertrand, thou mightest well lose thy wits because of my son, for he loved thee more than any other man upon earth; and I, for love of him, give thee thy life, thy property, thy castle."* The details of this singular scene may have been slightly over- coloured by the warm poetical imagination of the south, but that Henry pardoned his inveterate enemy is an historical fact, which shows how supe- rior he was in the quality of mercy to Beauclerk, when acting under much slighter provocation,! and which ought to be carefully preserved, in justice to his memory. If Bertrand de Born was a villain, he was a most accomplished one : he appears to have excelled all his contemporaries in insinuation, elegance, and address, in versatility of talent, and abundance of resource. J Attempts have been made to set off his patriotism against iiis treachery; and it has been hinted, that while labouring to free his native country from the yoke of the English king, he was justifiable in making use of whatever means he could. It is, perhaps, difficult to fix precise limits to what may be done in such a cause ; but though we may affect to admire the conduct of the elder Brutus, who slew his own son for the liberties of Rome, we doubt whether the sympathies of our nature w'ill not always be against the man who armed the sons of another against their father's life. Such appears to have been the sentiment of the time; and Dante, who wrote about 120 years after the event, and who merely took up the popular legend, placed Bertrand de Born in one of the worst circles of hell.§ Prince Geoffrey sought his father's pardon soon after the death of his brother Henry, and abandoned theinsurgents of Aquitaine, who tlien saw themselves opposed to a united family (for Richard was as yet tnie to his last oaths) whose unnatural divisions had hitherto proved their main strength and encou- ragement. The confederacy, no longer formid- able, was partly broken up by the victorious arms of the king, and partly dissolved of itself. A mo- mentary reconciliation took place between Henry and Eleanor, v/ho was released for a short time to be present at a solemn meeting, wherein " peace and final concord" was established between the king and his sons, and confirmed by " writing and by sacrament." II In this transaction Prince John was included, who had hitherto been too young to wield the sword against his father. The family concord lasted only a few months, when Geoffrey demanded the earldom of Anjou ; and, on receiving his father's refusal, withdrew to the French court, * Poesies des Troubadours, Collection de Eaynouard. — Millot, Hist. Litteraire des Trouliadours. + See ante, p. 417, for the death of Luke de Barr^. i We learn from Dante, who seems (o have been forcibly im- pressed with his strange character, that besides poems on other sub- jects, Sir Bertrand " treated of war, which no Italian poet had yet done.'' (Arma vero nullum Italum ndhuc poetasse invenio.) — De Vulg. Eloq. Bertrand left a son of the same name, who was also a poet, and who satirised Kini{ John, § Inferno, Canto xxviii. The passage is terrific, and one of the most characteristic in the whole poem. II Scripto et Sacramento.— Rog. Hoved. 476 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. to prepare for another war. But soon after (in August, 1186) his turbulent career was cut short at a tournament, where he was dismounted and trampled to death under the feet of the horses of the other knights engaged in the lists. Louis VII., the soft and incompetent rival of Henrjs had now been dead several years, and his son Philip II., a young and active prince, sat on the throne of France — anxious, and far more able than his father had been, to diminish the English monarch's power on the continent. He buried Geoffrey with great pomp, and then invited to his court his bro- ther Richard, the Lion-hearted, who was to hate him with a deadly hatred in after years, but who now accepted his invitation, and lived with him on the most affectionate terms, " eating at the same table, and out of the same dish by day, and sleeping in the same bed by night;"* — things which were either the common practice of princes who wished to display their affectionate regard for each other, or the common and received expression of the chroniclers to denote the extreme of royal friend- ship. King Henry well knew that this friendship betokened mischief to him, and he sent repeated messages to recall Richard, who always replied that he was coming, without hastening his depar- ture. At last he moved, but it was only to sur- prise and seize a treasure of his father's, deposited at Chinon, and then to raise the banner of revolt once more in Aquitaine. But this time his stan- dard failed to attract a dispirited people, and he was fain to accept his father's pardon. Henry, who had seen so many oaths disregarded, made him swear fealty upon this occasion on a copy of the Holy Evangelists, in the presence of a great assembly of churchmen and laymen. A.v. 1188. The misfortunes of the Christians in the Holy Land were the means of producing a brief peace between Henry and Philip, who had been waging an insignificant war with each other, and preparing for more decisive hostilities. Jeru- salem had fallen again before the Mahomedan crescent, in the September of the preceding year; the reigning pontifl" was said to have died of grief at the news; and the new pope called upon all Christian princes to rescue the tomb of Christ and the wood of the true cross, which latter, it was said, had been carried away by the victorious Saladin. No one responded to the appeal more promptly and enthusiastically than Henry, who, at once, de- clared himself willing to quit his kingdom and all his states, and proceed with an army to Asia. A well- settled peace with France was, however, an indispensable preliminary ; and Philip being also pressed by the pope to take the cross, an inter- view for the settlement of all differences was easily arranged. The two kings met in the month of January, at the usual place between Trie and Gisors, near to the old elm-tree. William, the eloquent and enthusiastic archbishop of Tyre, attended the meeting, with many bishops and • Singulis diebus in una mensa ad unum catinum manduca')ant, et in noctibus non si-parabut eos lectiis. — llojj. Iloved. priests, of whom some had witnessed the reverses and dangers of the Christians in Palestine. Roger of Hoveden, the most entertaining and judicious of the contemporary chroniclers, attributes to the archbishop's preaching the converting of the two princes, who had been such bitter enemies, into friends and allies. Henry and Philip swore to be " brothers in arms for the cause of God ;" and in sign of their voluntary engagement, each took the cross from the hands of the archbishop of Tyre, and attached it to his dress, swearing never to quit it or neglect the duties of a soldier of Christ, " either upon land or sea, in town or in the field,"* imtil his victorious return to his home. Many of the great vassals of both monarchs fol- lowed their masters' example, and took the same oaths. The crosses given to the king of France and his people were red ; those distributed to the king of England and his people Avere white. Richard, who was to connect his name inseparably with- the sub- ject of the Crusades, had neither waited for his father's example nor permission, but had taken the cross some time before. f The old elm-tree wit- nessed another solemn peace, which was about as lasting as its predecessors ; and Henry returned to England evidently with a sincere desire of keeping it on his part, and making ready for the Holy War. In the month of February, he called together a great council of the kingdom, at Gidington, in Northamptonshire, to provide ways and means, for money was much wanted, and a royal crusade was always so expensive an undertaking as to demand the consent and co-operation of all the vassals of the crown. The barons, both lay and ecclesias- tic, readily enacted that a tenth of all rents for one year, and a tenth of all the moveable pro- perty in the land, with the exception of the books of the clergy, and the arms and horses of the knights, should be levied to meet the expenses. The lords of manors who engaged to accompany the king in person were permitted to receive the assessments of their own vassals and tenants ; but those of all others were to be paid into the royal exchequer. It appears that no more than 70,000/. was raised in this manner. To make up the de- ficiency, Henry had recourse to extortion and violent measures against the Jews, whom he had hitherto treated with laudable consideration and leniency ; and from that oppressed fragment of an unhappy people he procured 60,000/., or almost as much money as he got from all the rest of his kingdom put together. Nominally, the tax was levied upon the Jews at the rate of one-fourth of their personal property. Ano- ther council of bishops, abbots, and lay barons, * Script. Uer. Franc. + Nor was this tlie lirst time the king talked of Roing to tlie Holy Land. Several years before, the Patriarch of Jerusalem offered him tha: kincdom, with the keys of the city and of the lioly sepulchre. Henry, who was not then carried away by the popular enthusiasm, referred the matter to an assembly of his bishops and barons, who, mint wisely, determined that, "for tlie good of his own soul," he would do much belter by remaining at home and taking care of his own subjects. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 477 lield at Mans, regulated the tax for Henry's con- tinental dominions; but we are not informed what amount was actually raised in them. It was esta- blished, on both sides of the Channel, that clerks (priests), knights, and serjeants-at-arms, should be exempted on taking the cross ; but that all burgesses and peasants joining the crusading army, without the express permission of their lords,* should be made to pay their tenths, even as if they had staid at home.f But the money wrung from Jew and Gentile was never spent against the Turk. " The malice of the ancient enemy of mankind," says the honest chro- nicler, "was not asleep j" J and he goes on to deplore how that infernal malice turned the oaths of Christian princes into a mockery, and relit the flames of war among Christian people on the conti- nent of Europe. The fiery Richard appears to have been the first cause of this new commotion, in which the French king soon took a part. Another confer- ence was agreed upon, and the two kings again met under the peaceful shadow of the elm ; they could not, however, agree as to terms of accommodation ; and Philip, venting his spite on the tree, swore by all the saiTits of France that no more parleys should be held there, and cut it down.§ Had causes of dissension been wanting, the ingenuity of the king of France and the jealous impatience of Richard would, in all probability, have raised imaginary ■WTongs ; but unfortunately for the fame of Henry, there ivas a real existing cause, and one singularly calculated to excite and unite those two princes against him, or, at least on Richard's side, to serve as a not unpopular pretext for hostility, while it loaded his father with dark and almost unavoidable suspi- cions. Richard, when a child, had been affianced, as already mentioned, to the infant Alix, or Adelais, of France. Henry had obtained possession of the person of the royal infant, and of part of her dowry, and had kept both. By the time the parties were of proper age for the completion of the marriage, Richard was at open war with his father ; but it is curious to remark, that at none of the numerous peaces and reconciliations was there any deep anxiety shown either by her spouse Richard or her father King Louis, or her brother Philip, about the fate of the fair Adelais, who remained sometimes ostensibly as a hostage, but, of late years, in a very ambiguous situation, at the court of Henry. A report, true or false, had got abroad that the king was enamoured of her person, and when he made an unsuccessful application to the church of Rome for a divorce from Richard's mother, Eleanor, it was believed that he had taken the step in order to espouse Richard's affianced bride. Of late, how- ever. King Philip, feeling that the reputation of his sister was committed, had repeatedly urged that Adelais should be given to Richard, and the marriage completed ; and the church of Rome had even threatened Henry with its severest censures in case of his resisting this demand. An air of + Uoger Iloved. ' Sine licentia dominorum." t Id. ? Id.— Script, Ecr. Franc. mystery involves the whole story and every part of it : how Henry evaded the demand we know not, but of this we are perfectly well informed, that he had detained the lady, — that no consequences had ensued therefrom on the part of the Pope, — and that Philip had even made peace more than once, and had vowed eternal friendship to him while he was thus detaining her. If Richard credited the worst part of the current reports (as he afterwards averred he did), he was not likely to feel anything but the strongest aversion to the marriage. Affec- tion for his affianced bride was, however, a very colourable pretext ; and as he was now haunted by a more real and serious uneasiness, — namely, by the belief that his father destined the English crown for his youngest son John, — he set this plea forward in justification of his rebellion, and co-operated heart and hand with the French king. If the stipulations and engagements entered into had been observed with anything like decency, we should be inclined to praise the wisdom of these princes in staying the ravages of war, and having such frequent recourse to conferences and con- gresses. In the month of November in this same year (a.d. 1188), another conference was held, not, however, between Trie and Gisors, but near to Bonmoulins in Normandy. Philip proposed that Adelais should be given up to Richard, and that Henry should declare that prince heir, not only to his kingdom of England, but also to all his con- tinental dominions, and cause his vassals im- mediately to swear fealty to Richard. Henry, who could not forget the miseries he had suffered in consequence of elevating his eldest son in this manner, resolutely refused the latter proposition. A violent altercation ensued, and ended in a manner which sufficiently proved that Richard was think- ing little of the first proposition or of his bride. Turning from his father, he furiously exclaimed, " This forces me to believe that which I before deemed impossible," (that is, the report concern- ing his younger brother John). He thenungirded his sword, and kneeling at the feet of King Philip, and placing his hands between his, said, — " To you. Sire, I commit the protection of myself and my hereditary rights, and to you I do homage for all my father's dominions on this side the sea." Like the rest of his brothers, he had done homage to the French crown on other occasions ; but this scene was attended with peculiar and exasperating circumstances, and the declaration of Richard was meant to imply that, by force of arms, and with the aid of Philip, he would seize, not one or two states, but everything Henry possessed from the Seine to the Pyrenees. Philip ostentatiously ac- cepted his homage, and made him a present grant of some towns and castles he had captured from his father. Henry, violently agitated, rushed from the scene, and, mounting his horse, rode away to Saumur, to prepare for the further prosecution of the interminable war.* But his iron frame now felt the inroads of disease and grief; his • Hoved. — Diceto. — Script. Rer. Franc. 478 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. activity and decision at last forsook him, and, relying on exertions making in his favour by the Pope's legate, he remained supine while Philip and Richard took several of his towns and seduced many of his knights. Even at this ex- tremity, the good people of Normandy were faith- ful to him, and, wishing to secure that duchy for his favourite son, of whose love and faith he had never doubted, he was careful to procure an oath from the seneschal of Normandy that he would deliver the fortresses of that province to John in case of his death. The church was on this occasion zealously engaged on the side of Henry, and both the French king and his son Richard were threat- ened with excommunication. Though elated by unusual success, Philip was obliged to consent to another conference for arranging a peace. The meeting took place in the month of June in the fol- lowing year (a.d. 1189), at La Ferte-Bernard, and Richard, John of Anagni, cardinal and legate, the archbishops of Canterbury, Rouen, Rheims, and Bourges, were present. Philip proposed the same conditions as at the conference of Bonmoulins seven months before ; Henry, who had been hurt in every feeling by Richard in the interval, rejected them, and proposed that Adelais should be united to his dutiful son John, — an overture that tends to shake the credibility of the existing scandal even more than does the circumstance of Henry's advanced age. Should Philip agree to this arrangement he declared his readiness to name Prince John heir to his continental dominions, — a distribution which he seems to have long contemplated. But Philip would not enter into the new plan, or abandon Richard, who was present, and joined the French king in violent abuse of his father. John of Anagni, the cardinal-legate, then threatened to put the kingdom of France under an interdict ; but these menaces, at times all-prevalent, depended much for their effect on circumstances and the character of the princes to whom they were ad- dressed. Philip had boldness enough to despise them : he even accused the legate to his face of partial and venal motives ; telling him it was easy to perceive he had already scented the pounds sterling of the English king.* Richard, who was never exemplary for command of temper, went still further : he drew his sword against the Car- dinal, and would have cut him down but for the timely interposition of some more moderate mem- bers of the party. Henry again rode away from the conference, and this time with a desponding heart. The people of Aquitaine, Poictou,and Brittany were induced to rise in mass against their now falling master ; and under the command of Richard they fell upon him on the west and south, while the French king attacked him in Anjou on the north. . He had on former occasions made head against almost equally for- midable confederacies, but the strength of frame, the eagle-glance, and the buoyancy of spirits which > Jam sterlingos regis Anglise olfecerat. Rog. Hoved.' -Matt. Tar. had then carried him through a victor, were now crippled and dimmed by sickness and sorrow. His barons continued their open desertions or secret treachery, and at last he was induced to solicit peace, with the offer of resigning himself to whatever terms Philip and Richard sliould pro- pose.* The two monarchs met on a plain between Tours and Azay-sur-Cher : it appears that Richard did not attend to witness the humiliation of his father, but expected the issue of the negotiations at a short distance. Wiiile the kings were con- versing together in the open field and on horse- back, a loud peal of thunder was heard, though the sky appeared cloudless, and the lightning fell between them, but without hurting them. They separated in great alarm, but after a brief space met again. Then a second peal of thunder more awful than the first rolled over their heads. The state of Henry's health rendered him more nervous than his young and then triumphant rival : he dropped the reins, and reeling in his saddle, would have fallen from his horse had not his at- tendants supported him. f He recovered his self-possession, but he was too ill to renew the con- ference ; and the humiliating conditions of peace, reduced to writing, were sent to his quarters for his signature. It was stipulated that Henry should pay an indemnity of twenty thousand marks to Philip, renounce all his rights of sovereignty over the town of Berry, and submit in all things to his decisions ; J that he should permit all his vassals, both English and continental, to do homage to Richard ; that all such barons as had espoused Richard's party should be considered the liege men and vassals of the son, unless they voluntarily chose to return to the father ; that he should deliver Adelais to one out of five persons named by Richard, who at the return of Philip and Richard from the crusade on which they proposed to depart imme- diately (there was no longer any talk of Henry's going), would restore her in all honour either to her brother or her affianced ; and finally, that he should give the kiss of peace to Richard, and banish from his heart all sentiments of anger and animosity against him,§ — a clause better fitted for a sermon than for a treaty. The envoys of the French king read the treaty, article by article, to Henry as he lay suffering on his bed. When they came to the article which regarded the vassals who had deserted him to join Richard, he asked for a list of their names. The list was given him, and the very first name upon it which struck his eye was that of his darling son John, of whose base treachery he had hitherto been kept happily ignorant. The broken-hearted king started up from his bed and gazed wildly around. " Is it true," he cried, " that John, the child of my heart, • Kog. Hoved. — Script. Rer. Franc. + Ros;. Hoved. i "Ex toto se posuit in voluntate regis Francise," says Roger of Hoveden. Except in one clause the name of England seems hardly to have been mentioned ; and this submission was evidently limited to the continental dominions, over which (at least in theory) the authority of the French crown was always extensive. $ Rog. Hoved,— Script Rer. Franc. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 479 — he whom I have cherished more than all the rest, and for love of whom I have drawn down on mine own head all these troubles, hath verily betrayed me ?" They told him it was even so. " Now, then," he exclaimed, falling back on his l)ed, and turning his face to the wall, " let every- thing go as it will — I have no longer care for myself or for the world !" * Shortly after he caused himself to be trans- ported to the pleasant town of Chinon ;t but those favourite scenes made no impression on his pro- found melancholy and hopelessness of heart, and in a few days he laid himself down to die. In his last moments, as his intellects wandered, he v.as heard uttering unconnected exclamations. " Oh shame !" he cried, " a conquered king ! I, a conquered king ! . . . Cursed be the day on which I was born, and cursed of God the children I leave behind me !" Some priests exhorted the disordered, raving man to retract these curses, but he would not. He was sensible, however, to the affection and unwearying attentions of his natural son Geoffrey, who had been faithful to him through life, and who received his last sigh. As soon as the breath was out of his body all the ministers, priests, bishops, and barons, that had waited so long, took a hurried departure, and his personal attendants followed the example of their betters, but not before they had stripped his dead body, and seized everything of any value in the apartment where he died. The disrespect and utter abandonment which had followed the demise of the great conqueror 102 years before, were repeated towards the corpse of his great-grandson. It was not without delay and difficulty that people were found to wrap the body in a winding-sheet, and a hearse and horses to convey it to the Abbey of Fontevraud.f While it was on its way to receive the last rites of sepulture, Richard, who had learned the news of his father's death, met the procession, and accompanied it to the church. Here, as the dead king lay stretched on the bier, his face was uncovered that his son might look upon it for the last time. Marked as it was with the awfid expression of a long agony, he gazed on it in silence, and shuddered. He then knelt and prayed before the altar, but only for " a modicum of time, or about as long as it takes to say the Lord's Prayer ;" and when the funeral was over, he quitted the church, and entered it not again until that hour when, cut off in the full strength and pride of manhood, he was carried thither a corpse to be laid at the feet of his father. § It was a popular superstition which the Normans as well as the Anglo-Saxons had derived from their common ancestors, the Scandinavians, that the body of the dead would bleed in presence of its murderer ; and more than one chronicler of the • Script. Uer. Franc. " Iterum se locto reddens, et faciem suam ad parietem vertens," &c. T Cliinon, beautifully situated on the river Loire, vas.the French Windsor of our Norman kings, and Fontevruud, at the distance of about seven miles (to the south), their favourite place of burial. t Script. Rer. Franc— Girald.—Ang. Sac— Rog. Hoved. ■ J Script. Rer. Franc. time avers that this miracle was seen at the church of Fontevraud, where (say they), from the moment that Richard entered until that in which he de- parted, the king never ceased to bleed at both nostrils, — " the very corse, as it were abhorring and accusing him for his unnatural behaviour."* The story at least shows in what light the con- duct of Henry's sons was regarded by their con- temporaries. On the day of Henry's death (July 6th, 1189) he was in the fifty-seventh year of his age, and had reigned over England thirty- four years, seven lunar months, and five days, counting from the day of his coronation, f This long reign had been highly beneficial to the country : with a few brief exceptions, peace had been main- tained in the interior, and there is good evidence to show that the condition of the people generally had been elevated and improved. Tlie king's personal character lias been differently represented, some dwelling only on its bright qualities, and others laying all their emphasis on his vices, which, in truth, were neither few in number nor moderate in their nature, although, for the most part, com- mon attributes to the princes of those ages, few of whom had his redeeming virtues and splendid abili- ties. To say with Hume that his character, in pri- vate as well as in public life, was almost without a blemish, is a manifest defying of the testimony and authority of contemporary history ; but yet, when every fair deduction is made, he will remain indis- putably an illustrious prince, and a man possessed of many endearing qualities. We will briefly state his vices as pourtraj-ed by one party, and then give his picture, both physical and moral, as painted by an admiring friend. He was exceedingly ambitious of dominion, and accustomed to repeat, in hia prosperity, that the whole world was but portion enough for one great man. His lust was boundless, and he set no limits to the gratification of that passion. His dis- simulation, duplicity, and disregard for truth, when he had any political purpose to serve, were all extreme : no trust could be placed in his pro- mises; he was wont to say himself, that it was better to repent of words broken than of deeds done ; and Cardinal Vivian, who had frequent in- tercourse with him, said of him, that he had never met his equal in lying. He was jealous of every species of authority, — anxious to concentrate all power within his own person, — and to depress and degrade the nobles of the land. [This last accusa- tion arose inevitably out of his successful efibrts to curb the baronial power.] Though a kind and generous master, and a warm and steady friend, he was a most vindictive enemy [a fact certainly not borne out by the history of his life]. He could not bear contradiction. He was irascible beyond measure [this is admitted by his warmest ad- mirers], and was not to be approached without danger in his moments of passion. When under one • Ijcnedict. Abbas. — Script. Rer.. Franc— Rog. Hoved.— Speed, Chron. t R. Diceto.— Rog. Hoved. — Sir Harris Nicolas, Clirouology cf History. 480 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. of his paroxysms, he was more like a wild beast than a man; his eyes were blood-shot, his face like fire, his tongue abusive and blasphemous, his hands most mischievous, striking and tearing whatever came in his way. On one occasion he flew at a page to tear out his eyes, and the boy did not escape without some ugly scratches.* Let us now turn to the friendly picture of Peter of Blois, — as curious, as elaborate, and as charac- teristic a portrait as ever was painted of a king. It occurs in a letter addressed to the Archbishop of Palermo, and written in the latter part of Henry's reign : — " You are aware," says the minute Peter, " that his complexion and hair inclined to red ; but the approach of old age hath somewhat altered this, and the hair is turning grey. He is of middle size, such that among short men he seems tall, and even among tall ones, not the least in stature. His head is spherical, as if it were the seat of great wisdom and the special sanctuary of deep schemes. In size it is such as to correspond well with the neck and whole body. His eyes are round, and, while he is calm, dove-like and quiet ; but when he is angry, they flash fire, and are like lightning. His hair is not grown scant, but he keeps it well cut. His face is lion-like, and almost square. His nose projects in a degree proportionate to the symmetry of his whole body. His feet are arched ; his shins like a horse's ; his broad chest and brawny arms proclaim him to be strong, active, and bold. In one of his toes, however, part of the nail grows into the flesh, and increases enormously to the injury of the whole foot. His hands, by their coarseness, show the man's carelessness; he wholly neglects all attention to them, and never puts a glove on, except he is hawking. H e every day attends mass, councils, and other public business, and stands on his feet from morning till night. Though his shins are terribly wounded and discoloured by constant kicks from horses, he never sits down except on horseback, or when he is eating. In one day, if need requires, he will perform four or five regular days' journeys, and by these rapid and unexpected movements often defeats his enemies' plans. He uses straight boots, a plain hat, and a tight dress. He is very fond of field-sports ; and if he is not fighting, amuses himself with hawking and hunt- ing. He would have grown enormously fat if he did not tame this tendency to belly by fasting and exercise. In mounting a horse and riding, he pre- serves all the lightness of youth, and tires out the strongest men by his excursions almost every day ; for he does not, like other kings, lie idle in his palace, but goes through his provinces examining into every one's conduct, and particularly that of the persons whom he has appointed judges of others. No one is shrewder in council, readier in speaking, more self-possessed in danger, more care- ful in prosperity, more firm in adversity. If he • Epist. St. Thorn— Girald—Camb.— Script. Rer. Franc— Ra<Uil- phii.s Niger (apml Wilkins, Leg. S.ix.) adds still darker tiuts; but this ■writer had been punished aud banished by Henry. once forms an attachment to a man, he seldom gives him up; if he has once taken a real aversion to a person, he seldom admits him afterwards to any familiarity. He has for ever in his hands bows, swords, hunting-nets, and arrows, except he is at council or at his books ; for as often as he can get breathing-time from his cares and anxieties, he occupies himself with private reading, or, sur- rounded by a knot of clergymen, endeavours to solve some hard question. Your king knows literature well, but ours is much more deeply versed in it. I have had opportunity of measuring the attainments of each in literature; for you know the king of Sicily was my pupil for two years. He had learnt the rudiments of literature and versification ; and, by my industry and anxiety, reached afterwards to fuller knowledge. As soon, however, as I left Sicily, he threw away his books, and gave himself up to the usual idleness of pa- laces. But in the case of the king of England, the constant conversation of learned men, and the discussion of questions, make his court a daily school. No one can be more dignified in speak- ing, more cautious at table, more moderate in drinking, more splendid in gifts, more generous in alms. He is pacific in heart, victorious in war, but glorious in peace, which he desires for his people as the most precious of earthly gifts. It is with a view to this, that he receives, collects, and dispenses such an immensity of money. He is equally skilful and liberal in erecting walls, towers, fortifications, moats, and places of inclosure for fish and birds. His father was a very powerful and noble count, and did much to extend his terri- tory ; but he has gone far beyond his father, and has added the dukedoms of Normandy, of Aqui- taine, and Brittany, the kingdoms of England, Scot- land, Ireland, and Wales, so as to increase, beyond all comparison, the titles of his father's splendour. No one is more gentle to the distressed, more affable to the poor, more overbearing to the proud. It has always, indeed, been his study, by certain carriage of himself like a deity, to put down the insolent, to encourage the oppressed, and to repress the swellings of pride by continual and deadly persecution." * Besides his five legitimate sons, of whom three preceded him to the grave, Henry had three daugh- ters by his wife Eleanor. Matilda, the eldest, was married to Henry, duke of Saxony, Bavaria, West- phalia, &c. ; and from her is descended the present royal family of Great Britain : Eleanor, the second daughter, was married to Alfonso the Good, king of Castile ; and Joan, the youngest, was united to William II., king of Sicily, a prince of the Norman line of Guiscard. Two of his natural children have obtained the general notice of history on account of the celebrity of their mother, and of their own eminent qvialities. The first, who was bom while Stephen was yet on the throne of England, was William, surnamed " Longsword," who married the heiress * We avail oirselves of the translation of this highly curious liassage fjivon in a late number of the Quarterly Review. 1 Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 481 of the Earl of Salisbury, and succeeded to the high titles and immense estates of that baron : the second was the still better known Geoffrey, who was born about the time when Henry became king, and who was made bishop of Lincoln at a very early age. He had much of Henry's spirit and ability, and, if an indifferent prelate, he was a bold and successful warrior in his nonage, when (during the first insurrection promoted by his father's legitimate sons) he gained in the north some signal advantages for the king, to whom he and his brother William liongsword were ever faithful and affectionate. Geoffrey was subse- quently made Chancellor, when, like Becket in the same capacity, he constantly accompanied the king. In liis dying moments, Henry expressed a hope or a wish that he might be made Archbishop of York, a promotion which, as we shall find, he afterwards obtained. The history of their mother, the ' Fair Rosamond,' has been enveloped in romantic traditions which have scarcely any foundation in trutli, but which have taken so firm a hold on die p> puiar mind, and have been identified with so mucli poetry, that it is neither an easy nor a pleasant task to dissipate the fanciful illusion, and unpeople the " bower" in the sylvan shades of Woodstock. Rosamond de Clifford was the daughter of a baron of Hereford- shire, the beautiful site of whose antique castle, in the valley of the W\e, is pointed out to the tra- veller between the town of the Welsh Hav and the city of Hereford, at a point where the most ro- mantic of rivers, after foaming through its rocky, narrow bed in Wales, sweeps freely and tranquilly through an open English valley of surpassing love- liness. Henry became enamoured of her in his youth, before he w as king, and the connexion con- tinued for many years ; but long before his death, and even long before his quarrel with his wife and legitimate sons (with which, it appears, she had nothing to do), Rosamond retired, to lead a re- ligious and penitent life, into the " little nunnery'* of Godestow, in the " rich meadows of Evenlod, near unto Oxford." As Henry still preserved gentle and generous feel- ings towards the object of his youthful and ardent passion, he made many donations to the " little imnnery," on her account; and when she died (some time, at least, before the first rebellion) the nuns, in gratitude to one who had been both di- rectly and indirectly their benefactress, buried her in their choir, hung a silken pall over her tomb, and kept tapers constantly burning around it. Thete few lines, v.e believe, comprise all that is really known of the Fair Rosamond. The legend, so familiar to the childhood of all of us, was of later and gradual growth, not being the product of one imagination. The chronicler Brompton, who wrote in the time of Edward III., or more than a century and a half after the event, gave the first description we possess of the secret bower of Rosa- mond. He says, that in order that she might not Ruins ok the Akciekt Royal Mahor-house of Woodstock, us they appeared before their removal in 17 H. 2 E 482 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III be " easily taken unawares by the queen" (ne forsan aregina/aaVe deprehenderetur) Henry con- structed, near " Wodestoke," a bower for this " most sightly maiden" (puellae spectatissimse), of wonderful contrivance, and not unlike the Deeda- lean labyrinth i but he speaks only of a device against surprise, and intimates, in clear terms, that Rosamond died a natural death. The clue of silk, and the poison-bowl forced on her fair and gentle rival by the jealous and revengeful Eleanor, were additions of a still more modern date. The adventures of the amiable frail one's un- oflFending bones are better authenticated. A rigid bishop caused them to be cast out of the church, and interred in the common cemetery, observing to the nuns, that the tomb of a harlot was no fit ob- ject for a choir of virgins to contemplate, and that religion made no distinction between the raistrcse of a king and the mistress of any other man. But gratitude rebelled against this salutary doctrine, and the virgin sisterhood of Godestow gathered up the remains, perfumed the dry bones, laid thera again in their church, under a fair, large grave- stone, and set up a cross hard by, with an in- scription, imploring requiem or rest for Rosa- mond. Richard I. — Surnamed Cceur de Lion. Great Seal op Richakd I. A. D. 1189. As soon as his father was buried, Richard laid hands on Stephen of Tours, the sene- schal of Anjou and treasurer to Henry II. This unfortunate officer was loaded with chains, and thrown into a dungeon, from which he was not re- leased until he delivered up, not only the funds of the late king, but his own money aLo, to the last penny he possessed.* Letters were sent over to England for the immediate enlargement of th'e queen dowager ; and, on quitting her prison, Eleanor was invested, for a short time, with the office of regent, and especially charged to have an eye on the monies in England. Her misfortunes seem for awhile to have had a beneficial eftect on her imperious character ; for, during her brief au- thority, she relieved the people by many works of mercy ; releasing those who were arbitrarily detained in prison, pardoning offences against the crown, moderating the severity of the forest-laws, and reversing several attainders. She also distributed bountiful alms to the poor, that they might pray • Hoved. for the soul of the husband whom she, more than any one, had contrived to send with sorrow to the grave. She hastened to Winchester, where the royal treasure was deposited, and having made sure of that city, summoned thither the barons and prelates of the realm, that they might recognise and receive their new sovereign. The state of^ affairs, however, detained Richard on the conti- nent for nearly two months. At last, when he had made the necessary arrangements, he crossed the channel, accompanied by his brother John, and landed at Portsmouth, whence he repaired to Win- chester. Henry had left in his treasury there a large sum in gold and silver, besides plate, jewels, and precious stones. All these Richard caused to be weighed and examined in his presence, and had an inventory of them drawn up. His soul was occupied by an enterprise that was likely to absorb all the money he could possibly procure ; and, to find means for a most lavish expenditure, he re- sorted to the cares and expedients that more pro- perly characterize avarice. It was this enterprise, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 483 PoETBJUT OF KicHABD I— From the Tomb at Fontcvraud. however, that gave him the benefit of an undis- puted succession to all his father's dominions ; for John, expecting to be left in full authority by the immediate departure of his brother for Palestine, and hoping that he would never return alive from the perils of the Holy War, submitted to what he considered would be a very brief arrangement, and made no effort to dispute Richard's right. But for these circumstances it is very clear, from the character of the crafty and ambitious John, that the old story of a disputed succession would have been repeated, and that that prince would have raised his banner of war either in England or in some one of the continental states. As it was, it was wiser for him to wait awhile for the chance of getting peaceful possession of the whole, than to risk life or failure for a part. The confidence re- posed in him may excite some surprise, and the more, perhaps, because one of Richard's first acts as a sovereign was to discard and persecute all those who had plotted against his father, not ex- cepting even his own most familiar friends who had plotted for his own advantage ; thus reading a good lesson to those who embark their fortunes in the family quarrels of princes. On the 3rd of September the coronation festival was held at Westminster with unusual magnificence ; the abbots, and bishops, and most of the lay barons attending on the occasion. The crown was in- trusted to the Earl of Albemarle, who carried it before Richard, over whose head was a rich canopy of silk stretched on four lances, each of which was held by a great baron. Two prelates — the bishops of Durham and Bath — ^walked on either side the king, whose path, up to the high altar, was spread with cloth of the Tyrian die. On the steps of the altar he was received by Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, who administered to him the usual oath: — 1. That all the days of his life he would bear peace, honour, and reverence to God and holy church, and the ordinances thereof 2. That he would exercise right, justice, and law, on the people unto him committed. 3. That he would abrogate wicked laws and perverse customs, if any such should be brought into his kingdom ; and would enact good laws, and the same in good faith keep without mental reservation. The king then cast off liis upper garment, put sandals or buskins of gold on his feet, and was anointed from the am- pulla of holy oil on the head, breast, and shoul- ders : he then received the cap, tunic, dalmatica, sword, spurs, and mantle, each being presented by the proper officer in due order of succession. The unction over, and the king thus royally arrayed, he was led up to the altar, where the archbishop ad- jured him, in the name of Almighty God, not to assume the royal dignity unless he fully proposed to keep the oaths he had sworn. Richard repeated his solemn promises, and with his own hands taking the ponderous crown from off the altar, " in signification that he held it oidy from God," he delivered it to the archbishop, who instantly put it on his head, and so completed all the cere- monies of coronation.* " Which act," says old Speed, with a cold-bloodedness less excusable than » Iloveden and ])iccto, who were both present. At the coronation feast, whicli immediately followed, the citizens of London were the king's butlers, and the citizens of Winchester served up the meats. 484 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. his Buperstition, " was accidentally hanselled and auspicated by the blood of many Jews (though utterly against the king's will), who, in a tumult raised by the multitude, were furiously murdered, w^hich, though it were afterwards punished by the laws, might seem a presage, that this lion-hearted king should be a special destroyer of the enemies of our Saviour." The modern historian cannot permit these atrocities to pass off so easily. We have mentioned the Jews under the preceding reign, and our cursory allusion to them has shown tliat they were already in possession of great wealth in England, where they were persecuted by the government, though most useful, and, indeed, essential to it, and hated by the whole nation, though nearly all the comforts, and, without excep- tion, all the ornaments and luxuries of civilized life, brought from foreign markets, were intro- duced by tlieir commercial enterprise. Their wealth seems to have had as much to do in ren- dering them odious as the religious faith to which they heroically adhered, and the advance they had made in the rate of interest on their loans to men who were about departing on the dangerous expeditions to the Holy Land — though the ne- cessary consequence of the great and sudden demand for money, and of the augmented risk incurred by the lenders — had recently had the effect of exasperating the minds of many of the noble but needy crusaders, and had increased that rancour against them which was always a prevalent feeling among the superstitious and ignorant popu- lace — if the populace deserve these distinguishing epithets when ignorance and superstition were so prevalent among all classes. At the accession of Phihp to the throne of France, all the Jews liad been banished that kingdom, their property con- fiscated, the obligations of their numerous debtors annulled ; and though Henry 11. had declined taking this iniquitous course, it was expected by many that Richard, on coming to the throne of England, would follow the example of liis friend Philip. The Jews probably expected something of the sort : they assembled in London from all parts of the kingdom, " meaning to honour the coronation with their presence, and to present to the king some honovirable gift, whereby they might declare them- selves glad for his advancement, and procure his friendship towards themselves, for the confirming of their privileges and liberties, according to the grants and charters made to them by the former king."* On the day before the coronation, Richard being " of a zealous mind to Christ's religion, abhorring theh* nation, and doubting some sorcery by them to be practised, issued a proclamation forbidding Jews and icomen to be present at Westminster, either within the church when he should receive the crown, or within the hall whilst he was at dinner."t A few, however, persevering in a custom sanctioned by remote antiquity among all Oriental people, ventured, on this day of genrral grace and joy, to lay their offerings at the • noViusiied. + la. king's feet. Their humble suit was heard, — tlieir I'ich presents were accepted, "gladly enough j" but a Christian raised an outcry, and struck a Jew that was trying to enter the gate with the rest of the crowd. The com tiers and king's servants, catching the contagion of the quarrel, then fell on the wealthy Jews who had obtained admittance, and drove them out of the hall. A report spread among the multitude gathered outside the palace that the king had commanded the destruction of the unbelievers, and therefore, following up an example already set them by their supeiiors, the people cruelly beat the Jews and drove them with " staves, bats, and stones, to their houses and lodgings." This violence being left unchecked, and the rumour of the king's intention still spread- ing, fresh crowds of fanatic rioters collected, and after barbarously murdering every Jew they found in the streets, they assaulted the houses they occupied and in which they had barricaded them- selves. As many of these houses were strongly built, they set fire to them, and burned men, wo- men, and children, with everything they contained. In some cases they forced their v/ay into the apart- ments, and hurled their victims, not excepting even the aged, the sick, and bed-ridden, out of the windows into fires which they had kindled below. The king, alarmed at length by the riot, sent Ilanulf de Glanville, the Lord Justiciary, and other officers to appease it; but the authority of these high functionaries was despised, their own lives ; were threatened, and in the end they were obliged J to fly back to Westminster Hall, where the banquet] still continued. When night set in, the " rude] sort " were lighted in their horrid work of plunder j and murder by the flames that rose from the Jewish ' houses, and that, at one time, threatened a general conflagration of the town. The magazines and shops of the Jews were plundered and ransacked ; the defenceless wretches who attempted to escape from their forced, or burning dwellings, " were received upon the points of spears, bills, swords, j and gleaves of their adversaries, that watched for them very diligently." These atrocities continued from about the hour of noon on one day till two o'clock in the afternoon of the next, when the in- furiated populace seem to have ceased plundering and butchering out of sheer weariness. One or two days after, Richard hanged three men, not because they had robbed and murdered the Jews, but because (at least so it was declared in the public sentence) they had burned the houses of Christians, some of which were indeed unintentionally consumed by the spreading of the flames. He then issued a proclamation in which, after stating that he took the Jews under his own immediate protection, he commanded that no man should personally harm them or rob them of their goods and chattels ; and these were the oidy judicial measures that followed the terrific outrage. * All that the new king could think of at this moment was how he should go to Palestine Avitli a splendid army, and leave the • Hovcd. — Diceto. — Newbr, — IIcmin''fol"d. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 485 care of his kingdom and of all his subjects to others. To raise money he had recourse to expedients similar to those v/hich ruuied Stephen and the nation under him. He alienated the demesne lands, publicly selling, by a sort of auction, royal castles, fortresses, and towns, — and, together with estates that were his own, not a few that were the property of other men. When some friends ven- tured to remonstrate, he swore he would sell Lon- don itself if he could only find a purchaser for it.* Thus most of those royal lands which his father with so much prudence and address had recovered out of powerful private hands, and re-annexed to the crown, were again detached from it. In the same way places of trust and honour, — the highest offices in the Idngdom, — were publicly sold to the highest bidder. " Richard's presence chamber," says a recent writer, " was a market overt, in which all that the king could bestow, — all that could be derived from the bounty of the crown or imparted by the royal prerogative, — was disposed of to the best chapman. Hugh Pudsey, the Bishop of Durham, purchased the earldom of Northumberland, together with the lordship of Sadburgh. For the chief justiciarship he paid, at the same time, the sum of 1000 marks. In the bargain was included a dispensation to the bishop, — or at least such dispensation as the king could grant, — from his vow or promise of joining in the crusade. "t There are circumstances attend- ing the sale of the justiciarship which throw at least an odious suspicion on the king. At the period when Richard succeeded to the throne, the celebrated Ranulf de Glanville filled the high office of " rector regni," or regent of the kingdom, and that of " procurator regni," or justiciary ; and under these designations he is enumerated amongst the great barons who figured at the coronation. There was not a better or wiser man among the ministers of the crown, nor was there any man more cherished by the late king, whose obligations to him were immense, for Glanville had served him with wonderful success as well on the field of battle as in the council chamber and the infant courts of law, and he it was that had taken prisoner the Scottish king near Alnwick Castle. In every sense the crown, as w-ell as the nation, was deeply indebted to this extraordinary and ex- cellent man. According to one contemporary authority he was at the time sinking imder bodily infirmity, and being disgusted by the impolicy of the young monarch, he l^ecame anxious to free himself from the burden of offices which he could no longer discharge to his satisfaction and the benefit of the country. By this single account, therefore, it appears that Glanville resigned his office of his own free will, and departed as a crusader to the Holy Land, — that his strong intellect became enfeebled by anxiety and vexation, — that he died shortly after, leaving only female issue, and that • Newb. t Introduction to Rotuli Curiao Regis (piiblisliod by tlio Record Commission), by Sir Francis Valyvave. not an individual remained to continue his honoured nam.e. Several other authorities, who were also contemporaries, inform us, however, that Glanville was forcibly and uidely deprived of the justi- ciarship by the rapacious king, who at the same time removed the sheriffs and their officers through- out the kingdom, exacting from each the ransom for his release from imprisonment to the very last fartliing; and that Glanville himself, in spite of liis reproachful gTcy head and long services, was cast into prison, and detained there until he sub- mitted to pay a fine of three thousand pounds. "The latter account," says Palgrave, "is not destitute of plausibility. Coeur de Lion's avarice w-as equalled only by his extravagance ; and, by creating a vacancy in this or any other office, he obtained the means of raising money by its sale."* Richard hastily filled all the vacant bishoprics and abbacies, exacting a heavy fee from each prelate and abbot he appointed. In consideration of twenty thousand marks received from the Scot- tish king, he granted to him a release from all the obligations which had been extorted from him and from his subjects during his captivity, and gave back to him all the charters and documents of his servitude, with this proviso, that he should never- theless duly and fully perform all the services which his brother Malcolm had performed, or ought of right to have performed, to Richard's predecessors, t For the sum of three thousand marks he granted his peace to his half-brother Geoffrey, who had been elected Archbishop of York, according to the wish expressed by his father Henry on his death-bed; and other sums of money were obtained by means much less justi- fiable. It was now necessary to nominate a regency. At this step Prince John saw his hopes disap- pointed; but he remained perfectly quiet, being anxious, no doubt, that nothing should occur to prevent or delay his formidable brother's departure. A great council was held at the monastery of Pip- well, in Northamptonshire. Here the king formally announced the appointment of Hugh Pudsey, the Bishop of Durham, to be Rector Regni and Pro- curator Regni ; but he included with him in the commission of justiciarship William de Mande- ville. Earl of Albemarle. This great earl, however, quitted England soon after, leaving the bishop in the full possession of the high office ; but he did not retain it long, for his authority was first of all weakened and subdivided by Richard before he began his journey, and finally during the king's absence, but while he was yet in Normandy, wrenched from him altogether by the much abler hands of Longchamp, Bishop of Ely and Chan- cellor of England. In part of his bargain with tlie king, poor Pudsey had paid a deal of money for nothing ; but Richard seldom scrupled to break his contracts, or revoke and annul the grants which he • Introduction to Rotuli Cuiiaj Re^-is. f Allen. Vindic. Anc. Ind. Jj'cot. — Foedera, — Bonedic'^ Abb. 486 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IIIJ had made. To satisfy his brother John he, gave him, besides the earldom of Moreton or Moretain, in Normandy, the earldoms of Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, Gloucester, Nottingham, Derby, and Lancaster, in England, forming together not less than a third part of the whole kingdom. To gratify his mother he added to the estates she already possessed all the lands that had been en- joyed by Matilda, the Saxon wife of Henry L, or by Alice, the French widow of the same monarch. She was also to be consulted in sundry matters of government; and at a subsequent period, during Richard's confinement in Germany, Eleanor exer- cised considerable authority with the consent of the king, though whatever power in the state his brother John acquired was usurped and against his will. Richard had proceeded with a most arbitrary haste ; but Philip of France being ready before him, and doubting he might delay, sent messengers to remind him that the time of departure for the Holy Land was unchangeably fixed at the coming festival of Easter. At the arrival of these messengers Richard, with a vast number of the earls, barons, and knights, who had taken the cross with him, swore he would be ready by the time appointed, and Philip's envoys took a like oath on behalf of themselves. The form of these oaths was some- what unusual, the Frenchmen swearing by the soul of the King of France, the Englishmen by the soul of the King of England. By this time Richard had got all the money he could on this side of the Channel, and towards the end of the year, and a little more than three months after his coronation, he left his fair kingdom to its fate, and crossed over to his continental dominions, to see what money he could raise and extort there. A.D. 1 190. In the month of February following Richard held a great council in Normandy, which was attended by the Queen Dowager, by his brother John, and by various bishops, who are stated to have crossed the Channel by the king's command. At this meeting there was an abundant pledging of oaths which were but indiiferently kept, and many arrangements for the government of the states on both sides the sea were made, most of which were defeated by ambition and intrigue in the sequel. Soon after the two kings made a compact of alliance and fraternity of arms, swearing that each would defend the life and honour of the other, — that neither would desert the other in his danger, — that the king of France would cherish and pro- tect the rights of the king of England, even as he would protect his own city of Paris, and that the king of England would do the like by his majesty of France, even as he would protect his own city — of Rouen.* Owing to the death of Philip's young queen their departure was postponed from the feast of Easter till Midsummer. At last they met in the plains of Vezelai, each accompanied by a gallant and a numerous army, for their forces, when united, are • Hoved, said to have amounted to one hundred thousandj men. They marched in company from Vezelai toj Lyons, and the people, though much distressed byj the passage of such a host, confidently predictedi that the Paynim could never withstand them, andl that the city of the Ijord, with the whole of Pales-| tine, would be recovered by their swords and lances. At Lyons the two kings separated, with the mutual^ understanding that they should meet again in the - port of Messina, in Sicily. Philip, with his forces, took the nearest road to Genoa, for he had no fleet of his own, and that flourishing commercial re- public had agreed with him for the furnishing of transports and some ships of war. Although it appears that the two kings went on, thus far, amicably together, great inconveniences to the cru-; saders as well as to the people among whom they ; travelled would result from their keeping one line of march : but it Avas not this consideration, as assumed by some old historians, but the necessity Philip was under of contracting for a Genoese fleet, that caused the two armies to part company. From the time of his expedition to Ireland, Henry II. had paid great attention to maritime affairs, and an English royal navy had gradually grown up. We do not possess much information on this interesting subject, but we learn from the chroniclers that he had some vessels which would be considered, even now, of a large size, and that one of the " chiefest and newest" of his ships was capable of carrying 400 persons. Some time before his death he began to build vessels expressly for the voyage to Palestine ; and when his son succeeded, he found these prepa- rations so far advanced, that he was soon able to launch or equip fifty galleys of three banks of oars, and many other armed galleys inferior in size to them, but superior to those generally in use at the period. He had also selected transports from the shipping of all his ports ; and perhaps there is not much danger in assuming, that in size and strength of ships, this was the most formidable naval arma- ment that had as yet appeared in modern Europe.* Having thus a fleet of his own, Richard was not dependent, like Philip, on arrangements with the maritime Italians, and, instead of crossing the Alps, he kept his course by the beautiful valley of the Rhone towards Marseilles — a free trading city, belonging neither to the English nor the French king,t where he had ordered that his ships shovdd meet him, to convey him and his army thence across the Mediterranean to Sicily, and then to Palestine. When Richard reached the coast, he found his fleet had not arrived. After passing eight impa- tient days at Marseilles, he hired twenty galleys and ten great busses or barks there, and proceeded coastwise with some of his forces to Genoa, where he again met the French king. His English ships, for which he left orders at Marseilles to follow him • Snutlipv, Nav. Hist. t Marseilles was not even nominally under Pliilip, but acknow- ledged the suzerainty of the King of Arragon. The same appears to have been the case with all the French ports oa the Mediterranean, from the Pyrenees to the maritime Alps. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 106G— 1216. 487 to Sicily, had met with some strange adventures, even hefore reaching the straits of Gibraltar and entering the Mediterranean. In his absence, dis- cipline was at a low ebb among the forces em- barked, in spite of the severe, and, in some respects, singular scale of punishment he had drav.n up for the preservation of order. He had enacted : — I . That if any man killed another, he should suffer immediate death ; if the crime were committed at eca, the murderer was to be lashed to the dead body of his victim, and so thrown overboard ; if in port, or on shore, the murderer was to be bound to the corpse and buried alive with it. 2. That if any man drew a knife against another, or struck another, so as to draw blood, he should lose his hand, and that every gentler blow, causing no bloodshed, should be punished by ducking the offender three several times over head and ears. 3. That cursing and swearing and abusive language should be punished by a fine of an ounce of silver for each offence. 4. Any man convicted of theft or " pickerie" was to have his head shaved, and hot pitch poured upon his bare pate, and over the pitch the feathers of some pillow or cushion were to be shaken, as a mark whereljy he might be known as a thief. This appears to be the earliest mention of the punish- ment called, in modern times, '• tarring and feather- ing." But this process did not finish the penalty incurred by theft, for the offender was to be turned ashore on the first land the ship might reach, and there abandoned to his fiite, without any hope of returning to his comrades.* " These," says Ho- linshed, " were the statutes which this famous prince did enact, at the first, for his navy ; which, since that time, have been very much enlarged." Two prelates, Gerard, archbishop of Aix, and Ber- nard, bishop of Bayeux, and three knights, Robert de Saville, Richard de Camville, and William de Fortz, were intrusted with the command of the fleet, with the title of*' constables ;" and all men were ordered to be obedient unto them as deputies and lieutenants of the king. The ships sailed from Dartmouth with a gallant display of banners and painted shields; but in crossing the Bay of Biscay they encovuitered a storm which scattered them in all directions. One of them which belonged to London suffered more than the rest, and was well nigh foundering ; but, according to the superstitious chroniclers, there were a hundred pious men on board, who cried aloud to St. Thomas of Canterbury ; and Becket not only came himself, with crozier and pall, but also brought with him Edmund, the Saxon king, saint, and martyr, and St. Nicholas, the protector of distressed seamen, and told the crew that God and our lady had instructed him and his beatified com- panions to watch King Richard's fleet, and see it safe.t This same ship, however, or another be- longing to the port of London, did not go far on her voyage ; after beating ofl' the coast of Spain • Iloved, — Rymer. t Kobert de JJrunne. — Hearne's Peter Lringtoft. Old Robert tells the story iu rhymes, some of which are sufliciently impressive. and Portugal, and doubling Cape St. Vincent, she arrived at Sylves in a deplorable state. The inha- bitants of that town, who were menaced with a siege by the African Mahomedans, easily per- suaded the Englishmen to let their vessel be broken up to form barricades with its timber, and to assist themselves in defending the town against the Moors, who were as great infidels as any they would meet in Palestine. The townspeople, Iiow- ever, promised them a liberal reward, together with a vessel as large as that they sacrificed, with which they might continue their voyage when the Moors should be defeated. Nine others of the scattered ships put into the Tagus, where the crews, or the crusaders on board, were in like manner entreated to join the Portuguese in a war against the Maho- medans. The King of Portugal was at Santarem, expecting an immediate attack from the Moors. Five hundred of the English crusaders landed from the ships, and, marching rapidly to his assistance, compelled the enemy to retreat. The king then marched down to Lisbon, where he found more crusaders than he wished for, as sixty-three of Richard's ships had by this time found their way into the Tagus, and landed their passengers in his capital. Although two of the constables, De Saville and De Camville, were with this portion of the fleet, they could not " so govern their people, but that some naughty fellows amongst them fell to breaking and robbing of orchards, and some also, on entering into the city, behaved themselves very disorderly."* The king, mindful of his recent obligations, would resort to none but courteous measures ; and, for the time, these, with the ex- ertions of the two constables, seemed to suffice. In three days, however, fresh riots broke out : the people of Lisbon took up arms for the defence of their wives and their property, and, as almost in- variably happened, whenever these holy warriors staid any time at a foreign town, a considerable quantity of Christian blood was shed. The king then ordered the gates of Lisbon to be shut, and committed all the crusaders found within the walls to prison. The English retaliated by making prisoners outside the walls. Sancho, the reigning king, was moderate and prudent, and he readily consented to a friendly accommodation. The pri- soners were released on both sides ; the English engaged to maintain peace and friendship with the king ; and the Portuguese, glad to be rid of such visitors, promised to aid and succour all future pilgrims bound for the Holy War that might put into their ports. f The crusaders then sailed from Lisbon. At the mouth of the Tagus they were joined by thirty-three vessels; and, with a fleet now amounting to 106 sail, they steered for the Straits of Gibraltar. Passing those straits, and hugging the coasts of Spain and southern France, they reached, in less than four weeks from the * Holinshed. t The accounts of tliese transactions given by tlie old Portuguese liistorians differ in a few particulars. Dr. Southey remarks that, to tlie honour of the Portu;,'uese, they relate the story iu the manner the least discreditable to the English. 488 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. time they had quitted Lisbon, the prosperous city of Marseilles, Avhere they found their impatient king was gone. According to his orders, the fleet took on board the mass of the army which he had left behind at that port, and made sail again with all expedition for Messina, which city it reached several days before either the Fi'ench or English king.* Richard, in the mean while, had had several adventures of his own. After coasting the Riviera of Genoa and a part of Tuscany, he entered the river Arno, and visited the splendid city of Pisa. Continuing his voyage along the coast from the mouth of the Amo, he came to the desolate spot where the Tiber pours his brown waters into the sea. His galley required some repairs, and he brought her to anchor in the famous river where the galleys of the Caesars had once lain. He was there within a few miles of Rome ; but though a liberal curiosity, and devotion, would alike have suggested a pilgrimage to the eternal city, he did not go thither. The cardinal bishop of Ostia, a town close to the mouth of the Tiber, went to wel- come him to the patrimony of St. Peter; but, availing himself of the opportunity, he pressed the irascible Richard for the payment of certain fees due to the see of Rome. Instead of money, Richard gave this prince of the church abuse, reproaching the papal court with simony, rapacity, and gross corruption ; and for this reason it is said he re- fused to visit Rome.t When his galley was repaired, he made his way to Naples, where he again landed, and whence he determined to continue his journey to the straits of Messina by land — his active body and restless mind being, no doubt, alike wearied with the close confinement of ship- board, and the slow progress made in the dead calms of summer in the Mediterranean. While at Naples, he visited the sanctuary of St. Januarius, the protector of that city, and told his orisons in a crypt, where the bodies of the dead stood up in niches, dry, and shrivelled, but arrayed in their usual dresses, and otherwise looking as if they were still alive. The beauties of Naples or some other inducements made him loiter several days in that city ; but he then mounted his horse, and taking the beautiful pass of the Apennines, which leads by Nocera, the Benedictine abbey of La Cava, and Vietri, he went to Salerno, then celebrated for its School of Medicine, the foundation of which had been laid by the Arabs as early as the eighth century, and which had been carried to its height of fame (by orientals, or by persons who had tra- velled and studied in the East) under the reign and by the liberal patronage of Robert Guiscard, the Norman conqueror of the south of Italy. But the city of Salerno, which the lances of the Nor- mans had won from the Saracen invaders, and * The Enjjiish fleet sailed from Marseilles on the 30. h of August, and entered the port of Messina on the 14th of September, without hiiving lost a single vessel in the Mediterranean. Tlie French fleet from Genoa arrived on the Kith, having lost several ships. ■f- Baronius speaks at some len^'lh and with great emphasis, of lliis lingular interview en the Tiber.— Annal. Eccles. which the bold Guiscard had made for a time his capital, was redundant witli Norman glory, and crowded with objects to interest Richard. Thej Normans had built the cathedral in the plain, and | rebuilt the noble castle on the hill. Princes, de-j scended, like himself, from the first Duke Rollo, i slept in sculptured tombs in the great church, and goodly epitaphs, with many a Leonine (or rhyming Latin) verse — that favourite measure of the Nor- mans — recorded their praise.* Every castle that met his eye on the flanks and crests of the neigli- bouring mountains was occupied by the descendant of some Norman knight ; for the time, though ap- proaching, was not yet come, when the dynasty of Suabia made a fresh distribution, and introduced a new race of northern lords into the most glowing regions of the south. Salerno, too, then one of the most civilized, as always one of the most beautifully situated towns of Italy, had other schools besides that of medicine ; though it was held not unworthy of a king, and a fitting accomplishment in a true knight, to know something of the healing art. Moral and natural philosophy, such as they were, geometry, astronomy, dialectics, rhetoric, and poetry, were all cultivated, and Richard himself was a professed poet, being one of the troubadours, t After staying at this interesting spot several days, during which, the galleys he had hired at Marseilles came round to him from Naples, he mounted his horse, and left Salerno on the 1 3th of September. He rode across the Peestau plain, and through the luxuriant dis- trict of Cilento, into Calabria, his galleys following along shore, from which his own path was seldom very distant. Roads there were none ; and, as it was the commencement of the rainy season, he must have encountered great difficulties in crossing the mountain-streams ; for he did not reach Mileto till the 21st. From that town he spurred on with only one knight to accompany him. On passing through a village, he was told that a peasant there had a very fine hawk. For a man in his condition to keep that noble bird was contrary to the cus- toms and the written laws of aristocratic Europe ; and Richard, who wanted some sport, to beguile the tedium of the way, went into the poor man's house, and seized the hawk. Tlie peasant ran after him, demanding his property ; but the king kept the bird on his wrist, and would not restore it. The pour man's neighbours took up his quarrel, and the Calabrians being then, as now, a proud and fiery race, they presently attacked the robber with sticks and stones, and one of them drew his long knife against him. Richard struck this fellow with the flat of his sword ; the sword broke in his hand, and then matters looked so * Dr. Lingard is in error, in saying th.at the celebrated medical poem in Leonine verse, by the professors of Salerno, was dedicated to Richard. It was first published (nearly eighty years before his visit) in 1100, and dedicated to Uuke Robert (the unfortunate Cnrt- hose^.who was then in Italy, on his way home from .lerusalem, and who was, by right of birth and treaty at least, king of Engiand, through tlie recent death of Rufus. + He was born a poet— if not in the sen^e of Horace, atlsast gene- alogically — for his mother Eleanor, as well as his maternal grand- father, were troubadours, and the rank was made liergditary in Fomc families. He merited it by his compositions. CffAP. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 106G— 1216. 489 serious, that tlie hero took fairly to flight. The enraged rustics followed him with their sticks and stones, and if a priory had not hcen close at hand, to aff'ord him a refuge, it is prohahle the Lion-heart would liave perished in this ignohle brawl.* At last, he reached the shore of the narrow strait, commonly called the Faro, which separates Calahria from Sicily, and passed the night in a tent hard hy the famed rocks and caverns of Scylla. The next morning (September 23rd), being either advised by signal, or by some one of the Marseilles galleys, the mass of his fleet crossed over from the island to receive him. He embarked, and scorning, or being ignorant of, the Homeric dangers of Scylla and Charybdis, was presently wafted over to the noble harbour of Messina, which he entered with so much splen- dour and majesty, and such a clangour of horns and trumpets and other warlike instruments, that he astonished and alarmed the Sicilians, and the French also, who had reached that port with a shattered fleet a week before him. The first feel- ings of the allies and confederates in the Holy War towards each other were not of an amicable nature ; and Philip, foreseeing, it is said, that dissen- sions would be inevitable if the two armies passed much time together in inactivity, got ready his fleet as soon as he could, and set sail for the East. But contrary winds and storms drove him back to Messina ; and it was then resolved, for the misfor- tune of the country, that the two kings should winter there together, and find supplies for their armies as best they could. The kingdom of Sicily, which then comprised Calabria and Apulia, and all those parts of lower Italy now included in the Neapolitan realm, was in a weak and distracted state. A few years be- fore, under the reign of William I., or of his heroic father, Ruggiero, when the kingdom was united, and their powerful fleets of galleys gave the law in both seas (the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic), the Sicilians might have been able to defend themselves against the insolent cru- saders, numerous as they were ; but Richard, who had a private account to settle with their king, well knew their present weakness, and determined to take advantage of it. The king of Sicily, who had scarcely been ten months on the throne, and who reigned by a disputed title, was Tancred, a prince of the Norman line, of great valour and ability. Richard's sister, Joan, who had been wedded when a mere child, had borne her hus- band no children ; and, after nine years' marriage with her. King WilUam II., commonly called " The Good," became uneasy about the succession, and resorted to curious measures in order to keep it in the legitimate line. The only legitimate member of the family living was an aunt about the same age as himself — a posthumous child of his grandfather, the great Ruggiero. The princess Constance had been brought ui) from her infancy in religious retirement, and was living in a con- * Iloveil. vent — some writers say she had taken the veil and the vows of a nun long before — when her nephew, the king, fixed his eyes upon her for his successor. Notwithstanding her acknowledged legitimacy, William the Good knew it would be worse than useless to propose a single woman to his warlike barons as their queen. It was the same everywhere, and for the same reasons ; but, if anything, the objection to a female reign was stronger in Sicily than elsewhere. By the old laws of the country, as of all Italy (and the laws were not changed in Sicily until after the accession of Frederick II., the son of this very Constance), the deaf, the dumb, the blind, and women, were ex- cluded from the succession to feudal estates, or fiefs, held of the crown on condition of military service — a condition which applied to nearly all l^roperty, except that belonging to the church. And though the old laws expressly excluding women from the throne had been abrogated since the Norman conquest, the feelings and prejudices of the people, and the usage of the nobles in the in- ferior class of successions, survived the destruction of the theory, and all tended to make a female reign odious or impracticable in idea. William, therefore, looked abroad for a powerful husband that might assert her rights ; or, considering the age of the parties, he might reasonably have hoped to live to sec a son of his aunt's grow up before he died. He, therefore, negotiated a marriage with Henry, the son and heir of the Emperor Frede- rick Barbarossa. Considering the country and climate, and the juvenile age at which royal ladies were then given in marriage, Constance was rather in advanced life — for she was thirty-two years old ! The dower and the hope of succession were, how- ever, brilliant and tempting ; and Henry espoused her with great pomp and magnificence, in 1186, in the city of Milan. In the month of November, 1189 — little more than three years after this mar- riage, and between nine and ten months before the arrival of the crusaders at Messina, William died at Palermo, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, leaving his childless widow, Joan, the sister of Richard, who was only in her twenty-fourth year, to the care of his successor. This successor was declared by his will to be his aunt Constance, to whom, and to her husband Henry, some time be- fore his decease, he had, according to the practice of the age, made the barons of the kingdom, on both sides the Faro, take an anticipatory oath of allegiance, at the town of Troja, in Apulia. But he was no sooner dead than his will and the oaths he had exacted were alike disregarded. The pre- judice against a female succession was as strong as ever ; and it was not prejudice, but laudable policy, in the people of the south to be adverse to the rale of the German emperors, who were already formid- able in the north of Italy, which they had deluged with blood, and who threatened the independence of the whole peninsula. By the insular portions of the kingdom, or in Sicily proper, the notion of being governed by Henry, a foreign prince, was 490 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. held in abhorrence. Constance and Henry were both far away at the time, and, encouraged by these feelings and circumstances, several of the great barons more or less closely connected with the royal family, advanced claims to the crown. It was difficult, and in part impossible, to reconcile these pretensions ; but at length the mass of the people and a large majority of the nobles agreed to elect Tancred, count" of Lecce, cousin to the de- ceased king, William the Good, but reputed of illegitimate birth, though avowedly born of a lady of the noblest rank.* In Sicily, as in England, the church had made great advances in the esta- blishment of the rights of legitimacy ; but these rights were, as yet, far from being imperative or sacred in the eyes of the people, who, in all cir- cumstances, would have preferred a bastard to a woman, and whose choice on the present occasion fell on a prince of ripe manhood and mature expe- rience, who had many qualities to recommend him, besides that of his descent from the great Ruggiero, the founder of the dynasty. Tancred was, there- fore, hailed king by public acclamation,t and solemnly crowned at Palermo, in the beginning of the year 1190. His election by the nobles and people, or his right, was acknowledged by the court of Rome, just as that of Stephen had been in England, and the reigning Pope (Clement III.) sent him the usual bulls of investiture and the be- nediction. Though acceptable and dear to the people, Tancred's throne was immediately dis- turbed by his disappointed competitors, and by Archbishop Walter and some of the Apulian barons, who declared for Constance, and armed in her cause. In the island of Sicily this insurrection was defeated by the unanimity of the people ; and, passing over to the continent in person, Tancred presently reduced most of the ApuHan barons to his obedience. But the civil war had weakened him— plots and conspiracies were forming against him, and Henry of Suabia, now emperor, by the death of his father, Barbarossa, was on his march to the south with a powerful army, to claim the throne for Constance, when Richard, received as a guest, commenced his course of aggressions. J The question of Tancred's legitimacy was not, in itself, likely to claim much of the Lion-heart's attention ; his quarrel had a more private ground. When the late king, William the Good, married his sister Joan, in the first impulse of love and generosity, he gave her a magnificent dower — the cities of Monte Sant' Angelo and Vesti, the towns and tenements of Ischitella, Peschici, Vico, Ca- • lumostofouv histories Tancred is called the illegitimate Iro- Iher of William II., which is riecidedly incorrect He v, as son ol Ruggiero, the elder brother of William I., who was father to William the Good. Count RuRgioro died before MU father, the sreat Ruggi- ero, and first king of Sicily; the lady of his love was the beautiful daughter of liobert.count of Lecce, whose titles and inheritance were subsequently given to his grandson, Tancred. According to some Italian write'rs, Count Ruggiero and the young lady were law- fully married. , , t 'Giannone says, " Tancredi adunque non altro titolo p\Q plausa- bile poteya allegar per s&, se non la volonta de'Popoli." This great writer, no doubt, thouglit the " will of the people" one of the best Ot rights, hut he durst not say so, when and where he wrote. t Angelo di CostaDia. — Giannone.— Fazello.—Muratori. prino, Castel Pagano, and others, with their several castles ; Lesina and Varano, with their lakes and the forests adjoining ; two stately monasteries, with their pastures, woods, and vineyards — in short, in one extensive and solid mass, the whole of the beautiful country comprised in the great promon- tory of Monte Gargano, between the provinces of Apulia and the Abruzzi, was allotted to the fair •daughter of our Henry II. Tancred, on his ac- cession, had withheld this splendid dower, and had even, it was said, deprived the young queen- dowager of her personal liberty.* Richard's first demand was for the enlargement of his sister ; and, whether she had been a prisoner or not, it is quite certain that Tancred sent her immediately to her brother, from Palermo to Messina, escorted by the royal galleys. The impetuous king of England then demanded her dower, which, under circum- stances, it would not have been easy for Tancred to put her in possession of, as the territories lay in the very heart of the great fiefs of the continental barons, who were again in revolt. Without wait- ing the result of peaceful negotiations, into which Tancred readily entered, Richard, embarking part of his army, crossed the straits of Messina, and took possession, by force of arms, of the town and castle of Bagnara, on the opposite coast of Cala- bria. Leaving his sister Joan, with a good gar- rison, in this castle, he returned to Messina, to commit another act of aggression. There was a monastery on the sea-shore (a little beyond the port of Messina) that covered one of the flanks of his army, which was encamped outside the town. The place was capable of being strongly fortified, and was otherwise well suited to his purpose ; so he drove the monks out of it, and, garrisoning it for himself, converted it into a place of arms and military store-house. Whether the poor Sicilians loved these monks t or not, the honour of their wives and daughters was dear to them, and they were probably as jealous as at the time of the " Vespers," a century later ; and when Richard's disorderly soldiers of the cross, the very day after this seizure of the monastery, " strolled licen- tiously through the city, with much lascivious- ness,"t the townspeople, no longer able to contain their indignation, set upon therti in the streets, killed several of them, and then closed the gates of the town. On this, the whole camp armed, and En"-lish, Normans, Angevins, Poictevins, with the res^ that followed Richard's standard, rushed to the walls, and would have scaled them then, had not their king ridden among them, and commanded them to desist, beating them the while with his truncheon as hard as he could. § He then went to the quarters of the king of France, whither the magistrates of the town soon repaired. After mu- tual complaints, promises of redress were made on • This fact is not admitted by the oldest Sicilian historians. + From some accounts it appears that the monastery was occu- pied by Greek monks. If that were the case, they were not likeiy to be very dear to the M*ssinese. t Fazello.— 1st. de Sic. § Hoved.— Vinesauf. J Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 491 both sides, and the king drew off his men to their tents and ships. On the following morning a solemn meeting was held, with a view of providing for future tranquillity and concord among all par- ties ; for Richard's men and the followers of the French king regarded each other with evil eyes, and had already shed some blood in brawls. The prelates and chief barons of the two nations, and tlie principal men of Messina, went with Philip to the quarters of Richard. While they were deli- berating a troop of incensed Sicilians gathered on tlie hills above the English camp, with the inten- tion, it is said, of attacking the king. A Norman knight was wounded by these people, and so great an uproar arose, that Richard rushed from the conference, and called all his men to arms. The English and Normans rushed up the hill-side, but the French did not move, and Philip at one moment seemed inclined to take part with the fj Sicilians. Richard drove the multitude from the hill, and followed them with the sword in their loins to the city. Some of the English entered pell-mell with the fugitives, but the gates were then closed, and the citizens prepared to defend their walls. Five knights and twenty men-at-arms were killed before the walls, but Richard, having brought up nearly the whole of his force, took the town by storm, and planted his banner on its loftiest tower, as if it had been his own town, or one taken in regular warfare. At this exhibition Philip was greatly incensed, but an open rujiture between the two sworn brothers in arms was avoided for the present, by Richard's consenting to lower his banner, and commit the city to the keep- ing of the Knights Hospitallers and Templars, till his demands upon Tancred should be satisfied. - Soon after this altercation the kings of France and England solemnly renewed their vows of friendship and brotherhood, and, by the advice of the prelates embarked in the crusade, and took mea- sures for repressing the excesses of the pilgrim- soldiers. The vice of gaming, it appears, had be- come very prevalent. Playing for money was now prohibited, with the following exceptions : the two kings might play themselves, and command their followers to do so in their presence; but these nobles were bound not to lose more than twenty shillings in one day and night ; knights and priests might play to the same amount, but were to forfeit four times twenty shillings every time they lost more than the sum appointed in one day and night ; and the servants of archbishops, bishops, earls, and barons might, in like manner, play by their mas- ters' command ; but if any servants were detected in playing without such license, then they were to be whipped round the camp naked on three suc- cessive days. If any mariners played they were to be ducked three times in the sea ; and any others of the crusaders of like mean degree, being neither knights nor priests, so offending, were to be whipped as varlets. In all cases, however, the punishment was redeemable by payment of a fine ill money, which was to go towards the expenses of rescuing the tomb of Christ.* Other laws were enacted at the same time, to prevent any pilgrims or crusaders that might chance to die from remit- ting their property to their family or friends at home. Two of Tancred's nobles and prime favourites — his admiral and another — commanded at Messina at the time of Richard's arrival. Seeing that re- sistance was vain, and feeling that their dignity was committed by remaining in a town where a foreign prince gave the law, they both retired with their families and movable property ; upon which, Richard seized their houses, galleys, and whatever else they had not been able to carry off with them. He made a complete castle of the monastery on the sea-side, digging a broad and deep ditch round it, and he built a new fort on the hills above the town.t These, and other proceedings, in which he consulted no one, but acted as if he were abso- lute master of the island, again excited the envy aad disgust of Philip ; but they probably hastened the conclusion of a treaty with Tancred, who, in the difficulties under which he was labouring, could hardly contend with so fierce and powerful a dis- putant. Richard demanded for his sister all the territories before mentioned, together with a golden chair, a golden table, twelve feet long, and a foot and a half broad, two golden tressels for support- ing the same, twenty-four silver cups, and as many silver dishes — to all which, it appears, she as queen was, by the custom of that kingdom, entitled. After all this, he demanded for himself, as repre- sentative and heir of his father, a tent of silk, large enough to accommodate 200 knights sitting at meals, 60,000 measures of wheat, and 60,000 of barley, with 100 armed galleys equipped and pro- visioned for two years. I This voluminous dona- tion, which, as it has been judiciously remarked, was not merely a mark of friendship, but meant as a pious contribution to the Holy War, had been left in his will by William the Good to his father- in-law, Henry of England, who was bound for the Holy Land, but who died before the death of his son-in-law gave validity to the testamentary be- quest ; and Richard must have exercised ingenuity as well as impudence in attempting to prove the legality of this part of his demand. In the end, Richard either proposed or agreed to a compen- sation in money. Twenty thousand golden oncie§ were paid in satisfaction of all Joan's demands, and twenty thousand more were paid to Richard him- self, but not in satisfaction for his claim, which he waived (caring little, probably, on what ground he obtained the money, so long as he got it), but on a treaty of marriage which he concluded. || He affianced his young nephew Arthur, who was his • Hoved. We have translated " solidos " by shillings. tThis castle, called Mattagriffono, after having been enlarged and repaired at different periods, still frowns over Messina, t Iloved.— Bened. Abb. ? An oncia Is a Sicilian gold coin : the present value is about ten shillings English. II The Sicilian historians mention only one payment of 20,000 oncie, and this they piit down to the account of the dota, or dower, of Tancred's daughter. 492 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. heir presumptive* to an infant daughter of Tan- cred, and engaged, in case the marriage should he prevented by the death of either of the parties, tliat he or his heirs would repay to Tancred or his heirs the twenty thousand oncie then received by him, as the dower of the infant. But the treaty went further than this; for Richard guaranteed to Tancred the possession of Apulia, which was partly in revolt, and of the important city of Capua, which had never submitted to the new king. He, indeed, contracted with him what we now call an alliance offensive and defensive — a leagxie he had cause to regret when his evil fortune threw him into the power of Tancred's competitor, the Emperor Henry. The treaty was sent to Rome, to be placed in the hands of the Pope, who was invited, both by Richard and by Tancred, to enforce its observance, should any want of faith be shown by either of the contracting parties in the sequel. The money ob- tained was lavished by Richard in a manner Avhich appeared thoughtless and wild ; but his liberality had the effect of increasing his popularity with the crusading host ; for he made the followers of the French king, and the king himself, share his bounty with his own followers, who highly lauded him, " for that he gave away as much in largesses in one month as his father Henry would do in a whole year." Such a multitude of men collected on one point had greatly raised the price of provi- sions ; and Richard's treasure, and his table too, were open to the crossed knights of all countries, who complained of the cxpensiveness of their sojourn at Messina. On the feast of Christmas he gave a splendid banquet, to which he invited every man of the rank of a knight or gentleman, in botli armies ; and when the dinner was over, he made a present in money to each, the amount being more or less, according to the rank of the parties. A little army of troubadours and minstrels, who had followed him from Aquitaine and the rest of the south of France, constantly sang his praises. This display of superior wealth, and the popularity he obtained by his liberality, seem to have increased the envy and malevolence of Philip, who, however, must have had, all along, a standing cause of com- plaint, which we shall presently refer to. Part of the winter months were spent in repairing the ships, that were much worm-eaten, in the port of Messina, and in preparing catapults, manginalls, and other warlike engines, wherewith to batter the walls of the infidel towns in Syria and Palestine, the timber for which was cut on the mountains of Sicily and in the extensive forests of Calabria. But in spite of these and other occupations, time hung heavily on the hands of the impatient Richard. In a period of inactivity he was seized with a fit of devotion and penitence. He called all the prelates together that were then with his host at Messina, • In the treaty, Uichard styled liim liis " most dear nephew and heir," meiitioiiiiii;, however, the condition of liis dying without chil- dren—" Si forl^ sine prole nns obire conlingeret." — Ilecueil des Histo- riens de France. — Daru, Ilist. de la Bri'tiigne. The unfortunate Arthur was little more than two years old at the time of this con- tract. into the chapel of Reginald de Moiac, in whose house he then resided ; and there, in presence of them all, falling down upon his knees, he confessed his sins and the profligate life which he had hitherto led, humbly received the penance enjoined him by the bishops ; " and so," adds an old historian, who did not sufficiently bear in mind the deeds of his after life, " he became a new man, fearing God, and delighting to live after his laws."* At this time Christian Europe was filled with the fame of Giovacchino, or Joachim, the Cala- brese, a Cistercian monk and abbot of Curacio, who was commonly reputed a prophet, and who had lashed the vices of the court of Rome in an infinitude of books and treatises, all bearing the most extravagant titles. Richard being anxious to converse with this seer, King Tancred sent for him into Calabria ; and the monk, probably flat- tered by such an invitation, came over to Messina, where the lion-hearted soldier had a grand field- day of theology and vaticination. Giovacchino had no difficulty in interpreting, in his own way, the whole of the Apocalypse. He told his majesty of England that Antichrist was born, and then actually living in Rome. Saladin, against whom Richard was to fight, was one of the heads of the beait in the Revelations ; and for every other symbol or type the fervid imagination of the Cala- brian monk found an existing reality in some pub- lic character of the time. Christian or Pagan. He foretold the year in which Jerusalem would be re- covered by the crusaders ; and to every doubt he would reply — " but is it not written in the book ?" The bishops and learned clerks, however, in Richard's train would not permit the abbot to have it all his own way, and a fierce controversy ensued, in which English lungs (they would have had no chance but for the disparity of numbers) were tried against the stentorian lungs of Calabria. f Accord- ing to Giannone, Richard at once set the prophet down as an idle babbler ; J but people must have been better qualified to give a decided opinion on this head some years later, when every one of the Abbot Giovacchino's prophecies about Jerusalem and the holy war was falsified by the event. § A sliort time after these theological conferences Richard mounted his horse, and rode to the flanks of the towering and smoking Mount Etna, which had recently been in active eruption. At the city of Catania he was met by appointment — and it ap- pears for the first time — by Tancred. The two kings embraced, and, walking in splendid pro- cession to the cathedral church (another work of the Normans), prayed, kneeling side by side, be- • Holinsliod. -f Hoved. J " Cianciatore." 5 Dante, however, did not hesitate to place the astute Calabiian in Paradise. The abbot probably owed this elevation to his enmity to tlie popes, whom Dauto hated even more than he: — " Raban e quivi, e lucemi da lato, 11 Calavrese Abate Giovacchino Di spirito profetico dotato." — Paradiso, canto xii. Raban is here; and at my side tliere shines Calabria's Abbot Joachim, cndow'd Wiih soul prophetic. . . . Cary^s Translation- II Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 493 fore the shrine of St. Agatha. They lived in great cordiality, and each seemed to entertain a high re- spect for the valour and character of the other. Like the heroes of Homer, they exchanged pre- sents, Tancred giving Richard a ring, and Richard giving Tancred a sword, reputed to he tl;e en- chanted blade Excalebar, or Caliburn, of the British l<ing Arthur. But his Sicilian majesty also gave, as a contribution to the holy war, four large ships and fifteen galleys. On his return to Messina, he accompanied his guest for many miles, even as far as the town of Taormina ; and before they parted there, it is said, he gave to Richard a letter wherein the French king declared his majesty of England to be a traitor, who meant to break the peace and treaty he had concluded with the king of Sicily, and offered to assist Tancred to drive him and his English out of the island. Coeur de Lion, after a furio'.is explosion, and many oaths that he never had been, and never would be, false to Tancred, col- lected his ideas, and then expressed a doubt that Philip, his liege and sworn comrade in that pilgrimage, could be guilty of so much baseness. Tancred declared that the letter had really been delivered to him, as from the King of France, by the Duke of Burgundy ; and he vowed that, if the duke should deny having so delivered it, he would make good his charge upon him, in the lists, by one of his barons.* When he arrived at the camp Richard met Philip with a clouded brow, and a day or two after, in the course of one of their many altercations, he produced the letter, and asked the French king if he knew it? Philip pronounced it to be a vile forgery, and, changing defence into attack, accused Richard of seeking a pretext for breaking off his marriage with the French princess. This was touching at once on the grievance that must long have made all friendship on the part of Philip a mere simulation. All the clamour Richard had raised for his affianced bride, in the last months of his father's reign, was merely for political purposes : as soon as Henry died he dropped all mention of the Lady Alice ; and at this very moment, as Philip no doubt well knew, he had contracted a very different alliance, and was every day expecting another wife. " I see what it is," said Philip; " you seek a quarrel with me, in order not to marry my sister, whom, by oath, you are bound to marry ; but of this be sure, that if you abandon her, and take another, I will be all my life the mortal enemy of you and yours." Richard replied that he could not and never would marry the princess, as it was of pviblic notoriety that his own father Henry had had a child by her ; and, according to the minute relater of these curious passages, he produced many witnesses to prove to • There are several versions of this mysterious story; we have chosen that which a))pears most natural. If theie was any deceit about the letter it was iiractised by Tancred. It is said tliat before Ricliaid's arrival the Sicilian prince hadofTered one of his daufjhlors to Philip for his infant son. and tliat the French king had rejected the alliance. But, «;;*'"• '* '^ **''' that, a few hours after Kichard had left liim at Taormina, Tancred met Philip at tlie same town and passed the nixht with him in a friendly manner. The native histo- rians are provokingly silent on nearly all the transactions of the crusadei s in Sicily. Philip the dishonour and shame of his own sister. True or false, this exposure was a cruel and de- grading blow, not likely ever to be forgotten or forgiven.* For the present, however, Piiilip bar- tered his sister's honour for a pension, agreeing to release Richard from his previous matrimonial contract, and permit him to marry whatsoever Avife he chose, for two thousand marks a-year, to be paid for the term of five years. Besides pro- mising this money, Richard engaged to restore the Princess Alice, together with the fortresses received as her marriage portion, as soon as he should return from the Holy Laud.— [Eventually the lady was not restored till some years after that event, when she espoused the Count of Ponthicu.] — This precious arrangement, and the settlement of other differences,t were confirmed on both sides by fresh oaths, for, in these days, princes seem never to have tired of swearing, or to have felt that tlie continually lecurring rupture of tlieir oaths made them nothing but a solemn mockery. Philip then got ready for sea, and, after receiving some vessels and stores bountifully given him by Richard, he set sail on the 30th of March, 1199, for Acre. Richard, with a few of his most splendid galleys, accompanied him down tl.e straits of Messina, and returning the same evening to Reggio, on the Cala- brian coast, took on board his new bride, who had been for some time in the neighbourhood, waiting only for the departure of the French king, and then carried her over to tiie city of Messina. This lady was Berengaria, the beautiful daughter of the King of Navarre : Richard had seen her in her own country a year or two before his father's death, and was passionately enamoured of her at the moment when, to annoy Henry, he was raising such a clamour for the Princess Alice. His passion was romantic and disinterested, for he gained no territories by the union, and seems to have stipu- lated for no political advantages, when he de- spatched his mother Eleanor to ask the hand of Berengaria. It is said that the fair maiden partook of his generous passion, and that, without being deterred by the many dangers and privations to which she exposed herself, she joyfully consented to travel with her mother-in-law from the Pyrenees to the Alps and Apennines, and thence to follow her husband beyond sea to the laud of the Paynim. Leaving Navarre with a suitable escort of barons, knights, and priests, the young Berengaria and Eleanor, whose activity was not destroyed by age, travelled by land to Naples, and from the gay city of Naples they travelled on through the passes of Monteforte and Bovino, and across the vast Apu- lian plain to the ancient city of Brindisi, there to wait until the French king should be out of the • According to an old French wiiler the insult was "a nail stuck in and driven througli the heart of Philip." — De Scrres, Inveutaire Genc'ral del'Hist. de France. lloKcr of Hoveden gives the fullest account of this quarrel. See also Diceto. — Iter. Hieio. f Wilh reference to youusj Arthur, Philip consented that lUitiany should continue to acknowledge the direct feudal supremacy of the Norrnan dukes or English kings, who should do homage for it to the crown of France. 494 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. way. As the expedition of Richard was so nearly ready for sea when the royal travellers arrived, it was not thought proper to delay its sailing, and, as the penitential season of Lent was not quite over, the marriage was not celebrated at !Messina ; and the queen-mother, having placed the bride under the matronly care of her own daughter Joan, the dowager-queen of Sicily, embarked for England four days after. Eleanor, it will be remembered, had already made the " great passage," as it was called, with her first husband, Louis of France, and it is probable that certain recollections of that crusade contributed more than her advanced years in preventing her from revisiting Palestine. Ac- cording to a quaint old rhyming writer, " Dame Joan held her sister Berengaria very dear, and the two ladies lived together like two birds in one cage."* They did not embark in the same ship with Richard, but a separate galley was delicately allotted to them. The day after Eleanor's departure for England the whole fleet set sail for Acre. As a rapid current carried it through the straits of Messina it presented a beautiful and imposing appearance, that called forth the involuntary admiration of the people of either shore, — the Sicilians saying that so gallant an armament had never before been seen there, and never would be seen again. The size and beauty of the ships seem to have excited this admiration not less than their number. The flag of England floated over fifty-three galleys, thirteen dromones, " mighty great ships with triple sails," t one hundred carilies or busses, and many smaller craft. Thirty busses from England had arrived just before, bringing out fresh stores and men. The mariners of England, however, were not then what centuries of struggle and experience have made them ; and when a great tempest arose, soon after leaving the Sicilian sea, the whole navy was '* sore tossed and turmoiled," and scattered in all directions, not a few of the ships being foun- dered or cast on shore. | After a narrow escape himself on the coast of Candia or Crete, Richard got safely into Rhodes ; but the ship which bore his sister and his bride was not with him, and he passed several days in distressing anxiety as to their fate. At Rhodes he fell sick, and was detained there several days. Incapable of taking the sea himself, he despatched some of his swiftest vessels to look after the ladies and collect the scat- tered fleet. This storm blew more mischief to the petty tyrant of Cyprus than to any one else. One of the English scouts returned to Rhodes with the information that two of his ships had been cast ashore on the island of Cyprus, and that the people of the country had barbarously plundered the wrecks and cast the mariners and crusaders into prison. Vowing vengeance, — and of these vows • Robert of Brunne. + By this is meant that they were thresmasted. i It is said, however, by one who was on board the fleet, tliat the sailors did everything that it was possible for human skill to do ; but old Vinesauf was a landsman, and not a good judge, and people then allowed very oairow limits to the extent of human skill in many things. he was always very tenacious, — Richard embarked, and, departing immediately with all of the fleet that had joined him at Rhodes, made way, with press of oars and sails, for the devoted island. Off Limisso, or Limasol, then the principal sea- port town of Cyprus, he found the galley of his bride and sister. Either the Cypriots had refused the royal ship the entrance of the port, or (which is more probable) the ladies, knowing how they had treated the two wrecks, feared putting themselves in their power, and had refused their invitation to land. The island of Cyprus was occupied by Greeks, a people wlio, from a difference in some dogmas of faith and from other reasons, had never been able to agree with the crusaders of the West. The islanders had probably learned the overbear- ing conduct of Richard in Sicily, where there were many Greek colonies ; and general experience had proved that the holy warriors were most turbulent and dangerous guests. Hence, the Cypriots might have been induced to give them so bad a welcome ; but, considering the circumstances of the English who were thrown on their coast, the conduct they pursued was odious and exasperating. The sove- reign of the island v/as one Isaac, a prince of the imperial race of the Comneni, who pompously styled himself " Emperor of Cyprus." When harshly called upon for satisfaction, he put himself in a posture of defence, throwing out some armed galleys to the mouth of the harbour of Limasol, and drawing up his troops along shore. These troops were ill calculated to contend with the steel-clad warriors of Richard, for, with the exception of a body-guard which was splendidly armed and ap- pointed, they had no defensive armour, but were half naked, and the mass of them had no better weapons than clubs and stones. Richard boarded and took the galleys, dispersed the troops, and made himself master of the city, with little dif- ficulty. The inhabitants fled, but had not time to carry off" their property, whicli the crusaders made prize of. They found an abundance of provisions of all kinds, and when Queen Joan and Berengaria landed at Limasol they were welcomed with a feast. Having rallied, to make another impotent attempt at resistance, the Cypriots were surprised the next morning, and " killed like beasts," their " Emperor " saving his life by flying " bare in serke and breke."* Isaac, who had now learned to his cost the might and fury of the enemy he had provoked, sent from his capital of Leikosia, or Nicosia, situated in the centre of the island, to sue for a conference of peace. Richard, gaily mounted on a Spanish charger, and splendidly attired in silk and gold, met the humbled Greek in a plain near Limasol. The terms he imposed were suf- ficiently hard ; but the " Emperor" agreed to pay an indemnity in gold for the wrong he had done the galleys, to resign all his castles, to do homage to the king of England, and to follow him to the holy * Robert of Brunno. From Vinesauf and Hovcden it appears that Isaac, betrayed by the Cypriots, was surprised before he was out of bed, and fled without armour or clothes. I I Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 495 war with 500 well-armed infantry, 400 light horse, and 100 knights. Isaac was to place his daughter and heiress as an hostage in Richard's hands, and Richard was to restore her, with all the castles, on their return from Palestine, on the delicate condi- tion, however, that the Emperor's conduct in the holy Avar should give the king entire satisfaction. That very night the Greek fled to make another vain effort at resistance ; but Richard had no great right to complain of this, seeing that he treated Isaac, not as a reconciled enemy and ally, but as a prisoner of war, having actually placed guards over him, whose brute force the Greek defeated by a very excusable exercise of cunning. Despatching part of his army by land into the' interior of the country, Richard embarked with the rest, and, sailing round the island, took all the maritime towns, and cut off Isaac's fliglit by sea, for he seized every ship, and even every boat, though of the smallest dimensions. Isaac fought another battle ; but the contest was in every way unequal, for the people, whom he had governed harshly and corruptly, instead of fighting for him, by connivance, if not actively, assisted the invaders. Nicosia, the capital, surrendered, and Isaac's beautiful daughter fell into the hands of Richard, who gave her as a companion to Berengaria. Isaac, who doated on his child, lost all heart in losing her, and quitting a strong castle or fortified monastery in which he had taken refuge, he again sought the presence of the conqiieror, and threw himself at his feet, im- ploring only for the restoration of his child and for the preservation of his own life and limbs. The conqueror would not restore his fair captive, and he sent her father away to be confined in a strong castle at Tripoli in Syria. The unfortunate captive was loaded with chains ; but it is said that, in con- sideration of his rank, Richard ordered that his fetters should be forged of silver instead of rude iron.* If the Cypriots had been discontented with their old master, they had little reason to be satisfied with their new one. Richard's first act of government was to tax them to the dreadful amoimt of half of their movable property, after which he gave them an empty confirmation of the rights and privileges which they had enjoyed in former times under the emperors of Constantinople. The amount of provisions and stores of all kinds which he carried off was so considerable that it enabled the crusaders to carry on their operations with much greater vigour and success than they could other- wise have done. Having conquered, and in a manner settled, the island, he returned to Limasol, and at length celebrated his marriage with the Lady Berengaria, who was anointed and crowned by the Bishop of Evreux. All these important operations did not occupy more than a month, and, granting the present government of the island to Richard de Camville, one of the constables of the fleet, and Robert de Turnham,t Richard embarked with his • Isaac died a prisoner four years after. f Several of the Italiim historians say he sold the government of Cyprus to the Order of the Templars, but this does not appear very probable. fleet for Acre. Sailing between Cyprus and the Syrian coast, he fell in with a dromond, or ship of the largest size, which was carrying troops and stores to the great Saladin. He attacked her with his usual impetuosity, threatening to crucify all his sailors if they sufi'ered her to escape. She was taken after a gallant action, in which the superior height of her board, and an abundant use of the Greek fire, to which Richard's followers were as yet unaccustomed, gave her for some time a decided advantage. There were on board seven Emirs, or Saracens of the highest rank, and 650 — some say 1500 — picked men. Thirty- five individuals only were saved, the rest were either massacred or drowned, the great ship sinking before the cru- saders could remove much of her cargo.* On the 8th of June an astounding clangour of trumpets and drums, and every instrument of war in the Christian camp, hailed the somewhat tardy arrival of Richard and his host in the roadstead of Acre. The welcome was sincere, for their aid was indispensable. The French king had arrived some time before, but had done nothing, and the affairs of the crusaders were in a deplorable condition, for, after prosecuting the siege of Acre the best part of two years, they were not only still outside the walls, but actually pressed and hemmed in, and almost besieged themselves by Saladin, who occupied Mount Carmel and all the neighbouring heights with an immense army. The loss of human life was fearful. The sword and the plague had swept away six archbishops, twelve bishops, forty earls, and five hundred barons, whose names are re- corded in history, and 150,000 of " the meaner sort," who went to their graves without any such record. t This heavy draft upon population had been supplied by fresh and continuous arrivals from all parts of Cliristendom, for, like a modern conqueror, Europe then believed that the fate of Syria and the East lay within the narrow circuit of Acre. The operations of the besieged, which had languished for some weeks, were vigorously re- newed on Richard's arrival ; but the kings of France and England quarrelled again almost as soon as they had met ; the besiegers became again inactive, and then threw away some thousands of lives from mere pique and jealousy of each other. The French and the English soldiery took a full share in the animosities of their respective leaders ; and of the other bodies of crusaders, some sided with Philip, and some with Richard. The Genoese and Templars espoused the quarrel of France, the Pisans and Hospitallers stood for England ; and, on the whole, it appears that Richard's more brilliant valour, and superior command of money and other means, rendered the English faction the stronger of the two. The French tried to take the town by an assault without any assistance from the English, and then the English, wishing to have all the • Vinesauf. — Hove. — Boliadin, the .\rab historian. + We have taken tlie very lowest estimate. Vinesauf, who was present part of the time, calculates that 300,000 Chri.stians perished during the long siege. IJohadin, and other .\rabic ■S'riters, carry the number to 500,000 or GOO.OOO I 496 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Kamparis or AtuK. honours to themselves, repeated the like experi- ment without the French, and with the like ill Buccess. These two fatal attempts showed the necessity of co-operation, and another brief re- conciliation was effected between the rivals. Richard's personal exertions* attracted universal admiration in the camp, and gave rise to fresh jealousies in the breast of Philip, of whom it has been well said, that, thovigh brave, he had more of the statesman than the warrior in his character. At length, being disappointed of aid from Cairo, and seeing that Saladin could no longer penetrate the Christian lines to throw in provisions, the brave Mussulman garrison offered to capitvdate. After some negotiation, during which Philip and Richard once more disagreed, it was finally stipulated that the city should be surrendered to the crusaders, and that the Saracens, as a ransom for their lives (for their property, even to their arms, was for- feited), should restore the wood of the holy cross, set at liberty 1500 Christian captives, and pay 200,000 pieces of gold. Some thousands of Sara- cens were detained as hostages in the fortress for the performance of these conditions. Immediately afterwards, — it was on the 12th of June, 1191, — the crusaders entered Acre, and Saladin, evacuating all his positions, retired a short distance into the interior. The banners of the two kings were raised with equal bonours on the ramparts ; but it • He workeil like a common soldier at the heavy battering en<;ines. ■When sicV,, he caused himself to be cairitd to the eiitvenchmeiits on a silk pallet or maltrass. appears that Richard took the best house in the place for the accommodation of himself and family, leaving Philip to take up his lodgings with the Templars. Scarcely, however, had they entered this terrible town ere the French king expressed his determination to return to Europe. The cause he alleged for his departure was the bad state of his health ;* but this probably was not the true one — it certainly was not the only cause. Though Jerusalem was in the hands of the Mussulmans, there was a disputed succession to the throne among the Christians : — Guy of Lusignan had worn the crown in right of his wife, a descendant of the great Godfrey of Bouillon, the first Christian king of Jerusalem ; but Sybilla was dead, and Conrad, Marquis ofMonferrat and Prince of Tyre, who had married her sister, contended that the sole right of Guy of Lusignan was extinct by the demise of his wife, and that the crown devolved to himself as the husband of the legitimate heiress. The dispute was referred to the English and French monarchs, . and it was not likely that they, who from the com- mencement of the crusade had never agreed in anything, should act with concord in this important | matter. As soon as Philip reached Acre, without j waiting for the opinion of Richard, he declared iaj favour of the claims of Conrad, who, without re^ ference to the doubtful right of legitimacy, seems to have been much better qualified for a throne tha^ was to be won and maintained by the sword tlia * rhilip liad been sick. Some of the French chroni'.lers r.ccus Richard of having given him poison! Chap. I.]] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 497 his miserable competitor Lusignan. Richard, however, swayed by other motives, or possibly merely out of pique^ had declared against Conrad, and when Lusignan visited him as a suppliant in Cyprus, he had acknowledged liim as king of Jerusalem, and, with his usual liberality, had given him a sum of money, his majesty being pennyless and almost inwaiitof bread. This sub- ject had given rise to many disputes during the siege, and tliey were renewed with increased violence when the capture of Acre gave the French and English kings more leisure. In the end, Philip was obliged to yield so far to his fiery and determined rival as to allow that Lusignan should be king of Jerusalem during his life. The king of France was otherwise irritated by the absolute will and constant domineering of his rival, who was as superior to him as an adven- turous warrior as he was superior to Richard in policy and political forethought. One of our old rhyming chroniclers no doubt hit part of the truth when he said " ."^o lliiit King Phil'p was annoyed there nt tlie tliinif. That there was not of liim a word, but all uf Richard the king."* But, after all, we should be doing a manifest in- justice to Philip's consummate king-craft were we not to suppose that one of his strongest motives for quitting an unprofitable crusade was to take ad- vantage of Richard's absence in order to raise and consolidate the French kingdom, — an end perfectly natural, and perhaps laudable in itself, however dishonourable the means that were employed to effect it. Dazzled as he was by dreams of chi- valry and glory, Richard himself was yet not so blind as to overlook the danger that threatened him in the west, and, after his efforts to persuade Philip to remain had all failed, he exacted from him an oath not to make war upon any part of the ter- ritories of the English king, nor attack any of his vassals or allies, vmtil at least forty days after the return of Richard from Palestine. Besides taking this oath, Philip agi-eed to leave at Acre 10,000 of his followers to be immediately commanded by the Duke of Burgundy, who, however, was bound to recognise the superior authority of the English monarch. In the popular eye, Philip appeared as a deserter, and the mob of all nations that witnessed his departure from Acre hissed him and cursed him.t His absence, however, saved him from direct participation in an atrocious deed. Forty days was the term fixed for the fulfilment of the articles of capitulation. Receiving neither the Christian captives, nor the cross, nor the money, Richard made several applications to Saladin, who was unable or unwilling to fulfil the conditions, though he sent to offer Richard some costly pre- sents for himself. A rumour — apparently false — was spread through the Christian camp and the town of Acre, that Saladin had massacred his Christian captives, and the soldiers demanded instant vengeance, making a fearful riot, and killing Ecveral of their officers who appeared to be opposed • Rob. Gloucester, VOL. I. f Vines. — Iloved, to a massacre in cold blood. On the following day the term of forty days expired. At an appointed hour a signal was given, and all the Saracen host- ages were led out beyond the barriers of the French and English camps, and butchered by the exulting and rejoicing crusaders. Richard presided over the slaughter at one camp, — the Duke of Burgundy at the other. Between 2000 and 3000 prisoners* Mere thus destroyed, and only a few Emirs and Mahommedans of rank were saved from the carnage, in the hope of obtaining valuable ransoms from their families. Some centuries had to elapse ere this deed excited any horror or disgust in Christen- dom. At the time, and indeed long after, it was considered as a praiseworthy smiting of the in- fidels, — as a sacrifice acceptable to Heaven; for was not every drop of blood there shed the blood of the accursed followers of Mahommed, who had plundered the sepulchre, and who reviled the laws of Christ? Vinesauf says his victorious master showed therein his wonderful great zeal for the glory of God ; and the author of the popular ro- mance of ' Richard Cceur de Lion,' which was produced two or three centuries later, for the admiration of the Christian world, represents angels of heaven as assisting at the execution, and crying aloud to Richard, " kill, kill, spare them not."t But the atrocities of the crusaders did not end with the death of their victims ; the soldiers cut open the bodies of the Saracens to look for precious stones and pieces of gold which they fancied they had swallowed for concealment. " They found many of these things in their bowels," says a contemporary, " and they made store of the gall of the infidels for medicinal uses."t It appears that after this Saladin ordered the massacre of the Christian prisoners in his hands ; but these mea- sures neither injured the fame of the two chiefs, nor prevented Richard and Saladin from having a courteous correspondence with each other at a period a little later. Having restored the battered works of Acre, Richard prepared to march upon Jerusalem. The generality of the crusaders by no means shared his impatience ; " for the wine (says old Vinesauf ) was of the very best quality, and the city abounded with most beautiful girls ;" — and the gravest knights had made a Capua of Acre. At length, however, Richard tore them from these enjoyments, and, leaving behind him his sister and wife, and the fair Cypriot, and strictly prohibiting women from fol- lowing the camp, he began his march on the 22nd of August. Thirty thousand men, of all countries, obeyed his orders, marching in five divisions : the Templars led the van; the Knights of St. John brought up the rear. Every night, when the • VVe liave aifain taken the very lowest number. Bohadin, the Arab, says that 3000 were destroyed by Richard alone, and that the Duke of Burgundy sacrificed a like number. Hoveden says that 5000 were slain by the king and the duke. ■f "Sfigueur, tuez, tuez ! Spare hem nought." Ellis, Spec. Metr. Romances. t " Multum inveuerunt et fel eorum usui medicinali serva- verunt." — Hoved. 498 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. army halted, the heralds of the several camps cried aloud three times, " Save the holy sepulchre !" and every soldier bent his knee, and said " Amen !" Saladin, who had been reinforced from all parts, infested their march every day, and encamped near them every night, with an army greatly supe- rior in numbers. On the 7th of September Richard brought him to a general action near Azotus, the Ashdod of the Bible, on the sea-shore, and about nine miles from Ascalon ; and after a display of valour, which was never surpassed, and of more cool conduct and generalship than might have been expected, he gained a complete victory. Mourning the loss of seven thousand men and thirty-two emirs, Saladin, the victor of many a field, retreated in great disorder, finding time, however, to lay waste the country, and dismantle the towns he could not garrison or defend; and Richard ad- vanced without farther opposition to Jaffa, the Joppa of Scripture, of which he took possession.* As the country in advance of that position was still clear of enemies, the Lion-heart would have followed up his advantages, but many of the cru- saders, less hardy than himself, were worn out by the heat of the climate and the rapid marches, on which he had already led them ; and the French barons urged the necessity of restoring the fortifi- cations of Jaffa before they advanced. No sooner had Richard consented to this arrangement than the crusaders, instead of prosecuting the work with vigour, abandoned themselves to a luxurious ease ; and Richard himself gave many of his days to the sports of the field, disregarding the evident fact that Saladin was again making head, and that hordes of Saracens were scouring the country in detached parties. One day he was actually sur- prised, and would have lost either his life or liberty, had not one of his companions, William de Pra- telles, a knight of Provence, cried out, " I am the king," and, by drawing attention upon himself, given Richard the opportunity of escaping. On another occasion this generous daring threw him almost into an equal danger. A company of Tem- plars fell into an ambuscade : he sent the brave Earl of Leicester to their aid, promising he would follow as soon as he could get on his armour. Be- fore that rather long operation was completed they told him the Templars and the earl were being crushed by the number of the enemy. Without waiting for any one, he leaped on his war-horse, and galloped to the spot, declaring he were un- worthy of the name of king, if he abandoned those whom he had promised to succour. He spurred into the thickest of the fight, and so laid about him, that the Earl of Leicester and all the Templars who had not fallen previously to his arrival were rescued. On such onslaughts, say the chroniclers, his cry was still " St. George, St. George." Many other ad- ventures equally or more romantic are related of this flower of chivalry — this pearl of crusading princes. His battle-axe seems to have been the • Jaffa is still a considerable maritime town, distant about thirty miles from Jerusalem. weapon most familiar to his stalwart arm. He had caused it to be forged by the best smiths in England before he departed for the East, and twenty pounds of steel were wrought into the head of it, that he might " break therewith the Saracens' bones."* Nothing, it was said, could resist this mighty axe, and Avherever it fell, horseman and horse went to the ground. It appears, indeed, after making every rational deduction from the exaggeration of minstrels and chroniclers, that it was a fearful weapon, and that Richard's strength and valour were alike prodigious. When the forti- fications of Jaffa were restored, the Lion-heart was duped into a further loss of time, by an affected negotiation artfully proposed by Saladin, and skil- fully conducted by his brother, Saphadin, who came and went between the two armies, and, spite of his turban, ingratiated himself with Richard. At last, the crusaders set forth from Jaffa ; but it Avas now the month of November, and incessant rains, nearly equal to those in tropical countries, wetted them to the skin, rusted their arms, spoiled their provisions, and rendered the roads almost impassable. Cross- ing the plain of Sharon, where " the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valley" no longer bloomed, they pitched their tents at Ramula,t only fifteen miles in advance of Jaffa ; but the wind tore them up and rent them. They then sought quarters at Bethany, where they were within twelve miles of the holy city ; but their condition became daily worse — famine, disease, and desertion thinned their ranks, and Richard was compelled, sore against his will, to turn his back on Jerusalem. He retreated rapidly to Ascalon, followed closely by the loose light cavalry of the Kourds and Turks, who, though they could make no impression on the main body, or even penetrate the rear guard, where the gallant knights of St. John wielded sword and lance, yet did much mischief by cutting off stragglers, and caused great distress by keeping the whole force constantly on the alert by night as well as by day. On the retreat, as during the advance, Richard was greatly indebted to the exertions of the brave Earl of Leicester, who covered one flank of the English army, the other being protected by the sea. Ascalon, so cele- brated in the ancient history of the Jews, was still a city of great importance, being the connecting link between the Mahomedans in Jerusalem and the Mahomedans in Egypt. Saladin had dismantled its fortifications, which Richard now determined to restore in all haste. To set a good example, he worked, as he had already done at Acre, upon the walls and battlements, like a common mason, and he expected every prince and noble in the army would do the same ; for the common crusaders required a stimulus, and the Saracens seemed to be gathering for an assault or siege. All the men of rank, with the exception of the proud Uuke of Austria, thought it no dishonour to do as the * Weber, Metrical Romances. + Ramula, Ramla, or Ramah, is the Arimathea of Scripture. A little beyond it begin the almost Impracticable mountain defiles of Judoea, which extend to Jerusalem. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 499 Pam of xhb Walls and Foetipicatio>-s op Jjoiusalem, adjoihinq Ephraiu Gate. king of England did. There was an old quarrel between these two princes. During the siege of Acre, the Duke of Austria took one of the towers, and planted his banner upon it ; Richard, enraged at this step, which appears to have been, at least, out of order, tore down the banner, and cast it into the ditch. Such an affront could never be for- gotten. And now, when urged by Richard to work on the fortifications of Ascalon, the duke replied that he would not, seeing that he was the son nei- ther of a mason nor of a carpenter. Upon this, it is reported that Richard struck him or kicked him, and turned him and his vassals out of the town, with threatening and most insulting language. Notwithstanding the duke's refusal, the greatest personages there, including bishops and abbots, as well as lay lords, worked as masons and carpen- ters ; and the repairs were soon completed. Richard, acting with great military judgment, then- turned his attention to the other towns which Saladin had dismantled, or which had not been previously fortified ; and in the course of the win- ter, and the following spring, he made the whole coast from Ascalon to Acre a chain of well-fortified posts; and below Acre he rebuilt the walls of Gaza. Before these works were completed, how- ever, his forces were considerably diminished : his lavish generosity had hitherto kept the French and other soldiers not his subjects together ; but now his treasures were nearly exhausted. Hence arose a wonderful cooling of zeal — a disposition even to criticise his military skill, and a pretty general de- fection on the part of all except his English and Norman subjects. Acre, a pleasanter place than Ascalon, was again crowded with jealous and mer- cenary chieftains, and became a very hot-bed of corruption and political intrigue. The Genoese and Pisans fought openly in the streets of the town, hiding their old animosities under the pre- tence of combating for the rights of the lawful king of Jerusalem; for Richard's treaty in favour of Guy had not settled that question. The Genoese had declared for Conrad of Montferrat — the Pisans for Guy of Lusignan ; and when Conrad himself, disregarding the treaty and the power of the Eng- lish king, joined his troops with those of the Ge- noese, a sort of civil war seemed imminent among all the Christians in Palestine. On this, Richard moved from Ascalon to Acre, effected a reconci- liation between the Genoese and Pisans, and forced Conrad to retire. He attempted to conciliate that nobleman, who had given him many other causes of complaint; but Montferrat insultingly rejected all overtures, and withdrew to his strong town of Tyre, where he opened a correspondence with the common enemy, Saladin, and where he was soon joined by 600 French knights and soldiers, whom he had seduced from Richard's garrison at Ascalon. Saladin, who was, in all respects, a rival worthy of Richard, gaining fresh heart, from the dissen- siops of the Christians, once more condensed his forces, in the hope of striking a decisive blow. 500 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. About this time the Lion-heart, in some distress of mind, wrote to the abbot of Clairvaux,* who had great interest in several of the European courts, earnestly entreating him to rouse the princes and people of Christendom to arms, in order that he might have a force sufficient for the occasion, and that Jerusalem, the inheritance of the Lord, might be rescued, and made secure for the future. This letter apparently was scarcely despatched when he received others from his mother, Eleanor, inform- ing him that his own throne in England was beset by the greatest of dangers. At this crisis he opened a negotiation for peace, declaring to Saladin tliat he wanted nothing more than the possession of Jerusalem, and the wood of the true cross. To this Saladin is reported to have replied, that Jeru- salem was as dear to the Mussulmans as to the Christian?, t and that his conscience and the law of the prophet would not permit him to connive at idolatry or the worshipping of a piece of wood. The next step related of Richard excites wonder, if not doubt. It is said that he proposed a union and consolidation of the Christian and Mahomedan interests, with the establishment of a government at Jerusalem partly Christian and partly Maho- medan ; and that, as a basis and bond to this scheme of policy, he offered to give his own sister Joan, the queen-dowager of Sicily, in marriage to Saphadin, the brother of the great Saladin. And it is added, on the same authorities, that the two Mussulman princes entertained the project, which was only defeated by the intolerance of the Imams on the one side and of the Catholic priests on the other. J Strange as it may appear, after the long duration of hostilities, and all the hoiTors that had been committed, the people of the two armies, during this negotiation, as during several preceding ones, lived in friendly intercourse, mingling in the tournament and other amusements ; and through- out the whole of the war Saladin and Richard emulated each other as much in courtesy as in military exploits. Presents were frequently ex- changed: when the King of England was sick Saladin sent him the incomparable plums of Da- mascus, with peaches, pears, and other fruits ; and during the heats of summer he regularly forwarded to the crusader's camp the inestimable luxury of snow gathered from the lofty mountains in the interior. § In order to reconcile parties, and facilitate his own return to Europe, Richard now abandoned the cause of Guy of Lusignan, whom he most liberally recompensed by the gift of the island of Cyprus ; and consented that Conrad of Montferrat, who was supported by the French, the German, and the Ge- • The successor of St. IVernnrl, who had done more Ihnn .-iny othersiiigk'individual, after Peter the Hermit, to promote the cru- sades. + The .\rabs Btill call Jerusalem '• El Gootz," or " The Blessed City." t Mill's Hist. Crusades.— Bohadin.—Abulfcda.— D'IIerbelot, in art. Salaheddin. § Hoved. Vinesauf says that Saladin had received the honour of knighthood from a French cavalier, and that Saphadin obtained the oame honour from Richard himself, for his (Saphadin's) fou. noese factions, shoidd be crowned King of Jerusa- lem. Although Conrad had few virtues he had much ability, which, together with his undisputed bravery in the field, might have qualified him to take the command of the crusaders in Richard's absence, and possibly might have enabled him to gain Jerusalem, and change his condition from that of a titular to a real king; but he Avas mur- dered in the streets of Tyre, while preparing for liis coronation, by two of the Assassins, the fanatic subjects of the Old Man of the Mountain. The murderers were seized, and put to the torture. Hoveden and Vinesauf both say that the wretches declared that they had murdered Conrad by the order of their master, in revenge for injuries done to his people and insvdts offered to himself by Conrad, whose imprudent quarrel with the Old Man of the Mountain was notorious. Bohadin, the Arab historian, indeed, affirms that the men said they were employed by the King of England ; but another Arabic writer, of equal weight, says that the murderers would make no confession wliat- ever, but that, triumphing amidst their agonies, they rejoiced that they had been destined by Heaven to suffer in so just and glorious a cause ; and this account agrees better with tlie character of the wonderful association to which they belonged, and is more probable than any other. Everybody knew the generosity which Richard had shown to Conrad ; and it appears tliat that unfortunate prince, with his dying breath, recommended his widow to the protection of the English monarch. The wliole tenor of Richard's character and con- duct should have absolved him from all suspicion but both the French and Austrian factions at once charged him with being the instigator of this murder; and the report was diligently spread in Europe on no evidence at all, or on none but of the loosest and most contradictory description. But the French king, the German emperor, the Austrian duke, and other sovereigns, were burning with spite and revenge against him ; and Philip, more especially, who was contemplating an attack or Richard's dominions, in order to cover his infamy^ filled all the west with exclamations against lii rival's perfidy ; and, pretending that a like attempt might be made on his own person even in France (for the daggers of the Assassins despised the obstacles of distance), he ostentatiously ap|)ointed a new body-guard for his protection. In the mean- while the French within the town, declaring tluit Richard had employed the murderers, rose in arms, and demanded from the widow of Conrad that she would resign Tyre to them : this she refused to do , and the people, siding with the countess, took uj arms against the French. In the midst of the tumult Count Henry of Champagne, King Richard's own nephew, made his appearance, and, at the in- vitation of the people, took possession of Tyre anc the other territories in Palestine which had been held by Conrad. Soon after, by marrying Conrad's widow, young Henry received her claim to the imaginary crown, and the crusaders, with the Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 501 Christians in the country, generally acknowledged Richard's nephew as King of Jerusalem. Richard had attempted to conceal his many causes of uneasiness, and when the army showed that they were aware that his presence was most earnestly prayed for in his own dominions, he issued a pro- clamation stating his fixed resolution of remaining in Palestine another year. By his promises and exertions he again restored something like una- nimity of purpose, and at the end of May the crusaders once more set out on their march towards Jerusalem under his command. Early in June he encamped in the valley of Hebron, where he received some messengers from England bring- ing fresh accounts of plots within, and armed con- federacies without his dominions. We follow the most consistent, though not the most generally received account, in saying that, on this intelli- gence, and at the prospect of the increasing ])ower of the Saracens, (who had not only strongly fortified and garrisoned the holy city, but had thrown a tremendous force between it and his advanced post,) and of the increasing weakness and destitution of the Christian forces, to whose wants he could no longer administer, Richard now came to a stand, and turned his heart to the west. A council, as- sembled at his suggestion, declared that, under present circumstances, it would be better to march and besiege Cairo, whence Saladin drew his main supplies, than to attack Jerusalem. This decision was perhaps a wise one, but it came too late. Richard, however, pretended that he would follow it, upon which tlie Duke of Burgundy wrote a song reflecting in severe terms on his vacillation. Richard did not reply by despatching two emissaries of the Old Man of the Mountain, or by adopting any other violent measure: he revenged himself with the same instrument with which the offence had been given, and wrote a satire on the vices and foibles of the Duke of Burgundy. It could not be expected, however, that the Lion-heart should renounce his great enterprise without feel- ings of deep mortification. It is related of him that when a friend led him to the summit of a mountain which commanded a full view of Jeru- salem, he raised his shield before his eyes, de- claring that he was not worthy to look upon tlie holy city, which he had not been able to redeem. If the expedition to Egypt had ever been seriously contemplated, it was presently seen that it was im- practicable ; for as soon as a counter-march from the Hebron was spoken of, all discipline abandoned the camp, and, after some conflicts among them- selves, the mass of the French and Germans de- serted the standard altogether. Richard then fell back upon Acre. Taking advantage of the circum- stance, the vigilant Saladin descended from the mountains of Judea, and took the town of Jaffa, all but the citadel. At the first breath of this intelli- gence Richard ordered such troops as he had been al>le to keep together to march by land, while he, with only seven vessels, should hasten by sea to the relief of Jaffa. On arriving in the road he found the beach covered with a host of the enemy, hut, turning a deaf ear to the advice and fears of his companions, and shouting " Cursed for ever be he that followeth me not," he leaped into the water. The knights in the ships were too high-minded to abandon their king ; and tliis small body dispersed the Saracens, and retook the town. On the fol- lowing day, between night and morning, Saladin came up with the main body of his army ; and Richard, who had been joined by the troops that had marched by land, went out to meet him in the open country behind Jaffa. The Lion-heart made up for his immense inferiority in point of number by careful and judicious arrangement; and the victory of Jaffa, which was most decisive, is gene- rally esteemed as the greatest of his many exploits. Overpowered by a generous admiration, Saphadin, seeing him dismounted, sent him, during the action, two magnificent horses, and on one of these Richard pursued his successes till nightfall. Every champion tliat met him that day was killed or dis- mounted; and the ordinary troops, whenever he headed a charge against them, are said to have turned and fled at the very sight of him. It was by deeds like tliese that Richard left a traditionary fame behind him that grew and brightened with the passing years, and that his name became a word of fear in the mouth of the Musselman natives. " I'his tremendous name," says Gibbon, " was employed by the Syrian mothers to silence their infants ; and if a horse suddenly started from the way, his rider was wont to exclaim, " Dost thou think King Richaid is in that bush." * As the battle of Jaffa was the most brilliant, so also was it the last fought by the Lion-heart in the Holy Land. His health and the health of his glorious adversary were both declining ; and a mutual admiration and respect facilitated the terms of a treaty which was concluded sliortly after. A truce was agreed upon for three years, three months, three weeks, three days, and three hours ; Ascalon was to be dismantled, after Richard had been reimbursed the money it had cost him ; but Jaffa and Tyre, witli all the castles and all the country on tlie coast between them, were to be left to the peaceful enjoyment of the Chris- tians. The pilgrims of the west were to have full liberty of repairing to Jerusalem at all seasons without being subjected to those tolls, taxes, and persecutions which had originally pro- voked the crusades. All parties immediately pre- pared to avail themselves of the treaty, and since they coidd not enter Jerusalem as conquerors, to visit it as licensed pilgrims. The French, who had refused to take part in the battle of Jaffa, and who were on the point of embarking at Acre, now declared their intention of staying yet awhile, that they, too, might visit the holy sepulchre; but Richard, indignant at their recent conduct, told them they had no claim to the benefits of a treaty which they had done nothing to procure. The rest • Tlu! old Sire de Joiiiville is the reporter cf this. " Cuides-tu que ce soft le roi Richard?" are his words. 502 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. of the army visited the hallowed spots, and Saladin nobly protected them from all injury or insult. The friends and relations of the hostages that had been murdered at Acre threw themselves on their knees before him, imploring permission to take vengeance on the Christians, who were now in their power; but he rejected their prayer with disgust, and successfully controlled their fanaticism and revenge. The second body that arrived in Jeru- salem experienced the greatest kindness, as we learn from Vinesauf, who was one of the party. The Bishop of Salisbury, who led the third body of pilgrims, was received with marked respect, being invited to the royal palace, and admitted to a long and familiar conversation with the sultan. Saladin was eager of fame, even from the Chris- tians. " What say your men of your king and of me 1 " he inquired. " My king," replied the bishop, "is acknowledged as one surpassing all men in valorous deeds and generous gifts; but your fame also stands high, and were you but con- verted from your unbelief, there would not be in the world two such princes as you and Richard." Saladin applauded, as he had often done before, the loyal frankness and the courage of the English king, but blamed his rashness and unnecessary exposing of himself; ending this part of the con- versation by saying that, for his own part, he would rather enjoy the reputation of modesty and pru- dence, than that of mere audacity. He conceded to the bishop's request that the priests of the Latin church should be allowed to have regular establishments at Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth, — a privilege hitherto confined to the eastern churches of Greece, Armenia, and Syria. A violent fever, brought on by his tremendous exertions in the field of Jaffa, is said to have been the cause why Richard himself did not visit Jeru- salem ; but it is at least probable that his reluct- ance to enter merely on sufirance that town which he had so vehemently hoped to conquer, had some share in this omission. In the month of October, 1192, on the feast-day of St. Dionysius, Richard finally set sail from Acre with his queen, his sister Joan, the Cypriot princess, and the surviving bishops, earls, and knights of England, Normandy, Anjou, and Aqui- taine. The next morning he took a last view of the mountains of Lebanon and the hills above the Syrian shore. With outstretched arms he ex- claimed, " Most holy land, I commend thee to God's keeping. May he give me life and health to return and rescue thee from the infidel." A storm arose and scattered the fleet: — it was the usual season for tempestuous weather in the Medi- terranean ; but people attributed the storm to the wrath of Heaven at the Christians sailing away and leaving the tomb and the cross of Christ unre- deemed. Some of the vessels were wrecked on the hostile shores of Egypt and Barbary, where the crews were made slaves ; others reached friendly ports, and, in time, returned to England. The galley in which Richard's wife and the other ladies were embarked reached Sicily in safety. It is not very clear why Richard sailed in another vessel, or why he did not take his way homeward through the friendly land of Navarre ; but we are told that when within three days' sail of the city of Mar- seilles, fearing the malice of his numerous enemies, he suddenly changed his course for the Adriatic, resolving, it should seem, to pursue his way home- ward from the head of that sea through Styria and Germany. He reached the island of Corfu about the middle of November, and there he hired three small galleys to carry him and his suite, which consisted of Baldwin de Bethune, a priest, Anselm the chaplain, and a few Knights Templars, — in all twenty individuals. After escaping capture by the Greeks, who were among his numerous enemies, he landed at Zara, on the coast of Dalmatia, where his liberal expenditure attracted attention, and defeated the object of his disguise. He had put on the humble weeds of a pilgrim, hoping that this dress, with his beard and hair, which he suffered to grow long, would enable him to cross the con- tinent without being discovered. A storm drove him on the coast of Istria, between Venice and Aquileia. From this point he and his companions, crossing the Friuli mountains, proceeded inland to Goritz, a principal town of Carinthia. He could hardly have taken a worse course ; for Maynard, the governor of this town, was a near relation to Conrad of Montferrat. Richard sent a page to Maynard to ask for a passport for Baldwin of Bethune and Hugh the merchant, who were pilgrims returning from Jerusalem. To forward his request the young man presented a very valuable ring as a proof of his master the merchant's good will towards the governor. Maynard, much strack with the beauty and value of the ruby, exclaimed, " This is the present of a prince, not of a merchant ; — your master's name is not Hugh, but King Richard : tell him, from me, that he may come and go in peace." The king was alarmed at this discovery, and, having purchased some horses, he fled by night. Baldwin de Bethune and seven others v/ho remained behind were arrested by Maynard, and the news was spread far and wide that the King of England was advancing into Germany in a helpless state. The fugitives rode on without accident or molestation till they reached Freisach, in the territory of Saltzburg, where Richard was recognised by a Norman knight in the service of Frederick of Beteson, another near relation of Conrad. The Norman's sense of duty to his native prince overcame the love of money, — for a large reward had been offered for the detec- tion and apprehension of the disguised king, — and instead of seizing him he warned him of his danger, and presented him with a swift horse. Richard escaped with one knight, and a boy who spoke the language of the country, but all the rest of his companions who had been able to keep up with him thus far were taken and thrown into prison. After travelling three days and three nights without entering a house, and almost without Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 503 nourishment of any kind, he was compelled by hunger and sickness to enter Erperg, a village close to Vienna. His ignorance of the country was pro- bably the cause of his lighting on a spot which, of all others, he ought most carefully to have avoided. Though sensible of his danger, Richard was too weak to renew his flight. He sent the boy to the market-place of Vienna to purchase provisions and a few comforts which he greatly needed. With his usual thoughtlessness in these matters, he had given the boy a quantity of money, and dressed him in costly clothes. These things excited atten- tion, but the messenger eluded inquiry by saying that his master was a very rich merchant, and would presently make his appearance in Vienna. The boy was again sent into the town to make purchases, and for some days escaped further notice : but one day that he went as usual, the citizens saw in his girdle a pair of such gloves as were not worn save by kings and princes. The poor lad was instantly seized and scourged, and on being threatened with torture and the cutting out of his tongue, he confessed the truth, and revealed the retreat of the king. A band of Austrian soldiers surrounded the house where Richard was, forgetting his pains and anxieties in a deep sleep. Surprised and overpowered as he was, Richard drew his sword, and refused to sur- render to any but their chief. That chief soon made his appearance in the person of his deadliest enemy — Leopold, Duke of Austria, who had ar- rived from the Holy Land some time before him. " You are fortunate," said Leopold, with a tri- umphant smile, as he received the sword which had often made him quail ; " and you ought to consider us rather as deliverers than as enemies : for, by the Lord, if you had fallen into the hands of the Marquis Conrad's friends, who are hunting for you everywhere, you had been but a dead man though you had had a thousand lives." The duke then committed the king to the castle of Tiernsteign, which belonged to one of his barons called H ad- mar of Cunring.* When the Emperor Henry, the degenerate son of the great Frederic Barbarossa, was informed of this arrest, he claimed the prisoner, saying, " A duke must not presume to imprison a king, — that belongs to an emperor." Henry, the sixth of the name in the list of emperors, and whom old historians desig- nate as " a beggar of a prince, ferocious and avaricious,"t hated Richard almost as much as Leopold of Austria did. This arose chiefly out of the English king's close alliance with Tancred of Sicily, whom the emperor held as the usurper of his or his wife Constance's rights. In the summer of 1191, the year in which Richard sailed from Messina for Acre, Henry, accompanied by his Si- cilian wife, advanced with a powerful German army into the south of Italy, and laid siege to the city of Naples, which made a faithful and gallant stand for Tancred. During the heats of summer a mal- aria fever carried off a vast number of his men, and some nobles of high rank, — the archbishop of Cologne among others, — and, as soon as Henry fell sick himself, he raised the siege of Naples, and made a disgraceful retreat. Tancred then esta- blished himself on the disputed throne more firmly • There are several versions of Richard's adventures from the time he left Acre to his captivity in the hands of the emperor, but they do not differ very essentially, and are about equally romantic. We have adopted what appears to us the simplest and most con- sistent story, the chief authorities being Hoveden, Bromptou, R, Coggeshall, William of Newbury, and Matthew Paris. f Legendre, Hist, de France, Castle and Town op Tiernsteign. 504 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Lynn, as it appeared at tlie commencement of the Kighteenth Century. tlian ever, nor had the emperor been able to retrieve his honour in the South. He was, however, at the monaent of Richard's capture, engaged in prepara- tions for that object, and he was overjoyed at an event which would save him from the dangerous hostility of so great a warrior and so powerful a prince ; for the English king, it will be remembered, had entered into an alliance, offensive and de- fensive, with the occupant of the Sicilian throne, and Henry and his advisers had little doubt that, if he reached England in time, Richard would perform his part of the treaty and prevent the suc- cess of the Emperor.* The Duke of Austria would not resign his prisoner without a reservation of his own claims, and a payment, or at least a promise, of a large sum of money from Henry. The dis- graceful sale and transfer took place at the feast of Easter, 1193, after which, it appears that, even in Germany, Richard was entirely lost sight of, and men knew not where he was confined for some time. In following the romantic adventures of one who was rather a knight-errant than a king, and whose history is more that of a crusade than a reign,t we have strayed far and long from England. And what were the home events during the interval ? Our information is scanty, but enough is on record • Tanered died at the end of 1193, duiing Hichard's imprisonment. Hi! died a king, and tiansmilted the crown to his younj; son William, who, however, could not kee)) it on his liead. The Emperor Henry, in 1195, enriched with Richard's ransom, invaded his dominions, and became master of them after much treachery and \doodshed. The cruelties committed by the gaoler of Coeut de Lion were most atrocious; his advent in Sicily and Naples was made memorable by an apparently interminable process ol' burning, hanging, l)linding, and mutilating. Richard's mother, Eleanor, wrote in earnest terms to the pope, imploring that he would endeavour to put a stoi) to tliese horrors. Richard himself was too much o^eupiid wvth his wars in France to interfeie. t Sir James Mackintosh, to show that they were of a gloomy nature, and that the country paid dearly for the knight-errantry of the king. The tragedy of the Jews, enacted at Richard's coronation, was speedily repeated in several of the other principal towns of the kingdom, beginning at Lynn in Norlblk, in the month of February, 1190, while Richard was in Normandy. All these hor- rors, indeed, were committed before he sailed for Palestine ; but though so near home, he was unable or unwilling to check them in their progress, or in- flict a proper punishment on the offenders. AVithin a month, the populace rose, and robbed and slaugh- tered the Jews at Norwich, Stamford, St. Edmonds- bury, and Lincoln. The great massacre of York was not a mere popular tumult ; it was conducted in a more systematic manner. On the 16th of March, in the dusk of the evening, a number of armed men, apparently strangers, entered the city, and, in the darkness of night, attacked the house of a very lich Jew, who himself had fallen six months before in the riot at London. His widow and children were butchered, — their property was carried oiF, — their house was burnt. On the following day, Jocen, another wealthy Jew, but who had escaped with life from London, sought refuge in the castle of York with his movable treasures and family j and as the governor received him, on his stating that his house was marked for destruction on the ensuing night, most of the Jews in York and the neighbour- ing country followed his example, and they also were received within the fortress. Soon after, the governor left the castle ; and at his return, the Jews, who, it is said, amounted to five hundred men, besides women and children, fearing he came with evil intentions, and that the mob Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066— 121G. 505 which followed would enter with him should the drawbridge be lowered, refused him ad- mission. They excused their disobedience by stating their reasonable dread of the rabble; but the governor flew into a transport of rage, and, in conjunction with the sheriff of York, ordered the very rabble to attack the castle. It is said that he soon repented of this command, and that he tried to recal it, but in vain. The mob, which con- tinually increased, and wdiich was kept in the highest state of fervour by a mad monk, who ex- horted them night and day to exterminate the enemies of Christ, laid close siege to the castle, and, at the end of several days, had made all their preparations to take the place by assault. On the eve of the day fixed for the assault, a learned Rabbi, who had been but a short time in England, ad- dressed his afflicted and now despairing brethren : — " Men of Israel," he said, " God bids us die for the law, and our glorious ancestors have so died in all ages. If we fall into the hands of these our enemies, not merely death but cruel torture awaits us. Let us, then, return to our Almighty Creator that life which he gave ; — let us die willingly and devoutly by our own hands !" The majority ap- plauded this resolution. They kindled a laige lire; they burnt their costly garments and their Eastern shawls ; they destroyed or buried their pre- cious stones and vessels. They set fire to part of the castle in the hope that the whole might be con- spumed with them, making a vast funereal pyre ; and then Jocen, as the chief man among them, cut the throat of liis own wife. The rest followed his example, each of them cutting the throats of his wife and children. When the women and children were all despatched, Jocen stabbed himself; and the other men stabbed themselves after him. On the following morning, as the rabble prepared for the assault, they saw only a few Jews who had shrunk from the complicated horrors of the over night. Pale as ghosts, these wretches spoke from the battlements, and, in the hopes of saving their lives, expressed their readiness to abjure their religion. On this condition, the mob promised that their lives should be spared. Tiie gates of the castle were then thrown open, and, in the next minute, every Jew in it that still lived was bar- liarously murdered. The Christians then marched to the cathedral church, and got forcible possession of the bonds of Christian debtors, which the Jews liad deposited there for greater security ; and having lit a fire in the middle of the nave of the church, they burnt the bonds in a mass.* As the per- petrators of this summary method of extinguishing debt by destroying the securities were not of a con- dition to have money transactions with the Jews, a suspicion naturally arises that they were incited and directed in part of their operations by their superiors, who were in debt to the only people who then had money to lend. On this dreadful occasion, an unusual degree of activity was shown by the government; but the proceedings adopted were • Iloved — Brompt.— Matt. Par. scarcely characterized by the purity and proper efficiency of justice. Longchamp, the bishop of Ely, in his quality of chancellor and chief justiciary of the kingdom, went to York with an armed force, displaced the sheriff and governor, and laid a fine on the richest and best of the citizens of York, ivho had not moved in the riot. As the king was still pressing for money, for the holy war, it appears that Longchamp's chief motive in moving at all in the matter was to procure some, and that the amount of the fines raised was remitted to Richard on the continent, whither many of the real criminals, who were crusaders, had already repaired to march un- der his banner ; the rest of the ringleaders had fled into Scotland ; and as the rabble of the town had no money to pay, they were let alone, the " stout bishop " dealing only with such as could pay. Tlie next important events during Richard's absence arose out of the struggle for power between Hugh Pudsey, the bishop of Durham, and Long- champ, the bishop of Ely. The reader has been already informed how Pudsey purchased the post of chief justiciary for 1000 marks. Richard, who was never scrupulous in such bargains, before he departed from England nominated a new regency, and appointed other justiciaries, by which mea- sures Pudsey's bought authority was wofuUy re- duced. These additional justiciaries were, Hugh Bardolf, William Briwere, and Longchamp — the last-named being the royal favourite, in whose hands Richard openly showed his intention of placing the whole power of the government. Be- sides his justiciaryship, Longchamp held the chan- cellorship, for which he had paid 3000 marks. He was, moreover, intrusted with the custody of the Tower of London. He was a man of great worldly wisdom, activity, and talent for business ; his ambition was immense, and must soon have made itself felt; but the first accusation his oppo- nents seem to have brought against him was, his lowness of birth. His grandfather, they said, had been nothing but a serf in the diocese of Beauvais. Richard, however, who did not judge of him by the condition of his grandfather, issued letters patent addressed to all his lieges, commanding them to obey Longchamp in all things even as they would obey the king himself. He wrote to the pope, to obtain for him the legation of England and Ire- land ; and when Longchamp was appointed legate — which he was immediately — his power in spi- ritual matters completed his authority. The first act of his administration was the digging of the Tower ditch ; but, to use the words of Palgrave, " he had more skill as a politician than as an en- gineer ; for he sup'posed that the river Thames would keep the excavation constantly full." Poor Pudsey would not without a struggle sink into the obscurity for which he seems to have been best fitted. Complaints against Longchamp's ex- cessive power had been sent after Richard, and he arrived in great triumph in London, with letters from the king, importing that he should be re- stored to some part, or to the whole, of his former 506 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. authority. Although Longchamp was absent from London, his rival received an immediate check there from the barons of the Exchequer, who re- fused to admit him on the bench. Thus rejected, Pudsey posted after Longchamp, who was in the north, and surrounded by an armed force devoted to his interest. When the brother bishops met, he of Ely was all courtesy and compliance. He said he was quite willing to obey the king's commands ; and then he invited his lordship of Durham to visit him that day se'nnight in the royal castle of Tickhill. Pudsey, with " singular simplicity," accepted the invitation ; and as soon as he was within the castle-walls, Longchamp laid hands on him, exclaiming, " As sure as my lord the king liveth, thou shalt not depart hence until thou hast surrendered all the castles which thou boldest. This is not bishop arresting bishop, but chancellor arresting chancellor." Nor was Pudsey released from this duress until he surrendered the castle of Windsor, and the custody of the forest, together with the shrievalty of the county, as well as the earldom of Northumberland and the lordship of Sadburgh — everything, in short, which he had pur- chased from the king. Longchamp's power was now without check or control. He had the whole powers of civil and military, and, we may add, ecclesiastical government; and he is represented as tyrannizing equally over clergy and laity. " Had he continued in office," said his enemies, *' the kingdom would have been wholly exhausted ; not a girdle would have remained to the man, nor a bracelet to the woman, nor a ring to the knight, nor a gem to the Jew." Another writer says he was more than a king to the laity, and more than a pope to the clergy. Abroad and at home, he made a display of as much or more power and parade than had been exhibited by any Norman king. A numerous guard always suiTounded his house ; wherever he went he was attended by a thousand horse ; and when he passed the night at an abbey or any house on the road, his immense and greedy retinue consumed the produce of three whole years — a poetical exaggeration, implying that they ate, and drank, and probably wasted a great deal. He was a munificent patron of min- strels, troubadours, and jongleurs ; he enticed many of them over from France, and these sang his praises in the public places, saying there was not such a man in the world.* It is evident that Longchamp was vain of his authority ; but there is nothing to indicate that he was not most loyal to the king, and anxious for the preservation of peace in the kingdom : the worst shades in his portrait were put in by men who were notoriously disloyal to Richard, and careless of deluging the country with blood, so long as they fancied *that they were forwarding their own views ; and it was the bishop's decided opposition to these men that first called forth the accusations against him. Peter of Blois, whose testimony carries no small weight, • Introduct. Rot. Cur. Reg.— Matt. Par.— Hoved.— Newbr.— Gervase. speaks most highly of Longchamp, and styles him a man famed for wisdom and unbounded generosity, as also for his amiable, benevolent, and gentle temper. In those turbulent times, and with such crafty, re- morseless opponents as Earl John and his ad- visers, it was almost impossible that he should preserve peace ; but while the ambitious and the great envied him, it is probable that the humbler and quieter classes in the land saw him with plea- sure get that power into his hands which alone could give him a chance of averting the storm. He was the first to see that John was endeavouring to secure the succession to the throne, and he steadily opposed those pretensions. After many violent dissensions, John wrote to his brother, to tell him that the chief justiciary was ruining king and kingdom ; and several barons of his faction put their signatures or crosses to this letter. Richard, whose confidence in Longchamp was scarcely to be shaken, sent, however, from Mes- sina two letters patent, in which he ordered, that if the accusations against him were true, then Walter, archbishop of Rouen, was to assume the regency, or chief justiciaryship, with William Mareschal and Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, as his col- leagues; if false, the three were, nevertheless, to be associated with him in the government. Al- though these letters are preserved in the contem- porary chronicle of Ralph de Diceto, their authen- ticity has been questioned ; and it appears quite certain, that if they were really written, Richard repented of his douljts, and that immediately be- fore he set sail from Messina he addressed letters to his subjects in nearly the same terms as those written about a year before from France, requiring them all to obey Longchamp, whom he again mentions with the greatest affection and honour. It is also equally certain, that though the arch- bishop of Rouen came into England from Sicily, he never showed any royal order until a year later, when Longchamp was overwhelmed by his enemies, who never made any judicial inquest into his conduct — ^nor could they have made it with any fairness, seeing that they would have been both accusers and judges. As soon as John knew for a certainty that his brother had actually departed from Sicily, beyond which the real perils of the crusade were sup- posed to begin, he assumed the state and bearing of an heir-apparent about to enter upon his in- heritance. He knew that Richard had named his nephew Arthur for his heir; but that cir- cumstance irritated without discouraging him — he felt that a child would be no formidable rival if he could only dispose of Longchamp, who was bent on doing his master's will in all things, and who, by Richard's orders, had opened a treaty with the King of Scotland to sup- port Arthur's claims in case of necessity. The decisive conflict, which had been postponed as long as Richard was in Europe, began as soon as his loving brother thought he was fairly in Asia. Gerard de Cam villa, a factious baron and a partisan Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 507 of John, claimed the custody of Lincoln Castle, and kept that place in defiance of the regent's authority. Raising an army, Longchamp marched to Lincoln ; but, while he was besieging the castle, John put himself at the head of a still more numerous anny, and attacked the royal castles of Nottingham and Tickhill, and took them both after a siege of two days. This done, the earl sent a threatening message to the regent. Long- champ, who was not much of a soldier, was taken by surprise ; he gave up the siege at Lincoln, and Gerard de Camville did homage for his castle to John.* The regent then convened the chiefs of the king's army and the barons most attached to Richard, and warned them in strong terms that John was seeking the government : but he was not pro- perly supported, and, being compelled to yield, a truce most disadvantageous to Longchamp was concluded between the contending parties. The regent was forced to agree that a certain number of the royal castles, the possession of which had hitherto constituted his greatest strength, should be placed in the custody of various bishops and barons, who were sworn to keep the fortresses in the king's fealty until he should return from Pales- tine ; but should he die during his pilgrimage, then they were to deliver them to Prince John. At the same time another concession of almost equal im- portance was extorted from Longchamp : the set- tlement in favour of Arthur was formally set aside ; and, the regent himself directing the act, the earls and primates of the kingdom took the oath of fealty to John, acknowledging him, should Richard die without issue, as heir to the throne. f For a short time John was satisfied with the pro- gress he had made, and left to the chancellor- regent his places and honours ; but the tranquillity thus insured was disturbed by circumstances art- fully arranged. Geoffrey, archbishop of York, the son of Henry the Second by Fair Rosamond, had been compelled to swear that he would live out of England. He was now preparing to return to obtain possession of his church. The whole board of justiciaries joined their chief in prohibiting his landing ; and Longchamp, fairly acting in the exercise of his authority, commanded the sheriffs to arrest Geoffrey, should he disregard the injunc- tion. At the instigation of his half-brother John, Geoffrey defied the regent, and landed at Dover, where, however, he was presently obliged to take refuge in a church. When the requisition was made by the sheriff or the constable of Dover, lie replied that he would never submit to that " traitor, the bishop of Ely." It was required of him that he should swear fealty anew or depart the kingdom. For three days he refused to answer, and his asylum was respected the while ; but on the fourth morning the officers broke into the church, where the archbishop had just concluded mass, seized him at the foot of the altar, and, after • John seems to have assumed a royal authority in the domains which Richard had too liberally given him. From the importance of these possessions the chroniclers call John the Tetrarch. + B. Abbas. — Hoved.— Kicardus Divisiensis.— Dieeto. literally dragging him through the streets, lodged him in Dover Castle. At the news of this trans- action, which excited considerable indignation among the people, John and his party were over- joyed. They had got Longchamp fast in the snare they had laid for him ; and now they produced what they called Richard's authority for displacing him altogether, and substituting the archbishop of Rouen. In vain did the regent plead that he had not directed the more violent and offensive part of the proceedings against Geoffrey, — that the autho- rities of Dover had thought fit to understand much more from his warrant than he ever intended. It was equally in vain that, at the solicitation of the bishop of London, who gave security for his good bshaviour, Longchamp released Geoffrey within a very few days, and allowed him to go to London. John, acting with the Archbishop of Rouen, who assumed all the rights of a chief justiciary, per- emptorily summoned him to make amends to the archbishop of York, and to answer for the whole of his public conduct before the King's Council. The semblance of an affection which was as sudden as it was tender, sprung up between John, who had hitherto hated him, and his illegitimate brother. On the one side all the prelates and barons in the kingdom were invited or ordered by John to assemble — on the other they were all for- bidden by Longchamp (who declared that John's object was to disinherit his sovereign) from holding any such meeting. The meeting, however, was held at Loddon Bridge on the Thames, between Reading and Windsor ; and Longchamp himself, who was in Windsor Castle, was ordered to attend, — an order he did not care to obey. There John and Geoffrey embraced each other weeping ; and John, who was a good actor, fell on his knees before the bishops and barons, and implored them to avenge his dear brother's wrongs. Soon after this meeting Longchamp marched from Windsor Castle to the capital, being informed by Richard Biset that John intended to seize the city of London. The regent required the citizens to close their gates against the earl; but Geoffrey, the arch- bishop of York, who was beforehand with him, had spread disaffection, and John was close behind him with a considerable army. Under these cir- cumstances the Londoners replied to the regent's summons by declaring that they would not obey a traitor and disturber of the public peace. Sorely disappointed, Longchamp then took refuge in the Tower of London; and Earl John was joyfully received on taking a solemn oath that he would be faithful to his brother Richard, and would main- tain and enlarge the franchises of the city. On the following day, the 9th of October, 1191, it was decreed by what was called the unanimous voice of the bishops, earls, barons, and citizens of London, that the chief justiciar should be deposed, and that John should be proclaimed " The Chief Governor of the whole kingdom." On receiving this news Longchamp fainted and fell on the floor. At an early hour the next morning John assembled /i \ \ f3 n A f; or THt UNIVCR^.1 508 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. his troops in the East Smithfield, which was then a great, open, green plain. A part of his forces, united with a liondon mob, had ah-eady closely blockaded the Tower both by land and water. The deposed regent came out of the fortress to receive the propositions of his opponents, which were rather liberal, in order, probably, to induce Longchamp to ratify John's title. They ofl'ered liim his bishopric of Ely, and the custody of three of the royal castles. But he was not to be won, and his conduct on this occasion was honour- able and dignified : he refused to commit any of the king's rights, or to surrender any of the powers intrusted to him by his master. " But," said he, " you are stronger than I : and, chan- cellor and justiciary as I am, I yield to force." So saying, he delivered up the keys of the Tower to John. It is rather surprising that, after these proceed- ings, Longchamp should be left at large, and allowed to escape from the kingdom. It appears, however, that he was obliged to put on an unseemly disguise. Some fishermen's wives saw the tall figure of a woman sitting on the sea-shore near Dover, with a web of cloth under one arm and a mercer's yard- measure in the right hand : upon a nearer inspec- tion, the women discovered under the " green hood " the " black face and new-shorn beard of a man."* It w^as the bishop of Ely, the regent, the chancellor, on his way to Normandy ! John ap- pointed the archbishop of Rouen grand justiciary and chancellor in his place, and seqviestrated the revenues of his bishopric to answer for public monies which he was accused of having dissipated or purloined. His enemies said that, when ex- pelled from office, he left nothing behind him in the treasury except empty chests and the keys. It is very probable that Longchamp did not leave much specie, but it should be remembered that Richard had been constantly calling upon him for money and had left him heavy debts to discharge ; and the chancellor offered to account for every farthing which had come into his hands. He maintained in the face of the world that his beloved master had never ordered his removal, which had been effected by force, in order that John might with the more ease usurp the crown. The pope, to whom he wrote from Normandy, took this view of the case, and warmly espoused Longchamp's quarrel, denouncing* excommunication against all those who had seized his authority. This time the anathema had little or no effect, for not a bishop in England would obey the commands of pope or legate. The displaced, minister wrote to his master, who assured him that he had not withdrawn his confidence from him, and it should appear (we venture no positive assertion where all is mystery and confusion) that Richard made representations • Viderunt faciem liominis nigram et noviter rasam. Hoved. We have omitted the indelicate and improbable parts of the story of Limjfchamp's escape which were written by Hu^h, bislioj) of Coven- try, the bitter enemy of tlie chancelloi-. Peter of Blois took HujflJ to account for this satire, wliich was evidently intended to put Loufj- ch.".mp in a more ridiculous and degrading liijht than Archbishoj) GeolTrey had been in at the same place — Dover. to his mother in his behalf, for in the following year Longchamp was in friendly correspondence with Eleanor, and soon after, through her means, with John himself, who had probably not found all he expected in the new chief justiciary, the arch- bishop of Rouen, — a man acknowledged by all parties as a prudent and upright minister, one who conducted himself mildly and conscientiously, refusing all bribes, and deciding equitably and according to law. Prince John, on the contrary, was only to be gained by money, and when Long- champ made him a large offer for repurchasing his places, he invited the exile back to England, pro- mising to reinstate him. Eleanor, it is said, had been already propitiated by gifts and "promises ; and she certainly joined John in setting up Longchamp, and endeavouring to persuade the archbishop of Rouen and the other prelates and nobles to reinstate the legate. John, who, in fact, had displaced Longchamp under a colour of acting in obedience to his brother's orders, now unblushingly urged that it Avould miich displease the king to know how Longchamp had been removed from the govern- ment without his command. It is quite evident that this fickle, selfish prince only wanted to make money. A council being assembled at London during these negotiations, a messenger suddenly presented himself, and announced the arrival of his master Longchamp, " legate and chancellor'," at Dover. Alarmed at this intelligence, the new ministers sent for John, who soon appeared and told them that Longchamp defied them all, provided he could obtain his (John's) protection, for which he offered 700/., to be paid within a week ; and he concluded this significant speech by saying that he was in great want of money, and that " a word to the wise is enough." Such a monition could not be misunderstood, and, anxious to prevent the return of their great rival, the ministers agreed to buy John off by lending him 500/. from the king's treasury. John then withdrew his proposition ; Eleanor did the same, and a harsh and threatening letter was addressed to Longchamp in the name of the queen, the clergy, and the people, insisting upon his im- mediate departure from England.* The fallen minister withdrew again to Normandy, there to await the return of his master. Such was the state of the government in Eng- land. On the continent, the French king, who was in close correspondence with Earl John, and who disregarded all his solemn oaths, was preparing most dishonourably to take advantage of Richard's absence. Almost as soon as he returned to France, Philip had demanded the cession of Gisors and the other places in the Vexin constituting the dower of that princess, together with the person of Alice, whom, strange to say, he offered in marriage to John, who (stranger still) listened to the pro- position with a willing ear. Tlie governor of Nor- mandy replied that he had no orders from his master ; and all of them knew that, by the treaty of Messina, these restitutions were not to be made • Palgrave, Uot. Cur. Reg. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 509 until the return of Richard. Philip then threatened to invade Normandy ; but, when his army -was partly assembled, some of the French nobles refused to ac- company him, alleging the oaths they had taken to protect his states, and in no way make war on Richard till he should be returned from the crusade. As the pope, too, expressed his abhorrence of the project of invasion, and threatened him with the thunders of the church, Philip was obliged to renounce his disgraceful enterprise, and to satisfy himself with hatching mischief to his rival by in- trigues still more disgraceful. John, it appears, offered no objection whatever to the marriage with Alice, and Philip engaged to put him in possession of all that his heart liad so long coveted.* These intrigues were in full activity when the news of Richard's departure from the Holy Land arrived in England. The people were daily expecting his arrival, when vague and contradictory, and then very inauspicious, intelligence began to circulate. Some returned crusaders asserted that he must have fallen into the hands of the Moors, others that he must have perished at sea, and others again affirmed that they had seen the ship in which he had embarked safe in the Italian port of Brindisi. We are sorry at being again forced to reject a touching and beautiful legend, but, leaving Blondel in the con- genial hands of the poets, we fear that in historical soberness we must attribute the discovery of Richard's imprisonment to the copy of a letter from his gaoler Henry to Philip. The emperor told the king that the enemy of the empire — the dis- turber of France — was loaded with chains and safely lodged in one of his castles of the Tyrol, where trusty guards watched over him, day and night, with drawn swords. This discovery shocked and disgusted all Europe. Longchamp, who was still on the continent, was one of the first to learn it, and the first to adopt measures for his master's deliver- ance. Earl John openly rejoiced at the intelli- gence ; but Richard's English subjects voluntarily renewed their oaths of allegiance. The archbishop of Rouen, and the bishops and barons, met at Oxford, and immediately sent two deputies — the abbots of Broxley and Pont-Robert — into Germany to give the king advice and consolation. Beyond the Alps, as everywhere else where the cause of the crusades was cherished and Richard known as the greatest champion of the cross, a most violent in- dignation was excited. The pope at once excom- municated L°opold, the Austrian duke, and threat- ened the emperor with the same sentence unless he immediately liberated Richard. Seeing that he could not work his ends with English means, John hastened over to Paris, where he surrendered the greater part of Normandy to the French king, and did Philip homage for the rest of his brother's con- tinental dominions. He then engaged some troops of foreign mercenaries, and returned home, having agreed with his ally, that Philip should fall upon Normandy with a powerful army, while he overran England. • Script, Rer. Franc. — Ilovcd.— Newb. John took the castles of Windsor and Walling- ford, and, marching on London, reported that his brother was dead in prison, and demanded the crown as lawful heir. For a moment the steadi- ness of the grand justiciary, the archbishop of Rouen, was doubtful, but the prelates and barons raised Richard's standard, defeated John's merce- naries, and compelled him to retreat. He, how- ever, obtained an armistice, during which he ex- tended the threads of his intrigues. Philip was still less fortunate in Normandy; for, after ad- vancing to Rouen, he was beaten by the indignant and enthusiastic people commanded by Richard's old comrade, the brave Earl of Leicester, who had got safely from Palestine, and he was obliged to make a most disgraceful retreat into his own terri- tories. In the mean time, though irritated by the indig- nities he suffered, and at times depressed by the notion that his subjects would abandon him — a captive as he was in the hands of his ungenerous enemies — Richard's sauguh-e and jovial spirit saved him from any long fits of despair or despond- ence. He whiled away the weary hours by singing or composing trovibadour verses,* and when tired of this resource, he caroused with his keepers, who seem to have been about equally pleased with liis music, his facetiousness, and his powers of drinking. Borne down by the weight of European opinion, and the authority of the church, the emperor was at length obliged to relax his hold ; and Longchamp, who was now with Richard, seems to have been in- strumental in inducing him to produce his captive before the diet at Hagenau. Richard was on his way to that place, when the two abbots despatched from England first met him. He received them in a gay and courteous maimer. The full accounts they gave him of his brother's treachery made him look grave ; but it was only for a moment, and he said, laughing, " My brother John, however, will never gain a kingdom by his valour." On his arrival at Hagenau, Richard was received with a * The love stanzas of Richard have all been lost, but a short poem of liis, written in prison, has been preserved. The following passnges from Mr. Ellis's translation will give an idea of it. Tliere is more pathos in it than might be expected; but most men can be pathetic ubout their own sufferings : If captive wight attempt the tuneful strain, His voice, belike, lull dolefully will sound; Yet, to the sad, 'tis comfort to complain. Friends have I store ; and promises abound ; Shame on the niggards ! .Since, these winters twain Unransom'd, still I bear a tyrant's chain. Full well they know, my lords and noldes all. Of England, Normandy, Guienne, Poictou, Ne'er did 1 slight my poorest vassal's call, 15ut all whom wealth could buy from chains withdrew. Not in reproach I speak, nor idly vain, Uut I alone unpilied bear the chaiu. My fate will show, " the dungeon and the pave Alike repel our kindred and our friends." Here am I left their paltry gold to save ! Sad fate is mine ; but worse their crime atten<!s. Their lord will die; their conscience shall remain. And tell how long I viote this galling chaiu. There are three more stanzas in the same strain. Another sir- ccn^e, attributed to Richaid, is preserved. It is addressed to his cousin, Count Guy of Auvergne, whom it reproaches for lukewarm- ness in not taking up arms against the traitor. King Philip. One passage is curious — " The desire of building strong castles makes you forgetful of ladies and gallantry. You are no more seen at bowers or tournaments. Have a care of the French; they are Lom- bards in their dealings."— //ls^ Trouhod. 510 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. show of courtesy ; but his first interview with the emperor was discoiu-aging. Henry revealed all his avarice and unjustifiable pretensions, and made many demands, with which his captive would not comply, saying he would rather die where he was, than so drain his kingdom and degrade his crown. On the following day, Richard appeared before the diet of the empire ; and Henry, who had no right over him, except what he gained by treachery and force, and from the exploded theory of the impe- rial supremacy over all the kings of the west, accused him of many crimes and misdemeanors, the chief of which were: — 1. His alliance with Tancred, the usurper of Sicily. 2. His treatment of Isaac, the Christian sovereign of Cyprus. 3. His insults offered to the Duke of Austria, and through him to the whole German nation. 4. His im- peding the crusade by his quarrels with the French king. 5. His having employed assassins to mur- der Conrad of Montferrat. 6. The most impudent charge of all — his having concluded a base truce with Saladin, and left Jerusalem in his hands. Richard, after asserting that his royal dignity exempted him from answering before any jurisdic- tion except that of Heaven, yet condescended, for the sake of his reputation, to justify his conduct be- fore that august assembly, which was composed of all the ecclesiastical and secular princes of Ger- many. His speech is not given by any origi- nal writer, but it is stated by Hoveden and other contemporaries, that his reply to all the charges was manly, clear, and convincing — that his elo- quence filled the members of the diet with admi- ration, and left no suspicion of guilt in their minds.* Matthew Paris says that the emperor was convinced of Plantagenet's innocence, and that he treated him thenceforth with humanity. He still, however, exacted a heavy ransom, though it is difficult to understand by what right, or under what decent pretext, he could detain Richard, or put him to ransom, if his innocence was acknow- ledged. But there was no right in the transaction — no decency in the actors in it ; it began in re- venge, and was to end in money, and as much money as could be possibly obtained, without a care or a thought about guilt or innocence. After fixing one price, the emperor raised it to another, and the bargain was protracted for five tedious months, during which, though his fetters were removed, Richard was still kept in prison. This was, no doubt, the most anxious and most painful part of his captivity. He sent Longchamp, as his chan- cellor, to the council of regency, to press the raising of the ransom. The captivity of the king, or superior lord, was a case especially provided for by the feudal tenures on which the vassals of the crown and others held their estates ; and a tax of • Kichard produced two letters from the Old Man of the Moun- tain, or the Prince of the Assassins, who (in them) gloried in having ordered tlie murder of the Marquess of Montferrat, because the marquess had robbed and murdered one of his subjects. These letters are generally set down as spurious ; but they may have been written, and, as Sir James Mackintosh remarks, the unskilful hands of the chroniclers may have disfigured them, without encroachingon their substantial truth. But, true or false, such evidence was scarcely wanted. twenty shillings was, therefore, imposed on every knight's fee. The clergy and laity were besides called upon for a fourth part of their yearly in- j comes. While the money was slowly raising, the emperor still kept increasing his demands. At last, on the 22nd of September, 1193, the terms ■ were fixed. It was agreed that Richard should pay 100,000 marks of pure silver of Cologne standard to the imperial court; that he was also to pay 50,000 marks to the emperor and the duke of Austria conjointly, giving sixty hostages to the emperor for 30,000 marks, and other hostages to the Duke of Austria for 20,000 marks ; on condi- tion, however, that these 50,000 marks were to be remitted altogether if Richard performed certain private promises. Several clauses of this treaty were either secret or added afterwards. It was also agreed that Richard should restore Isaac of Cyprus to his liberty, though not to his dominions, and deliver Isaac's beautiful daughter to the care of the Duke of Austria, and send his own niece, Eleanor of Brittany, the sister of young Arthur, to be married to the Duke of Austria's son. Henry, on his side, agreed to aid Richard against all his enemies ; and, that he might have the air of giving something for so much money, invested him with the feudal sovereignty of the kingdom of Aries, or Provence — an obsolete right which the emperors long claimed without being able to enforce it. Ac- cording to Hoveden, one of the very best of con- temporary authorities, Richard, in an assembly of the German princes and English envoys, by deli- vering the cap from his head, resigned his crown into the hands of Henry, who restored it to him again, to be held as a fief of the empiie, with the obligation attached to it, of paying a yearly tribute of 5000 pounds. But is there not some error in the transmission of this statement, or was not the fanciful crown of Aries here intended? Such a debasing tender may, however, have been made by Richard to cajole the German, and defeat the active intrigues of his brother John and King Philip. These precious confederates offered to pay the em- peror a much larger sum than that fixed for the ransom, if he would detain Richard in captivity. Henry was greatly tempted by the bait ; but the better feelings of the German princes, who had at- tended the diet, compelled him to keep his bargain. More difficulties than might have been expected were encountered in obtaining the money for the ransom ; and what was procured seems to have been raised almost wholly in England, the continental dominions contributing little or nothing. In our is- land, the plate of all churches or monasteries was taken ; the Cistercian monks, who had no plate, gave up their wool ; and England, in the words of an old annalist, " from sea to sea was reduced to the utmost distress." Seventy thousand marks were sent over to Germany, and in the month of Febru- ary, 1194, Richard was at length freed.* He • Hoved, — Brompt.— Diceto.— Newb.— Matt. Par.— Rymer, Feed. — Michaud, Hist, des Crolsades. — .Mills, Hist. Crusades. — Rauwer, House of Hohenstaufen. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 511 landed at Sandwich, on the 13th of March, after an absence of more than four years — about fourteen months of which he had passed in the prisons of the duke and emperor. Though they had been sorely fleeced, the English people received him with an enthusiastic and honest joy. There was, it appears, wealth enough left to give him a magnifi- cent reception in London ; and one of the German barons who accompanied him is said to have ex- claimed, " Oh king ! if our emperor had suspected this, you would not have been let off so lightly."* After spending only three days at Ijondon, he headed such troops as were ready, and marched against Nottingham Castle, belonging to Earl John, which surrendered at discretion. As for John himself, being timely advised by his ally, Philip, who wrote to him as soon as he learned Richard's deliverance, " Take care of yourself — the devil is broken loose," — he had put himself in safety at a distance. On the 30th of March, Richard held a great council at Nottingham, at which it was determined, among other things, that, if John did not appear within forty days, all his estates in England should be forfeited, and that the ceremony of the king's coronation should be re- peated, in order that every unfavourable impression v.hich his captivity had made might be thereby effaced. f Accordingly, he was re-crowned with great pomp (not at Westminster, but at Winchester) on the feast of Easter. All his attention was again turned to the raising of money ; and he proceeded \ ith as little scruple or delicacy as he had done four cars before, when filling his purse for the holy war. He resumed many of the estates which he had then alienated or sold, and took from several idividuals the employments and offices which iiey had bought, selling them all again to the best bidders. A.D. 1 194. Even from a nature much less fiery and vindictive than Richard's, the forgiveness of such injuries as had been inflicted by the French king could scarcely be expected. Philip, more- over, who during his confinement had sent him back his homage, was now actually in arms within, or upon the frontiers of, his continental states. Richard prepared for war, and his people of Eng- land were as eager for it as himself. About the middle of May, he landed at Barfleur, in Nor- mandy, bent on revenge. He was met at his land- ing by his craven-hearted brother John, who threw himself at his feet, and implored forgiveness. At the intercession of his mother, Eleanor, Richard forgave him, and received him into favour. This is a noble trait, and a wonderful one, considering the amount of the provocation and the barbarous usages of the times. " I forgive him," said Richard, " and hope I shall as easily forget his injuries as he will forget my pardon. "J The demoniac cha- racter of John was placed in a not less forcible light. To return to his brother, he had deserted • Brompt. — Hemingford. f It appears that Richard was opposed to this re-coronation, but Bubmitted to it In deference to the opinion of the council. t Brompt. from Philip, to whom he had sworn that he would never make peace without his concurrence : so far, however, his step was a usual one ; but he further impressed it with his inherent treachery and fero- city. Before quitting Philip's party, he invited to dinner all the officers of the garrison which that king had placed in Evreux, and massacred them all during the entertainment. His hands were wet with this blood when he waited upon Richard; but, with all his vices, we think too well of the Lion-heart to believe that such a deed facilitated his pardon. Although begun with fury, this cam- paign was carried on rather languidly and on a confined scale, in part owing to the impoverished state of Richard's exchequer, and in part to the disaffection prevalent in most of his dominions on the continent. He, however, defeated Philip in several engagements, took several towns, and in one encounter got possession of his adversary's military chest, together with the cartulary, the records, and the archives of the crown. The cam- paign terminated, on the 23rd of July, in a truce for one year. A. D. 1195. Hubert Walter, who had been lately advanced from the bishopric of Salisbury to the archbishopric of Canterbury, was appointed guardian of England and grand justiciary. He had shown his bravery and attachment to Richard in the wars of Palestine, and now he displayed ad- mirable talent and conduct as a peaceful minister. He deserved better times, and a more prudent master. He had been educated under the great Ranulf de Glanville, and was versed in the science of the English laws. Under his administration the justices made their regular circuits ; a general tranquillity was restored ; and men, gradually re- covering from the late oppressions and vexations, began to be re-animated with the spirit of order and industry. The absence of the king might have been felt as a real benefit to the nation, had it not been for his constant demands for money to carry on his wars abroad, and complete the payment of his ran- som, Avhich demands frequently obliged the mi- nister to act contrary to the conviction of his better judgment and his conscience. Hubert, however, seems to have raised more money with less actual violence and injustice than any of his predecessors. Longchamp was employed in some important em- bassies, and continued to hold the office of chan- cellor till his death, which happened about a year before that of his master. Towards the end of the preceding year death had delivered Richard from a part of his anxieties. Fearing that the brutal Leopold would take the lives of the hostages placed in his hands, the Eng- lish king fulfilled one of his agreements, by send- ing the Princess of Cyprus and his niece, " the Maid of Brittany," into Germany. Before the ladies reached Vienna they received news of the duke's death. As he was tilting on St. Stephen's day, his horse fell upon him, and crushed his foot j a mortification ensued ; and, when his physicians told him he must die, he was seized with dread 512 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. tind remorse ; and, to obviate some of the effects of tlie excommunication under Avhicli he still lay, he ordered that the English hostages should be set free, and that the money he had extorted should be returned to Richard.* When war broke out again in France — which it did before the term of the truce had expired — it was carried on in a desultory manner, and a strange treaty of peace was proposed, by which Richard was to give " the Maid of Brit- tany," who had returned to him on learning the Duke of Austria's death, in marriage to tlie son of the French king. Peace was, however, concluded at the end of the year without this marriage. Great discontents had long prevailed in London, on account of the unequal assessment of the taxes ; the poor, it was alleged, were made to pay out of all proportion with the rich. The people found an advocate and champion in AVil- liam Fitz-Osbert, commonly called " Longbeard" — a man of great activity and energy, " some- what learned and very eloquent," who, in his first proceedings, seems to have been perfectly in the right. He went over to the continent to lay his complaints before the king; and as he admitted that the war which called for so much money was perfectly just, and even necessary; and as he contended for nothing more than that the rich should not throw all the burden of the supplies upon the poor, Richard received him without anger, and promised that the matter should be properly examined. It appears, however, that nothing was done. Longbeard then (a. d. 1196) had recourse to secret political associations — an expedient always dangerous, but particularly so with an unenlightened people. Fifty-two thousand persons are said to have sAvorn implicit obedience to the orders of their " advocate," the " saviour of the poor," whose somewhat obscure and mystical harangues,! delivered every day at St. Paul's Cross, filled the wealthier citizens with alarm. It is pretty clear that Fitz-Osbert now became a dangerous demagogue, but the particular accusation brought against him is curious : he was charged with inflaming the poor and middling people with the love of liberty and happiness. He was cited to appear before a great council of prelates and nobles ; ' — he went, but escorted by so many of the inferior classes, wiio proclaimed him " the king of the poor," that it was not considered safe to proceed against him. The agents of government then en- deavoured to gain over a part of the mob, and succeeded by a cunning alternation of promises and threats. The archbishop of Canterbury and the other justiciaries met the poorest citizens on several occasions, and at last induced them to give up mnny of their children as hostages for their peace- aV)le behaviour. Longbeard, however, was still so formidable that they durst not arrest him openly. One Geoffrey, and another wealthy citizen whose • It does not appear what part, or wlictUcr any, of tho money was tcstor.d. It is asserted that Richard's ransom was spent in beaiui- fying and fortifying Vienna. + It appears tliat Fitz Osbert, or Longbeard, took a text frcm Scripture, and^pave to his political discourses the form and character of sermons. Pie wore his beard that he might look like a true Saxon. name is not recorded, undertook to seize him by surprise : they watched all his motions for several days, being always followed by a body of armed men ready to act at their signal. At length they caught him as he was walking quietly along with only nine adherents. They approached him as if they had no business with him, but when suffi- ciently near they laid hands on him, and the armed men, who were concealed close at hand, ran up to secure him. Longbeard drew his knife, stabbed Geoffrey to the heart, and then with his comrades fought his way to the church of St. Mary of Arches. He barricaded the church tower, and there made a desperate resistance. On the fourth day fire Avas set to the tower, and the besieged were driven forth by the flames. They w^ere all taken and bound, and, while they were binding Longbeard, the son of that Geoffrey whom he had slain plunged his long knife into his bowels. He fell, but was not so fortunate as to die there. Wounded and bleeding as he was, they tied him to the tail of a horse, and so dragged him to the Tower, where he was pre- sented to the archbishop-regent, who presently sentenced him to the gallows. From the Tower they dragged him at the same horse's tail to " the Elms" in West Smithfield, and there hanged him on a high gibbet, and his nine companions along with him. The mob, who had done nothing to rescue him while living, honoured him as a saint and martyr when dead. They stole away the gibbet on which he was hanged, and distributed it in precious morsels for relics ; they preserved the very dust on which he had trod ; and by degrees not only the people in the neighbourhood of London, but the peasantry from distant parts of the kingdom, made pilgrimages to Smithfield, believing that miracles were wrought on the spot where the " king of the poor" had breathed his last. The archbishop sent troops to disperse these rustic enthusiasts ; but, driven away by day, they re-assembled in the darkness of night ; and it was not until a perma- nent guard was established on the spot, and manv men and women had been scourged and thrown into prison, that the pilgrimages were stopped, and the popular enthusiasm and ferment abated.* Not many months after these events England was afflicted with a dreadful scarcity, and the famine was accompanied or followed by the plague, a frequent visitor in those ages, but which, on this particular occasion, committed unusual havoc. The monasteries alone were exempted. A.D. 1197. A war, contemptible in its results, but savagely cruel, again broke out between Richard and Philip, and ended when their barons were tired of it, or when they, the kings, had no more money to purchase the services of Brabanters and other mercenaries. Even had the vengeance of Richard been less implacable, and the ambition of Philip to establish his supremacy in France, at the cost of the Plantagenets, a less fixed and ruling passion, there were other causes wliich * Newb. — Iloved. — Gervase. — Knighton. — Matt. Par. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 513 would have sufficed for the disturbance of peace. In Brittany the rule or paramount authority of the English king was most unpopular, and the same was the case in Aquitaine, where Bertrand de Born, who had so often intrigued with Richard against his father Henry, was now intriguing with the French king against Richard. In both these states some of the most powerful of Richard's vassals raised the banner of war, and, at times separately, at times united with French troops, they fought with the view of emancipating their country from the Plantagenets, not heeding the obvious danger of only changing masters and bearing the yoke of Philip. The Earl of Toulouse also declared war in the south, and, changing from an ally into an enemy, the Earl of Flanders in the north at one time menaced Richard with his dan- gerous attacks. Though surprised and defeated by the Bretons at Carhaix, and beaten again by the Bretons united with some troops of France near Aumale, Richard, on the whole, maintained his usual superiority in the field of battle. The Earl of Toulouse was reconciled by a treaty of family alliance, Richard bestowing on him the hand of his sister Joan, the queen-dowager of Sicily. * The most memorable incident of this campaign was the capture of the Bishop of Beauvais, a near connexion to the French king, and one of the most bitter of Richard's enemies. He was taken, fighting in complete armour, by Marchadee, the leader of the Brabanters in Richard's service. The king ordered him to be loaded with irons, and cast into a dungeon in Rouen Castle. Two of his chaplains waited on Richard to implore for milder treatment. " You yourselves shall judge whether I am not justified," said Ricliard. "This man has done me many wrongs. Much I could forget, but not this. When in the hands of the emperor, and when, in consideration of my royal character, they were beginning to treat me more gently and with some marks of respect, your master arrived, and I soon experienced the effect of his visit : over-night he spoke with the emperor, and the next morning a chain was put upon me such as a horse could hardly bear. What he now nttrits at my hands declare yourselves, and be just." The chaplains, it is said, were silent, and withdrew. The bisho]) then addressed the pope, imploring him to intercede. Celestine rated him severely on his flagrant departure from the canons of the church ; and told him that though he might ask mercy as a friend, he could not interfere in such a case as pope. Soon after this the pcntiff" wrote to Richard imploring him to pity " his son," the bishop. Richard, who, like most of his Norman pre- decessors, was not wanting in a rude wit or caustic humour, replied to the pope by sending him the bishop of Beauvais' coat of mail, which was besmeared with blood, and had the following • We have me ntioned that Queen Borciigariii and the two other hv;\ii's readied Sicily safely from Acre. From Sicily they went to Kame, wh-re the Pope entertained them some months, and then caused tliem to be conducted to Atiuilaine. TOL. 1. scroll attached to it, — an apposite quotation from the Old Testament, — " This have we found : know now whether it be thy son's coat or no." Though, as usual, sorely in want of money, Richard refused ten thousand marks which were offered as a ransom, and the bishop of Beauvais occupied his dungeon and wore his chains till Richard went to the grave. * In the month of September of this same year disease, misfortune, remorse, and a premature decay did the English king justice on another of his foes. The Emperor Henry died at Messina, after suffering an extremity of humiliation at the hands of his Sicilian wife ; and in his dying moments he confessed his shameful injustice to Richard, and ordered that the money he had ex- torted as his ransom should be restored. Though a bishop was charged with a message to Richard, and though the clause was solemnly inserted in the emperor's will, the money was never repaid. As the war again waxed languid, and the powerful vassals of both potentates showed again that they were actuated by other motives and interests than those of their masters, the two kings again spoke of peace, and meeting at Andely, on the Seine, finally " concluded upon an abstinence of war, to endure from the Feast of St. Hilary for one whole year." These paltry details vex and tire the nar- rator, but it is impossible to convey a just notion of the course of events and the spirit of the times without them. A.D. 1198. — When the truce expired, hostilities were again renewed, and with greater ferocity than ever, both princes burning and utterly desolating the territories they invaded, and tearing out the eyes of many of their prisoners. Near Gisors, Richard gained another victory, and Pliilip in his flight was nearly drowned in the river Epte, a bridge he had to cross breaking down under the weight of the fugitives. In his triumphant bul- letin, Richard said, " This day I have made the king of France drink deep of the waters of the Epte!" As for himself, he had unhorsed three knights at a single charge, and made them pri- soners. It was Ccsur de Lion's last fight. A truce was -concluded, and early in the following year, through the mediation of Peter of Capua, the pope's legate, it was prolonged and solemnly de- clared to be binding for five years. A fresh ground of quarrel arose almost immediately after, but the differences were made up, and, marching from Normandy, Richard repaired to Aquitaine to look after his intriguing and ever-turbulent vassals in that quarter. A strange ballad had for some time been current in Norpiandy. Its burden purported, that in the Limousin the arrow was making by which the tyrant would die. The learned writert who has collected all the discrepancies and contradictions respecting the circumstances by which Richard's death was attended, will not ven- ture to decide whether these shadows cast before • lloved. — ISiximpt. — Matt. Par. — Newhrig. t Sir Francis Palgrave, lulroduct. Rot. Cur. Reg. 2g 514 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. the event arose out of the wishes of the people or indicated any organized conspiracy. We are in- clined to believe ourselves that there was no con- spiracy beyond the old, dark brooding, the settled hatred and vindictive spirit of his vassals of the south. Those fiery men, it will be remembered, had attempted the life of his father Henry more than once by shooting arrows at him. There are many contradictions which throw doubt upon parts of the commonly received story of the deatli of Richard, but all accounts agree in stating that the heroic Lion-heart fell before an obscure castle, and in consequence of a wound received either from an arrow or a quarrel. The usual narrative, which has almost a prescriptive right to insertion, is to this eflfect : — arriving from Normandy in the south, Richard learned that Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, his vassal, had found a treasure in his domains. This, as superior lord, he de- manded ; and when the viscount offered only half of it, and refused to give more, Richard, deter- mined to have the whole, besieged him in his castle of Chaluz. The want of provisions reduced the garrison to the greatest straits, and they offered to surrender at the king's mercy, their lives only being spared. Richard refused the terms, telling them he would take the place by storm, and hang every man of them upon the battlements. The garrison of the castle were driven to despair. The king, with Marchadee, the leader of his mercenaries, then surveyed the walls to see where the assault should be made, when a youth, by name Bertrand de Gurdun, having recognised him from the ramparts, praying God to speed it well, discharged an arrow, and hit the king in the left shoulder. Soon after the castle was taken by assault, and all the men in it were butchered, with the exception of Bertrand. The wound was not in itself dangerous, but it was made mortal by the unskilfulness of the surgeon in ex- tracting the arrow-head, which had been broken off in the shoulder. Feeling his end approach, Richard summoned Bertrand de Gurdun into his presence. "Wretch!" he exclaimed, "what have I done unto thee that thou shouldest seek my life ?" The chained youth replied firmly, — " My father and my two brothers hast thou slain with thine own hand, and myself thou wouldest hang ! Let me die now, in cruel torture if thou wilt ; I am content if thou diest, and the world be freed of an oppressor !" " Youth, I forgive thee !" cried Richard : " loose his chains, and give him a hundred shillings !" But Marchadee* would not let him go, and after the king's death he flayed him alive, and lianged him. Richard expired in anguish and contrition, on Tuesday, the 6th of April, 1199, a date in which all the contemporary writers of best note seem to be agreed. He had reigned nearly ten years, not one of which was passed in Enghmd, but which had all been wasted in incessant wars, or in preparations for war. He was only forty-two years old, and he left no children to succeed him. By his will he directed that his heart should be carried to his faithful city of Rouen for interment in the cathedral, that his bowels, " as his ignoble parts," should be left among the rebellious Poic- tevins, and that his body should be buried at the feet of his father at Fontevraud, • Here Uiere is a varying account. Tlie MS. chronicle of Win- chester says that Marchadee surrendered the prisoner to Riclnrd's sister Joan, and that she pUicked out Ills eyes, and caused him to suffer other horrible mutilations and tortures, under which he ex- pired. JoTTN. SURNAMED SaNS-TeRRE, OR LaCKLAND.* Great Seal of Kino John. * A nickname, according to Brompton, given him by his father, who in a will which ho made at Domfront, in 1170, left John no lands, but only recommended him to be provided for by his eldest brother. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 515 PoETBAiT oj? King John.— From his Tomb at Worcester. A.D. 1 199. — Earl John was in Normandy when his brother died. As soon as he received the intelligence, he sent to retain the foreign mer- cenaries who had been in Richard's pay, promising them large gifts and increased salaries. Dis- patching Hubert Walter, the archbishop of Can- terbury, and William Mareschall into England, to overawe the barons there, he himself hastened to Chinon to seize his Ijrother's treasure, which was deposited in that castle. Chinon, with several other castles in the neighbourhood, voluntarily re- ceived him ; but, in the meanwhile, the barons of Touraine, Maine, Anjou, and Brittany, proclaimed his nephew, the young Arthur, as their lawful sovereign. John, in assertion of his claim, pro- ceeded to chastise the citizens of Mans for the sup- port they afforded his nephew, and then, returning to Normandy, he was received at Rouen without opposition, and, on Sunday the 25th of April, he was there inaugurated, being girt with the sword of the duchy, and having the golden coronal put upon his head. News, whether good or bad, travelled but slowly in those days. A vague report of Richard's death was spread in England, but no- thing certain was known, and the friends of John seem purposely to have concealed the fact for many days. When the archbishop of Canterbury and his companion arrived, they required all the lieges in the cities and burghs throughout the king- dom, and all the earls, barons, and freeholders, to be in the fealty, and keep the peace of John Duke of Normandy, son of King Henry, son of the Empress Matilda.* But John had never been • Hoved. — Matt. I'ar. — Pulgrave, Rot. Cur. Reg. popular in the nation, and the more powerful classes seemed disposed to resist his accession. Bishops, earls, and barons, — most of those who had castles, — filled them with armed men and stocked them with provisions. The poorer classes com- mitted great devastations, for in those times a king's death was the signal for the general dis- organization of society. The primate and his associate acted with great alacrity and vigour, seeing that nothing less would save the country from a frightful anarchy. They convened a great council at Northampton, and there, by secret gifts and open promises of justice and good government on the part of John, they induced the assembled prelates and barons to swear fealty and faithful service to the " Duke of Normandy," as the pre- tender was carefully called, until bis coronation at Westminster. John did not arrive until the 25th of May, when he landed at Shoreham. On the 27th he repaired to the church of St. Peter at West- minster to claim the crown. He well knew that many preferred the right of his nephew, the son of an elder brother, who had repeatedly been declared his heir by the late king ; and now John professed to be in possession of a will, drawn up in his last hours, by which Richard revoked former wills, and appointed him his successor. But this testament, whether true or false, seems to have carried no weight with it, and to have been altogether disre- garded on this solemn occasion. The fact that the crown was not considered heritable property was stated in the broadest terms, and never was the elective character of the monarchy so forcibly put by such high authority. The Archbishop 516 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Hubert, having annovmced to the audience that the Duke of Normandy had been elected king at North- ampton, laid it down as a known principle that no one could be entitled by any previous circumstances to succeed to the crown unless he were chosen to be king by the body of the nation, — " ab univer- sitate regni clectus." Matthew Paris pretends to give the words of the archbishop : their substance is as follows : — " Hear, all ye people ; — it is well known that no one can have a right to the crown of this kingdom, unless for his excellent virtues lie be elected to it, and then anointed king, as was tlie case with Saul, the son of no king, nor even royally connected ; such a man also was David. And thus it was ordained, to the end that he whose merits are pre-eminent be chosen the lord of all the people. If indeed of the family of the deceased monarch there be one thus Euper-emincntly endowed, he should have our preference. This I say touching the noble Duke John, here present, brother of our late excellent King Richard, who had no lieir pro- ceeding of his body. He possesses the same worthiness of qualities, and is also of the same blood as King Richard was of, and for these qua- lities, having invoked the Holy Spirit, we elect him our king." According to Matthew Paris, John assented without starting the question either of his inherent right by birth, or of his right by will ; and when he had taken the usual oaths to protect the church and govern justly, all present hailed him with, "Long live the king!"* On the fol- lowing day, the prelates and barons did homage to. him, immediately after which he repaired to St. Albans to pray before the shrine of the martyr. John was at this time thirty-two years old, — a manly age, — which gave him many advantages over kings commencing their reigns in youth. He was robust, healthy, and, like most of his race, handsome; but his evil passions distorted his countenance, and gave him a treacherous and cruel expression. He was already hated by the people, and his reign opened inauspiciously. Many of the nobles in England immediately showed disafliection : the king of Scotland, William the Lion, who had quarrelled with him on account of the provinces of Northumberland and Cumberland, threatened him with invasion ; and on the continent, with the ex- ception of those in Normandy, all the great vassals were vip in arms for his nei)hew, and in close al- liance with the French king, who had renewed the war, and was promising himself every s^uccess, well knowing the difference between the warlike Richard and the cowardly John, as also the weak- ncijs that nuist arise out of a disputed succession, for the election at London and tlie inauguration at Rouen had no legal effect in those provinces which had declared for Arthur.f Leaving William de Stutevillc to keep in clieck the Scots, John crossed • The claims of younf; Arthur do not appear to have been men- tioned. It was, however, only by stretching .-i point, ami declaiin;; the crown elective, that the boy coul I be set aside. If they had gone on legitimacy and the rights of ])rimoj;enituri', tliey must have awarded the crown to him, — and ibis sulTicienlly acounts for the mode of proccedinj; adopted bv .Tohn and his partizans. + Paru, Ilist. de la lirotagnj.— Matt. I'ar.— llovrd. over to Normandy, where the Earl of Flanders and other great lords who had confederated with Richard brought in their forces. Philip demanded and obtained a truce for six weeks, at the end of which term he met John to propose a definitive peace. His demands led to an instant renewal of war, for he not only reqviired the surrender by the English king of all his French possessions (Normandy excepted) to Arthur, but the cession also of a considerable part of Normandy itself to the French crown. The only being engaged in this game of ambi- tion that can at all interest the feelings was the innocent Arthur, who was too young and helpless to play his own part in it. The greatest of our poets has thrown all the intensity both of pathos and horror around the last days of this prince ; but all the days of his brief life were marked with touching vicissitudes. Like William of Nor- mandy, the liapless son of Duke Robert, Arthur was the child of sorrow from his cradle upwards. His misfortunes, indeed, began before he came into the world ; liis father Geoffrey was killed in a tour- nament eight months prior to his birth, and Brit- tany, to which he had an hereditary right through his mother, was divided into factions, fierce yet changeable, destructive of present prosperity and unproductive of future good ; for the national in- dependence, their main object, was an empty dream, in the neighbourhood of such powerful and ambi- tious monarchs as the Plantagenets of England and the Capetians of France. The people of Brittany, however, hailed the birth of the posthumous child of Geoffrey with transports of patriotic joy. In spite of his grandfather Henry, who wished to give the child his own name, they insisted on giving him the name of Arthur. That mysterious hero was as dear to the people of Brittany as to their kindred of our own island : tradition painted him as the companion in arms of their " King Hoel the Great ;" and though he had been dead some centu- ries, they still expected his coming as the restorer of their old independence. Merlin had predicted this, and Merlin was still revered as a prophet in Brittany as well as in Wales. Popular credulity thus attached ideas of national gl^ry to the che- rished name of Arthur ; and, as the child was hand- some and promising, the Bretons looked forward to the day when he should rule them without the control of French or English.* His mother Constance, a vain and weak woman, could spare little time from her amours and intrigues to devote to her son, and, at the moment when his uncle John threatened him with destruction, she was occupied by her passion for a third husband, M-hom she had recently married, her second husband being still living. During the lifetime of Richard, she had bandied her son between that sovereign and the French king as circumstances and her caprice varied ; and now when, awakened to a sense of his danger, the only course she could pursue was to carry him to Paris, and plac3 him under the protection of the astute and selfish Philip, • Daru, Hist, de la lirotasne. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 517 to whom she offered the direct vassalage not oulj^ of Brittany, which Arthur was to inherit through her, but also of Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine, and the other states he claimed as heir to his father. The troops of John, composed almost entirely of mer- cenaries, fell with savage fury upon Brittany, burning and destroying the houses and fields, and selling the inhabitants as slaves. Philip assisted William Desroche?, the commander of the small Breton army, and took several castles on the frontiers of 13rittany and France from the English. But as soon as he gained these fortresses he de- stroyed them, in order evidently to leave the road open to himself when he should throw off the mask and invade the country on his own account. Desroches, incensed at these proceedings, with- drew Arthur and his mother from the French court, and they would both have sought his peace, and delivered themselves up to John, had they not been scared away by the report that he intended the murder of his nephew. After this, young Arthur returned to Philip, who knighted him, not- withstanding his tender age, and promised to give him his daughter Mary in marriage. But Philip only intended to make a tool of the unfortunate boy ; and when some troublesome disputes, in which he was engaged with the pope, induced him to treat with John, he sacrificed all his interests without any remorse. By the treaty of peace which was con- cluded between the two kings, in the spring of 1200, John was to remain in possession of all the states his brother Richard had occupied ; and thus Arthur was completely disinherited, with the con- nivance and participation of the French king ; for it is said, that by a secret article of the treaty, Philip was to inherit his continental dominions, if John died without children. Circumstances and the unruly passions of John soon nullified the whole of tliis treaty, and made Philip again the slippery friend of young Arthur ; but nothing could efface the French king's perfidy, or reinspire confi- dence in him, in reasonable men. In the summer of this same year, the second of his reign, John made a royal progress into Aquitaine, to receive the homage of the barons cf that province. He delighted the lively people of the south with Jiis magnificence and parade ; he captivated some of the volatile and factious nobles with a display of a familiar and festive humour; but these feelings were but momentary ; for neither with the people nor their chiefs could he keep up the favourable impression he had made. Though a skilful actor, his capability was confined to a single scene or two ; it could never extend itself over a whole act : his passions, which seem to have partaken of insa- nity, were sure to baffle his hypocrisy on anything like a lengthened intercourse. He had thus shown his true character, and disgusted many of the nobles of Poictou and Aquitaine, when his lawless passion for the young wife of one of them completed their irritation and disgust. Isabella, the daughter of the Count of Angouleme, was one of the most celebrated beauties of her time : she had been re- cently married to the Count of la Marche, a power- ful noble ; and John had been married ten years to Avisa, a daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, a fair and virtuous woman, who had brought him an immense dower. In spite of these obstacles, John got possession of the person of Isabella, and mar- ried her at Angouleme, the archbishop of Bor- deaux performing the ceremony. In the autumn, he brought his new wifie to England, and caused her to be crowned at Westminster. He himself was recrowned at the same time, the archbishop of Canterbury officiating. He then gave himself up to idleness and luxurious enjoyment. But in the following spring he was disturbed by the vengeance of the Count of la Marche, whom he had robbed of his wife. That nobleman, with his brother, the Earl of Eu, and several other barons, took up arms in Poictou and Aquitaine. When summoned to attend their liege lord, many of the English vassals refused, declaring that it was too insignificant and disho- nourable a warfare for them to embark in. They afterwards said that they would sail with him if he would restore their rights and liberties. For the present, John so far triumphed over their opposi- tion as to make the refractory barons give him hostages, and pay scutage in lieu of their personal attendance. Tiieir resistance was not yet organ- ized ; but as John's insolence, rapacity, and law- less lust had provoked lay and clergy, and as he had engaged in a personal quarrel with one of the most powerful of the monastic order.-, a regular and an extensive opposition was in due process of formation. John, accompanied by Isabella, went through Normandy to Paris, where he was courte- ously entertained by Philip, a much greater master in deceit, who was, at the very moment, in league with the Count of la Marche, in Aquitaine, and preparing a fresh insurrection against his guest in Brittany. From Paris, John marched without his wife into Aquitaine, but not to fight, and, after a paltry parade through the safe part of the country, he marched back again to his pleasures, leaving the insurgents in greater power and confidence than ever. A. D. 1202. The moment had now arrived for the decision of the question at issue — whether the Plantagenets or the Capetians should be lords of France. The superiority of the former race had been established by the wisdom of Henry II., and pretty well maintained by the valour of Richard ; but under the unwise and pusillanimous John it had no longer a chance. Having settled his dis- putes with the pope, and freed himself from other troubles, Philip now broke the peace, by openly succouring the insurgents in Aquitaine, and by reviving and again espousing the claims of young Arthur. The poor orphan— his mother had died the preceding year — was living under the protec- tion of the French king, because, says a chronicler, he was in constant fear of treachery on the part of John. " You know your rights," said Philip to tlie youth; " and would you not be a king?" " That truly would I," replied Arthur. '• Here, 518 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. then," said Philip, " are 200 knights ; march with them, and take possession of the provinces which are yours, while I make an inroad on Normandy." In the treaty drawn up between these most unequal allies, Arthur was made to agree that the French king should keep all that he pleased of the terri- tories in Normandy which he had taken, or might henceforth take, with God's aid; and he agreed to do homage for the rest of the continental domi- nions.* Arthur then raised his banner of war; the Bretons sent him 500 knights and 4000 foot soldiers ; the barons of Touraine and Poictou 110 men-at-arms ; and this, with the insignificant con- tingent supplied by Philip, was all the force at his disposal. His friends had counted on a force of 30,000 men ; but it was not the plan of his trea- cherous ally to make him powerful. Philip only wanted a diversion in his own favour, while he fol- lowed up his successes in Normandy. The young orphan — for, even now, Arthur was only in his fifteenth year — was of course devoid of all military experience, and dependent on the guidance of others. Some of his friends — or they may have been his concealed enemies — advised him, as his first trial in arms, to march against the town of Mirebeau, about six miles from Poictiers, because his grand- mother, Eleanor, who had always been the bitter enemy of his mother, was residing there ; and be- cause (it was reasoned) if he got possession of her person, he would be enabled to bring his uncle to terms. He marched, and took the town, but not his grandmother. The veteran Amazon, though surprised, had time to throw herself into a strong tower, which served as a citadel. Arthur and his • Guil. Arraoric— Matt. Par. small army established themselves in the town, and laid siege to the tower where the " Ate" — the stirrer " to blood and strife," stoutly defended herself. John, with an activity of which he was not deemed capable, marched to her rescue ; and his troops were before Mirebeau, and had invested that town, ere his nephew was aware of his depar- ture from Normandy. The unnatural discords of the Norman and Plantagenet race had already and repeatedly presented the spectacle of son warring against father, brother against brother, but here was a boy of fifteen besieging his grandmother of eighty, and an uncle besieging his nephew — all at one point. On the night between the 31st of July and the 1st of August the savage John, by means of treachery, got possession of the town. Arthur was taken in his bed, as were also most of the nobles who had followed him on that dismal expe- dition. The Count of le Marche, Isabella's hus- band, on whom he had inflicted the most insup- portable of wrongs, and whom John considered as his bitterest enemy, the Viscounts of Limoges, Lusignan, and Thouars, were among the distin- guished captives, who amounted in all to 200 noble knights. The captor revelled in base vengeance ; he caused them to be loaded with irons, tied in open carts, drawn by bullocks, and afterwards to be thrown into dungeons in Normandy and England. Of those whose confinement fell in our island, twenty-two noblemen are said to have been starved to death in Corfe Castle — a mode of destruction, indeed, " worthy of a being of unmingled malig- nity."* Young Arthur was carried to Falaise, and from Falaise he was removed to the castle of Rouen, •Mackintosh. — Rigoid.Gest. Phil. Aug. — Matt, Par, — Guil, Armoric Castle of Falaise. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 106G— 1216. 519 where all positive traces of him are lost. Such damnable deeds are not done in the light of day, or in the presence of witnesses, and some obscurity and mystery must always rest ujwn their horrors. The version of Shakspeare has made an impression which no time and no scepticism will ever efface ; and, after all, it is probably not far from being the true one. Of the contemporary writers who men- tion the disappearai:ice of Arthur, Matthew Paris is the one who expresses himself in the most measured terms; yet his words convey a fearful meaning. He says, John went to his nephew at Falaise, and besought him with gentleness to trust his uncle. Arthur replied, indignantly, " Give me mine hiheritance — restore to me my kingdom of England." Much provoked, John immediately sent him to Rouen, with orders that he should be more closely guarded. " Not long after," pro- ceeds Mackintosh, " he suddenly disappeared ; I trust not ill the way that malignant rumour alleges. It was suspected by all that John murdered his nephew with his own hand, and he became the object of the blackest hatred. The monks of Mar- gan tell us, in their brief yearly notes, ' that John being at Rouen in the week before Easter, 1203, after he had finished his dinner, instigated by drunkenness and malignant fiends, literally im- brued his hands in the blood of his defenceless nephew, and caused his body to be thrown into the Seine, with heavy stones fastened to his feet ; that the body was notwithstanding cast on shore, and buried at the abbey of Bee secretly, for fear of the tyrant.' " According to the popular traditions of the Bre- tons, John, pretending to be reconciled with his nephew, took Arthur from his dungeon, in the castle of Rouen, and proceeded with him towards Cherbourg, travelling on horseback, and keeping #11 Eliil ilvBfixix AND i>iuNCE AnTHVE.— >'orthcote. 520 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. near the coast. I^ate one evening, when the king and his nephew had outridden the rest of tlie party, John stopped on a high cliff which overhung the sea : after looking down the precipice he drew his sword, and, riding suddenly at the young prince, ran him through the body. Arthur fell to the ground and begged for mercy, but the murderer dragged him to the brink of the preci- pice, and hurled him, yet breathing, into the waves below.* But Ralph, the abbot of Coggeshall, who tells the pitiable tale most minutely, is pro- bably the most correct of all. His account is as follows : — Some of the king's councillors (we believe John needed no covmcil save from his own depraved heart), representing how many slaughters and seditions the Bretons were committing for their lord Arthur, and maintaining that they would never be quiet so long as that prince lived in a sound state, suggested that he should deprive the noble youth of his eyes, and so render him incapable of government. Some wretches were sent to his prison at Falaise to execute this detestable deed : they found Arthur loaded with chains, and were so moved with his tears and prayers that they staid their bloody hands. The compassion of his guards, and the probity of Hubert de Burgh, — the kind Hubert of Shakspeare, — saved him for this time. Hubert, wlio was warden of the castle, took upon him to suspend the cruelties till the king should be further consulted. This merciful appeal only produced his removal from Falaise to Rouen. On the 3rd of April, in the year of mercy 1203, the helpless orphan was startled from his sleep and invited to descend to the foot of the tower, which was washed by the peaceful waters of the Seine. At the portal he found a boat, and in it his uncle, attended by Peter de Maulac, his esquire. The lonely spot, the dark hour, and the darker countenance of his uncle, told the youth his hour was come. Making a vain and last appeal, he threw himself on his knees and begged that his life at least might be spared. But John gave the sign, and Arthur was murdered. Some say that Peter de Maulac shrunk from the deed, and that John seized his nephew by the hair, stabbed him with his own hands, and threw his body into the river. Hemingford and Knyghton, who wrote near the time, say that the squire was the execu- tioner, and this statement is confirmed by the circumstance which they mention, and which is otherwise established, of John having be- stowed on De Maulac, the heiress of the barony of Mulgref in marriage, as the reward of his iniquity. In the essential parts of the crime all writers agree. " The small number of English writer;^," says a recant historian, " who do not speak of the murder, are equally silent respecting the notorious fact of the disappearance of Arthur, which they could have no reason for being afraid to relate, but their conviction of the guilt of John. In all who have dared to speak we can evidently perceive a sort of rivalship in expressing the • Argentr^, Hist, de Bretagnp.— Dnmoulin, Hist, de Normandie. horror felt by their contemporaries, which more than outweighs in the scales of evidence any mis- takes or exaggerations into which these honest feelings may have betrayed them."* The rumour of the mvirder, which was certainly spread in the month of April of this year, excited a universal cry of horror and indignation. The Bretons, among whom the young prince had been born and brought up, and who had looked to him with the fondest hopes, were the loudest of all : their rage amounted to an absolute frenzy ; and even when cooler moments came they unanimously swore to revenge their prince's death. The Maid of Brittany, — the fair and vnifortunate Eleanor, Arthur's eldest sister, — was in John's hands, and closely confined in a monastery or prison at Bristol, where she consumed forty years of her life ; but the enthusiastic people rallied round Alice, an infant half-sister of the prince, and appointed her father, Guy de Thouars, the last husband of their duchess Constance, their regent and general of their confederacy. At a meeting of the estates of the province, held at Vannes, it was determined that Guy, with a deputation, should forthwith carry their complaints before the French king, " their suzerain lord," and demand justice.f He listened to their petition, and summoned John to a trial before his peers, as a vassal of the French crown. T)ie pro- cess was in the regular order of feudal justice. But the accused monarch did not appear; on which, with the concurrence of the barons, this sentence was pronounced on him : — "That John, Duke of Normandy, unmindful of his oath to Philip, his lord, had murdered his elder brother's son, a homager to the crown of France, within the seignory of that realm ; whereon he is judged a traitor ; and, as an enemy to the crown of France, to forfeit all his dominions which he held bv homage ; and that re-entry be made by force of arms." Philip, who had been obliged to retreat from Normandy after the capture of Prince Arthur and the barons at Mirebeau in the preceding year, was now on the frontier of Poictou, where a general insurrection took place, and most of the nobles joined him against tlie murderer John. They surrendered to Philip most of the strong places, and then marched with him to Normandy. Here the enraged Bretons were before him, having invaded and occupied all the territory near their own frontiers : they took the strong castle of Mount St. Michael by assault, made themselves masters of Avranclies, and then advancing, burnt all the towns between that city and Caen. There was the national wildness and ferocity in their vengeance, but it appears that not a few of the Normans joined them. These movements facilitated the pro- gress of the French king, who, being joined by John's subjects of Anjou and Maine, advanced by An- dely, Evreux, Domfront, and Lisieux, all of which places he took, and then eiTected his junction with the army of the Bretons at Caen, While tower and • Mackiiitosli. t l>-^r\x. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066— 121G. 521 town thus fell before the invaders, John was pass- ing his time in a voluptuous indolence at Rouen, surrounded by women and effeminate courtiers, who feasted and played, sang and danced, without a thought of the morrow. He wished to remain ignorant of the loss of his towns, the miseries of his people, his own shame ; and, when obliged to listen to some dismal news, he was accustomed to say, in the fulness of liis infatuation, "Let them go on; let these French and this" rabble of Bretons go on ; I will recover in a single day all that they are taking from me with so much pains." At last his enemies appeared at Radepont, in the neighbourhood of Rouen, and then (in the month of December) he fled over to England to demand succour.* We are not sufficiently acquainted with the his- tory of the noble families of the time, and the transmission or division of their estates ; but it appears that the Norman barons of England had no longer that property at stake in Normandy which on all former occasions had made them resolute to prevent the separation of the two coun- Uies. There were no doubt other causes for their apathy ; but, in spite of John's demerits, we cannot but believe that they would have made great exer- tions if they had been in the same position as lormerly, when the same barons held great estates in Normandy as well as in England. Now they ^v•ould make no strenuous effort ; and we find John complaining on this occasion, as a little later, when liis other continental provinces were occupied by the French king, that his English nobles had for- saken him, and thereby put it out of his power to resist his enemies. A.D. 1204. Unable to meet Philip with the sword, John attempted to stop his progress with the spiritual weapons of Rome : he applied to the pope, imploring him to interfere. Innocent ilespatched two legates to i)lead in the recreant's I'avour ; but, in the high tide of his success, the French king,made the bolder by the universal odium John had fallen into, turned a deaf car to their representations and menaces, and the legates de- parted without producing any apparent eflect. When John fled nothing remained to him save Rouen, Verneuil, and ChS,teau - Gaillard. The last was a strong castle, the pride of the late king, who took extraordinary pains in its construction, and it was held for John by a brave warrior who was true to his trust. In Rouen, the people, ani- mated by an hereditary hatred of tlie French, determined to defend themselves ; but when pressed by a vigorous siege, they applied for aid to their sovereign, the king of England. John had no aid to give. It was in vain he punished his lukewarm barons of England by fines and forfeitures, — it was in vain that he collected a considerable army at Portsmouth, — the nobles resolutely told him that they would not follow his standard out of England. Thus abandoned to themselves, and suffering from famine, the citizens of Rouen surrendered to the • Matt. Par. — Annal.de Maijian. French king. Verneuil was taken about the same time, and Chateau-Gaillard fell after nobly sustain- ing a siege of seven months. Thus, John had no longer an inch of ground in Normandy, which duchy, after a separation of two hundred and ninety-two years, was finally re-annexed to the French kingdom. Within this year Brittany, Anjou, Maine, 'I'ouraine, and Poictou equallv ac- knowledged the authority of Philip, and John had nothing left in those wide provinces except a few castles. Aquitaine, or Guienne, retained its con- nexion with the English crown, but there the autho- rity of the king was limited and uncertain. A.D. 1206. Philip soon found that it was much easier to incite the people against the detested John than to keep them obedient to himself. The men of Brittany, who indulged in their old dream of national independence, were soon dis- gusted by seeing their country treated as a mere province of France ; and discontents also broke out in Anjou and Poictou. John contrived to land an English army at Rochelle, and even to take the strong castle of Montauban ; then marching to the Loire, he took and burned Angers, committing many cruelties. He then reposed on his laurels, and gave himself up to feasting and debauchery. When again aroused, he descended the Loire, and laid siege to Nantes. This siege he raised, to offer battle to Philip. As the battle was about to commence he proposed a negotiation, and as the proposal was under discussion he ran away to England, loaded with new infamy. Philip, who had nothing more to do, as it was not convenient for him to attack Guienne, and an invasion of England was as yet a thing not to be contemplated, listened to another legate from the pope, who induced him to consent to a truce with John for two years. AD. 1207. Tlie next step of the degraded but still arrogant John was to quarrel with the pope, and provoke to the utmost — and by deeds which gave an odious colouring to his cause, even w'here he was wholly or partially in the right — the en- during enmity of that power which had shaken the throne of his great and wise father. The dispute arose out of the conflicting claims of the crown and the church in the appointment of bishops ; while John insisted that his favourite minister, John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, should be ele- vated to the see of Canterbury, the pope cano- nicaliy appointed Stephen Langton, — and the monks of Canterbury would receive no other arch- bishop. Never was time, never was place so ill chosen for an attack on the church; but John, blinded by passion, despatched two knights with an armed band to drive the monks of Canterbury from the land. The ministers of his vengeance entered with drawn swords into the cloisters which had alike witnessed the slaughter of Becket and the subsequent humiliation of his sovereign. " In the king's name," exclaimed the knights, " we command you, as traitors, to quit the realm ; begone in a moment, or we will set fire to these 522 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. walls, and burn you with your convent." All the monks who were not bed-ridden departed forth- with, and going into Flanders, were there received and hospitably entertained in different religious houses. John seized their effects : but as no one would labour upon them for the king, the lands of the archbishopric and of the convent of Canterbury lay without culture.* When Innocent, in a gentle but most decided tone asked for redress, Jolm braved his authority ; and thus an open struggle began between one of the ablest priests tliat ever wore the tiara, and the meanest and basest king that ever disgraced the English throne. While John amused himself with terrible but impotent threats against the monks, the pope wrote to the already disaffected English barons, ordering them to do all they could with the arms of the flesh to save their king and kingdom from perdition ; and he called upon the prelates and abbots of the kingdom to fight with their spiritual weapons for I^angton and the liberties of the church. He then sent orders to the bishops of London, Ely, and Worcester to wait upon the king in his name, and, if they found him still refractory, to threaten him , with the interdict. John at last received these prelates : when they came to the threat he grew pale with rage, and his lips quivered and frothed. " By God's teeth," he cried, " if you, or any of your body, dare to lay my states under interdict, I will send you and all your clergy to Rome, and confiscate your property. As for the Roman shave- lings, if I find any in my dominions, I will tear out their eyes and cut off their noses, and so send them to the pope, that the nations may witness their infamy." The bishops trembled and with- drew : but these were not times when personal fear stopped the triumphant march of Rome. A few weeks after, on Monday, the 23rd of March, 1208, in passion week, they pronounced the sen- tence of interdict against all John's dominions, and then fled for safety to the continent. To secure himself at this moment of danger, the king obliged as many of his nobles as he could to place their children in his hands as securities for their alle- giance ; a measure which created fresh disgust. When his commissioners went to the castle of William de Braouse, that nobleman's lady ex- claimed, "My son shall not go near him; he murdered his own nephew, whom he should have cherished." " Thou hast spoken like a foolish woman," said her husband ; and then turning to the officers, the baron added, "If I have done anything against my sovereign, let a day and place be named, for I am ready, and ever shall be, to make him satisfaction, without hostages, according to the judgment of his court and of my peers." John gave secret orders to seize the whole family : they were warned in time, and escaped safely into Ireland, but soon after perished in a miserable manner, the victims of the tyrant's insatiable vengeance.f In the mean time the nation was plunged in • Matt. Par.— Annal. de Marg. f IWd. mourning by the interdict, — the churches were instantly closed, — the priests ceased their functions, refusing to administer any of the usual sacred rites, except baptism to infants, and the sacra- ment to the dying. The dead were buried, without prayers, in unconsecrated ground, — the relics of the saints were taken from their places and laid upon ashes in the silent church, — their statues and pictures were covered with veils of black cloth, — the chime of church bells no longer floated on the air, and everything was so arranged under an interdict as to give a most lugubrious aspect to the whole country upon which it had fallen. When this had lasted a year, the pope followed up the sentence of interdict by a bull of excommunication against John. Although by nar- rowly watching the ports, he prevented the entrance of the Roman envoy and the official publication of the latter bull, the king was seriously alarmed, for he knew that excommunication would be followed by a sentence of dethronement, and that Philip was making ready to invade England with a banner that would be blessed by the pope. He also saw that the disaffection of his barons was still increasing, and that there was no part of Christian Europe to which he could apply for succour or alliance. At this critical moment, if we are to believe a curious story picturesquely told by Matthew Paris, he applied for aid to the Mahommedans of Spain. The Emir al Nassir was in the full career of con- quest, and, by crossing the Pyrenees, he could at any time fall upon the dependencies and states of Philip in the south, and so make an important diversion in favour of John. Sovereigns much more scrupulous than this false-bearted tyrant have had recourse to such infidel alliances, even when pressed by much less danger than John, who, it is reported, intrusted a secret negotiation to Thomas Hardington and Ralph Fitz-Nicholas, knights, and a priest called " Robert of London." These envoys being led through several apartments, lined with Moorish guards with turbans on their heads and cimeters in their girdles, were presented to the emir, " a man of moderate size and grave aspect," who kept his eyes fixed on a book which lay open before him. The Englishmen presented their king's letter, whicli was translated to the emir by an interpreter. According to the report which was afterwards spread, John offered to hold the English crown of the emir, and to embrace the faith of Mahommed. This looks like exaggeration, but John may have set no limits whatever to pro- mises which he never intended to keep, and was quite capable of offering even more than this to serve his purpose in such an emergency. The Moorish chief questioned the envoys as to tlie population and strength of England, and the age and personal character of the king, and then dismissed them with vague expressions of fj;iendship which signified nothing. He, however, recalled " Robert of London," the priest, and adjured him, by his respect for the faith of Christ, on which he trusted for salvation, to tell him what manner of man his Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 523 master really was. Thus pressed, Robert replied that John was a tyrant that would soon feel his own subjects' wrath. This terminated the business. On his return, Robert received the custody of the abbey of St. Albans, and there Matthew of Paris, who was a monk of that house, heard him tell the curious story to his companions. The effect of the interdict upon the laity of Eng- land must have been weaker than was anticipated, or probably the expedient had lost its efficiency by time and use, for, as it has been justly remarked, John's strength was so little lessened that the only two successful expeditions of his reign, those against Ireland ,and Wales, occurred during the time that he lay under the proscription of the Roman see. A.D. 1210. — John employed the spring of this year in raising money by the most arbitrary means : all classes suffered, but none like the unfortunate Jews, who were seized, imprisoned, and tortured all over the kingdom. A great sum is said to have been collected, and with this he levied an army, pretending that he would go and drive Philip out of Normandy. When all Avas ready, he sailed for Ireland, where the English nobles had for some time defied his authority. On the 6th of June he landed on the Irish coast and proceeded to Dublin, where more than twenty of the native chieftains repaired to do him homage and offer tribute. He then marched into the province of Connaught, reduced the castles of some of the revolted English nobles, and drove Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, and his brother Walter de Lacy, Earl of Meath, out of the island. He divided such parts of the island as were subjected to England into counties, established English laws, and appointed sheriffs and other officers. He also ordered, for the convenience of traffic, that the same monies should be equally current in both countries ; and then, intrusting the government of Ireland to his favourite the bishop of Norwich, whom he had not been able to make archbishop of Canterbury, he returned to England after an absence of twelve weeks, during which he had enjoyed the pleasures of an easy triumph, for no one offered resistance. In the following year he determined to show his prowess in Wales. Money was again wanted : he summoned all the abbots and lady-abbesses, — all the heads of monastic houses, whether male or female, to meet him in London ; he urged his wants in a manner which was not to be resisted, and, having got what he could from these servants and hand-maidens of Christ, he again racked the unbelieving Jews, putting them to torture and throwing them into dungeons, where they were kept until they paid enormous fines to the king. Among other Jews thus treated was one of Bristol, a very wealthy man, but who would not consent to pay 10,000 marks for his deliverance. " Whereupon," says an old his- torian, " by the king's commandment he was put into this penance, that every day till he would agree to give those 10,000 marks that he was seized [assessed] at, he should have one of his teeth plucked out of his head."* The Jew braved the pain to save his money. John's exe- cutioner began with the double teeth, and, in the course of as many days, pulled out seven. On the eighth day this torture had its effect, and the Jew gave security for the money.f With the sums obtained in part by such flagitious means John raised a mighty army, and penetrated into Wales, as far as the foot of Snowdon. He was not a man to do more than his great and war- like predecessors, and he marched back again im- mediately, having, however, forced the Welsh to pay him a tribvite in cattle and horses, and to give him twenty-eight hostages, youths of the best families. Whenever John had a glimpse of suc- cess, he increased his arbitrary proceedings against his English subjects : on a former occasion he gave new rigour to the barbarous forest laws, and now he levied scutage-money in an unjust manner. In the following year the Welsh again were up in arms to assert their independence. John savagely hanged the twenty- eiglat hostages, and was prepar- ing for a fresh invasion when he was terrified by a report that many of his own barons were conspiring against him. He shut himself up in the castle of Nottingham for fifteen days, seeing no one but the personal attendants on whom he most relied. He then marched to Chester, still collecting troops, and vowing to exterminate the Welsh; but from Chester he turned suddenly back to London, where he kept strong bodies of foreign mercenaries con- stantly about him, and seldom showed hiifiself to his people. His enemies increased every day, and the crowd of English exiles were incessantly urging the pope to take vengeance on their king. A.D. 1213. — At last Innocent hurled his deadliest thunderbolt at the head of John : he pronounced his deposition, absolved his vassals from their oaths of allegiance, and called upon all Christian princes and barons to take part in the meritorious act of de- throning an impious tyrant. He then sent Stephen Langton, the exiled archbishop of Canterbury, with other English and some Italian prelates, to the French court, there to convoke a solemn meet- ing, and declare to the king and the whole nation that the pope authorized an immediate invasion of England. The worldly temptation was so great, that Philip probably required none other ; but the pope promised him the remission of his sins if he executed this pious purpose, and drove John from his throne. About the middle of March, Philip collected a great army in Normandy, and prepared a fleet of nOO vessels of all sizes at Boulogne and the other ports on the Channel. John, being well informed of these preparations, took for once a bold step : he summoned every man capable of bearing arms to be ready to march to the coasts of Kent and Sussex, and he collected every vessel in his dominions capable of carrying six or more horses. When the ships were ready, he anticipated Philip's attack : the English mariners crossed the Channel, took a French squadron at the mouth of the Seine, • Holinshed. t Matt. Par. 524 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. destroyed the ships in the harbour of Fecamp, and burned Dieppe to the ground. They swept the whole coast of Normandy, and returned in triumph, the main division of the French fleet at Boulogne not hazarding an attack. On Barham Downs 60,000 landsmen stood as yet firm around the standard of John ; but he dreaded these his own brave subjects, and he was always spiritless and unmanly. It was soon seen, after all his vain boasting, and his threats against the church of Rome, that he would lower himself to the dirt before that incensed enemy, — that he would do anything rather than fight. The pope's legate, Pandulph, well knew his dastardly character, and now skilfully took advantage of it. Two knights of the Temple (travelled men and crafty diplo- matists) landed at Dover and proceeded to the English camp. " We come," said they, with great respect, " from Pandulph, the sub-deacon and servant of our lord the pope : for your advantage and fdV that of the realm of England, he asks to see you in private." — " Let him come forthwith," said John. Pandulph came and drew so formid- able a picture of the French army of invasion, and represented the general and just disaffection of the great barons of England in such forcible, and, on the whole, true colours, that the paltry despot's heart died away within him. What added to his fears, was the prediction of a certain Peter, called " the Hermit," that, before the Feast of the Ascen- sion should be passed (it was distant only tln-ee days) John would be unknighted. As he trembled before the astute churchman, Pandulph bade him repent, and remember that the pontiff was a merci- ful master, who would require nothing which was not absolutely necessary either to the honour of the church or to the security of the king himself. After a little wavering, John gave way, and subscribed an instrument which, in itself, was not very objection- able, and which had been oft'ered him some time before, when, by accepting it, he might have avoided his present excessive debasement. It was agreed, on the 13th day of May, that John should obey the pope in all things for which he had been excommunicated, — that he should receive into favour the exiled bishops and others, particularly Stephen Langton and the prior and monks of Can- terbury, — that he should make fidl satisfaction to the clergy and laity for the damages they had suf- fered at his hands, or otherwise, on account of the interdict, and that he should pay down, in part of restitution, the sum of 8000/. John further agreed not to prosecute any person for any matter relating to the late disagreement ; and, on his part, Pandulph promised that, on the performance (jf these conditions, the sentences of interdict should be recalled, and that the bishops and other proscribed churchmen, on their return, should swear to be true and faithful to the king. John set his seal to the instrument, and fovir of his greatest barons, Wil- liam Earl of Salisbury, Reginald Earl of Boulogne, and the Earls of Warren and Ferrers, swore, " on the soul of the king," that he would keep this com- pact inviolate. The dastardly spirit of John, the over-reaching policy and ambition of the pope, and the address of the envoy Pandulph, can alone ac- count for the consummation of ignominy which followed. On the 14th of May, the following day, John was closeted with the Italian in secret con- sultation, and when seen for a moment abroad, his countenance was sadly dejected. Though depraved in morals and notoriously irreligious, he was a prev to superstition, and he was now thinking more of the prediction of a hair-brained recluse than of his kingdom, for he fancied that Peter the Hermit's prophecy betokened he must die. On the 15th of May, at an early hour of the morning, John repaired to the church of the Tem- plars at Dover, and there, surrounded by bishops, barons, and knights, took, on his knees, before Pandulph, an oath of fealty to the pope, — the same oath which vassals took to their lords. At the same time he put into the envoy's hands a charter, testifying that he, the king of England and lord of Ireland, in atonement for his offences against God and the church, not compelled by the interdict or by any fear or force, but of his own free will and with the general consent of his barons, surrendered to our lord the Pope Innocent, and Innocent's suc- cessors for ever, the kingdom of England and the lordship of Ireland, which were henceforth to be held as fiefs of the holy see, John and his suc- cessors paying for them an annual tribute of 700 marks of silver for England and 300 marks for Ireland. He then offered some money as an earnest of his subjection, but Pandulph trampled it under his feet,— an act which called forth an angry remonstrance from the bishop or archbishop of Dublin. Pandulph, it is said, meant to signify that the church of Rome scorned worldly riches ; but it is hinted by some old writers that he after- wards stooped down to gather up the money. The next day was tlie fatal term, the Feast of the Ascen- sion, dui'ing which John watched the progress of I the sun with an anxious eye : it set, and he died not, — it rose on the morrow, and he was still alive : instantly, in punishment for the vile terror he had suffered, he ordered Peter and his son to be dragged at the tails of horses and hanged on gib- bets. The people contended that Peter, after all, was no false prophet, and that John, by laying his crown at the feet of a foreign priest, had verified the prediction.* Five or six days after these transactions, Pan- dulph went over to France, and, to the astonish- ment and great wrath of Philip, announced to him that he must no longer molest a penitent son and a faithful vassal of the church, nor presume to invade a kingdom which was now part of the patrimony of St. Peter. " But," said Philip, " I have already expended enormous sums of money on this expedi- tion, which I undertook at the pontiff's express commands, and for the remission of my sins." The nuncio repeated his inhibition and withdrew. • M:i<t I':ir. Matthew Westminster, or Florilegus. W. Hemiii<;.— Cliron. Mailros. — Atinal. Waver. — Cliron. T. Wykes, Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 525 The Frencli king, however, who was already on the road, continued his march to the coast. It appears, indeed, that Philip, -va ho inveighed pub- licly against the selfish and treacherous policy of the pope, would not have been prevented i'rom attempting the invasion by the dread of the thun- ders of the church which again rumbled over his licad.* But other circumstances of a more worldly nature interfered : Ferrand, the new Earl of Flanders, demanded that certain towns which had lately been annexed to the French crown should be restored to him. Philip refused; and now when he proposed to his great vassals that they should continue the enterprise against England, the Earl of Flanders, the most powerful of them all, said that his conscience would not permit him to follow his lord in such an unjust attempt; and so saying, he suddenly withdrew with all his forces. Philip, vowing he would make Flanders a mere province of France, marched after him, and, taking several of the Earl's best towns on his way, sat down with his army before the strong city of Ghent. For- tunately for both parties, Ferrand had already a secret understanding with John, and now he ap- plied to that king for help. John's fleet lay ready in the harbour of Portsmoutli. Seven hvmdred knights, with a large force of infantry, embarked in 500 vessels, under the command of William Earl of Holland, and William Longspear, Earl of Salis- bury, one of the sons of Fair Rosamond, and im- mediately made sail for the coast of Flanders. They found the French fleet at anchor at Damme, Avhich was at that time the port of Bruges : it was three times more numerous than tlie English fleet; but most of the sailors and land-troops embarked with them were on shore plundering the neighbour- ing country, and committing all sorts of ravages in a district which, through the blessings of peace and commerce, had made a wonderfully rajiid progress in civilization and the arts that adorn life. This was the first fleet that the French kings of the Capetian line had ever put to sea, — this was the first naval engagement between the two nations whose unfortunate enmity has since then animated so many sanguinary encounters in all the quarters of the globe. It was an unfortunate beginning for the French : their navy was annihilated. We quote the account of the battle as Southey has abridged it from Holinshed : — " The English, as they neared the coast, espied many ships lying without the haven, which, capacious as it was, was not large enough to contain them all ; many, there- fore, were riding at anchor without the haven's mouth, and along the coast. Shallops were pre- sently sent out to espy whether they were friends or enemies ; and if enemies, what their strength, and in what order they lay. These espials," approach- ing as if they had been fishermen, " came near enough to ascertain that the ships were left without sufficient hands to defend them, and, hastening • riiilip had been excommunicated, and his kin2;dom had been laid under aa interdict^ a few years before, by the reigningpope, In- nocent III. back, told the commanders that the victory was in their hands if they would only make good speed. No time was lost: they made sail towards the enemy, and won the ' tall ships, ' which were riding at anchor, with little difficulty, the men on board only requesting that their lives might be spared. The smaller ones, which were left dry when the tide was low, they spoiled of whatever was useful and set on fire, the sailors escaping to the shore. This done, they set upon those that lay in the harbour, within the haven ; and ' here was hard hold for awhile,' because of the narrowness of the place allowing no advantage for numbers or for skill. ' And those Frenchmen,' says the chro- nicler, ' that were gone abroad into the country, perceiving that the enemies were come by the running away of the mariners, returned with all speed to their ships to aid their fellows, and so made valiant resistance for a time, till the English- men, getting on land, and ranging themselves on either side of the haven, beat the Frenchmen so on the sides, and, the ships grappling together in front, that they fought as it had been in a pitched field, till that, finally, the Frenchmen were not able to sustain the force of the Englishmen, but were constrained, after long fight and great slaughter, to yield themselves prisoners.' The first act of the conquerors was to give thanks to God for their victory. They then manned three hundred of the prizes, which were laden with corn, wine, oil, and oth-rr provisions, and with military stores, and sent them to England — the first fruits of that maritime superiority for which the church bells of this glorious island have so often pealed with joy. An hundred more were burnt, becavue they were drawn up so far upon the sands that they could not be got off without more hands and cost of time than could be spared for them. There still remained a gieat part of the enemy's fleet higher up the harbour, and protected by the town, in v/hich Philip had left a sufficient force to protect the stores which he had left there, and the money for the payment of his troops. The English landed; the Earl of Flanders joined them, and they proceeded to attack the place ; but by this there had been sufficient time for the French king to hasten, with an overpowering force, from the siege of Ghent. The English and their allies sustained a sharp action, and were compelled to retreat to their ships, with a loss computed by the French at two thousand men. But they re- treated no farther than to the near shores of the Isle of Walcheren ; and Philip saw the impossi- bility of saving the remainder of his fleet, consi- dering the unskilfulness of his own seamen, as well as other things. He set fire to them, there- fore, himself, that they might not fall into the enemv's hands."* The French king thus lost the means of supporting his army in Flanders or of transporting it to the English coast : half famished and overcome with vexation, he hurried across his • Naval History, i. 187, 188. 526 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. own frontiers, leaving Earl Ferrand to recover with case all that he had lost. This first great naval victory transported the English people with joy ; but with joy was mingled a malicious confidence and presumption in the heart of John, who now betrayed a determination to break the best part of his recent oaths. Being determined to carry the war into France, he sum- moned his" vassals to meet him at Portsmouth. The barons went armed and appointed, as if ready to sail ; but, when ordered to embark, they reso- lutely refused unless the king recalled the exiles, as he had promised to do. After some tergiver- sation John granted a reluctant consent, and Arch- bishop Langton, the bishops of London, Ely, Hereford, Lincoln, and Bath, the monks of Can- terbury, all with their companions and numerous dependants returned. John and the archbishop met and kissed each other at Winchester ; and there, in the porch of the cathedral church, Langton gave full absolution to the king, who again swore to govern justly and maintain his fealty to the pope. It was, however, clear to all men that Langton placed no confidence in the king; and that the king, who considered him as the chief cause of all his troubles, regarded Langton with all the deadly hatred which his dark character was capable of. John now set sail with a few ships, but his barons were in no hurry to follow him, being far more eager to secure their own liberties than to recover the king's dominions on the continent. They said that the time of their feudal service was expired, and they withdrew to a great council at St Albans, where Fitz-Peter, one of the king's justiciaries, presided, and where they published resolves, in the form of royal proclamations, ordering the observ- ance of old laws, and denouncing the punish- ment of death against the sheriffs, foresters, or other officers of the king who should exceed their proper and legal authority. John got as far as the island of Jersey, when, finding that none followed him, he turned back with vows of vengeance. He landed, and marched with a band of mercenaries to the north, where the barons were most contu- macious. Burning and destroying, he advanced as far as Northampton. Here Langton overtook him. " These barbarous measures, " said the prelate, " are in violation of your oaths ; your vassals must stand to the judgment of their peers, and not be wantonly harassed by arms." " Mind you your church," roared the furious king, " and leave me to govern the state." He continued his march to Nottingham, where Langton, who was not a man to be intimidated, again presented him- self, and threatened to excommunicate all the ministers and officers that followed him in his lawless course. John then gave way, and, to save appearances, summoned the barons "to meet him or his justices. Langton hastened to London, and there, at a second meeting of the barons, he read the liberal charter which Henry the First had granted on his accession ; and after inducing them to embrace its provisions, he made them swear to be true to each other, and to conquer or to die in support of their liberties. This was on the 25th of August. On the 29th of September a new legate from the pope, cardinal Nicholas, arrived in England to settle the indemnity due to the exiles, and to take off the interdict. John renewed his oath of fealty to Innocent, knelt in homage before the legate, paid fifteen thousand marks, and pro- mised forty thousand more to the bishops. The interdict was removed ; and from this moment the court of Rome changed sides, and, abandoning the cause of liberty and the barons, stood for the king. This abandonment, however, did not discourage the nobles, nor did it even detach Archbishop Langton from the cause for which they had confe- derated. A.D. 1214. A formidable league v/as now formed against the French king, and John was enabled to join it with some vigour. Ferrand, Earl of Flanders, Reynaud, Earl of Boulogne, and Otho, the new emperor of Germany, nephew to John, determined to invade France and divide that kingdom among them, givhig the English king all the country beyond the Loire for his share. Fer- rand was to have Paris with all the Isle of France, Reynaud the country of Vermandois, and the emperor all the rest. John sent some English forces under the command of his half-brother, the Earl of Salisbury, to Valenciennes, where the con- federates established their head-quarters, and tlien sailed himself to the coast of Poictou, where several of his former vassals joined him, and enabled him to advance to Angers. This diversion was well plannerl : it obliged Philip to divide his forces, and while he himself marched towards the frontiers of Flanders, he sent his son Louis into Brittany, whither the English king now advanced. John was kept in check, or lost his opportunity through cowardice and indolence, while his allies were thoroughly defeated at the battle of Bouvines, — one of the most memorable battles of the middle ages, in which the emperor was completely ruined, and the Earl of Flanders, the Earl of Boulogne, and the Earl of Salisbury were taken prisoners, with an immense number of inferior lords and knights. Salisbury, the gallant Longsword, was captured by the Bishop of Beauvais, the very in- dividual whom King Richard had loaded with chains, and upon whose coat of mail that king had been so facetious. This prelate, however, had become more prudent or more circumspect, — he no longer wielded the sword, but fought with a heavy club, thus knocking people on the head without shedding blood, v/hich was contrary to the canons of the church. He was not the only prelate in this fierce melee. Philip was chiefly indebted for his success to Guerin, bishop-elect of Senlis, who had also some scruples of conscience, for he would not use a sword, but marshalled the French host and directed the slaughter with a wand. This battle certainly gave lustre to the French arms ; but the French writers grossly exaggerate the dis- parity of numbers. It was fought on the 27th of Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 527 July, near an obscure village called Bouvines, between Lisle and Tournay. On tbe 19tb of October following John begged a truce, and ob- tained one for five years, on condition of abandon- ing all the towns and castles he had taken on the continent. He arrived in England on the 20th of October in a humour more ferocious than ever. As if he would take vengeance on his English subjects for the reverses and shame he had suffered, he again let loose his foreign mercenaries on the land, and began to violate all his most solemn promises. Fitz -Peter, his justiciary, the only one of his ministers that could moderate his fury, had now been dead some months. John, who feared him, rejoiced at his death. "It is well," cried he, laughing as they told him the news ; " in hell he may again shake hands with Hubert, our late primate, for surely he will find him there. By God's teeth, now for the first time I am king and lord of England."* But there were men at work resolute and skilful. Immediately after his arrival the l)arons met to talk of the league they had formed with Langton. " The time," they said, " is favour- able ; the feast of St. Edmund approaches ; amidst the multitudes that resort to his shrine we may assemble without suspicion." On the 20th of November, the saint's day, they met in crowds at St. Edmunds-Bury, where they finally determined to demand their rights, in a body, in the royal court at the festival of Christmas. The spirit of freedom was awakened, not soon to sleep again : they advanced one by one, according to seniority, to the high altar, and, laying their hands on it, they solemnly swore that, if the king refused the • Matt. I'ar. rights they claimed, they would withdraw their fealty and make war upon him, till, by a charter under his own seal, he should confirm their just petitions. They then parted to meet again at the Feast of the Nativity. When that solemn but festive season arrived John found himself at Wor- cester, and almost alone, for none of his great vassals came as usual to congratulate him, and the countenances of his own attendants seemed gloomy and unquiet. He suddenly departed, and riding to London, there shut himself up in the strong house of the Knights Templars. The barons fol- lowed close on the coward's steps, and on the Feast of the Epiphany (at every move they chose some day consecrated by religion) they presented them- selves in such force that he was obliged to admit them to an audience. At first he attempted to browbeat the nobles. One bishop and two barons were recreants, and consented to recede from their claims, and never trouble him again, but all the rest were firm to their purpose. John turned pale, and trembled. He then changed his tone, and cajoled instead of threatening. " Your petition," he said, "contains matter weighty and arduous. You must grant me time till Easter, that, with due deliberation, I may be able to do justice to myself and satisfy the dignity of my crown." Many of the barons, knowing the use he would make of it, would not have granted this delay, but the majority consented, on condition that Cardinal Langton, the bishop of Ely, and William, Earl of Pembroke, should be the king's sureties that he would give them the satisfaction they demanded on the ap- pointed day. The confederated nobles then retired to their homes. They were no sooner gone than St. EDSiuNDS-BuaY.— 1745, 1 528 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. John adopted measures which he fondly hoped would frustrate all their plans, and bring them bound hand and feet within the verge of his revenue. He began by courting the church, and formally renounced the important prerogative that had been hitherto so zealously contended for by himself and his great ancestors, touching the election of bishops and abbots. Having thus, as he thought, bound the clergy to his service, he turned his attention to the body of the people, whose progress had been slow, but pretty steady, and whose importance was now immense. He ordered his sheriffs to assemble all the free men of their several counties, and tender to them a new oath of allegiance. His next step was to send an agent to Rome, to appeal to the pope against what he termed the treasonable violence of his vassals. Tlie barons, too, despatched an envoy to the eternal city ; but it was soon made more than ever evident that Innocent would support the king through right and wrong. He wrote a startling letter to Cardinal Langton ; but that extraordinary priest was deaf to the voice of his spiritual chief where the inte- rests of his country were concerned. To make himself still surer, John took the cross on the 2nd of February, solemnly swearing that he would lead an army to the Holy Land. This taking of the cross, by which the debtor was exempted from the pursuit of his creditor, — by which the persons, goods, and estates of the crusaders were placed under the immediate protection of the church till their return from Palestine, — seemed to John the best of all defences. On the appointed day in Easter week the barons met at Stamford with great military pomp, being followed by two thousand knights and a host of retainers. The king was at Oxford. The barons marched to Brackley, witliin a few miles of that city, where they were met by a deputation from the sovereign, composed of Cardinal Langton, the Earl of Pembroke, and the Earl of ^^^a^enne. . Tlie confederates delivered the schedule containing the chief articles of their petition. " These are our claims," they said, " and, if they are not instantly granted, our arms shall do us justice." Wlien the deputies returned, and Langton expounded tlie contents of the parchment he held in his hand, John exclaimed, in a fury, " And why do they not demand my crown also ? By God's teeth I will not grant them liberties which will make me a slave." He then made some evasive offers which the barons understood, and rejected. Pandulph, who was with the king, now contended that the cardinal-prhuate ought to exconuuunicate the con- federates ; but Langton said he knew the pope's real intentions had not been signified, and that unless the king dismissed the foreign mercenaries, whom he had brought into the kingdom for its ruin, he would presently excommunicate them. The barons now proclaimed themselves " the army of God and of holy church," and unanimously elected Robert Fitz- Walter to be their general. They then marched against the castle of North- ampton, but they had no battering engines j the walls were lofty and strong; the garrison, com- posed of foreigner;^, stood out for the king ; and their first warlike attempt proved a failure. After fifteen days they gave up the siege, and marched to Bedlbrd with anxious minds. On whichever side the free burghers of England threw their sub- stantial weight that party must prevail, and, as yet, no declaration had been made in favour of the confederates. But now anxiety vanished, — the people of Bedford threw open their gates; and soon after messengers arrived from the ca{)ital with secret advice that the principal citizens of London were devoted to their cause, and would receive them with joy. Losing no time, they marched to Ware, and, not stopping to rest for the night, pur- sued their course to London, which they reached in the morning. It was the 24th of May, and a Sunday : the gates were open, — the people hearing nrais in their churches, — when the army of God entered the city in excellent order and profound J silence. On the following day the barons issued ij proclamations requiring all such earl?, barons, and knights, as had hitherto remaiired neutral, to join them against the perjured John, unless they wished , to be treated as enemies of their country. In all' ])arts of the kingdom the lords and knights quitted '• their castles to join the national standard at; London. It is needless, say the old chroniclers, ' to enumerate the barons who composed the army ] of God and of holy church : they were the whole nobility of Englaird. Tiie heart of the dastard; John again turned to water : he saw himself almost entirely deserted, only seven knights re- ■ maining near his person. Recovering, however,: from his first stupefaction, he resorted to his olct arts ; he assumed a cheerful CAUitenance ; saic what his lieges liad done was well done; and^ from Odiharn, in Ilampsliire, where he was stay- ing, he despatched the Earl of Pembroke to Ijondon, to assure tlie barons that, for the good of peace, and the exaltation of his reign, he was ready freely to grant all the rights and liberties ; and only wished them to name a day and place of meeting. " Let the day," replied the barons, " be the 15th of Jvnie, — the place, Runny-mead."* On the morning of the appointed day, the king moving from Windsor Castle, and the barons from the town of Staines, the parties met on the green meadow, cl(;se by the Thames, which the barons had named. AYith John came eight bishops, Pandulph, Almeric, the Master of the English Templars, the Earl of Pembroke, and thirteen other gentlemen; but the majority of this party, though they attended him as friends and adviser^-, were known to be in their hearts favourable to the cause of the barons. On the other side stood Fitz-Walter and the whole nobility of Eng- land. With scarcely an attempt to modify any of its clauses, and with a facility that might justly liave raised suspicion, the king signed the scroll presented to him. This was Magna Charta, — the • MiUt. I'm: Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 529 ECNNY-MEAD. Great Charter, — a most noble commencement and foundation for the future liberties of England. As the profound duplicity and immorality of John Mere well known, the barons exacted securities. They required that he should disband and send out of the kingdom all his foreign officers, with their fHmilies and followers ; that for the two ensuing months the barons should keep possession of the city, and Langton of the Tower of London; and that they should be allowed to choose twenty-five members from their own body to be guardians or conservators of the liberties of the kingdom, with power, in case of any breach of the charter, — such breach not being redressed immediately, — to make war on the king ; to distrain and distress him by seizing his castles, lands, possessions, and in any other manner they could, till the grievance should be redressed ; always, however, saving harmless the person of the said lord the king, the person of the queen, and the persons of their royal children. This last article, which invested a council of twenty- five with the real sovereignty of the realm, has been viewed by some as an unwarrantable invasion of the royal prerogative ; but a strong barrier was indispensable against the tyrannical and faithless character of the monarch, and without extreme securities the charter drawn from his reluctant hand would have been utterly valueless. It is true that no limits were set to the authority of the barons either in extent or duration ; but, under the circumstances, it was necessary that their VOL. I. power should be dictatorial, and the only bound as to time which could have been introduced was the death of John, — a clause which could not be decently inserted. As soon as the great assembly dispersed, and John found himself in Windsor Castle safe from the observing eyes of his subjects, he called a few foreign adventurers around him, and gave vent to rage and curses against the charter. According to the chroniclers his behaviour was that of a frantic madman ; for, besides swearing, he gnashed his teeth, rolled his eyes, and gnawed sticks and straws. The creatures, who would be ruined and expelled by the charter, roused him by appealing to his passion of revenge, and he forthwith de- spatched two of them to the continent to procure him the means of undoing all that he had been obliged to do. One of these adventurers went to Flanders, Poictou, Aquitaine, and Gascony, to hire other adventurers to come to England and fight against the barons ; the other went to Rome, to implore the aid of Innocent. John then sent messengers to such governors of his castles as were foreigners or men devoted to him, command- ing them to lay in provisions and put themselves in a state of defence ; *' doing all this without noise and with caution, lest the barons should be alarmed." He caused the alarm himself, by instantly evading some of the clauses of the charter. On their departure from Ruimy-mead, the barons, in the joy of their hearts, appointed a great 530 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. tournament to be held at Stamford on the 2nd of July. John, during their absence, formed a plot to surprise London, where the main strength of the party lay; but, being warned in time, the nobles put off the celebration of the tournament to a more distant day, and named a place for it nearer to London. The king now withdrew to Winchester, where, alarmed at the whole course of his conduct, a deputation waited on him on the 27th of June. He laughed at their svispicions, — swore, with his usual volubility, that they were unfounded, and that he was ready to do all those things to which he was pledged. He issued a few writs required of him, and then withdrew still further to the Isle of Wight, where he would mix with no society save that of the fishermen of the place and the m.ariners of the neighbouring ports, whom he tried to captivate by adopting tlieir manners. Here he remained about three weeks (not months, as stated by Matthew Paris) ; for it appears from public instruments, still extant, that he was at Oxford on the 21st of July, where he appointed a conference which he did not attend, posting away to Dover, where he staid during the whole of September, anxiously awaiting the arrival of his mercenary recruits from the continent. When the barons learned that troops of Brabanters and others were stealing into the land in small parties, they de- spatched William d'Albiney, at the head of a chosen band, to take possession of the royal castle of Rochester. D'Albiney had scarcely entered the castle, which he found almost destitute of stores and engines of defence, when John found himself sufficiently strong to venture from Dover. The lui-English despot, followed by Poictevins, Gascons, Flemings, Brabanters, and others, — the outcasts and freebooters of Europe, — laid siege to Rochester Castle at the beginning of October. The barons, knowing the insufficient means of defence within the castle, marched from London to its relief, but they were obliged to retreat before the superior force of the foreigners, who, day after day, were joined by fresh adventurers from the other side of the Channel. Fortunately for Eng- land, one Hugh de Boves and a vast horde of marauders perished in a tempest on their way from Calais to Dover. John bewailed this loss like a maniac, but he pressed the siege of Rochester Castle, and still prevented the barons from re- lieving it. After a gallant resistance of eight weeks, when the outer walls were thrown down, an angle of the keep shattered, and the last mouthful of provision consumed, D'Albiney surrendered. John, with his usual ferocity, ordered him to be hanged, with his whole garrison ; but Savaric de Manleon, the leader of one of the foreign bands, opposed this barbarous mandate, because he feared the English might retaliate on his own followers, if any should fall into their hands. The tyrant was therefore, contented to butcher the inferior prisoners, while all the knights were sent to the castles of Corfc and Nottingham. The loss of Rochester Castle was a serious blow to the cause of the barons, who were soon after excommunicated by the pope ; for the king's ap- plication to Rome had met with full success, not- withstanding a counter appeal made by the English nation. Innocent declared that the barons were worse than Saracens for molesting a vassal of the holy see — a religious king who had taken the cross. Thus emboldened, John marched from Kent to St. Alban's, accompanied by " Falco, without bowclsj" " Manleon, the bloody,'' " Walter Buch, the mur- derer," " Sottim, the merciless," " Godeschal, the iron-hearted," and a most mixed and savage host. It was thought at one time he would turn upon London, but the attitude of the capital struck him with terror ; and leaving a strong division to manoeuvre rovmd it, and devastate the south-eastern counties, he moved towards Nottingham, marking his progress with flames and blood. Alexander, the young king of Scotland, had entered into an alliance with the English barons, and, having crossed the borders, was investing the castle of Norham. The whole northern country, moreover, was especially obnoxious to John, and thither he determined to carry his vengeance. A few days after the feast of Christmas, when the ground was covered with deep snow, he marched from Not- tingliam into Yorkshire, still burning and slaying, and becoming more savage the farther he advanced and the less he was opposed. Every hamlet, every house on the road, felt the fury of his execrable host, — he himself giving the example, and setting fire with his own hands in the morning to the house in which he had rested the preceding night. His foreign soldiery put his native subjects to the torture to make them confess where they had con- cealed their money. The tortures inflicted were worthy of fiends, and too horrible to bear descrip- tion. All the castles and towns they could take were given to the flames ; and the people of York- shire and Northumberland were reminded of tlie expedition of William the Conqueror, which tlieir local traditions faithfully painted as the extremity of human barbarity on the one side, and of human misery on the other. The Scottish king retired before a superior force, and John, vowing he would "unkennel the young fox," followed him as far as Edinburgh. Here, meeting with opposition, he paused, and then — never having any valour but when unopposed — -he turned back to England, burning Haddington, Dunbar, and Berwick on his way. Near the borders, Morpeth, Mitford, Aln- wick, Wark, and Roxburgh had been consumed already. In the mean time the division left in the south, which seems to have been reinforced by fresh arrivals of mercenaries from the continent, com- mitted equal atrocities ; and wherever the castle of a noble was taken, it was given, with the adjoining estate, to some hungry adventurer, — John thus renewing the early scenes of the Conquest. On the 1 5th of December another sentence of excommu- nication was promulgated by the abbot of Abing- don and two other ecclesiastics : in this bull Robert ClIAP. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 531 Fitz- Walter, the general of the confederacy, and all the principal barons, were mentioned by name ; and the city of London was laid mider an interdict. This measure excited some fear and wavering in the country, but the citizens of London had the boldness to despise it. According to Matthew Paris they asserted that the pontiff had no right to interfere in worldly concerns ; and, spite of the interdict, they kept open their churches, rang their loells, and celebrated their Christmas with unusual festivity. But the barons, who were confined in London by the force that continually increased around them, — • who saw their property the prey to new invaders, — and who knew the full extent of the danger to which tlie nation was exposed (the effect of the ex- communication on the villains in the country not being the least of these), were sorely disquieted, and knew not what measures to adopt. Many meetings were held, and a variety of plans debated ; but at last they unanimously resolved, in a moment of desperation, upon the vei'y equivocal and perilous expedient of calling in foreign aid. They sent to offer the crown to Philip's eldest son, Prince Louis, who was connected with the reign- ing family by his marriage with Blanche of Cas- tile, John's own niece ; believing that, should he land amongst them, the mercenaries now with John, who were chiefly subjects of France, would join his standard, or at least refuse to bear arms against him. Philip and Louis eagerly grasped at this offer ; but the wary old king moderated the impatience of his son, and would not jTcrmit him to venture into England until twenty-four hostages, vions of the noblest of the English, were sent into France. Then a fleet, with a small army, was sent up the Thames : it arrived at London at the end of February, and the commander assured the barons that Louis himself would be there with a proper force by the feast of Easter. Innocent in the meanwhile was not inactive in John's, or rather in his own, cause ; he despatched a new legate to England; and Gualo, on his journey, reached France in time to witness and to endeavour to pre- vent the preparations making for invasion. He boldly asked both king and prince how they dared attack the patrimony of the church, and threatened them with instant excommunication. To the astonishment of the churchman, Louis advanced a claim to the English throne through right of his wife, and departed for Calais, where his army was collecting. At the appointed time, he set sail from Calais with a numerous and well-appointed army, embarked on board 680 vessels. His passage was stormy : the mariners of the Cinque Port?, who adhered to the English king, cut off and took some of his ships ; but on the 30th of May, he landed safely at Sandwich, John, who had come round to Dover with a numerous army, fled before the French landed, and, burning and ravaging the country, he went to Guildford, then to Winchester, and then to Bristol, where Gualo, the pope's legate, soon joined him. Leaving Dover Castle in his rear, Louis besieged and took the Castle of Roches- ter. He then marched to the capital, where, on the 2nd of June, a.d. 1216, he was joyfully re- ceived by the barons and citizens, who conducted him, with a magnificent procession, to St. Paul's. After he had offered up his prayers, the nobles and citizens did homage, and swore fealty to him. And then he, with his hand on the Gospels, also swore to restore to all orders their good laws, and to each individual the estates and property of which he had been robbed. Soon after, Louis published a mani- festo, addressed to the king of Scotland and all the nobles not present in London. An immense effect was presently seen : nearly every one of the few nobles who had followed John now left him and repaired to London ; all the men of the north, from Lincolnshire to the borders, rose up in arms against him; the Scottish king made ready to march to the south ; and, at first in small troops, and then in masses, all the foreign mercenaries, with the ex- ception of those of Gascony and Poictou, deserted the standard of the tyrant, and either returned to their homes or took service under Louis and the barons, who were now enabled to retake many of their castles. Gualo, the legate, did all he could to keep up the drooping, abject spirit of John ; but, at the very moment of crisis, on the 16th of July, the pope himself, the mighty Iimocent, died, and left the church to be wholly occupied for some time by the election of a new pontiff. Louis marched to Dover, and laid siege to tlie castle, which was most bravely defended for the king by Hubert de Burgh ; and, at the same time, some of the barons attacked Windsor Castle, which was equally well defended. Philip sent his son a famous military engine, called the malvoisine, or bad neighbour, with which to batter the walls of Dover Castle; but when the siege had lasted several weeks, Louis found himself obliged to corr- vert it into a blockade. Withdrawing his army beyond reach of the arrows of the garrison, he swore that he would reduce the place by famine and then hang all its defenders. The barons raised the siege of Windsor Castle entirely, in order to repel John, who, after running from place to place, had at last made his appearance near them, and was pillaging the estates of some of those nobles. At their approach he fell back, and eluding their pursuit by skill, or, more probably, by hard run- ning, he reached the town of Stamford. The barons wheeled round, and joined Louis at Dover, where much valuable time was lost in inactivity, for that prince would neither assault the castle nor move from it. Other circumstances at the same time caused discontent : Louis treated the English with disrespect, and began to make grants of estates and titles in England to his French fol- lowers. But jealousy and apprehension were ex- cited to the very utmost by an event w^hich hap- pened, or at least was said to have happened. The Viscount de Melun, who had come over with the prince, being suddenly seized by a mortal malady in London, earnestly implored to see such of the 532 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. English nobles as had remained in that city. The barons went at the summons of the dying man. " Your fate grieves me," said De Melun; "the prince and sixteen of his army have bound them- selves by oath, when the realm shall be conquered and he be crowned, to banish for ever those who have joined his standard as traitors not to be trusted. Their whole offspring will be beggared or exterminated. Doubt not my words ; I, who here lie dying before you, was one of the con- spirators ! look to your safety !" and so saying, the Viscount died. This dramatic scene, which pos- sibly originated in the invention of some of John's partisans, was whispered everywhere, and believed by many. Several barons and knights withdrew from Dover, and though few would trust John, all l)egan to doubt whether they had not committed a fatal mistake in calling in the aid of a foreign prince. As these doubts prevailed more and more, and as the gloom thickened round the camp at Dover, where Louis had now lost nearly three months, the cause of John brightened in propor- tion. Soon after eluding the pursuit of the barons, he had made himself master of Lincoln, where he established his head-quarters for some time, making, however, predatory incursions on all sides. As- sociations were formed in his favour in several of the maritime counties ; and the English cruisers frequently captured the supplies from the conthient destined for Louis. At the beginnhig of October, marching through Peterborough, he entered tlie district of Croyland, and plundered and burnt the farm-houses belonging to that celebrated abbey : he then proceeded to the town of Lynn, where he had a depfit of provisions and other stores. Here, turning his face again towards the north,, he marched to Wisbeach, and from Wisbeach he pro- ceeded to a place called the Cross Keys, on the southern side of the Wash. It is not clear why he took that dangerous route, but he resolved to cross the Wash by the sands. At low water this estuary is passable ; but it is subject to sudden rises of the tide. John and his army had nearly reached the opposite shore, called the Fossdike, when the returning tide began to roar. Pressing forward in haste and terror, they escaped; but, on looking back, John beheld the carriages and sumpter- horses which carried his money overtaken by the waters ; the surge broke furiously over them, and they presently disappeared, — carriages, horses, treasures, and men being swallowed up in a whirl- pool caused by the impetuous ascent of the tide and the descending current of tlie river Welhand. In a mournful silence, only broken by curses and useless complaints, John travelled on to the Cis- tercian abbey of Swineshead, where he rested for the night. Here he eat gluttonously of some peaches or pears, and drank new cider immo- derately. The popvilar story of his being poisoned by a monk may be true or false ; but it is told in two ways, and was never told at all by any writer living at the time or witliin half a century of it, and the excess already mentioned, acting upon an irritated mind and fevered body, seems to be cause enough for what followed. He passed the night sleepless, restless, and in horror. At an early hour on the following morning, the 15th of Octo- ber, he mounted his horse to pursue his march, but he was soon compelled, by a burning fever and acute pain, to dismount. His attendants then brought up a horse-litter, in which they laid him, and so conveyed him to the castle of Sleaford. Here he rested for the night, which brought him no repose, but an increase of his disorder. The next day they carried him with great difficulty to tlis castle of Newark, on the Trent, and there he sent Tmib of Kino John, at ^^■oI(rKSTER. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. lOGG— 121G. 533 for a confessor, and laid himself down to die. The Abhot of Croxton, a religious house in the neigh- bourhood, who, it appears, was equally skilled in medicine and divinity, attended him in his last hours, and witnessed his anguish and tardy re- pentance. He named his eldest son Henry his successor, and dictated a letter to the recently elected pope, Honorius III., imploring the pro- tection of the church for his young and helpless children. He made all the knights who were with him swear fealty to Henry ; and he sent orders to the sheriffs of counties and the governors of castles to be faithfvd to the prince. Messengers arrived from some of the barons, who were disgusted with Louis, and proposed returning to their allegiance. This gleam of hope came too late, — the " tyrant fever " had destroyed the tyrant. The Abbot of Croxton asked him where he would have his body buried ? John groaned, " I commit my soul to God, and my body to St. Wulstan !" and soon after he expired, on the 1 8th October, in the forty-ninth year of his age and the seventeenth of his wretched reign. They carried his body to Worcester and interred it in the cathedral church there, of which St. Wulstan was the patron saint.* During the whole of the period through which we have now passed, the three states of Albin, Pictland, and Strathclyde, which had formerly divided the northern part of the island, were con- solidated into the single kingdom of Scotland, of which, however, the southern limits varied consi- derably at different times ; for the proper Scotland lay all beyond the Forth and the Clyde ; and the territory to the south of these rivers was not ac- counted as strictly forming part either of Scotland or England till some ages after the Norman Con- quest. At the time of that event the Scottish king was Malcolm III., surnamed Canmore, or Great Head, whose reign commenced in 1057. t His dominions undoubtedly included the ancient king- dom of Strathclyde, or the district now forming the south-western part of Scotland, which had been conquered by Kenneth III. in the latter part of the preceding century ; J and the district of Cumbria, lying on the same side of the island, but wuthin what is now called England, was also at this time an appanage of the Scottish crown, having been made over to Malcolm I. by the Saxon king, Edmund I., in 946, § and held from that date, either by the occupant of the throne or by the person next in succession, as an English fief or lord- ship. With regard to the south-eastern portion of modern Scotlandj or the district then known by the name of Lodonia or Lothian (now confined to a part of it), the state of the case is not so clear. The people appear to have been chiefly or exclu- sively Angles, mixed in later times with Danes ; and the territory undoubtedly at one period formed • Matt. Par.-- Matt. West. + -See ante, p. 232. t See ante, p. 218. i See unto, pp. 170 and 2 ID. part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. From the defeat, however, of the Northumbrian king, Egfrid, by the Picts in 685,* it may be con- sidered as having been withdrawn from the actual dominion of its former masters, although perhaps their claim to its sovereignty Avas never abandoned, and it may have been for short periods wholly or partially re-subjected by the English. " Situated between the Scotch or Pictish and the Northum- brian kingdoms," observes a writer to whom we owe the latest as well as the most acute and learned discussion of this obscure matter, " it is impossible to say to which it usually or rightfully belonged. It seems to have been a debateable land, subject, as they alternately preponderated, to the strongest." f Mr. Allen, however, is inclined to accept the ac- count given by Wallingford (who, although he wrote in the twelfth or thirteenth century, appears, as it is observed, " to have possessed original materials which are now lost,") of the manner in which what he calls the old quarrel, respecting Lothian, was at last determined. Wallingford's statement is, that in the reign of the English Edgar, Kenneth IV., King of Scotland, having come to London, and represented that Lothian jjro- perly belonged by hereditary right to the Scottish kings, Edgar laid the affair before his nobles, who, seeing that it was, from its remoteness, difficult to protect, and little profitable to England, agreed to resign the territory to Kenneth ; but only on con- dition that he should hold it, as they maintained his predecessors had done, or at least ought to have done, by doing homage for it to the Eng- lish crown. To these terms Kenneth assented, promising, while he did his homage, that he would allow the people to keep their ancient customs, and that they should continue English in name and in language ; | all which, adds the histo- rian, remains firmly established to this day. This transaction appears to have taken place in the year 911. It is probable, from the account, that Lothian was already in the actual possession of the Scottish kings ; and they appear from this time to have continued in the undisturbed occupa- tion of it till the defeat of Malcolm II., in 1005, by the Earl of the Northumbrians ; in consequence of which, Mr. Allen thinks, the whole or part of the district was re-annexed to the Northumbrian earldom. Some years after, however, the Nor- thumbrians were in their turn defeated by the same Malcolm at the battle of Carrum, near Werk, and eventually, in 1020, a final cession of Lothian to the Scottish king was formally made by the Northumbrian earl Eadulf § It is probable that the English kings did not consider their ancient claim to the paramount dominion of the district to be affected by this last cession ; but there is no record of any subsequent assertion of the claim till after the Norman conquest. Malcolm Canmore • See ante, p. 21G. + Allen's Vindication of the Ancient Independence of Scotland, 8vo. 1833. X " Sub nomine et lingua Anglicana pennauerent." § Seeante, p. 221. 534 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. may therefore be regarded as reigning in full sove- reignty over Lotliian, as well as over all the rest of the country now included under the name of Scotland. It is only necessary further to mention, that the south-western angle of Scotland, formerly called Galloway, and now forming tlie counties of Wigton and Kirkcudbright, received various bodies of colonists from Ireland in the course of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. " They appear," says Mr. Allen, " at all times to have owed subjec- tion to the Scottish kings, but th(;y long retained the barbarous habits and ferocious manners which the ravages of the Northmen had impressed on the country they had quitted. In the twelfth century, they are called Picts, or Galwegiaus ; and as late as the fourteenth century, they aie distinguished by the appellation of the Wild Scots of Galloway." In fact, the name of Galloway, which is first men- tioned in the early part of the twelfth century, was derived from this Irish or Gaelic population. Malcolm had passed about fifteen years at the court of the Confessor before he became king ; and in his long exile he must have formed various Eng- lish connexions, as well as become habituated to the manners of the sister country. He may there- fore be supposed to have, from the first, kept up a more intimate intercourse with England than had been customary with his predecessors. The chief of his English friends, in the beginning of his reign, appears to have been Harold's notorious brother Tostig, who obtained the earldom of Nor- thumberland about the same time that Malcolm ascended the throne of Scotland. Simeon of Dur- ham says they were so much attached to each other that they were commonly called the sworn brothers. Accordingly, when Tostig was driven off from the English coast, on his first invasion after the acces- sion of Harold,* he took refuge in the first instance with Malcolm. The Scottish king, however, seems to have taken no part in the new attempt made by his friend in the close of the same year ; and he did not therefore share in the decisive defeat of Staneford Bridge, in which both Tostig and his ally, Hardrada of Norway, lost their lives. The principal events that make up the subsequent history of the reign of Malcolm arose out of his connexion with another English fugitive, the un- fortunate Edgar Atheling. Edgar fled to Scotland,! according to the most probable account, with his mother and his two sisters, in the beginning of 10(38; and soon after, Malcolm espoused Edgar's elder sister Margaret, at Dunfermline. From some cause, which is not distinctly explained, Malcolm did not arrive with his forces in time to support the insurrection of the people of Northumbria,J in con- junction with the Danes and the friends of Edgar, in the foUov/ing year : and it was not till after the complete suppression of that attempt, and the whole of the east coast, from the Humber to the Tyne, had been made a desert by the remorseless vengeance of the Norman, that the Scottish king, 1070, * See ante, p. 208. t See an^e, p. 3G9. t See ante, p. 371. entered England, through Cumberland, and spread nearly as great devastation in the western parts of York and Durham as William had done in the east. He commanded his soldiers to spare only the young men and women ; and they were driven into Scotland to be made slaves. A writer of the fol- lowing century* says that Scotland was in conse- quence so fully supplied v/ith male and female slaves of English race that, in his own days, not a village, and scarcely even a house, could be found without them. Great numbers of the people of the east coast also now fled to Scotland, and there sold themselves into slavery, to escape from the svv'ord of the conqueror, or from perishing by hunger in the desolation it had left. It was not till 1072 that William found leisure to chastise Malcolm for this inroad. He then advanced into Scotland, and wasted the country as far as the Tay, though the inhabitants, after the plan which they had been accustomed to pursue in such cases from the days of Galgacus, and which they continued to follov/ occasionally to a much later age, destroyed or removed everything of value as the invader advanced, so that, as the Saxon chronicler expresses it, " he nothing found of that which to him the better was." In the end, how- ever, Malcolm came to him at Abernethy,t when, according to the Saxon Chronicle, a peace was arranged between the two kings, on Malcolm agree- ing to give hostages, and to do homage to William as his liege lord. William then returned home with his army. This transaction makes a principal figure in the controversy which was formerly carried on with so much unnecessary heat, and which still continues to divide historical inquirers, respecting the alleged dependence in ancient tim.es of the kingdom of Scotland upon the English crown. The position taken by the asserters of this dependence appears to be that, from a date long before the Norman Con- quest of England, the Anglo-Saxon kings of that country had in some way or other obtained pos- session of the sovereignty of the whole island, and the kings of Scotland, as well as the princes of Wales, had become their acknowledged vassals. We may say without hesitation that this notion is directly opposed to the whole course of the history of the two countries. Upon what could tlie Anglo-Saxon kings pos- sibly found any pretension to the sovereignty of Scotland ? The country was never conquered by any of them, nor is there a vestige of evidence that even an attempt was ever made by them to settle in it, or to wrest it from the possession of the people of another lineage that occupied it before the Saxons and Angles ever set foot in the island , The Northumbrian kings were occasionally cn- * Simeon of Duiliam. t This seems to be really the place meant by the " Abernithici" of Ingulphus, the "Abernithici" of Florence of Worcester, the " Abernilici" of R. de Diceto, and the "Abrenitici" of Walsing- ham, althou,'5h Lord Hailes, Pinkerton, and other ■writers have contended that it was more probably some place on the river Nith. Mr. Allen conceives that no doubt can exist as to its being Aber- nethy on the Tay.— Vindication, &c., p. 47. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS : A. D. 1066—1216. 535 gaged in wars with those of the Scots and Picts ; but no one of these wars, as far as any account of it has been preserved, ever terminated in anything hke the conquest of the one country hy the other, or even took the shape of a contest having that object; and the supposition that it did, would be as contrary to all the probabilities of the case, as it is wholly unsupported by the testimony of histo- rians or records. The quarrel between the two contending parties appears to have been exclusively for the possession of Lothian ; and, on the whole, the course of the contest went rather against the English, who, as we have just seen, were at a very early period driven from the disputed territory, and eventually consented to relinquish all claims to its occupation and actual government, on re- ceiving from the Scottish kings at most an empty acknowledgment of their merely titular sove- reignty. But at any rate there is no evidence whatever to show that any attempt was ever made by a Northumbrian or other Anglo-Saxon king to conquer the territory to the north of the Forth, which alone originally and properly constituted the country called Scotland ; to supj)ose that any such attempt was ever successfully made, would be an assumption in the face of all evidence. Notwithstanding this state of the fact, it appears to be clear, on the other hand, that certain of the Anglo-Saxon kings did assume the title of monarch or emperor of all Britain — of Scotland as well as of England. This is proved, not only by the testi- mony of the monkish chroniclers, but by the charters of the kings themselves. It is unneces- sary for our present purpose to dispute the genu- ineness of these charters ; their evidence may be at once admitted — for it proves nothing. The dis- pute is not, as to whether the vaunting titles in question were assumed by some of the Anglo- Saxon kings, but as to whether they ever actually possessed that right of dominion over the whole island which they thus arrogantly claimed. The whole course of the history of the two countries shows that they never could have acquired any such dominion; their asserted sovereignty over Scotland could only have been founded upon a conquest of that country, of which there is no more evidence than there is of their conquest of France or of Spain. As little good evidence is there of any acknov/ledgment of this pretended sovereignty by the Scottish kings. To prove what is, in itself, so grossly improbable, as that any country would, without being compelled by force, relinquish its independence, and place itself in subjection to ano- ther country, which had always been its rival, and often its enemy, would demand the very strongest evidence. But here all the evidence that we have consists of a few vague expressions by writers for the most part extremely credulous and ill-informed, neither agreeing in this particular matter one with another, nor even each with himself, and, especially, all Imving their testimony, meagre and unsatisfactory as it is, rendered suspicious by their national con- nexion and partialities, and for the most part by a manifest anxiety to flatter or magnify the renown of the particular kings to whom they attribute this fancied supremacy over the whole island. Against all this, we have, in an age of writing and of char- ters, the absence of any authentic instrument in which any of the Scottish kings acknowledges his subjection, and a crowd of undisputed historical facts, proving that, in the general government of their dominions at least, all of these Scottish kings acted in every respect as independent sovereigns. The titles of basileus, or emperor of Britain, and king of England, Scotland, and Ireland, assumed by Edgar and some of the other Anglo-Saxon princes, are really no better evidence of their pos- session of this extensive dominion either in fact or in right, than was the long-continued assumption of the title of king of France by our modern Eng- lish kings a proof that they really were sovereigns of that country in any sense whatever. The fact, indeed, seems to be merely that the principal Saxon king, after having reduced to subjection the other states of the heptarchy, and thus made himself king of all England, not unnaturally chose to consider himself as in some sort the legi- timate successor of Carausius, and Maximus, and the other rulers over a similar extent of territory, who, in the old Roman times, had boasted with as little truth of possessing the empire of Bri- tain. We have nearly a parallel case in the pre- tensions of the emperors of Germany, who, on tlie ground that they were the successors of the Roman emperors, long claimed a sort of sove- reignty over all the other kings of Europe, and were strenuously supported in this vain assumption by a crowd both of churchmen and of lawyers.* It may be conceded that the English king in Britain, like the emperor in Europe, was considered the chief among the several crowned heads; the others may have generally " confessed the pre- eminence of his rank and dignity ;" but the defer- ence that may thus have been paid to him is alto- gether a different thing from any acknowledgment of his paramount dominion, or any surrender by those who yielded it of the independence of their own kingdoms. The only subjection or homage which either the Scottish kings rendered, or the English crown claimed from them, before the Norman conquest, appears to have been not for the kingdom of Scot- land, but for territories annexed to that kingdom or otherwise held by them, situated or conceived to be situated in England. Such v/as the lordship of Cumbria, or Cumbraland, after the donation of • " Nor was the supremacy of the emperor," says Gibbon, "con- fined to Germany alone: the hereditary monarchs of Europe con- fessed the pre-eminence of his rank and dignity : he was the first of the Christian princes, the temporal liead of the great republic of the west ; to his person the title of majesty was long appropriated ; and he disputed with the pope the sublime prerogative of creating kings and assembling councils. The oracle of the civil law, the learned Bartolus, was a pensioner of Charles IV. ; and his school resounded with the doctrine that the Roman emperor was the rightful sove- reign of the earth, from the rising to the setting sun. The contrary opinion was condemned, not as an error, but as a heresy since even the gospel had pronounced, ' And tliere went forth a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.' " — Dec. and Fall of Rom. Empire, ch. 49. 53G HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. it by the English king Edmund to Malcolm I., in 946. Lothian, or a part of it,* may be considered to have been similarly circumstanced after the agreement between Kenneth IV. and Edgar, in 971. There is reason to believe, also, that the Scottish kings were anciently possessed of other lands clearly viathin the realm of England, besides the county of Cumberland. For these possessions of course' they did homage to the English king, and acknowledged him as their liege lord, exactly in the same manner as the Norman kings of Eng- land acknowledged themselves the vassals of the crown of France for their possessions on the con- tinent. When Malcolm III., however, on the seizure of the English crown by the Duke of Normandy, espoused the cause of Edgar Atheling, he neces- sarily at the same time refused to do homage for his English lands to the Norman invader, whom by that very proceeding he declared that he did not acknowledge as the rightful king of England. William, on the other hand, took measures to main- tain his authority and to compel the obedience of iiis rebellious vassal ; and these objects he com- pletely attained by the submission of Malcolm at * Lord Hailes has emlcivoured to show that the district anciently called Lothian, and perhaps considered as part of England, by no means included the whole of the south-east of Scotland, but only the counties of Kerwick and East Lothian, and the part of Mid Lothian lying to the east of Edinburgh. And, he adds, "only a small part of that territory could be considered as feudally dependent on I'.ng- land. Great part of those territories was the patrimony of St. Cuth- bert." — Remarks on the Hist, of Scotland (Edin. 1772), chap. 2. Abernethy. The llitter now consented to make that acknowledgment of William's title, and of his own vassalage for the lordship of Cumberland and his other English possessions, v\ hicli he hi.d hitherto refused ; he gave hostages to the English king, as the Saxon chronicler expresses it, and became his man. After this Malcolm appears to have remained quiet for some years. He did not, however, finally abandon the cause of his brother-in-law, the Atheling; and in 1079, choosing his opportunity when the English king was engaged in war with his son Robert on the continent, he again took up arms, and made another destructive inroad into Northumberland. The following year, after the reconcilement of William and his son, the latter was sent at the head of an army against Scotland : but he soon returned without eft'ecting anything. It was immediately after this expedition that the fortress bearing the name of the Castellum Novum, on the Tyne, which gave origin to the town of Newcastle, was erected as a protection against tlie invasions of the Scots. When Rufus succeeded to the English throne the two countries appear to have been at peace. But in the summer of 1091 we find Malcolm again invading Northumberland. Rufus imme- diately made j^reparations to attack Scotland both by sea and land; and, although his ships were destroyed in a storm, he advanced to the north with his army before the close of the year. We have Castle of NtwcASTiJi-cpoN-TYNE. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 537 already related* the course and issue of tins new war. After being suspended for a short time by a treaty made, according to the Saxon chro- nicle, " at Lothian in England, " whither Mal- colm came "out of Scotland," and awaited the approach of the enemy, it was renewed by the refusal of the Scottish king to do the English king right, that is, to afford him satisfaction about the matter in dispute between them, anywhere except at the usual place, — namely, on the frontiers, and in presence of the chief men of both kingdoms. William required that Malcolm should make his appearance before the English barons alone, as- seml:)led at Gloucester, and submit the case to their judgment. " It is obvious on feudal principles," as Mr. Allen observes, " that if Malcolm had done homage for Scotland to the king of England, the Scotch nobles must have been rere-vassals of the latter, and could not have sat in court with the tenants in chief of the English crown." Yet it is evident that the nobility of both kingdoms had been wont on former occasions to meet and form one court for adjudication on such demands as that now made by the English king. The hostilities tliat followed, however, were fatal to Malcolm. He was slain in a sudden attack made upon him while besieging the castle of Alnwick, on the IStli of November, 1093. The reign of Malcolm was one of the most memorable and important in the early history of Scotland. It was in his time, and in conse- quence, in great part, of his personal fortunes, that the first foundations of that intimate con- nexion were laid which afterwards enabled the country to draw so largely upon the superior civi- lization of England, and in that way eventually revolutionized the whole of its social condition. From the time of Malcolm Canmore, Scotland ceased to be a Celtic kingdom. He himself spoke the language of his forefathers as well as Saxon ; but it may be doubted if any of his children un- derstood Gaelic, any more than their English mother. All his six sons, as it has been remarked, as well as his two daughters, received English names, apparently after their mother's relations. His marriage with the sister of Edgar Atheling exercised a powerful influence both over the per- sonal conduct of Malcolm and over public affairs. Ttiere is still extant a Latin Life of Queen Mar- garet by her Confessor Turgot, which is on various accounts one of the most interesting records of those times. Margaret was very learned and elo- quent, as well as pious, and she exercised her gifts not only in the instruction of her husband, but also in controversy with the Scottish clergy, whose various errors of doctrine and discipline she took great pains to reform. One of the subjects upon which she held a solemn conference with them was the proper season for celebrating Lent. On this occasion, " three days," says Turgot, " did she employ the sword of the Spirit in combating their errors. She seemed another St. Helena, out of the • See ante. p. 398. Scriptures convincing the Jews." Turgot has preserved the heads of the debate, in which Mal- colm acted as interpreter between his wife and the clergy, and which ended in the acquiescence of the latter in the queen's arguments. Her affections, however, were not all set upon the beauty of spiritual things. She encouraged merchants, we are told by Turgot, to come from various parts of the world, with many precious commodities which had never before been seen in that country, among which are especially mentioned vestments orna- mented with various colours, which, when the people bought, adds the chronicler, and were in- duced by the persuasions of the queen to put on, they might almost be believed to have become new beings, so fine did they appear. She was also, to adopt the summary of the monk's account given by Lord Hailes, " magnificent in her own attire ; she increased the number of attendants on the person of the king, augmented the parade of his public ap- pearances, and caused him to be served at table in gold and silver plate. At least (says the honest historian) the dishes and vessels were gilt or silvered over." Malcolm is traditionally said to have, with the advice of his nobility, made various important in- novations in the Constitution of the kingdom, or the administration of public affairs. He appears to have restored the rule of law and order, which had been banished from the country by the civil wars that preceded his accession ; and it is proba- ble that in the measures he adopted to accomplish this end, he imitated, as far as he could, the forms and usages of England. There is neither proof nor probability, however, for the statement which has beea often repeated, that he introduced feudalism in a systematic form into Scotland. That state of things appears rather to have grown up gradually under the influence of various causes, and its com- plete establishment nmst be referred to a period considerably later than the reign of this king. The modern titles of Earl and Baron, however, are traced nearly to his time, and seem then, or very soon after, to have begun to supplant the older Celtic Marmor and Saxon Thane. Surnames also began to be used in this or the next reign. But, on the whole, it was probably not so much by any new laws which were enacted by Malcolm Canmore (the collection in Latin which has been attributed to him is admitted to be spurious), or by any new institutions which he established, that Scotland was in a manner transformed into a new country in his days, as by his English education and marriage, the English manners which were thus introduced at his court, and the numbers of English of all ranks whom the political events of the time drove to take refuge in the northern kingdom. Much of the change, therefore, was really the effect of the Norman Conquest of England, which in nearly the same degree that it made Saxon England Norman, made Celtic Scotland Saxon. The disastrous close of the reign of Malcolm, whose own death was followed in a few days by that of 538 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. his excellent queen, worn out, it is said, by her vigils and fastings, and other pious exercises, afforded an opportunity to his brother Donald Bane (or the Fair) to seize the throne. Malcolm's eldest son, Edward, had fallen with his father at Alnwick ; his second, Ethelred, was a churchman ; but he left four other legitimate sons, although they were all as yet under age. Donald is said to have remained till now in the Western Islands, where he had taken refuge, on the death of his father Dun- can, more than fifty years before.* He now in- vaded Scotland with a fleet fitted out in the Western Islands, and, with the aid of the faction which had all along been opposed to the English iimovations of Malcolm, carried everything before him. The children of the late king were hastily conveyed to England by their uncle Edgar Atheling; and Donald, as soon as he mounted the throne, ex- pelled all the foreigners that had taken refuge at his brother's court. He had reigned only a few months, however, when another claimant of the crown appeared in the person of Duncan, according to the common account, an illegitimate son of Malcolm Canmore. He had been sent, it seems, by his father as a hostage to England ; and by now offering to swear fealty to Rufus, he obtained his permission to raise a force for the invasion of Scotland. He succeeded in driving Donald from the throne and mounting it himself in May, 1094. But after a reign of only about a year and a half, Duncan was, at the instigation of Donald Bane, assassinated by Malpedir, Earl of Mearns, and Donald again became king about the end of the year 1095. After his restoration, he proceeded in his former course of policy — the expulsion of the foreign settlers, and the abolition, as far as possible, of all the recent innovations upon the old national manners and usages, being now prosecuted with greater zeal and vigour than ever. Affairs proceeded in this train for about two years; but at length, in 1097, Edgar Atheling raised an army, with the approbation of the English king, and marching with it into Scotland, after an obstinate contest, overcame Donald, in the begin- ning of the following year, and obtained the crown for his nephew Edgar, the son of Malcolm Can- more. " Edgar, like Duncan," observes Mr. Allen, " appears to have held his kingdom in fealty to William. These two cases, and the ex- torted submission of William the Lion, during his captivity (to be presently mentioned), are the only instances I have found since the Conquest of any king of Scotland rendering fealty to England for his crown. Both occurrences took place after a • See ante, p. 222. It must be confessed tliat the great length of the interval — fifty-four years— between tlie dates assigned to the dealli of Duncan and tliat of Malcolm, throws some suspicion upon the common statitment that the one was the son of the other. All that we know of the age of Malcolm is, that lie was married about 1069 or 1070, that he reigned thirty-six or thirty-seven years, and that at his death he left several children under age. As he fell in battle, however, it seems improbable that he was very old when he died. Pinkerton (who, by-the-by, places his accession on the authority of the Chronicle of Melrose, in 1055, not in 1057) strongly insists that he must have been, not the son, but the grandson of Duncan. — In- (juiry.ii. 203,204, disputed succession in Scotland, terminated by tlie arms and assistance of the Englisli. Duncan was speedily punished for his sacrifice of the honour and dignity of the sceptre he unworthily held. Edgar appears to have repented of his weakness, and to have retracted before his death the disgrace- ful submission he had made in order to obtain his crown. One of his coins is said to bear the im- press of ' Eadgarus Scottorum Basileus,' a title which, like Imperator, implied that the holder acknowledged no superior upon earth." On his second deposition, Donald Bane was deprived of the power of giving further disturbance by being detained in prison and having his eyes put out. Edgar retained the throne till his death, on the 8th of January, 1107; and during his reign the country appears to have enjoyed both internal tranquillity and freedom from foreign war. The accession of Henry I. to the throne of Eng- land, which took place in 1100, and his marriage the same year with Edgar's sister Maud, had the effect of maintaining peace between the two coun- tries for a long course of years from this date. This favourable tendency of circumstances was not op- posed by the disposition of Edgar, whom a con- temporary chronicler describes as " a sweet- tempered, amiable man, in all things resembling Edward the Confessor ; mild in his administration, equitable and beneficent."* Like Edward, the Scottish king appears to have been a favourite of the clergy, to whom he probably showed both liberality and deference. Edgar, dying without issue, was succeeded by his next brother, Alexander I. Soon after his accession, Alexander strengthened his connexion with the English king by a marriage with one of Henry's numerous illegitimate daughters, the Lady Sibilla, or, as she is called by other authorities, Elizabeth, whose mother was a sister of Walleran, Earl of Mellent. A dismemberment, however, of the Scottish kingdom, as it had existed for some reigns preceding, now took place, by the separation of Cumberland, which Edgar on his death-bed had bequeathed to his younger brother David. Alexan- der at first disputed the validity of this bequest ; but, the English barons taking the part of David, he found himself obliged to submit. By this arrangement, the king of Scotland would for tlie present (putting aside the doubtful case of Lothian) cease to be an English baron ; and accordingly it appears that Alexander never attended at the English court. Nearly the whole history of his reign that has been preserved is made up of a long contest in which he was engaged with the English archbishops on the subject of their assumed au- thority over the Scottish church. Turgot, the con- fessor of the late Queen Margaret, hud been ap- pointed to the bishopric of St. Andrew's soon after the accession of Alexander; but his consecration was delayed for two years in consequence of a two- fold dispute about the right of performing the ceremony, the archbishops of Canterbury and York • Aldred. Rival. ClIAP. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. >39 severally laying claim to it, while the king and clergy of Scotland denied that it lay with either. In the latter form this ecclesiastical dispute was closely connected with the question respecting the independence of the Scottish crown ; and Alexander the Fierce, as he was surnamed, fought the battle with apparently a full sense of its imporLance. Turgot was at length consecrated on the 30th July, 1 109, by the archbishop of York, but only after an agreement between the two kings that the necessary ceremony should be so performed, " saving the authority of either church." Turgot, however, died in 1115; and then the former difficulty recurred. For some years no new bishop was nominated ; but at last, in 1120, Alexander wrote to Anselm, the archbishop of Canterbury, requesting him to set at liberty Eadmer, one of the monks of that church, that lie might be placed in the vacant episcopal throne. Eadmer was accordingly sent to Scotland, and elected to the bishopric, as he has himself told us, by the clergy and people of the country, with the consent of the king. On the following day, however' Alexander called the new bishop to a secret conference, and surprised him by intimating the strongest aversion to his receiving consecra- tion from the archbishop of Canterbury. On Eadmer remarking that the church of Canter- bury had by ancient right a pre-eminence over all Britain, Alexander started up with much emotion and left the apartment. It was not till after a month, during which time the person who had presided in the bishopric since the demise of Turgot had by the royal command resumed his functions, that Eadmer was again sent for. A compromise was now arranged, and it was agreed that the bishop should in the mean time assume the charge of his diocese without consecration, on receiving the ring from the hands of the king, and taking the pastoral staff" from the altar. Eadmer, however, soon found that, in the peculiar circumstances in whicli he was placed, his situation was not a very comfortable one, and he resolved, therefore, to repair to Canterbury for advice. But Alexander at first peremptorily refused to allow him to leave the kingdom. " I received you alto- gether free from Canterbury," he said, in a warm altercation they had together ; " while I live I will not permit the bishop of St. Andrews to be sub- jected to that see." " For your whole kingdom," answered Eadmer, " I would not renounce the dignity of a monk of Canterbury." " Then," replied the king passionately, " I have done nothing in seeking a bishop out of Canterbury." In a letter written some time after to Anselm, Alexander affirmed that the bishop had refused to accommodate himself to the usages of the covaitry and the manners of its inhabitants, as the exigencies of the times required ; but Eadmer himself denies that there was any ground for this charge. Per- haps, however, he may have needed the advice v/hich it appears he received from an English friend, named Nicolas, who, in a long letter which he wrote to him, urged upon him with especial earnestness, as the best course he could take for softening the barbarity of the Scots, promoting sound doctrine, and establishing ecclesiastical dis- cipline, the keeping of a plentiful and hospitable table ! Nicolas, who seems to have been a sort of agent or solicitor in ecclesiastical causes, strongly advised Eadmer to obtain consecration from the pope himself; and he requested him to inform Alexander that he should himself be hap])y to undertake the defence of the independence and freedom of the Scottish church at the papal court. In making this offer he probably had an eye to his own interests fully as much as to those of the bishop. It was followed up by a strange request — " I entreat you," the letter concluded, " to let me have as many of the fairest pearls as you can procure : in particular, I desire four of the largest sort. If you cannot procure them otherwise, ask them as a present from the king, who is the richest" of all men in this sort of treasure." Eadmer at last was obliged, in order to obtain permission to take his departure, to resign his bishopric, and to engage not to reclaim it during the life of Alex- ander, unless by the advice of the pope, his con- vent, and the king of England. Yet, soon after he had returned to Canterbury, he wrote a long letter to Alexander requesting leave to return and resume his office. " I mean not," he said, " in any par- ticular to derogate from the freedom and inde- pendence of the kingdom of Scotland. Should you continue in your former sentiments I will desist from my opposition ; for, with respect to the King of England, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the sacerdotal benediction, I had notions which, as I have since learned, were erroneous. They will not separate me from the service of God and your favour. In those things I will act accordhig to your inclinations, if you only permit me to enjoy the other rights belonging to the see of St. Andrews." Alexander, however, would not listen to his petition; and in January, 1124, a new- bishop of St. Andrews was appointed in tlie person of Robert, prior of Scone. The archbishop of York again insisted upon his right of consecration ; " but the Scots," says Simon of Durham, " with foolish prating, asserted that his claim had no foundation either in right or usage." Alexander did not long survive the settlement of this affair. He had about two years before lost his queen, who had brought him no offspring ; and his own death took place on the 2'7th of April, 1124. The quality for which this king is most celebrated by the old historians is his personal valour, of which various remarkable instances are related, although some contests with revolted por- tions of his own subjects, of which there are obscure notices, seem to have been the only opportunities lie had of displaying mibtary talent. But he sufficiently proved his intrepidity and firmness of character, in the manner in which he defended and maintained the independence of his kingdom, in the only point in which it was attacked in his time. In the stand which he made here, he ap- 540 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. pears to have had with him the great body of the national clergj', and they and he were always on the best terms. Aldred describes him as " hum- ble and courteous to the clergy ; but to the rest of his subjects, terrible beyond measure; high- spirited, always endeavouring to compass things beyond his power ; not ignorant of letters ; zealous in establishing churches, collecting relics, and providing vestments and books for the clergy; liberal, even to profusion, and taking delight in the offices of charity to the poor." David, Earl of Cumberland, the youngest of the sons of Malcolm Canmore, now became king. Having lived from his childhood in England, his manners, says Malmsbury, were polished from the rust of Scottish barbarity. He had also, before he came to the throne, married an English wife, Matilda, or Maud, the daughter (and eventually heiress) of Waltheof, Earl of Northumberland, and the widow of Simon de St. Ldz, Earl of North- ampton. The King of Scotland was now again an English baron, by his tenure of the earldom of Cumberland ; and accordingly, when Henry I., in 1127, called together the prelates and nobles of the realm, to swear that they would after his de- cease support the right of his daughter Matilda to the inheritance of the English crown,* David was (me of those that attended, and was the first who took the oath. In observance of this engagement, tl)e Scottish king, on the usurpation of Stephen, led an army into England, and compelled the • See ante, page 416. northern barons to swear fealty to Matilda. " What the King of Scots," said Stephen, when this news was brought to him, " has gained by stealth, I will manfully recover." He immediately col- lected a powerful force, and advanced at its head against JDavid. They met at Newcastle ; but no engagement took place; a compromise was ef- fected (February, 1136), and David consented to withdraw his troops, on Stephen engaging to con- fer on his eldest son, Henry, the earldom of Hunt- ingdon, with the towns of Carlisle and Doncaster, and promising to take into consideration his claims, in right of his mother, to the earldom of North- umberland. Earl Henry did homage to Stephen for the new English honour he was thus to re- ceive; but David himself still refused to do so, although he appears to have retained the earldom of Cumberland in his own hands. The war was, however, renewed before the end of the same year by David, on the pretence that Stephen delayed to put his son in possession of the county of Northumberland, but, in reality, in con- sequence of a confederacy into which 'he had entered with the Earl of Gloucester and the other partizans of the Empress Matilda, who were now making preparations for a grand effort to drive her rival from the throne. With the same impetuosity he had shown on the former occasion, David was again first in the field. A truce, negotiated by Archbishop Thurstan of York, gained a short space for Stephen; but in 1131 David entered Northvmiberland, and ravaged that unfortunate Ruins of Norhaji Castle. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 541 district for some time, without mercy and without check. In the beginning of the following year, liowever, he deemed it advisable to fall back upon Roxburgh at the approach of Stephen, who fol- lowed him across the Tweed, and made requital by wasting the Scottish border for part of the in- jury his own subjects had sustained. But the English king was soon recalled by other enemies to the south, and then David (in March 1138) re- entered Northumberland, sending forward at the same time William, a son of the late King Dun- can, into the west, where he and his wild Galwe- gians (on the 9th of June) gave a signal discom- fiture to a party of Englfsh at Clitherow. Mean- while, Norham castle, erected in the preceding reign by Bishop Flambard on the south bank of the Tweed, to guard the main access from Scot- land, surrendered to the Scottish king after a short siege ; and from this point he marched forward, through Northumberland and Durham, to North- allerton in Yorkshire, without opposition. Here, however, his barbarous host was met by an English force, collected chiefly by the efforts of the aged archbishop of York. At the great battle of the Standard, fought on the 22nd of August,* the Scots sustained a complete defeat. The victors, however, were not in a condition to pursue their advantage. King David retired to Carlisle, and soon after laid siege to the castle of Werk, which having reduced, he razed it to the ground, and then, to adopt the expression of Lord Hailes, " returned into Scotland more like a conqueror, than like one whose army had been routed." The next year a treaty of ])eace was concluded between the two kings at Durham, by which David obtained the earldom of Northumberland, tlie ostensible object of the war, for his son, who enjoyed it till his death, and left it to his descendants. David, however, was never cordially attached to the interests of Stephen. When a few years after this the cause of Matilda for a short time gained the ascendant, he repaired to the court of his niece, and endeavoured to persvuide her to follow a course of moderation and policy, at which her imperious temper spurned. He was shut up with her in Winchester castle, when she was be- sieged there by Stephen, in August and September, IMlf, and escaped thence along with her. It is said that he was indebted for his concealment afterwards, and his conveyance home to his own kingdom, to the exertions of a young man, named David Olipbant, to whom he had been godfather, and who chanced to be serving in the army of Stephen. From this period the reign of David is scarcely marked by any events, if we except the disturb- ances occasioned by some piratical descents made upon the Scottish coasts by an adventurer of ob- scure birth, named Wimund, Avho gave himself out for a son of the Earl of Moray, but was at last, after giving considerable trouble, taken and deprived of his eyes, in 1 151. In his latter years, • Soe ante, pp. 424—426. t Ibid. p. i33. however, David, relieved from foreign wars, ap- plied himself assiduously to the internal improve- ment of his country, by the encouragement of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the establishment of towns, the erection of churches, monasteries, and other public buildings, and the reform of the law and its administration. Many of the statutes enacted by him are still preserved. AVhen the son of the Empress Matilda, after- wards Henry II., came over from the continent, in 1149, to assert in person his claim to the English crown, he was met by the Scottish king at Carlisle,* and after receiving from him the honour of knighthood, bound himself, when he should become King of England, to make over to David the town of Newcastle, and the whole ter- ritory between the Tweed and the Tyne. David and his son, Henry, immediately invaded England, and advanced as far as Lancaster; but on the approach of Stephen, the Scottish army retired without risking a battle. David did not live to witness the issue of the contest between Stephen and Henry. His death was probably hastened by that of his son, Henry, which took place on the 12th of June, 1152, to the great grief of his countrymen, whom his amiable character had filled with the anticipa- tion of a continuation of the same prosperity and happiness under his rule which they enjoyed under that of his father. Aldred, who knew him, says that he resembled his father in all things, ex- cept that he was in manner somewhat more gentle. Soon after this stroke, David fixed his residence at Carlisle ; and there he expired on the morning of the 24th of May, 1153, having been found dead in bed, with his hands joined together over his breast in the posture of devotional supplication. Both the virtues and the capacity of this king have been extolled in the highest terms by the monkish chroniclers ; but he seems on the whole to have deserved the praises bestowed vipon him. It is true that among the acts for which he is most eulogized, his donations to the church, and his founding of numerous religious houses stand con- spicuous — in allusion to which, his descendant, James L, is said to have feelingly complained of him as having been " a sore saint for the crown." But we may reasonably doubt whether it would have been for the advantage of the public interests that the funds thus expended should have remained in the possession of the crown ; and it may also be questioned whether anything more effective could have been done to promote the civilization of a country just emerging from barbarism, as Scotland was at this period, than the planting over all parts of it these establishments, which were not only seminaries of piety and letters, but ex- amples of ornamental architecture, and even central fountain-heads for diffusing a knowledge of the art of cultivating the soil, and other useful arts. David, however, had many other estimable qualities besides his regard for religion and the church. • See ante, p. 436. >42 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. He was always, Aldred tells us, accessible to his subjects, from the highest to the lowest ; and on certain days of every week he sat at the gate of his palace, hearing and deciding upon the causes brought before him by the poor. He took great pains also, it is added, to make them understand the reasons, and. to convince them of the justice of his decisions — allowing them freely to argue tlie matter with him when they were not satisfied. His custom was to dismiss all his attendants at sunset, and. to retire for solitary meditation ; at daybreak he reappeared in public. One of the favourite occupations of his leisure hours was gardening, and the planting and engrafting of trees. Hunting also he used as an exercise ; but " I have seen him," says Aldred, " quit his horse, and dismiss his hunting equipage, when any of the meanest of his subjects implored an audience." The late Earl Henry's eldest son, though as yet only in his twelfth year, succeeded his grandfather, under the name of Malcolm IV, The notices we have of the events of his reign in the contem- porary clironiclers are scarcely sufficient to furnish a continuous or intelligible narrative — and in the lack of recorded facts the writera of later date appear to have filled up the story by drawing on their invention with even more than their usual liberality. With a king of such tender age, the government must have been for some years in the hands of a regency; but there is no account of any such arrangement. This was the first ex- ample of the Scottish throne having been occupied by a boy, and it may be regarded as having for the first time established the principle of here- ditary succession as the rule of the monarchy in all circumstances. As might have been expected, however, the sceptre was not allowed to pass into the hands of so mere a pageant of a king without dispute. A few months only after Malcolm's accession, the public tranquillity was disturbed by what appears to have been more properly an invasion than an insurrection, being an attack made with the avowed object of effecting the con- quest of the kingdom by Somerled, the Thane of Argyle, whose daughter had married the adventurer Wimund. The provinces, it may be observed, of Argyle, Moray, Ross, and Gal- loway, seem still to have remained so many principalities, usually indeed acknowledging a sort of feudal dependence upon the Scottish crown, but scarcely considered as forming parts of the kingdom of Scotland, any more than the vassal dukedoms and earldoms of the crown of France were held to be integral parts of that kingdom. They had each its own chief, and in all respects its own government, with which that of the supreme sovereign rarely if ever interfered. Their princes indeed were legally bound to follow his banner in war ; but even this was an obli- gation which was only attended to when the vassal chose, or did not feel himself strong enough to disregard it. In the present case the Thane of Argyle made war upon his sovereign just as any independent potentate might have made war upon another. All that we know of the events of the war is, that it lasted for some years ; and then in 1157 the king of Scotland appears to have made peace with the Thane of Argyle, just as he might have done with any other sovereign as independent as himself. To this date also is assigned JNIal- colm's first transaction with the English king. At an interview held at Chester he was induced not only to give up his claim to the territory to the north of the Tyne, promised to his father David, but also to abandon Cumberland, and whatever other lands and honours he possessed in England, with the exception only of the earldom of Huntingdon, which Henry either confirmed to him, or conferred upon him, taking it from his youngest brother David, to whom it appears to have been left by the late king. Malcolm at the same time is stated to have done homage to Henry in the same manner as his grandfather had to Henry's grandfather, that is to say with the reservation of all his dignities. The accounts given of the Avhole of this affair by the old chroni- clers are confused and obscure ; but it is asserted by Fordun that Henry succeeded in effecting the agreement by bribing the advisers of the Scottish king, and taking advantage of his youth and inex- perience, and that it produced a deep and settled hatred against Malcolm among all classes of his own subjects. Nor does his facility appear to have gained for him much gratitude or considera- tion from Henry. He repaired the following year to Carlisle to obtain the honour of knighthood from the English king ; but this interview ended in a quarrel, and Malcolm returned home in dis- gust, and without his knighthood. When Henry, however, set forth on his expedition for the recovery of Toulouse in 1159,* Malcolm went with him to France, and was knighted by him there. But he had followed Henry's banner on this occasion in opposition to the judgment of the Scottish nobility, and after a fev/ months a solemn deputation was sent to him to urge his immediate return to his dominions. The people of Scotland, the deputies were commanded to tell him, would not have Henry to rule over them. Malcolm felt it neces- sary to obey this call ; but the faction 023posed to the connexion with England was not, it appears, to be satisfied with having succeeded in merely bringing him home. While he was holding a great council at Perth, Ferquhard, Earl of Strath- earn, and five other noblemen, made an attempt to seize his person, and openly assaulted a tower in which he was lodged. The movement threat- ened to lead to a general popular insurrection, when an accommodation was brought about by the intervention of the clergy. Immediately after this, Malcolm with judiciovis policy applied him- self to the reduction of those districts of his king- dom which, inhabited for the most part by races of foreign extraction, had never yet been com- pletely brought under subjection to the general * See ante, p. 445. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. 543 government, and in which revolts or disturbances were constantly breaking out. He found occupa- tion for his restless nobility by leading them first against the wild Irish of Galloway, and then against the people of Moray, who seem to have been principally of Danish lineage. In his two first expeditions against Galloway he was repulsed ; but in a third attempt, he compelled Fergus, the lord of the country, to sue for peace and to make complete submission. In regard to the province of Moray (at that time certainly not confined to the modern county of the same name, but com- prehending apparently the whole or the greater part of what is now called Inverness), where re- bellions had been incessant, Malcolm is asserted to have adopted the strong rneasure of removing the old inhabitants altogether to other parts of the kingdom, and replacing them with new colonies. We may presume, however, that any such trans- ference of population could have been only very partially carried into effect. The subjugation of Galloway and Moray was followed in 1164 by another contest with Somerled, who had again risen in arms, and landed at Renfrew on the Clyde with a numerous force, which he had collected both from his own territories and from Ireland. The Thane of Argyle probably sympathised with the Lords of Galloway and Moray, or regarded their fate as of evil omen to himself. The issue of his present attempt, however, was eminently disastrous; his army was scattered with great slaughter in its first encounter with the king's forces, and both himself and his son were left among the slain. It thus appears that Malcolm IV. was at least as successful as any of his predecessors in the maintenance of his proper authority as sovereign of Scotland, and that be probably indeed very consi- derably extended the real sway of the sceptre which they had left him in the country beyond the Tweed. His relinquishment, however, of the pos- sessions which bad been held by his grandfather in the south, and the partiality he evinced for a connexion with England, seem to have been in the highest degree distasteful to the generality of his subjects. At the head of the party which this feeling raised against him was his next brother William, for whom his grandfather is said to have intended the earldom of Northumberland, and who accordingly considered himself to be deprived of his inheritance by the agreement with Henry which Malcolm had made in the commencement of his reign. Meanwhile Malcolm is recorded to have, on the 1st of July, 1163, at Woodstock, re- newed his homage to Henry, and also to have taken an oath of fealty to his infant son as heir apparent, and the relations between the two kings appear to have become more intimate than ever. The next notice that we have of the course of events in Scotland represents Malcolm as deprived of the government, and his brother William at the head of affairs as Regent. Even the fact of this revolution, however, is involved in considerable doubt, and various accounts are given of the causes that led to it. One story is, that Malcolm incurred the displeasure of his subjects by neglect- ing the administration of affairs, and giving him- self up wholly to devotion ; and that, moreover, he had bound himself by a vow of chastity, from which no intreaties of nobles or prelates could prevail upon him to depart. Boyce gives at full length a singular harangue, which he says was addressed to the king upon this subject by the bishop of St. Andrews, at a great council held for its especial consideration at Scone. But the legend of Malcolm's vow of chastity appears to be most probably an invention, founded upon his surname of the Maiden, which it is likely was intended to designate him only as young and of an effeminate countenance; for it is known from one of his own charters that he had a natural son. Nor would the history of his reign and actions denote him to have been in any respect a person of monkish tendencies. His devotion, indeed, may have come on in his last days. Be this as it may, another account (by no means irreconcileable with the last) makes him to have been obliged to give up the management of affairs in consequence of an attack of illness. It is certain that he died at Jedburgh on the 9th of December, 1165, on which his brother William was raised to the throne. Notwithstanding the part he had hitherto taken, William appears to have begun his reign by courting the alliance of the English king. He passed over to the continent to Henry, while he was employed in reducing the revolted Bretons in 1 166, and, as already mentioned, was with him while he kept court in the castle on Mount St. Michael in the close of that year.* The Chro- nicle of Melrose (which is written throughout in an English spirit) says that William followed Henry to France " to do the business of his lord." It is probable that he expected to suc- ceed by this conduct in his favourite object of recovering possession of Northumberland. Henry seems to have kept up his hopes by fair promises for some years : when his eldest son Henry was solemnly crowned at London on the 14th of June, 1 1 70, both William and his younger brother David were present at the ceremony, and both did homage to the heir apparent along with the other English barons; but in 1173, when the quarrel broke out between the English king and his son, William, tired of fruitless solicitation, changed his course, and, joining in confederacy with the " junior king," from whom he obtained a grant of the earldom of Northumberland for himself, and of that of Cam- bridge for his brother, he raised an army and entered England as an enemy. But after merely ravaging part of the northern counties, he con- sented to a truce, which was eventually prolonged to the end of Lent in the following year. In 1174, however, he again invaded Northumberland, As before, his troops spread devastation wherever • See ante, p. 452. 544 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. they appeared ; but their destructive course was soon stopped. William, as has been already re- lated,* was on the 12th of July suddenly fallen upon at Alnwick by a party of Yorkshire barons, headed by Ranulf de Glanville, and made pri- soner, witli all his attendants. The Scottish king and his sixty knights, however, were not taken captive without resistance. As soon as William perceived who the enemy were, which was not till they were close upon him, for at first he had taken them for a returning party of his own stragglers, he cried out, " Now it will be seen who are true knights," and instantly advanced to the charge. But the numbers of the English (there were four hundred horsemen with Glanville) made this gallantry wholly unavailing. The king was quickly overpowered and unhorsed, and was then carried that same night to Newcastle, his attend- ants voluntarily sharing the fate of their sove- reign. He was at first confined in the castle of Richmond, in Yorkshire ; but after a few weeks Henry carried him across the seas to Falaise, in Normandy. In this strong fortress he remained shut up till the conclusion of the treaty of Falaise, in December following, by which William, with the consent of his barons and clergy, became the liegeman of Henry for Scotland and all his other territories. He was then liberated and allowed to return home, on delivering up to the English king the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, Roxburgh, Berwick, and Jedburgh, and giving his brother David and many of his chief nobility as hostages for his adherence to the treaty. The next event requiring to be noticed in the reign of William is a remarkable contest in which he was engaged with the court of Rome. It began in 1178, when, on the death of Richard, bishop of St. Andrews, the chapter elected as his successor John Scot, an Englishman of distinguished learn- ing. The nomination of a bishop by the chapter, without the royal consent, w-as a stretch of ecclesi- astical authority which had never been quietly submitted to either in England or Scotland, al- though any actual conflict between the claims of the spiritual and the temporal powers had usually been avoided by the king and the chap- ter uniting in the election of the same person. But in the present case William had a particular motive for making a stand against the clerical encroachment, having destined the see for Hugh, his chaplain. " By the arm of St. James," he passionately exclaimed, when he heard of the election made by the chapter, " while I live John Scot shall never be bishop of St. Andrews."' He immediately seized the revenues of the see, and, disregarding the appeal of John to Rome, made Hugh be consecrated, and put him in possession. When the Pope, Alexander III., cancelled this appointment, and John was the following year consecrated in obedience to the papal mandate, William instantly banished him from the kingdom. The pope on this resorted to the strongest mea- * Seoanto, p 471. sures ; he laid the diocese of St. Andrews under an interdict ; he commanded the Scottish clergv within eight days to instal John ; soon after he ordered them to excommunicate Hugh ; and, finally, he granted legatine powers over Scotland to the archbishop of York, and authorised that prelate and the bishop of Durham to excommuni- cate the king of Scotland, and to lay the whole kingdom under an interdict if the king did not forthwith put John in peaceable possession of the see. Still William was inflexible on the main point. He offered to make John chancellor, and to give him any other bishopric which should become vacant : but this was the only concession he would make. When the archbishop of York and the bishop of Durham called upon the clergy of the diocese of St. Andrews to yield obedi- ence to John under pain of suspension, he banished all who complied with that summons. At last the two prelates went to the full extent of their tremendous powers, and actually pronounced sentence of excommunication agahist William, and laid the kingdom of Scotland under an interdict. But at this point the death of Alexander (in August, 1181) prevented further consequences. William lost no time in making application to the new Pope, Lucius III., who, with the customary regard of each sovereign pontiff for the decrees of his predecessor, consented to reverse the sentence of excommunication, and to recal the interdict. The affair was ended by the pope himself nomina- ting Hugh to the bishopric of St. Andrews, and John to that of Dunkeld, and so, to use the words of Lord Hailes, " making thai his deed which was the king's will." Lord Hailes observes that William, in the obstinate stand he made on this occasion against Pope Alexander, " seems to have been proud of opposing to the uttermost that pontiff, before whom his conqueror Henry had bowed." Notwitlistanding the success which is attributed to the measures taken by the preceding king for reducing to a real obedience the various provinces that had before only acknowledged, at the utmost, a qualified dependence upon the Scottish crown, we find insurrections in these districts still disturbing the present reign. In 1171 the old annalists record another revolt of the people of Moray: in 1179 William was obliged to march with an armv to Ross, to compose some commotions there ; a state of anarchy and confusion which had lasted for more than ten years in Galloway was only put an end to in 1186 ; and hi 1 187 Ross and Moray were invaded by Donald Bane, or Mac- William, a grandson of the late king, Duncan, whose attempt, however, was soon put down, and himself slain. In 1186, William, on the proposal of the English king, married Ermengarde, the daughter of Richard, Viscount Beaumont, and the descend- ant of an illegitimate daughter of Henry I. ; on which, as part of the dower of his cousin, Henry restored the castle of Edinburgh. Two years afterwards he also offered to give up the castles of Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1066—1216. oil Roxburgh and Berwick, if William -svould pay the tenths of his kingdom for the holy -svar ; but the Scottish barons and clergy made answer, " That they would not, although both kings should have sworn to levy them." The accession of Richard I. to the English throne was followed, in a few months, by the release of William from the obligations which Henry, in the words of the charter of acquittance (dated December nth, 1189), " had extorted from him by new instruments, in consequence of his captivity ;" with the proviso, only, that he should in future perform whatever homage had of right been performed, or had been of right due, by his brother Malcolm. There seems to be no pretence for denying that this was a full renunciation by Richard, at least of whatever new rights of sove- reignty over Scotland had been created by the treaty of Falaise, " There is no clause, it must be owned," observes Mr. Allen, "in the charter of Richard, which recognises in express terms the independence of the Scottish crown The charter merely replaces the two kingdoms on their ancient footing, and leaves it open to discussion what were the lands and possessions for which homage and fealty were due to the English crown. But from one of the most full and accurate of our contemporary chroniclers, it is apparent that the independence of Scotland was understood at the time to be the efliect and purport of the treaty. Eenedictus Abbas, in his account of the transac- tion, informs us that William did homage to Richard for his English dignities ; and that Richard, on the part of himself and his successors, granted to the Scotch king, and to his heirs for ever, an acquittance from all allegiance and subjec- tion for the kingdom of Scotland." For this ac- quittance, and the restitution of the castles of Roxburgh and Berwick, William agreed to pay ten thousand marks sterling. William lived many years after this, but scarcely any events of importance mark the remainder of his reign. Some disturbances in Caithness, in 1196 and the following year, compelled him to march an army into that province, where he seized Harold, the Earl of Orkney and Caithness, who was at the head of the insurrection, and detained him in captivity until his son Torfin sunxndered himself as a hostage. This was, perhaps, the earliest actual assertion by any Scottish king of his authority in that remote district ; the earls of which, if they acknowledged any limitation of their independence, had probably been wont to consider themselves subject rather to the Danish than to the Scottish crown. After the accession of John to the throne of England, William did homage to him (November 22nd, 1200) at Lincoln, "saving his own rights." A few years aiterwards a misunderstanding arose between the two kings respecting a fort which John attempted to erect at Tweedmouth, and which William repeatedly demolished as soon as it was built. A war at last threatened to arise out of this quarrel; and, in 1209, the English king advanced to Norham, and the Scottish to Berwick, each at the head of an army. But no encounter took place ; a treaty of peace was concluded by the intervention of the barons of both nations, by which William became bound to pay to John fifteen thousand marks, as a compensation, it is supposed, for his demolition of the fort, which John, on his part, is said to have undertaken not to rebuild. WilHam also delivered his two daughters to John, that they might be provided by him with suitable matches. William died, after a long illness, at Stirling, on Seal vv Williaji tui; Lion ok Scotland. TThis Is the onlv Seal of William the T.ion that has boon cnpraved. But it is helleved, on the a\ithority of Alexander Nisbet, the horaUI, that there was in the chr.rter-chcst of tlic Setons, Karls of Winton, a charter of William with a seal appanded to it, in which the lion rampant appeared on the shield, as it does in the seal of his son and FUCccs.«or, Alexander II.— Sec Anderson s Diplomata, p. ol, note /..J rampant appear VOL. I. 2 I 546 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. the 4tli of December, 1214, in the seventy-second year of his age, and forty-ninth of his reign. He was surnamed The Lion on account, says Boyce, of his singular justice, — which seems a strange reason. It is more probable that he took this title from the lion rampant, the coat armorial of the Scottish kings, which he appears to have been the first to introduce. The statutes attributed to him consist of thirty-nine chapters ; but a few of them are believed to be interpolations of a later period. He left many natural children; but, besides his two daughters, mentioned above, only one son by his wife Ermengarde de Beaumont, a youth in his seventeenth year, who succeeded his father, and was crowned at Scone on the 10th of December, 1214, by the name of Alexander II. The part taken by the new king of Scots, in conjunction with the English barons in their contest with John, has been related above. We have now merely to add a notice of the few leading events, of subsequent date to Henry's expe- dition, which occur in the history of Ireland before it becomes mixed in one stream with that of Eng- land. The appearances of entire submission which had been exhibited during Henry's stay in the island were not long preserved after he left its shores. Before the close of the year 1172 the people had risen against the English domination in various districts ; and, for the next three years, De Lacy, Strongbow, and their associates, were kept in constant activity by the active or passive resistance of one part of the country or another. In 1 1 75, Henry, in the hope that it might have some effect in subduing this rebellious temper, produced, for the first time, the bull which he had procured from Pope Adrian twenty-four years before, along with a brief confirming it, which he had received in the interval from Alexander III. William Fitz- Aldelm, and Nicholas, prior of Wallingford, M'ere sent over to Ireland with the two instruments; and they were publicly read in a synod of bishops which these commissioners summoned on their arrival. In this same year, also, a formal treaty was concluded between Henry and Roderick O'Connor, by which the former granted to the latter, who was styled his liegeman, that so long as he continued faithfully to serve him, he should be king of the country under him, and enjoy his hereditary territories in peace, on payment of the annual tribute of a merchantable hide for every tenth head of cattle killed in Ireland. For some years after this one chief governor rapidly suc- ceeded another, as each either incurred the dis- pleasure of the king by the untoward events of his administration, or, as it happened in some cases, awakened his jealousy by seeming to have become too popular or too powerful. But Henry never himself returned to Ireland. At length, in 1 1 85, he determined to place at the head of the govern- ment his youngest son, John, then only in his nineteenth year ; the lordship of Ireland, it is said, being the portion of his dominions which he had always intended that John should inherit. But this experiment succeeded worse than any other he had tried. The same evil dispositions which were afterwards more conspicuously displayed on the throne, showed themselves in John's conduct almost from the first day he began to exercise his delegated authority ; by his insulting behaviour he converted into enemies those of the Irish chieftains who had hitherto been the most attached friends of the English interest ; and he met with nothing but loss and disgrace in every military encounter with the natives. He was hastily recalled by Henry after having been only a few months in the country. The government was then put into the hands of John de Courcy, who had some years before pene- trated into Ulster, and established the English power for the first time in that province. De Courcy remained governor to the end of the reign of Henry ; and from this date the history of Ire- land may be considered as merged in the history of England. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 547 CHAPTER II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. HE first act by which the Conqueror ^=5 expressed the joy of his heart for the victory of Hastings was in accord- ance with the spirit in _ which he had ^ professed to "" conduct his enterprise from its com- ;^^^p ^-^-" mencement, and betrayed none of that, jealousy of the churcli which he showed at a later period. Up to this time the countenance of the pope and the church had been one of his main stays, and he had still to look to that quarter for much important aid in establishing his power. In these circumstances, and in the hour of triumph, when he gave orders for building the abbey of Battle, he was naturally liberal to profusion, both in the privileges which he granted to the new establishment and the revenues with which he proposed to endow it. On being told, after the foundation was dug, that there was a scarcity of water in the place, in consequence of which it Avould be advisable to choose another site for the building ; — " Work ! work on !" cried the elated victor. " If God gives me life, there shall be more wine for the monks of the abbey to drink than there is now clear water in the best convent in Christendom."* Although many of the higher churchmen, how- ever, had, during a great part of the reign of the Confessor, been in the Norman interest, and con- tinued among the firmest friends of William after his seizure of the throne, the great body of the clergy were strongly attached to the national cause. Some of them had even taken arms and fought on the side of Harold at Hastings ; and, in the course of the protracted contest which followed before the country was finally subjugated, the English in their resistance to the foreigners had been on several occasions animated and led on by their priests. Hence it soon became a leading principle in the policy of William to depress the ecclesiastical power; while on the other hand the church, thus ♦ Dugdale't Monasticon, iii. 241. selected as a chief object of attack, rose on that account in the affections of the covmtry, and grew every day to be more and more regarded as the strength and best representative of the patriotic cause. Among the higher ecclesiastics who stood by what was considered as tlie English faction, the most conspicuous had all along been the Primate Stigand. He had refused, as we have already related, to put the crown on the head of the Con- queror, who was thereupon obliged to apply to Aldred of York to perform that office. Stigand, besides, lay under the displeasure of the court of Rome on other grounds. William therefore, when he judged that the proper time had come, found no difficulty in effecting the removal of the obnoxious prelate ; he was deposed by the papal legates at a council held at Winchester in the early part of the year 1070. The person appointed by the king, with the consent of the barons, to be his successor, was the celebrated Lanfranc. Lanfranc had been a professor of laws in his native city of Pavia ; but he had afterwards removed to Normandy, and opened a school at Avranches. Here he acquired great celebrity, and his seminary became the source from which the surrounding country was gradually provided with a lettered clergy. Of such import- ance were his services thought to be, that having, on the advance of old age, given up his public employment and retired to the monastery of Bee, he was after a few years induced, much against his own wish, to resume his occupation of schoolmaster or lecturer, and he continued to perform its duties with undiminished reputation till he was past the age of eighty, when William made him abbot of his new monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, He had nearly reached his ninetieth year when he was invited to the archbishopric of Canterbury. At first he sought an apology for refusing the offered dignity in his ignorance of the langxiage and man- ners of the English harbnriaivs, — for such they still appeared to an Italian ecclesiastic. The request of William, however, backed by the earnest exhortations of the pope, at length overcame his scruples. Having once assumed his high office, Lanfranc showed himself determined to neglect neither its duties nor its rights. The first thing to which he applied himself was to recover for his church of Canterbury the numerous ancient possessions of which it had been deprived in the confusions or by the arbitrary proceedings of the last few years. In pursuing this object, obliged as he was to contend with 548 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. hauglity barons, whom tlieir liege lord could scarcely control, his intrepidity and perseverance enabled him to succeed in many instances. Even the powerful Odo, uterine brother to the king, was thus compelled to restore twenty-five manors which had formerly belonged to the see of Canterbury. The wealth thus recovered for the church was applied by Lanfranc to the promotion of its interests. He rebuilt the cathedral of Canterbury with Norman stone, repaired the sacred . edifices in a style of comfort an<l elegance hitherto unknown to the Saxons, and erected churches and monastic esta- blishments where they were considered most ne- cessary. He also caused the bishops to remove their seats from the villages, in which many of them resided, to the larger towns : he is said to have introduced certain reforms into the monastic institutions; and he established schools in va- rious parts of the kingdom. Lanfranc at the same time cordially co-operated with William in that particular point of ecclesiastical reformation which the latter no doubt had most at heart, the general substitution of a foreign for a native clergy. Very good reasons were easily found fur the dis- placement of many of the English priests, on the ground both of ignorance and immorality ; and, on the whole, it is probable that the result of their ejection was the settlement in the country of a more instructed body of pastors than it had previously possessed. We must suppose that, whatever may have been the motives of another kind that princi- pally actuated William, this was the end which Lanfranc kept in view, and by which he justified to himself the measures of severity in which he took part. His own elevation, indeed, had been one of the commencing moves of the royal scheme of reform ; for it was at the council at which Sti- gand was deposed, held by the papal legates in 1070, that the removal of the native clergy and the introduction of foreigners were begun. For some years after this, the course which had been thus entered upon was vigorously pursued, till the con- version of the spiritual estate to a community of interest and feeling with the civil government was pretty completely effected. In many instances, the crime of being an Englishman, or inability to speak the Norman tongue, was reckoned sufficient for clerical deposition in the absence of more sub- stantial charges. Even the saints of the Saxon calendar shared in the fate of their worshippers. Their sanctity was denied, and their worship ri- diculed. Of the unfortunate clergy, some enrlea- voured to make terms with a power they had no means of resisting, by consenting to descend to a humbler station in the church : others fled to Scot- land. Their necessities, or the hope of vengeance, drove many to the forests, where they joined the bands of outlaws, and sanctioned with the rites of religion the wild struggle of independence which was there long maintained by the sparks of the popular spirit that were last in being trodden out, I'.nd also the deeds of rapine and cruelty with which it was doubtless plentifully deformed. Some even of the deposed prelates are said to have taken this course. It appears that in most instances the higher church benefices were filled by William with men of learning and virtue ; but it was impossible for him, whatever his wishes may have been, to pre- vent the intrusion of many unworthy persons into the inferior appointments. He had hired adven- turers to his standard by promises of ecclesiastical as well as political preferment. The powerful barons, whose swords had hewn out his way to the throne, and now maintained him upon it, had kins- men and retainers of the clerical order, wliose de- mands could not be refused ; and thus, though vacancies were rapidly made, they were still in- sufficient for a throng of greedy expectants, the gratification of whose demands, on the other hand, only deepened the miseries of the land and the hatred of the unhappy people. Amidst the acts of deposition that took place dvmng this reign, an attempt was made to eject the venerable Wulstan from the see of Winchester. This bishop, though illiterate, surpassed the gene- rality of his brethren of English birth in purity of character and a blameless life. But, on the charge that he was unacquainted with the French lan- guage, the resignation of his episcopal staft" was required of him, in a synod held in Westminster Abbey, at which Lat-franc presided. At this de- mand, Wulstan arose, and, grasping the crozier with a firmer hand, thus addressed the primate : " I am aware, my Lord Archbishop, that I am neither worthy of this dignity, nor equal to its duties : this I knew when the clergy elected, — when the pre- lates compelled, — v/hen my master called me to fill it. By the authority of the holy see he laid this burden upon me, and with this staff he com- manded me to receive the rank of a bishop. You now demand of me the pastoral staff which you did not present, and the office which you did not bestow. Aware of my insufficiency, and obedient to this holy synod, I now resign them — not, how- ever, to you, but to him by whose authority I received them." He then advanced to the tomb of Edward the Confessor, and thus solemnly in- voked the dead king : " Master, thou knowest how reluctantly I assumed this charge, at thy instigation. It was thy command that, more than the wish of the people, the voice of the prelates, and the desire of tire nobles, compelled me. Now we have a new king, a new primate, and new enactments. Thee they accuse of error, in having so commanded, and me of presimiption because I obeyed. For- merly, indeed, thou mightest err, because thou wcrt mortal ; but now thou art with God, and canst err no longer. Not to them, therefore, who recall what they did not give, and w^lio may deceive, and be deceived, but to thee who gave them, and art now raised above all error, I resign my staff, and surrender my flock." He then laid his crozier upon tl\e tomb, and took his seat among the monks as a simple brother of their order. The synod did Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 549 not dare to accept of a resignation so tendered. The staif remained untouched; and, to justify the continuance of Wulstan in his see, a miracle was invented. It was alleged that the crozier was so firmly imbedded in the stone, that it could not be removed. At the death of the Conqueror, Wulstan was the only English bishop who retained his office.* But while William was thus exercising the pri- vileges of a victor in the church as well as the state, he was surprised by finding himself threat- ened with vassalage in turn. The subtle and im- perious Hildebrand, now Pope, by the title of Gregory VII., declaring that kings and princes were but the vassals of St. Peter and his sviccessors, summoned William to do homage for the possession of England. The answer of the proud Norman was brief and decisive. The tax of Peter's-pence, discontinued of late years in England, and now re- quired by the Pope, he declared that he would regularly pay ; but the homage he peremptorily refused, alleging that it had never been promised by himself, nor rendered by any of his predecessors. With this answer to his demand, Gregory was obliged to remain satisfied for the present; he pro- bably, indeed, expected no other, and only an- nounced his claims with a view to their enforce- ment in more favourable circumstances, and that no future English king might be able to profess astonishment at their being advanced, seeing that they had first been pressed upon the Conqueror. William, in the meantime, taking advantage of the contest which arose between the poj)e and the emperor, and of his own remoteness from Rome, which enabled him to act with the more independ- ence, commenced a vigorous warfare against the papal encroachments. He ordered, first, that no pontiff should be acknowledged in his dominions without his previous sanction, and that papal letters, before they were published, should be submitted to his inspection ; secondly, that no decision, either of national or provincial synods, should be carried into execution without his permission ; and, thirdly, that the clerical courts should neither implead nor excommunicate any tenant holding of the crown in capite, until tlie offence had been certified to himself.f During the latter period of William's reign an event occurred, arising out of the disorders of the conquest, but from which an important benefit re- sulted to religion. No uniformity was observed in the public worship — the prayers and their mode of recital frequently depending upon the caprices of the officiating priest. In order to enf)rce a favour- ite liturgy among the Saxon monks of Glastonbury, Thurston, their Norman abbot, entered the church with a band of archers and spearmen. The monks withstood even tliis armed demonstration ; a despe- rate conflict commenced round the altar, and be- hind the great crucifix, which was soon stuck thick • Anglia Sacra, ii. 255. — W. Malms. De Pontif. lib. iv. — Cris- >inns, Vit. LanlVanc, torn, vi.— Paiker, Ue Aulu]. Kcc. IJrit. p. 110. — i. Brompton, p. 970. + Eadmer, p. C. with arrows, while benches, candlesticks, and crosses were wielded in their defence by the bre- thren, several of whom were slain. This incident suggested the necessity of a form established by authority ; and Oswald, bishop of Salisbury, com- posed a church-service that became universal throughout the realm.* Lanfranc did not long survive the accession of Rufus, for whom he materially assisted in securing the throne, and whose chief counsellor he continued to be while he lived. The archbishoj), it is re- corded, did not fail to press upon the new king the fulfilment of the oaths he had taken to observe the laws ; but Rufus, now that he had obtained his end, was little inclined to give heed to these exhortations. " What man," he impatiently re- plied, " is able to perform all that he has pro- mised?"! The primate, however, maintained a considerable ascendancy over the irregular spirit of the king, by which his excesses were frequently restrained ; and, with longer time, Lanfranc might perhaps have been also enabled to develop some of those better qualities, the elements of which Rufus undoubtedly possessed. But the archbishop, being nearly a hundred years old, died in 1089, about two years after the commencement of the reign.J Lanfranc was succeeded in his office of the king's chief adviser by the notorious Ralph Flambard. One of the chief sources to which the new minister, among his plans of extortion, looked for the sup- ply of the royal coffers, was the plunder of the church. At his instigation Rufus took to him- self the revenues of all vacant bishoprics and ab- bacies, and in many cases kept the most important offices in the church unfilled for years, drawing the profits all the while into his own exchequer. In these cases the ecclesiastical estates were farmed out to those who offered the highest terms for the uncertain tenure, and who of covuse em- ployed, without scruple, all the means at their command to repay themselves, and to make the most of their temporary occupation. The tenants under this system Avere ground to the earth by the most merciless exactions ; and when, at last, an occupant was appointed to the benefice, he was usually required to pay a heavy premium for his promotion, which, again, he could only raise by a continuation of the same methods which had already produced so much suffering, and gone so far to exhaust the resources of the benefice. Hence, also, the intrusion into the church of a swarm of hirelings, wlio w'ere regarded by their people rather as slave-merchants, by whom they were bought and sold, than as pastors by whom they were to be benefitted. § This oppressive course of the king had conti- nued for about four years, Avhen, in 1093, he was seized with a dangerous sickness, and, under the agonies of terror and remorse, he became anxious • W. Malms.— Cliioii. Sax, — Knyghton. t Eaiimer, p. 14, X Oideric, p. 241—45. W. Malms. 11?. § Eadmer.— W. Malmsb. 550 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. to repair the wrongs he had done the church. Since the death of Lanfrauc he had kept the see of Canterbury vacant, swearing that it should have no archbishop but himself; but now, impetuous in repentance as in guilt, he insisted that Anselm, the successor of Lanfranc in the abbacy of Bee, and whom that prelate had before his death ex- pressed his wish to have also for his successor in the primacy, should forthwith be appointed arch- bishop. Anselm happening to be at the time in England, he was hurried to the bed-side of the king. A crozier was presented to him, but he refused to touch it, till the royal attendants un- clenched his fingers, and forced the sacred staff into his struggling hand, when all with one accord burst forth into a Te deum for the primate whom heaven had sent them, while the helpless monk in vain protested against the whole proceeding. It would perhaps be wrong to assume that the resist- ance of Anselm was hypocritical. Independently of his love of studious retirement, he may be sup- posed to have foreseen that the primacy, from the temper of the king and the state of the country, would be no enviable elevation. " What are you doing ?" was his language to his friends who were most importunate for his consent : " the church of England should be drawn by two animals of equal strength : but you are yoking to the plough a feeble old sheep with a mad young bull that wiH tear its companion through every obstacle, and finally drag it to death." Anselm had not done justice to his own charac- ter when he likened himself to the most gentle of animals. Although unequally yoked with the fiery spirit of Rufus, yet upon occasion he could display an unbending obstinacy that even matched the fierceness of the king. The seeds of future dis- sension were sown between them at the commence- ment of their connexion. Anselm, upon accepting the primacy, had stipulated for the restoration of all the church lands belonging to his see, and the implicit obedience of the king to his advice in all matters of religion ; and to these demands William had evasively replied that the archbishop's reason- able expectations would be fulfilled. But the penitence of the king vanished with his fit of illness, and he rose from his sick bed with fresh vigour to resume the plunder of the church. His first quarrel with the primate was on the subject of the price to be paid by the latter for his promotion. As Rufus had not been accustomed to confer the higher benefices without a valuable consideration, Anselm was willing to comply with the usage ; but, pleading his previous poverty and the impo- verished condition of the see, he offered only the sum of five hundred pounds. Rufus eyed the money with disdain, and refused it, on which the primate bestowed it upon the poor. Afterwards he was given to imderstand that a thousand pounds would be a more welcome offering, but he declared that he was unable to raise such a sum from his exhausted revenues.* When this answer was • Rufus exacted thu same sum from his favourite Flambard, on reported to the king it filled him with fury. " As I hated him yesterday," he exclaimed, " so I hate him more to-day ; and tell him that I shall hate him more bitterly the longer I live. I shall never acknowledge him for my archbishop.''* A ground of open quarrel was soon found. About seven months after his forced acceptance of the see, the primate proposed, after the custom of his predecessors, to proceed to Rome, to receive the pall from the hands of the sovereign pontiff"; but there were at present two rival popes, between whom Ruftis had not yet made his election. When Anselm, therefore, presented himself to request permission to set out on his journey, Rufus asked him, in real or aff'ected surprise, to what pope he meant to go ? Anselm at once answered that he should go to Urban 1 1. Indignant at this arbitrary decision, the king instantly exclaimed, " As well tear the crown from my head as dispossess me of a right which is the peculiar prerogative of the English kings ! " The archbishop, nevertheless, did not hesitate to announce that he intended to proceed on his journey, even without the leave of the king. In these circumstances a council of the nobility and prelates was forthwith assembled at Rockingham to decide upon the case. The bishops acknowledged the illegality of the primate's con- duct; but when the king demanded his deposition, they declared that that could only be effected by the authority of the pope. They agreed, however, to unite in endeavouring to persuade him to retract his decision in favour of Urban, and to forego his journey ; but Anselm would make no such con- cessions. The aff"air was thus fast advancing to a crisis, when the difficulty was solved by Rufus finding it expedient to acknowledge the claims of Urban, and by the pope, on the other hand, by way of returning the favour, dispensing with the personal attendance of Anselm, and transmitting the pall to England. As Rufus, however, still persisted in keeping many of the chief offices of the church vacant, while Anselm felt it his duty to urge that proper persons should be appointed to the abbacies and other preferments which the king thus retained in his own hands, the quarrel between them was not long in breaking out again with all its former violence. "Are not the abbeys mine?" exclaimed the Red King, when the archbishop pressed his unwelcome solicitations ; — " Do what you please with the farms of your archbishopric, but leave me the same liberty with my abbeys !" Anselm eventually determined to go to Rome, and lay the matter before the pope, deterred neither by the steady refusal of Rufus to grant him permission to leave the kingdom, nor by the confiscation and banishment which he was assured would follow his unauthorized departure. He set out on his journey in the spring of 1098, on foot, as a humble pilgrim, with a staff" and wallet; and in this guise presenting him with the bishopric of Durham. It is likely, how- ever, that this able flnemcier found no great difficulty in raising the money. • Ead. p. 21-25. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 551 he reached Dover, where he underwent the indig- nity of a strict search from the king's officers, that he might carry no money out of England. He arrived, however, in safety at Rome, where he was greeted by the pope with the most distinguished welcome. Urban, addressing him in a long speech before his whole court, called him the pope of ano- ther world, while all the English in the city were commanded to kiss his toe.* The pontiff soon after sent a letter to Rufus, requiring the restitution of Anselm's property, which had been confiscated at his departure ; but when the king understood that the bearer was a servant of the archbishop, he swore that he would tear out his eyes unless he in- stantly quitted the kingdom. Before, however, it was known what reception the pope's application had met with, an ecclesi- astical council which was held at Rome in the close of this year, and at which Anselm was pre- sent, declared that the king of England deserved excommunication for his treatment of that prelate ; but at Anselm's request, made upon his knees, the pope refrained from actually pronouncing the sen- tence for the present. But this council is espe- cially memorable in the history of the church, for the decision to which it came upon the great ques- tion of investiture, which had now become the main point in the contest between the pretensions of the spiritual and of the temporal power in every part of Christendom. The matter in dispute was simply, whether ecclesiastical persons, on being inducted into bishoprics and abbeys, should be per- mitted to receive the ring and crozier, by which the temporalities of the benefice were understood to be conveyed, from the hands of the prince. It is evident, however, that this ceremony involved the whole question of, whether, in every country, the clergy should be under the dominion of the king or of the pope. Its observance accordingly had been for a long time- as strongly protested against by the court of Rome, as it had been usually in- sisted upon by every temporal sovereign. The present council denounced excommunication both against all laymen who should presume to grant investiture of any ecclesiastical benefice, and against every priest who should accept of such investiture. It was alleged, with a daring freedom of language, to be too horrible for hands that created the Creator himself — a power not granted even to the angels — and that offered him to the Father as a sacrifice for the world's redemption, to be placed in fealty be- tween the hands of one who might be stained and polluted with every excess.-]- Soon after this arrived the answer of Rufus to the pope's letter. '* I am astonished," he wrote, "• how it could enter your mind, to intercede for the restoration of Anselm. If you ask wherefore, this is the cause : — when he wished to go away, he was plainly warned that the whole revenues of his see would be confiscated, at his departure. Since, • W. Malmsb. p. 127. + The proceedings of tliis council are very minutely related by Eadmer, the companion of Anselm in his flight and banishment. therefore, he would needs go, I have done what I threatened ; and I think I have done right." An- selm was not recalled so long as Rufus lived. When Henry Beauclerc succeeded, his defective title required the sanction of the church, and he, therefore, politically recalled Anselm from banish- ment, at the commencement of his reign. He also promised neither to farm nor sell the ecclesiastical benefices, as his brother had done, and to restore to the church all its former immunities ; and he threw into prison the obnoxious Flambard, the agent of the late oppressions. The friendship and aid of the church in the matter both of his establishment on the throne, and of his marriage shortly after with Matilda, notwithstanding her apparent dedi- cation as a nun, rewarded this show of regard. It was not long, however, before the quarrel re- specting investiture was renewed, by the demand of Henry, that Anselm should do homage for his archbishopric. To this demand, the latter re- turned a decided negative. In consequence, the vexatious subject was again referred to Rome, and, as might have been expected, the decision pro- nounced by Pascal II., who was now pope, was in favour of the church. Henry, notwithstanding, still commanded Anselm either to do homage, or leave the kingdom ; but the archbishop would do neither. He declared that he would abide in his province, and he defied any one to injure him there. A second deputation was thereupon sent to Rome, to intimate, in the name of the king and nobles, that unless the right of investiture was conceded, they would banish Anselm, dissolve their connexion with the papal see, and withhold the usual payments. Thus pressed, if we may believe the account given by Anselm's biographer, Eadmer, the court of Rome had recourse to a very strange and clumsy stratagem. Three bishops had brought the mes- sage of the king, and two monks had also arrived to plead the cause of the archbishop. To the bishops, it is affirmed, the pope verbally conceded the right of investiture as claimed by the king, but excused himself from committing the permission to writing, lest other sovereigns should demand the same pri- vileges, and despise his authority ; while by the monks he sent letters to Anselm, exhorting him to resist all royal investitures, and hold out to the uttermost. The deputies of both' parties returned to London, and, at a great council held there (a.d. 1 102), after the bishops had rehearsed their verbal commission, the monks produced their letters. The pope afterwards declared the statement of the bishops to be false, and even excommunicated them as liars ; but still Henry stood out. At length it was arranged that the archbishop should himself repair to Rome to obtain a positive decision ; and he set out on his journey, accordingly, on the 29th of Apnl, 1103. Some years of further negotiation followed, during which Anselm remained abroad. At last a compromise was effected by the pope consenting that, provided the king would abstain firom insisting 552 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. upon tlie investiture with ring and crozier, the bishops and abbots should do homage, in the same manner with the lay tenants in chief of the crown, for the temporalities of their sees. On the tedious controversy being thus brought to a close, Anselm returned to England in August, 1 106. Two years after this act of pacification, a council was held at London, to enforce the obligation of clerical celibacy, a rule which both Anselm and his predecessor Lanfranc had always shown great zeal in promoting, although the subject had been partially lost sight of during the late controversies. Ten canons were now passed on this head more rigid than any that had been hitherto promulgated. All married priests of whatever degree were com- manded instantly to put away their wives, — not to suffer them to live on any lands belonging to the church, — and never to see them or converse with them except in urgent cases, and in the presence of witnesses. As a punishment for their crime in marrying, they were to abstain from saying mass for a certain period, and to undergo several penances. Those who refused to banish their wives were to be deposed and excommunicated ; their goods were to be confiscated, and their wives, as adulteresses, to be made slaves to the bishop of the diocese.* Anselm ended his troubled career in 1109, in the seventy-sixth year of his age and sixteenth of his primacy. His writings, which still remain, prove that he possessed a large share both of literary knowledge and metaphysical acuteness ; and it deserves to be remembered, as one of his chief merits, that he zealously followed up, and even extended, the plans of his predecessor Lan- franc, for the establishment of schools and the dif- fusion of learning in the coimtry of his adoption. Whatever may be thought, also, of the course which • Spi'lmau's Concilia, i. p. 20. [Book HL he took in defence of what he conceived to be the rights of his station and of his order, or of some of his measures for the reform of the church over which he presided, it is evident that the contest he so perseveringly waged was for no merely personal or selfish objects. To his honour, it is recorded that the English loved him as if he had been one of themselves.* To the favour which he thus enjoyed with the conquered race, and the predilection for them on his part by which it may be supposed to have been acquired, it is probable that he owed part of that royal aversion by which his primacy was embittered. After his death, Henry was in no haste to fill the see of Canterbury, and he kept it vacant for the space of five years. The ecclesiastical history of the remainder of the reign of Henry ofiers no events that require to be related. The conduct of the leading clergy in the contention between Stephen and INIatilda has been detailed at sufficient length in the preceding chap- ter. The defective nature of Stephen's title affbrded a favourable opportunity, which the eccle- siastical interest did not neglect, of extorting from the crown an acknowledgment of its haughtiest and heretofore most strenuously-disputed pretensions. Exemption from the royal investiture, and the right of carrying ecclesiastical causes by appeal to Rome, were conceded by Stephen, or usurped in spite of him, by a church that was daily improving in the art of profiting by every political emergency. It is not till the reign of Henry IL, however, that the contest re-assumes much interest or distinctness ; and to that period we will now therefore at once proceed. The principal figure here is Becket. The legend of the origin of this celebrated personage is sufficiently romantic. Gilbert Beck, or Becket, a Saxon yeoman, followed to the crusades the • r.iulmer. Hist. Nov. 112. Baptism of the Mother of Becket. From the Uoyal MS. 2 B vii. ■Prom lliis it mny be seen that entire or partial immersion was part of the old mode of baptism ; immersion, indeed, continued to be practised in the English Church till after the lieformatioii. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 553 pennon of his Norman lord, but being taken pri- soner by an emir of the Saracens, he was thrown into a dungeon. The daughter of the infidel prince saw and loved the humble captive, and by her aid. he efitcted his escape and reached his native country. Pining at his absence, the maiden aftei wards conceived the wild idea of following his steps, though she knew no more of his lan- guage than his name and that of the city in which he dwelt. She hastened to a seaport, and making her wishes known by repeating the word " London," she obtained a passage in a ship bound for Eng- land. Having reached the English capital, she went from street to street calling upon " Gilbert," until the invocation met the ear of the lost object of her affection. Having abjured her native faith. and been baptized, the foreign maiden became the wife of Becket, now a citizen of London. From this union was born Thomas, the future Archbishop of Canterbury, a man whose remarkable life was destined to be a fit sequel to this singular history.* His education, his introduction at court by the patronage of Archbishop Theobald, the rapid pro- gress which he made in the royal favour, his ele- vation to the chancellorship, and his subsequent appointment to the primacy, with the extraordinary transformation which his mode of life and his whole character imderwent upon the last-mentioned event, have been already related. There can be little doubt as to what Henry's design was in thus • Brompton, in X Scriptores. The story is told by Uiis author at great length aud with considerable pathos. Group of Xorman'-E>-gush Fonts Marriage op the Fatuke and Mothkr of Beckf.t.— From the Royal MS. 2 B vii. ■\ » R A ^. ' or THE UNIVERSE 554 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. CoNSECEATiON OP Becket AS Akchbishop,— From tlie Royal MS. 2 B viL placing at the head of the church the man who had hitherto been the most compliant as well as the most active and dexterous of his ministers in civil affairs. "When the intention of making him primate was first intimated to Becket he frankly declared to his friends that, in accepting the new dignity, he was aware that he must forfeit the favour either of God or the king. He expressed the same sentiment to Henry himself, but in such an equivocal manner that his remark seemed rather intended for a jest. When the king in- formed him that he had fixed upon him for arch- bishop, he lifted up a comer of his gay robe, and laughingly said, "A fine saint you have chosen for so holy an office ! " At first, also, men won- dered when the news became public, as if a miracle had been announced.* Many persons, also, pro- fessed to be not a little shocked as well as asto- nished ; but perhaps the indignaiat feelings of the Norman part of the community were as much excited by Becket's Saxon lineage as by the daring profanation, at which they affected to be scandalized. During the space of twelve mouths that the measure waited its accomplishment, the chancellor gave no indication of that decided change of sen- timent and conduct which he afterwards exhibited. It was not till after the appointment was com- pleted, and made irrevocable, that he suddenly underwent that metamorphosis at which the whole realm was astounded. The effect, however, pro- duced throughout the nation by so complete a dis- appointment of the expectations that all men had formed, was great and instantaneous. Unclerical as the archbishop's former life had been, and not- withstanding his obnoxious promotion, the bishops as well as the clergy generally were at first de- lighted with such a primate ; and the Saxon popu- lation, while they were charmed with his affability • Steptutn, — Vita Quadripart. and humbleness of demeanour, had their exulta- tion and affection heightened in regarding him as belonging to their own race. The circumstances which led to the first breach between the king and the archbishop have already been stated. The whole course, indeed, of the contest between Henry and Becket is so inter- woven with the general history of the kingdom, that a sketch of it from its commencement to its close has been necessarily given in relating the civil transactions of the period, and we have only now to fill up certain parts of that outline by a few additional details in regard to points belong- ing more especially to the subject of the present chapter. The various matters in dispute between the two parties, it will be remembered, were all submitted to the great council of prelates and barons which met at Clarendon in January, 1164. A short review of what took place upon that occasion, and of the history of the decrees, or " constitutions," as they were called, passed by the council, will best explain the conflicting claims of the king on the one hand and the archbishop on the other, and the relative positions in which the church and the state were left by the issue of the controversy. The particular question which originated wliat eventually became a general contest about their re- spective rights between the crown and the spi- ritual estate, appears to have been — whether tlie clergy, when accused of crimes, should be tried and punished by the ecclesiastical or the civil courts. Filled as many of the lower offices in the church were, with persons of little education, and whose emoluments were not such as to raise them above the habits and temptations of the lowest poverty, it is no wonder that, in an age of such general rudeness and disorder, some of the most serious offences, including even acts of violence and blood, should occasionally be committed by Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 555 churchmen. It was alleged, however, with appa- rent reason, that the temptations to the commission of crime in the case of a priest were greatly aug- mented by the peculiar sort of trial and punishment to which it subjected him. During the Saxon times, the clergy and laity were alike amenable to the courts of common law ; but the Conqueror withdrew the bishops from the civil tribunals, and, in imitation of the order of things already existing in all the other countries of Christendom, placed them at the head of other courts or their own. The extent of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction thus esta- blished had, from the first, been a subject of un- certainty and dispute ; but latterly the church courts had asserted the right of alone taking cog- nizance of all offences whatever committed by the clergy. One strong ground on which this claim was objected to by the civil authorities, was the inadequacy of the punishments which the eccle- siastical judges were considered to have the power of inflicting ; for they were held to be restricted by the canons from pronouncing sentence of death ; and, in consequence, for the most heinous offence committed by a priest, the heaviest retribution was stripes and degradation from his sacred office. It was also alleged that a natural partiality for their order induced those who presided in the church courts to treat the offenders that were brought be- fore them with dangerous lenity, and sometimes, perhaps, made them shut their eyes altogether to the proofs of a churchman's guilt. The Constitutions of Clarendon, as finally di- gested, were sixteen in number. They were pre- sented for the acceptance of the council by the king, as a restoration or recognition of the ancient customs of the realm, or, as it was more specifically declared in the preamble, of the usages, liberties, and dignities which had prevailed and been maintained in the days of his grandfather and the other kings his predecessors. It must be admitted that this title was not a correct description as applied to all the articles. The instrument comprehended, as has been already observed, the entire scheme of reform- ation by which Henry proposed to bring the church under subjection to the civil authorities ; and, however necessary certain of the clauses might be for this end, or however just and proper, they were undoubtedly innovations upon the laws and practice that had subsisted ever since the Con- quest. The substance of the principal enactments was — that all cases, whether civil or criminal, in which a clergyman was concerned, should be tried and determined in the king's court ; that appeals should lie from the archbishop to the king ; and that no cause should be carried further than the Archbishop's Court (in other words, to Rome) with- out the king's consent ; that no archbishop, bishop, or dignified clergyman, should depart from the kingdom without the king's leave ; that no tenant in chief of the crown, and no officer of the roval household or demesne, should be excommunicated, or his lands put under an interdict, until application had been made to the king or the grand justiciary ; that churches in the king's gift should not be filled without his consent ; that when an archbishopric, bishopric, abbacy, or priory became vacant, it should remain in the custody of the king, who should receive all its rents and revenues ; that the election of a new incumbent should be made upon the king's writ, in the royal chapel, and with the assent of the king; and that the person elected should do homage and fealty to the king before being consecrated. To these propositions Becket, at an interview with the king some time before the meeting of the council, had, althougl'i with much reluctance, pro- mised that he would give his assent ; and all the other bishops had also expressed their readiness to acquiesce in them. But now the archbishop, on being formally asked by the king to fulfil his pro- mise, to the surprise of all present, peremptorily refused to give any other answer than that he would render obedience to the said ancient customs of the realm, saving the rights of his order. Terrified at the rage into which the king broke out at this unexpected opposition, Becket's brethren vehemently implored him to yield. Meanwhile the door of the antechamber being thrown open, discovered a hand of knights standing clad in armour, and with their swords drawn. In these alarming circumstances Becket's firmness was at last shaken ; and he promised that if the meeting should be adjourned for the purpose of having the enactments digested into a regular form, he would then do what was required of him. But when he retired into solitude he was confounded at the thought of his weakness. Filled with remorse, he resolved even yet to draw back, to whatever of reproach or danger he might, by so doing, expose himself. When, therefore, the meeting re-assem- bled on the following day, and copies of the Con- stitutions were produced, he peremptorily refused his signature. Neither entreaties nor threats could now move him. Retiring from the council, he wrote to the pope an account of all that had taken place, soliciting absolution for the momentary lapse of which he had been guilty ; and, as a penance for the same crime, he condemned himself to an abstinence of forty days from the service of the altar.* The Constitutions of Clarendon, however, as assented to by the barons and the other prelates, became for tlie present the law of the land, not- withstanding the dissent and opposition of the archbishop. The rest of Becket's memorable story,— his con- demnation a few months after this by the council of Northampton,— his flight to the continent, — his re- conciliation with the king and return to England after an absence of nearly six yeai's, — and, finally, his barbarous murder, has been already told. It is only necessary to add, here, that Henry, on his reconciliation with the pope in 1172, only obtained absolution on solemnly promising to abolish all laws and customs hostile to the clergy that might • Gemase, 1388. 556 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. have been introduced in his kingdom since the beginning of his reign,— to reinstate the church of Canterbvuy in all the possessions it had held a year previous to Becket's departure, — and to make restitution to all the friends of the late primate who had been deprived of their property. To these, it is said, were added some other engage- ments whicli were not committed to writing ; and one version of the oath taken by Henry makes him acknowledge the kingdom of England to be held by him in feudal subjection to the Pope. This article, however, has generally been held to be a forgery ; and while on the one hand the evidence of its authenticity is very defective, its inherent improbability on the other is certainly strong. We cannot agree with a modern writer* in thinking it likely that this acknowledgment of vassalage on the part of Henry may be what is alluded to in some of the accounts as one of the king's promises or engagements which it was held expedient to keep secret. It is much more probable that what is thus alluded to was a payment of money to the sovereign pontiff. It is expressly stated that these secret engagements were not committed to writing, so that they would not be found in any copy of the * See Liiigard's " Historj- of England,'' vol. ii. p. 114. oath. It is unnecessary to remark how irreconcile- able with the character of Henry is the supposition that he could in any circumstances have made such an acknowledgment as this. If the oath, it may also be asked, existed with his signature in the form in which it has been published by Baronius and Muratori, how came it never afterNvards to be brought fonvard, even when, as in the reign of John, it might have been produced with so much advantage in support of the pretensions of the papal court ? Notwithstanding Henry's promise to abolish the customs that infringed upon the rights of the clergy, the Constitutions of Clarendon remained unrepealed for some years after this time. But if they were still nominally law, they were little better than a dead letter. All effective opposition to the cause of which Becket had been the great cham- pion, was for the present put down by his m?Jtyr- dom, and by the wonders that were believed to have followed that event. The spirit of the mur- dered archbishop seemed still to walk through the land, to animate his friends and confound his enemies. While his mangled body lay in the choir of the church, the right hand, it was affirmed, had solemnly raised itself, and made the sign of the Becket 8 Crown, a Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, situated immediately behind the chapel of the Holy Trinity, in which stood the =nnne of the martyr. Becket's Crown, probably so called from the form of the ribs of the arched roof, appears to have been In course of election at t)ie Reformation, and was only finished about the middle of the last centiirv, at the expense of a private citizen of Cantf rl urv. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 10G6— 1216. 557 cross in benediction of the collected multitude.* His eyes also, which had been dislodged by the blows of the murderers, were averred to have been replaced by two others smaller in size, and, that the miracle might be incontestible, of different colours. t After the interment of the body, crowds of the afflicted repaired to the spot, where the lame recovered the action of their limbs, the blind received sight, and the sick were healed. J Every day added to the number of the pilgrims and the miracles, and consequently to the spread and t^ervour of the delusion. The court, perplexed and paralyzed, looked on in silence ; the prelates, who had opposed the martyr while he lived, had still their own peace to make with the pope, and might be uncertain how far their interference would be welcome; and perhaps among both parties there might be a lurking dread that miracles so numerous and so well attested might be true. The enthusiasm became general, and messenger after messenger was despatched to Rome with fresh tidings of pro- digies, and supplications that Becket might be made a tutelary saint for the blessing and protection of England. This favour was at last granted by the pcjpe ; and the 29th of December, the day on which the saint was assassinated, was assigned to him in the calendar. § It was not, however, till the year 1176 that, at a great council held at Northampton, the repeal, or rather the modification, of the Constitutions of Clarendon was formally effected. It was tliere agreed, though not without much opposil ion from many of the barons, — first, that the clergy should not be brought to trial before the temporal courts on any charges except for offences against the forest laws : and, secondly, that no bishopric or abbey should be kept in the king's hands longer than a year, except in circumstances vrhich might make it impossible to have the vacancy filled up in that time. In this state the law continued during the remainder of the period now under review. ' Before dismissing this reign, an event remains to be mentioned, which although otherAvise insigni- ficant, is memorable as the first instance on record of any opposition being made to the common faith, and as such may be regarded as the earliest har- binger of the Reformation in England. About the beginning of the year 1166, a synod was held at Oxford in the presence of the king, for the arraign- ment of certain foreigners accused of heresy. It appears that five years before, several Germans, to the number of thirty men and women, had arrived in England, and began to disseminate their reli- gious opinions ; but as they had hitherto only converted one woman of low rank, and as their demeanour had been peaceful, they had been al- lowed to live unmolested. Attention, however, was at last called to the circumstance that their principles differed from the established creed, on which they were thrown into prison, and now * Iloveden, p. 522. t Girakl. Cambicn. cap. x.\. t Gervase, p. 1417.— Mat. Par. 125. I Baron. Annal. 1173. brought for trial before the king. To the question of what was their belief, Gerard their leader an- swered that they were Christians, and venerated the doctrines of the Apostles. But it is alleged that when they were examined upon particulars, they spoke impiously of the eucharist, baptism, and marriage, and when urged with texts of scripture, refused all discussion, declaring that they believed as they were taught, and would not dispute about their faith. ^Vhen they were exhorted to recant, they received the admonition with scorn ; and when threatened with punishment, they answered, with a smile, " Blessed are they who suffer for righteous- ness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." As heresy was new in England, the judges were at a loss how to act ; but canons had already been enacted by the Council of Tours against the Albi- genses, and sentence was pronounced in conformity with these. The accused were condemned to be branded in the forehead with a hot iron, and to be publicly whipped and expelled out of Oxford, while the king's subjects Mere forbidden by pro- clamation to shelter or relieve them. The enthu- siasts went to their punishment in triumph, singing "Blessed are ye when men shall hate you and per- secute you." Their garments were cut off by the waist, their brows were seared, and their backs torn with scourges ; and thus bleeding, and almost naked, in the depth of winter, they wandered about unsheltered among the fields, until they died. Such is the obscure account delivered by the con- temporary writers, in whose eyes dissent in belief from the church of Rome was an incomprehensible anomaly. It is probable that these strangers, from the notions ascribed to them on the institution of marriage and the sacraments, were Cathari, or Albigenses. The history of ecclesiastical affairs in England during the reign of Richard I. is almost a blank ; every feeling was absorbed in the great subject of the Crusades, and the clergy, who had already gained all for which they had contended at home, found am^ile scope for their belligerent propen- sities in the fields of Palestine, to which many of them repaired in warlike array notwithstanding the canons that had been enacted against their bearing arms. During the reign, the power of the pope- dom, which had been exerted in favour of Richard in the negotiations for his release, was also directed effectually against him when he showed symptoms of opposition to Rome. Hubert, the primate, jealous of the monks of Canterbury, and desirous to abridge their privileges, had determined to raise up against them a rival body, in the form of an establishment of canons regular, for whom he proceeded to erect a splendid edifice at Lambeth, with the approbation of Richard. But the monks of Canterbury, alarmed for their rights and sus- pecting that the gainful relics of Becket woidd be transferred to the new house, fiercely opposed the project, and appealed to the Pope, Innocent III., who warmly espoused their cause, and directed a bull to the Archbishop, in 1 198, commanding him 558 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. in a very imperious style to desist immediately from his proceedings. " It is not fit," he said, " that any man should have any authority who does not reverence and obey the apostolic see." He after- wards addressed another bull to Richard, whom he threatened for his contumacy in abetting the arch- bishop; warning him that if he persevered he should soon find in his punishment how hard it was to kick against the pricks. By a subsequent mandate also addressed to the king. Innocent declared that he would not endure the least con- tempt of himself or of God, whose place he held upon earth. " We will take care," he says, " so to punish both persons and lands without distinc- tion that oppose our measures, as to show our determination to proceed prudently, and in a royal manner." The lion-hearted king and the rebel- lious archbishop were equally dismayed at these menaces, and the obnoxious building was de- stroyed.* * Gervase, 1616—1624. KUINS OF THE AtJGTJSTIKE MONASTERY AT CANTKRBUHY. The history of the church in the reign of King John is principally a continuation of the same great contest respecting the appointment to the higher ecclesiastical ofl&ces between the clergy, or the pope, on the one side, and the crown on the other, which had been carried on throughout the greater part of the preceding century ; and the events that arose out of which, exercising as they did an important influence on the course of public affairs, have necessarily been related in the pre- ceding chapter. In the earliest ages of the Chris- tian church, the election of bishops was by the voice of the clergy and the people of the diocese. After the establishment, however, of the feudal system in the different kingdoms of Europe, and the annexation to bishoprics of high political power and large landed possessions, the king naturally claimed the right of being at least a party in the nomination to an office which gave to its possessor so much weight in the state. The claim to a veto upon the election, was as naturally extended to that of an absolute right of appoint- ment, as soon as the crown found that it could not otherwise secure the office for its own nominee. Accordingly, this was substantially the position which the crown at last assumed, although the form in which it asserted its claim varied with cir- cumstances. When it found itself obliged, for instance, to relinquish the absolute ncinination of the bishop, it stood out for the right of granting Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 559 or refusing to the individual elected that investi- ture, without which he certainly could not draw the revenues of the see, even if he could exercise any of the spiritual powers of his office. The course taken by the church, on the other hand, equally varied in conformity to the course of events. In the first place, at a very early period, the in- terference of the laity was first reduced to a mere form, and then got rid of altogether. Subse- quently the claim of the general body of the clergy of the diocese to a voice in the election was dis- puted, and the right of voting was asserted to re- side solely in the chapter. As the chapter in many cases consisted of the monks of some reli- gious house to which the cathedrals were held to belong, the natural enmity between the regular and the secular clergy here interfered materially to inflame the quarrel. This was the case, for in- stance, at Canterbury, where the chapter consisted of the monks of the great monastery of St. Augus- tine, who thus claimed the sole right of electing the Primate of all England. The regular clergy, (that is, those living under a monastic rule,) were always, it may be observed, regarded by the court of Rome as the main support of its authority, and it usually took their side against the secular (so called, as living at large in the world). What the popes therefore endeavoured to effect in regard to the nomination of bishops, was to retain that power either in their own hands or in those of the chapters. Against the claim of the king to pre- sent in the first instance they constantly protested, and this was a point which they would never concede. In many cases, however, the chapters submitted to present the person named to them by the king, and when the affair was arranged in that manner, the compromise of course prevented for the present any collision between the adverse claims of the church and the crown. Even in this case, however, the question of investiture, as we have already seen, created a serious difficulty to be got over after the nomination had been settled. But the particular point upon which the dispute between John and Innocent III. hinged, was the power claimed by the papal court of appointing to a bishopric vacated by the irregularity of the election, or by the unfitness of the person elected, the right being also assumed by it of deciding upon the irregularity or unfitness. On the death of Archbishop Hubert, the monks of Canterbury had, in the first instance, elected Reginald, their sub- prior, to the vacant see, but had subsequently, in their apprehension of the king's displeasure, pro- ceeded to a new election, and nominated the royal candidate, John de Gray, the Bishop of Norwich. The pope decided that, although the right of election was in the monks, the appointment of the Bishop of Norwich was invalid, as having been made without the previous election of Regi- nald being legally annulled ; and thereupon he took the nomination into his own hands, and appointed Stephen Langton, who happened to be then at Rome. John's resistance to this appoint- ment, the consequences that followed to himself and the kingdom, and the issue of the contest, have been already related. Little or no change took place in the internal constitution of the English churcli in consequence of the Norman Conquest; and its establishment remained through the whole of the period now under review nearly the same as it was before that event. The principal alteration was that made by the creation of two new sees — of Ely in 1109 and of Carlisle in 1133, in addition to the fifteen (including the two archbishoprics) that had ex- isted in the Saxon times, being the same that still exist, with the exception of Oxford, Peterborough, Gloucester, Chester, and Ripon. Before the Conquest the only order of monks known in England was that of the Benedictines, or observers of the rule of St. Benedict, instituted in the early part of the sixth century, which some conceive to have been brought over by Augustine, but which was most probably unknown in the country till a considerably later period, and cer- tainly was first generally established by St. Dunstan in the tenth century. Nor perhaps was the rule of St. Benedict ever strictly observed by the English monks till after the Conquest. In the course of the twelfth century two new orders were intro- duced, the Cistercian?, or Bernardines, in 1128, and the Carthusians in 1180. Both these indeed may be considered as branches of the Benedictines, only distinguished by subjection to a discipline of still greater severity. The order of the Carthusians especially (founded at Chartreux, in France, by St. Bnmo in 1080, whence their establishments in England were corruptly called Charter-houses) was the strictest of all the monastic orders, the members never being allowed to taste flesh, and being restricted on one day of every week to bread, water, and salt. The Carthusians never became numerous in England. The order of the Cister- cians (instituted at Cisteaux, in Latin Cistertium, in Burgundy, in 1098, and afterwards greatly patronized by the celebrated St. Bernard) was chiefly distinguished by having its houses sittiated for the most part at a distance from all other habitations. There were a considerable number of them both in England and in Scotland. The habits of the monks of these three orders were dis- tinguished from each other by some minor peculi- arities ; but they all consisted of an under garment of white, with a long loose black cloak or gown over it, which latter, however, seems to have been only occasionally worn. The Cistercians, and, according to some representations, the Carthusians also, when in church, wore a cloak of white. The most common form, however, which enthu- siastic devotion assumed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was that of going on pilgrimage to some spot supposed to be of peculiar sanctity, either within the kingdom cr abroad. After the martyrdom and canonization of Becket, his shrine at Canterbury became, and for ages continued to be, the favourite resort of the pious when they did 569 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. A Benedictine. A Carthusiak. A ClSTEHCIAN. not extend their penitential journey beyond the limits of their own country. Abroad, Rome, Loretto, but especially Jerusalem, Mount Sinai, and the other parts of the Holy Land now attracted crowds of palmers,* " beyond the example of former times," to use the words of Gibbon, " and • Pilfiriras to forei;,'n parts were properly called Palmers, from the branches of the palm tree, the emb'em of %ictorv, which they used 10 bear in their hands. In token of havins crossed the seas, or of their mtention of dDin;,' so. they were wont to put cockle, or scallop, shells m their huts— according to Ophelia's song in Hamlet, " How should I your true-love know From another one ? By his cockle-hat and stair, And by his sandal slioon.'' the roads were covered with multitudes of cither sex, and of every rank, who professed their con- tempt of life, so soon as they should have kissed the tomb of their Redeemer. Princes and prelates abandoned the care of their dominions ; and the members of these pious caravans were a prelude to the armies which marched in the ensuing age under tlie banner of tlie Cross." Out of this practice of pilgrimage grew the Crusades, in which the spirit of devotion formed a strange alliance with the military spirit, each communicating some- thing of its peculiar colour aad character to tlie Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1066—1216. 561 other. Four of tliese extraordinary expeditions belong to the present period, of which the first (the consequence of which was the establishment of the kingdom of Jerusalem) set out in 1097, the second in 1 147, the third (that in which Cceur de Ijion took so distinguished a part) in 1189, and the fourth (which resulted in the conquest of Con- stantinople from the Greeks) in 1203. The Crusades, however, though professedly religious enterprises, produced less effect upon the religion of the age in which they were undertaken than upon most of the other great constituents of its social condition. Among the phenomena that sprung out of the Crusades none presented a more Templar in his Mantle. expressi\e type of their character than the religi- ous orders of knighthood. The two earliest and most distinguished of these, the Knights Hospi- tallers of St. John, and the Knights Templars, both acquired establishments and extensive pos- sessions in this country soon after their institution ; the principal seat of the former having been esta- blished at St John's Hospital in Clerkenwell, London, that of the latter at the Temple, (to which they had removed from a previous residence in Holborn,) many years before the close of the twelfth centurv. Odo, Bisnop OP Bayevx, pronouncino a Pastoral Blessing. — From Kerrick's Collection in the British Museum, Additional MSS. No. 6728. Here may he observed the intermediate form assumed by the crosier, or pastoral staff, in its passage from the cross to the crook. 2 J 562 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [iioOK III. CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS. HE essential charac- ter of the Norman Conquest of England, as distinguished from the conquests of the northern nations who overran the Roman empire (for example, from those of the Sax- ons in Britain and of the Franks in Gaul), Avas this : it was not an old enervated com- munity overrun by a hand of men much inferior to it in civilization and much superior in energy and courage, but a semi- barbarous and warlike people invaded and subdued by another people in the same state nearly as regarded these points, but better organized, and led by an able chief whose power was suffi- ciently established and concentrated to ensure order and discipline. The Normans would ap- pear to have been the most widely successful warriors of the middle ages ; comparatively a mere handful of men, they filled Europe and Asia with their victories and their renown. They were victorious wherever they went ; in Italy and the East, under Robert Guiscard, no less than in England under William the Bastard, — and again, be it added, in France, strongly backed, however, by Anglo-Saxon aid, under the banner of the Anglo- Norman Plantagenets, the Henrys and the Ed- wards. Their victorious course is no less striking and no less distinctly marked if we turn our eyes to Scotland and Ireland. Like the huge image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which was broken by the shock of the stone cut from the mountain rock, horde after horde, nation after nation, sank beneath the desperate onset of the Norman chivalry, — was shivered to pieces by the fierce yet firm and com- pact charge of the Norman lances. It was mainly by the help of the Anglo-Norman nobility, whom they attached to their country by the offer of broad domains, that the kings of a part of the eastern coast of North Britain became " kings of broad Scotland." The Braces and Baliols had about as much Norman blood in their veins as the Planta- genets or Abrincis. The battle of the Harlaw was as decisive in establishing a Scoto-Norman aristocracy in the northern extremity of the island as that of Hastings had been in establishing an Anglo-Nor- man aristocracy in the south. After the Conquest, the Norman feudal aris- tocracy, encamped as it were in the midst of a hostile people, who had possessed independence, and who might therefore be supposed to have the will, as they had a considerable portion of the power, to regain it, would necessarily be firmly united. On the other hand, their common suffer- ings united the Saxons. Those dissensions which, before the Norman invasion, had rent the king- dom in pieces, disappeared. While the Normans, too, found an instrument of union in the feudal organization which they had possessed in Nor- mandy, the Saxons found one in their ancient customs and laws, which they now cherished the more as being associated with the remembrance of their independence and their prosperity. It was for this reason, probably, as much as for anything peculiarly and eminently good in them, that they constantly demanded with such earnestness the restitution of the laws of Edward the Confessor. In order to comprehend the constitution of society during this period of our history, it will be necessary to enter into a short examination of the feudal system. We have already touched upon this subject when treating of the Anglo-Saxon tenures, but it will now be necessary to go into it somewhat more fully. For although, under the Saxons, feu- dalism existed in parts, it was Avith the Normans that it came in as a system. The formation of the feudal system was not, as sometimes conceived and described, sudden and referrible to one point of time, but progressive, and the work of several centuries. In the fifth century, when the northern hordes overran and took possession of the Roman empire, the leaders portioned out among them the lands in full and unconditional ownership. They called these alod, a term, according to some etymologists, properly signifying allotted possessions ; according to others, full, independent property. It is pro- bable thM, from the very first, the portions which they gave to their followers were held on a different tenure, as we find them very early called bencjicia and precaria. The former term is still retained in English, and its signification will elucidate our subject. A clergyman receives his benefice upon condition of performing certain services. Simi- larly a soldier received his benefice. The word was borrowed from the mode of rewarding the Roman soldiers, and applied to the same pur- poses. The conquests having been made by a great number of separate and independent bands of warriors, the leaders of each of which would of course have a larger portion of land than those they led. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 563 Europe, or at least the greater part of it, was divided into a very great number of independent properties, we might almost say small independent sovereignties, for, according to the nature of allodial property, the smallest landholder was as little dependent on any one else as the largest. Now in the state of war and insecurity which then prevailed, the small landholders would of course have a much less sure existence, and much less secure tenure of their land, than the large ones. Whence it came to pass in time, that most of the smaller allodial holders of land gave up to some large holder the absolute dominion over their land which they before possessed, re- ceiving in its stead a conditional dominion; the condition being, that they should help the large proprietor when he required their assistance, and likewise, when they required it, receive help from liim. Beneficium was the word made use of, from tlie fifth to the ninth century, to denote this sort of tenure, and is proved* to have designated the same thing which, towards the end of the ninth century, received the name of feodum, the origin of our feud. The etymology of the latter word is uncertain; some deriving it from the Latin, others from the German. According to M. Guizot, the principal facts, the essential elements of the feudal system, are redu- cible to three — 1 . The particular nature of the territorial property. 2. The combination of sovereignty with pro- perty ; that is to say, the assignment to the owner of the soil over all the inhabitants of that soil, of all or nearly all the rights which constitute what we call sovereignty, and are now possessed by the government. 3. The system of political, that is of legislative, judicial, and military institutions, which bound, together the owners of fiefs, and formed them into a general society. We have already, in the section on the Anglo- Saxon Government, said as much as is necessary on the first of the above-named subjects. Of the history of the other two, into which M. Guizot enters at considerable length, our limits will not permit us to give more than his conclusions. That fusion, then, of sovereignty with property was not altogether, as by some supposed, the result of conquest. An analogous fact existed in Germany. In the German tribe, the head of a family was sovereign within his domains. There also existed the fusion of sovereignty and pro- perty. But in Germany this fusion took place from the influence of two principles ; — from the family or clannish spirit on the one hand, on the other from conquest — from force. Whatever might have been the proportions in which these two ele- ments existed together in Germany, it is certain that in Gaul the patriarchal or clannish proportion was greatly diminished ; while, on the other hand, the other element, that of conquest — of force, • M. Guizot refers to a charter of the Emperor Frederic I., of date 1162, in which feodum and heneficiumaxe employed indifferently. became the principal, if not the only, certainly the predominating element of that fusion. With regard to the third leading fact : — Im- mediately after the establishment of the Germanic nations in the provinces of the Roman empire, three principles of social organization, three systems of institutions, are found co-existing among them : 1. The system of free institutions. 2. The system of aristocratical institutions. 3. The system of monarchical institutions. Of these the system of free institutions had its origin — 1. In Germany, in the general assembly of the heads of families of the tribe, and in the common deliberation and personal independence of the warriors who formed the band. 2. In Gaul, in the remains of the municipal regime in the cities. The system of aristocratical institu- tions originated — I . In Germany, in the domestic sovereignty of the heads of families, and in the patronage of the leader of a band over liis compa- nions. 2. In Gaul, in the very unequal division of landed property, and in the reduction of the great mass of the population to the condition of villains or of slaves. The system of monarchical institutions originated— 1. In Germany, in the military and religious royalty of the people. 2. In Gaul, in the traditions of the Roman empire and the doctrines of the Christian church. Noav, while the system of free and that of monarchical institu- tions went on declining, the system of aristocra- tical institutions acquired greater strength, so that towards the end of the tenth century it was the predominating one in Europe. Towards the end of the tenth century the feudal society was fully formed. It is therefore, then, in a state fit to be studied, to be analyzed,— in a state such that its dissection will make known to us its component elements. The fundamental element of the feudal system, the " primitive feudal molecule," to use the words of M. Guizot, is the simple domain possessed in fief or fee by a lord who has over the inhabitants the sovereignty inherent, as we have seen, in pro- perty. This contains — 1. The feudal castle and its proprietor. 2. The feudal village and its inha- bitants. After learning the relations between the owner of a fief and the inhabitants of that fief, it will be necessary to inquire into those subsisting as between the owners of fiefs themselves. And, even then, to approximate to a complete view of the subject, it would be also requisite to inquire how the feudal system was acted upon or affected by two other elements, which, though co-existent, never tho- roughly amalgamated with it, and at last destroyed it, — we mean royalty and the towns, or municipal institutions. The feudal castle, then, usually built in an ele- vated and isolated situation, and rendered as strong as nature and the art of the time could make it, is inhabited by the owner of the fief, his wife and children : in addition to these, perhaps by a few freemen who have not become proprietors, and, being attached to his person, continue to live with 564 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. him. Without, close under the walls, is grouped a small population of coloni, or cultivators of the soil. Before the German invasion nothing of this kind existed in the Roman empire. The rich either lived in the cities or in fine houses agreeably situated near the cities, in rich plains, or on the banks of rivers. Throughout the country were scattered the villcB^ properly a sort of farm buildings, where lived the slaves or coloni, who tilled the soil — hence called villani, villains. Of these we shall speak presently. One of the first features that strikes us in the condition of this feudal lord is its isolation. Take any other form of human society with which his- tory has made us acquainted, — the purely savage, — the nomadic, — the Greek and Roman, — in all you will find man brought into constant contact and co-operation with his equals. Not so here. The feudal lord is like Robinson Crusoe in tlie desert island, — " monarch of all he surveys ;" for the human beings about the former are as much sub- jected to his will as the brutes around the latter. To this feature was joined another — idleness, want of occupation, almost unexampled in any other human society. For although the feudal baron is compelled, from time to time, to make great, to make desperate exertions to retain his place in that wild, almost anarchical society in which he lives, yet these exertions are called for at such long and irregular intervals, that they provide him with nothing whatever of the nature of regular occupa- tion. He becomes, therefore, a prey to ennui — an ennui so intolerable, that, cost what it may, he must find an escape from it. And what is the re- fuge he seeks ? The documents that have come down to us from these wild times sufficiently show the nature of it. It consisted in that long series of hunting-matches, robberies, and wars, which cha- racterise the middle ages. The crusades may be considered as one valve by which the pent-up energy escaped — by which the ennui was sought to be dispelled. Two consequences of the above-mentioned fea- tures are — 1. The strange and savage energy with which individual character is developed, as in the case when man lives alone, given up to the ca- prices of his imagination and the original tendencies of his nature. 2. The very slow progress of civilization — slower than under any other circum- stances when a similar previous advance had been made. Yet, at the same time, there existed within those rude and gloomy feudal fortresses a principle of civilization which has exerted a most powerful influence in modern society. It is well known that the domestic life and the condition of women have attained a much higher degree of importance in modern Europe than anywhere else. Of the causes of the importance of women in modern Europe, the life of the feudal lord in his solitary castle must be considered as one of the principal. In the other nations that have made mo^t ad- vances in civilization — the Greeks and Romans, — as well as in those that more resembled in theii mode of life the feudal society — the men ^\ere too much occupied to devote much time and attention to their wives and children : — ■ Sword, gown, gain.gloiy, offeiM in exchange. Pride, fame, .imbiliun to fill up the heart. Here, on the other hand, the sword was the only, and that not a constant occupation, — and, indeed, rather an amusement than an occupation. When the feudal baron returned from any of his wild adventures to his castle, he always found his wife and children there to receive him — almost liis only equals, his only intimates. When he left his home, too, in search of adventures, liis wife re- mained mistress of the castle, the representative of her husband, charged in his absence with the ser- vices and the defence of the fief. Hence the examples of displays of courage and dignity which we meet with in women of this period to a greater degree than anywhere else. Out of this state of things arose the order and spirit of chivalry ; the latter of which has long out- lived the former, and has certainly performed no mean or unimportant part in the drama of European civilization. But into this oiu' limits do not per- mit us to enter in any detail. We shall content ourselves with stating M. Guizot's opinion on the subject — which is, that chivalry was not the result of any regular design, but sprung up spontane- ously in the interior of the feudal castles — a conse- quence, on the one hand, of the ancient German customs — on the other, of the relations subsisting between the suzerain and his vassals. Leaving the lordly furtress, let us pause for a moment among the population inhabiting the cluster of huts that are closely huddled together under its walls, or at the foot of the rock or hill on which it is built. It is a common opinion that the deplorable condition of the agricultural population in the times of which we are writing, dates from the destruction of the Roman empire ; that the progres- sive development of the feudal system plunged them into the state in which we find them from the sixth to the twelith century. Von Savigny, and after him M. Guizot, have completely demon- strated the erroneousness of this opinion. By nu- merous passages which they have quoted from the Tlieodosian Code, from the code and novels of Justinian, and from the Constitutions of Justinian and succeeding emperors, they have shown that, at least during the latter periods of the Roman rule, the condition of the tillers of the soil, of the coloni, was almost precisely tlie same as it was afterwards under the feudal system ; that the husbtindman, or peasant, occupied a sort of in- termediate position between that of the freeman and that of the personal slave, corresponding exactly to that of the class in the feudal times described in the language of the English law as villains reyardant, that is, annexed to the manor or land ; and intermediate between freemen and the class described in English law language as villains in gioss^ Avho were annexed to the per- CirAP. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 565 sen of the lord, and transferable by deed from one owner to anotber.* There was, however, this difference between the condition of the Roman colonus and that of the feudal villain. The rent which Uie Roman colonus paid to the proprietor of the soil was a fixed sum ; but the tax which he paid to the State was a variable one. When the northern nations came into the Roman possessions, tliey left the coloni pretty much as they were ; hut from the union of property and sovereignty, which we have already adverted to as a characteristic fea- ture of the feudal system, the State and the owner of the soil became to the tiller of the soil identical. Consequently, the variable sum which was before in the power of the State, passed to that of the owner ; and hence the peculiar relations long sub- sisting between the feudal lord and the feudal villain. On the one side, unchecked oppression, insolence, rapacity — on the other, helpless, hope- less toil, degradation, and suffering. The priest, another portion of this little society, was not likely, M. Guizot thinks, to be able to exercise much influence between the lord and his villains, although the church exercised a very great influence upon European civilization, but in a general manner. We now pass to the wider feudal society, exhi- biting the relations of the fief owners with one another. We have already mentioned the feudal obligations of service on the one side, of protection on the other. An attempt was made to raise up rights corresponding to these obligations, and to estal^lish institutions that might protect those rights. Thus there were certain jurisdictions appointeil to decide disputes and administer justice among the owners of liefs. And thus every feudal lord of some con- sequence assembled his vassals in a parliament, to treat with them of the aff"airs in which he required their concurrence. It is to be understood that we speak now rather of what was the case in France than of any state of things that ever existed in England either before or after the coming in of the Normans ; but, in order to have a correct idea of feudalism, we must study it in its pure state, and it never was precisely pure in England ; and this, too, is necessary, in order to understand the state in which it existed in England, inasmuch as to know anything in a modified, it should first be studied and known in a simple form. But, to give efficacy to the rights and obligations which feudalism professed to recognise, one indis- pensable element was wanting, — a sovereign, a supreme power. Consequently, whenever any member of the feudal body disiliked the sentence of the court, he refused to comply with it, and, taking refuge in his feudal fastness, set it at defiance. Sometimes the other members of the confederacy, by iiniting their force against the delinquent, carried their point, but that was a work of time and difficulty ; and sometimes they failed, • Hbick stone, Cora.b. ii. c. G. The wot J " serf," often couruiiuded witli " villain regardant," or " coluuus," muiius tlic same as •' vil- ! iiii in gross." and the obnoxious member of their body succeeded in defying them. The histories of France and of Scotland abound in examples of this. Why that of England does not equally abound in them, wliy, there, the suzerain became really the sovereign, we will now endeavour to explain. Any of the great feudatories in France was mucli more powerful, in relation to any one of his own immediate vassals, than the king of France was in relation to him. Thus, the duke of Normandy, for example, had much more of the substance of sovereignty in Normandy than the king of Fiance had throughout France. This power the duke of Normandy retained in full : afterwards, by obtaining possession of England, the field of his suzerainele became greatly enlarged. The general of a vic- torious army, if in addition to his military he ];os- sesses political talent, may make his power almost co-extensive with his will. This was the case with William the Norman, who, to the character of an able military leader, united that of a cold, hard, far-sighted statesman. The consequence was, that he was able to retain as much of the feudal system, then established in France, as tended to support his power, and to set aside or alter much of it which was calculated to weaken that power. For exam- ple, it was a principle of that system that fealty was due from the vassal to the lord of whom he immediately held his land, and to no other. But William received the fealty of all landholders in England, both those who held in capite or in chief, and their tenants or vassals. This was one power- ful blow struck against the great feudatories. Moreover, the fiefs of the Anglo-Norman barons were not only much smaller than those of France, but they were dispersed over various counties.* Thete two circumstances, taken along with the preceding, must have had a powerful effect in pre- venting any one of the vassals of the crown from making head against it. Again, there were certain feudal services which, though everywhere due to feudal royalty, were, from the very nature of feudalism, as explained above, often incapable of being enforced by the feudal kings of the continent, but which the early Anglo-Norman kings were in a condition to enforce. Their vassals, for instance, were bound to attend them to the wars for forty days in every year, if called upon. Then there were the pecuniary payments due from the vassal to his lord; and the various profits arising from wardship, marriage, and other rights, the nature of which will be ex- plained when we come to speak of the royal revenue. Besides all this, William secured, as his own share of the conquest, i422manors,andthe principal towns of the kingdom. The forfeitures of the insurgent Saxons were constantly adding to these acquisitions. All these sources of revenue, together with the sale of public offices, and of the royal protection and justice, and the grievous imposition upon the infe- rior subjects, called tallages, secured to the king an independent power — a power against which any of • Dugilale's 15arona<;e. — Madox's History of the Excliequer. 866 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. WiLtiAM I. OEANTING LANDS TO HIS Nephew, THE Earl OF Brittany. — From tlie Keglstrum Honoris de Richmond. Kerrick, Collect. G730. his vassals, however great, would singly be as nothing. As we have before had occasion to remark, their very position, in the midst of a conquered but spirited and warlike people, caused the great vassals of the king to assemble frequently around him. There is reason to believe that, at least on certain solemn occasions, all the immediate vassals of the king had a right to attend his great council. According to the Saxon Chronicle and other ancient authorities, the Conqueror was wont " to wear his crown," as it is expressed, at Christ- mas in the city of Gloucester, at Easter in Win- chester, and at Whitsuntide in Westminster. On these occasions, Malmsbury states, all the spiritual and temporal nobles were assembled and feasted by the king. The same custom was kept up by William Rufus, and, although discontinued by Henry I., was revived by Stephen. Henry U. and his successors, in the same manner, used to call their nobles around them both at these great fes- tivals and on other occasions ; and there can be no doubt, from the accounts of contemporary writers, that consultation on public affairs was always one of the purposes of these meetings. But the real power of such a parliament could not have been considerable. The king is far richer and more powerful than any of his vassals. He alone makes laws, levies taxes, rewards with lands, punishes with banishment or death. He is supreme judge and commander-in-chief, as well as supreme legis- lator, throughout his dominions.* Before we proceed further in the development of our subject, let us pause for a moment to examine the machinery by which he puts his government in motion and does its work. It is the more important that we should do this, as the explanation we are * Gliinville, in the Preface to his Tractatus de Legib. et Consuetud. speaks of the will of the prince as law; using almost the very words of Justinian, with whose Corpus Juris lie seems to have been familiar. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 567 about to give is the analysis of a system out of which has arisen the whole machinery which has set in motion the English government and laws from that day to this. The power of William the Conqueror and his immediate successors being, as we have seen, not limited by any other power within the realm of England, they did whatever seemed good in their own eyes. If they chose, therefore, to administer the affairs of state, or to execute justice between subject and subject, in person, they did so; or if they chose to delegate any of those functions to their officers, they did so. Among our early Norman princes, as throughout the whole of feudal Europe, and likewise, as we have seen, under the Roman empire, the officers of state were the prince's household officers. Thus the king's trea- surer was the state treasurer ; the king's steward the state steward; the king's secretary the state secretary ;* and so for other officers. There is here a contrast not unworthy of remark between the Roman polity and the feudal. In the former everything bore the popular stamp ; in. the latter, the monarchical. Thus, instead of Pr^tors, Voiles, Quatuor viri Viarum Publicarum cuRANDARTJM,t (the Four Curators of the Public Roads), we have the King's Justiciary, the King's Chamberlain, the King's Forester (now Commissioners of Woods and Forests). The contrast between the results is also striking. Here the basis of the government has been widening from the first William downwards. There it went on narrowing, that is with some oscillations, till it ended in the apex of the imperial despotism. The only titles of nobility at this period were those of Baron and Earl, or Count ; the latter being in all cases either the possessor or at least the gover- nor of a county, and being always also a Baron, which indeed meant no more than a person holding lands in fee of a superior on the usual condition of military service. The king's barons were the tenants of the crown, or the tenants in chief, as they were called, just as other tenants were the barons of the lordship of which they held. All the barons of the crown, among whom were in- cluded the bishops, appear to have consituted what the old writers call the Commune Concilium, or Common Council of the realm. It has been com- monly supposed that what is called the Curia Regis (literally, the king's council or senate) was a different body from this; but for that notion there appears to be no foundation. J The ordinary business of the state, however, was certainly mainly conducted in the first ages after the Conquest by the great officers of the king's court, or, which is much the same thing, the great officers of the king's household. In order to see this matter • The Home Secretary was at first merely the clerk of the Privy Council. The King's secretary, or clerk, was, properly speaking, the Chancellor. t Ileinecc. Hist. Jur. Rom. § 55 et seq., and 1. 2, § 30 D. de ori(l jur. % See this point established in a very learned and able Article on tlie History of the English Legislature in the Edinburgh Review, Ncs. 69. in a clear light, we must go a good way back. The Anglo-Normans borrowed from the Normans, the Normans from the Franks; and the Franks, though doubtless, like other people in a similar stage of civilization, they would have some offices attached to the persons of tlieir kings, which they retained after their conquest over the Roman territory (that they had such, is implied in the names seneschal, mareschal) ; yet they unques- tionably borrowed that complex graduated system of offices and ranks from the courts of the Roman emperors. The English lawyers and legal antiquaries have produced between them almost inextricable confusion on the subject of some of these offices. Madox, who, in an antiquarian point of view, has done the most for this subject, and whom Black- stone and others seem to have followed, in his History of the Exchequer, places the great officers of the king's court in the following order : — 1 . The High Justiciary, or High Justiciar, as he writes it. 2. The Constable. 3. The Mareschall. 4. The Seneschall, or Dapifer. 5. The Chamberlain. 6. The Chancellour. 7. The Treasurer. Instead of this classification we shall substitute the follow- ing, for reasons which will be given immediately : 1. The Grand Seneschall, or Dapifer Anglicv. 2. The High Justiciary. 3. The Seneschall, or Dapifer Regis. 4. The Constable. 5. The Mares- chall. 6. The Chamberlain. 7. The Chancellor. 8. The Treasurer. I. The Grand Seneschall, or Dapifer — Sene- scallus, or Dapifer* Anglice ; in modern phraseo- logy, the Lord High Steward — comes palatii, major domus regies, or maire du palais. The word sene- schalch, about the etymology of which opinions vary somewhat, meant originally a sort of steward in the household of the Frank kings. After their conquest of Gaul, it came to signify a high poli- tical dignity. Dapifer, as shown in the preceding note, means the same thing, being the Latin syno- nyme for it. This officer was the highest in the State after the king, executing all the chief offices of the kingdom as the king's representative. He was not only at the head of the king's palace, but of all the departments of the State, civil and mili- tary, chief administrator of justice, and leader of the armies in war. This is proved not only to have been the case in France, by Ducange and other high authorities, as well as by the public records of that kingdom, t but to have been so • That these terms are synonymous, is shown by Ducange, Sprl- man, &c. Dapifer seems to have been introduced when a Latin word came to be wanted for seneschall, and was adopted for want of a better, there being no Latin terra exactly corresponding. Dapifer has been ignorantly translated "sewer" by Dugdale and otliers; whereas sewer, so far from meaning seneschall, means only ecuyer tranchant, an officer a great many degrees below the seneschall. See Ducange, ad voc. Dapifer, Senescallus ; Spelman, ad voc. Dapifer, Capitnlis Justiliarius, Senescallus ; and Dugdale's Baronage. t Ducange Gloss, ad voc. Dapifer et Senescallus. See also the Grand Coustumier de Normandie, c. x. " Soleb.it autem antiquilus quidara justiciarius predictis superior per Normaniam discurrere qui seneschallus principis vocabatur." — Conf. LaCoutume Reformee de Normandie commenteepar Basnage, t. i. p. 2. col. 2 (Seneschiil). See also the charters of the various Frank kings, in the witnessing of which the name of the seneschal or dapiler (sometimes the one word is used, sometimes the other) always stands before those ot all 568 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. also in England, by a document published by Madox himself, from the black and red books of the Exchequer — to wit, the celebrated Dialogue de Scaccario, written in the time of Henry II.;* and likewise by certain MSS. preserved in Sir Robert Cotton's collection in the British Museum, particularly an old MS , entitled, " Quis sit Sene- schallus Anglise, et quid ejus officium."t Conse- quently, Madox is wrong, when he says (Hist. Excheq. p. 28) that in the reign of William I. William Fitz-Osbern was the king's constable, because he is called magister militiim. The fact is, that in the very same passage (of Ordericus Vitalis) he is called Normannice Dapifer, in virtue of which office he would be magister mUitum. It was not till afterwards that the constable became magister militum, being originally an officer subor- dinate to the dapifer. By the nature of feudalism, every thing had a tendency, as we remarked before, to be given in fief. Among other things, the office of seneschal was given in fief, too, and became hereditary among the Franks, Normans, and at the conquest of Eng- land, among the Anglo-Normans. In France, un- der the Merovingian dynasty, the office was in the family of Charles Martel, from whom sprung the Carlovingian dynasty ; afterwards the Plantagenet counts of Anjou were hereditary seneschals of France ; and in England this high office was granted by William the Conqueror to the Grantmesnils, and thence came by marriage to the earls of Leicester. After the attainder of the family of Montfort, earls of Leicester, the office was given to Edmund, the second son of King Henry III., and it then re- mained in the royal family till its abolition — Thomas Plantagenet, second son of King Henry IV., being the last permanent High Steward. The office has been since conferred only for special occasions. In France, when the office became hereditary in the counts of Anjou, it soon became necessary, for various reasons, to have another seneschal, or dapifer, besides the hereditary one ; and this officer, whether he be considered as the representative or as the deputy of the hereditary seneschal, still took precedence, as appears from the charters of the French king, of all the other great officers of state. In England also, something of the same kind took place, but with this difference — that the various functions of the original grand seneschal, or Seiie- the other great oflficers. It is right to add, that in the En;;lish char- ters tlie name of the dapifer, or seneschal, does not invariably stand so liiiih as in tlie French. * Madox, Hist. Excliequer (edition 17U)- See also Co. Litt. fol. Gl a, for some Jiccount ol thejudicial part of the oflice of seneschal, or steward, and some attempts at the ttymology of tlie word, which, liowever, are not very successful. t Cotton MS. Vespasian, b. vii. fol. 99, b. It will also be found in Havl. MSS., 305, fol. 48, transcribed in a modern hand by U'Kwes, who supposed it to be of the a^e of Edw. II. See also Cotton MS. Titus C. passim, at the be;;inniiit; of wliich volume there is a well-written tract, which contains the most s.itisfactory account we have met with of the subject. There is also a tract entitled " Sumtnus Anglire Seneschalhis," in Somers* Tracts, vol. vili. All these agree in one tiling, viz. — the vastness and para- mount nature of the authority originally wielded by the high steward, though none of them explain the anomaly of the co-existence of such an officer as the high justiciary. This we hope we shall now be enabled to do. scallus Anglice, were divided into two parts, and committed to two distinct officers as his repre- sentatives; thejudicial functions being committed to an officer styled the High, or rather Chief Justi- ciary ; the administrative and those relating to tlie affairs of the king's palace or household, to an officer styled, nol the Senescallus Anglic^, but the senescallus, or dapifer Regis* This explanation will be found completely to remove the confusion that has so long prevailed among the English historians, antiquaries, and lawyers on this sub- ject. Our view of the subject, if it needed it, would be corroborated by the high privileges of the officer created in later times, to preside in the House of Lords at State Trials, which officer, be it observed, is not " High Justiciary," but " Lord High Steward," that is, " Senescallus Anglia;.'\ This explanation also removes the difficulty " of ac- counting for the extraordinary powers of the Lord High Steward's court, which some English lawyers have attempted to get over, by saying that the Lord High Steward succeeded to some of the powers of the High Justiciary, whereas he merely exercises powers which he had delegated to the High Jus- ticiary.f We would add a reflection which will make appa- rent to every one the vast power anciently attaciied to this high office of seneschal, dapifer, or steward. To two of the most illustrious royal lines of modern Europe, the Carlovingians and Plantagenets,]; it served as a stepping-stone to the throne. It was for fear of its again doing the same thing to the House of Montfort, earls of Leicester, that the office was first taken into the royal family, and afterwards abolished in England, And the veiy name of the House of Stuart came from their holding the office of Steward of Scotland. II. The Chief Justiciary — Capitalis Justiti- arius. — This officer was usually a person who had given special attention to the study of jurispru- dence. As the representative of the judicial por- tion of the Grand Seneschal's power, his authuiity extended over every court in the kingdom. One of the most distinguished persons who filled this hi<'h office was Ranulph de (jlanville, to whom is usually attributed the Tractatus de Legibus et Consuelu- dinibus Anglice., the oldest English law book ex- tant. The two offices of Chief Justiciary and Dapifer seem to have been sometimes filled by the same person ; Ranulph de Glanville seems tu have been at the same time High Justiciary and Dapifer.§ III. Tlie Seneschal, or Dapifer Regis. — That the functions of this officer, as the representative of that portion of the Grand Seneschal's authority, * Among many other proofs of this, see Madox's Form. An'lic., ccixxxix. ' + See a Disquisition on the Oflice of Lord High Steward, by Mr. Amos, in Phillips's State Trials, Appendix, vol. ii. Mr. Amos fills into the usual error of supposing that the judicial authority of the Lord High Stewanl "grew out of that which apjiertained to the Chief Justiciar at the period when tlie latter oflice was abolished." t Cliarles Martel was m«i>e du pn/ais, or seneschal, to the Meri>- vingian kings, ami the Plantagenets, Counts of Anjou, were senes- chals of France. The eldfst sou of Ilenrv II. is said to have actually pertbrmed the duties of the olTice to the French king. § .Madox, p. 3j. Ueaines's Glanville, Introd. p. la. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 106G-1216. 5G9 were political, and not merely, like those of the present Lord Steward of the Household, confined to matters connected with the king's household, is proved from the constant appearance of his name in the charters and other important public docu- ments of the time. His relative position with regard to the Mareschal appears from the follow- ing passage of Britton : " We ordain also, that the Earl of Norfolk (Marshal) shall, either by himself or his deputy (being a knight), be attendant upon us and our Steward, to execute our commands, and the attachments and executions of our judgments, and those of our Steward, throughout the verge of our palace, so long as he shall hold the office of Marshal.'"* IV. The Constable — Comes Stahuli. — An officer who originally had the care of the king's stable and horses ; f afterwards, as the power of the Seneschal declined, leader of the armies, or, at least, holding certain posts of honour in them — as, for instance, leading the vanguard in an advance, the rearguard in a retreat. V. The Mareschall^ or Marshal ; from German march or marach, horse, and schalch, master J !Madox § says mareschall is a general name for several officers employed about horses, game, &c. For some time the Mareschal was an officer subor- dinate, in the leading of the armies, to the Con- stable. VI. The Chamberlain. — This requires little ex- planation. It is sufficient to observe, that while some of his functions belonged to the king's house- hold, others belonged to the Exchequer. VII. The Chancellor. — This officer did not enjoy by any means the same importance in early times which he afterwards obtained. There was an officer about the covirt in later times whose func- tions and even whose title will furnish a good idea of what the chancellor originally was. This was the " clerk of the closet," a sort of coiffidential chap- lain or (before the Reformation) confessor to the king, occasionally employed by him as secretary, or clerk, in the modern sense of the term. In this capacity the Chancellor applied the king's great seal to charters and other public documents. But, as Madox observes, " the chancellorship, from a small beginning, became, in process of time, an office of great dignity and pre-eminence." || When the grandeur of the Seneschal and High Justiciary began to decline, the power of the Chancellor gra- dually increased, until it last approaclied to within a certain distance of — for it has never come up to by many steps— that portion of the authority of the Great Seneschal which was represented by the High Justiciary. The Chancellor, up to a late period, was a churchman. He was ex cfficio chief of the king's chapel.^ He also was wont to act with the High Justiciary and other great officers in matters of revenue at the Exchequer.** Of the Chancellor, we shall add one curious fact, • Hrilton.fol. 1, b. -f Ducange, (k^ roc. X DucanL'e, nd vuc. Marescalhis. i Hist. Kxcheq., cli:>i). ii. p. 30 Kiiit. 1711. C Hist. Exclicq. p. i\i. ^ Madox, p. 42. •• Ibid. given from an ancient memorial by Madox. " The Chancellour has five shillings a day, and so much in simnells (a sort of sweet biscuit), wine, and other small things."* VIII. The Treasurer. — Hewas mostly an eccle- siastic. Anciently it seems to have been the duty of the Treasurer to act with the other barons at the Exchequer in the management of the king's re- venue. f 'i he dignity of the Treasurer, as well as that of the Chancellor, was by no means, however, what it became afterwards, he being an officer subordinate to the Chamberlain, and more so to the Seneschal. But in the mutations brought about by time, which often decrees that the first shall be last and the last first, the Chancellor has become (after the king), in point of dignity, the first officer of the state ; and the Treasurer, or rather onlv a portion of him, — namely, the First Lord of the Treasury, — the first in political power ; while the Lord Steward and Lord Chamberlain of the House- hold, and the Earl Marshal (albeit the last has become hereditary in a potent house of high and comparatively ancient nobility), are little more than old lumber; and the High Steward, to all ordniary intents and purposes, is no longer in existence. These high officers seem not only to liave attended, each in his department, to all the public business which is commonly understood at present to fall under the province of the king's ministers, but also to the hearing and decision of ca\ises between suitors, — to have, in other words, fulfilled the judicial as well as the administrative office. The court of justice which was thus formed wr.s originally held in the king's palace or wherever he happened to be in person. There was a particular branch of it held in a particular part of the palace, in which all matters relating to the revenue were transacted, and which, though composed of nearly the same persons, was known by the name of the Exchequer. Among the things that most strike us on first looking at this period of our legal and judicial his- tory are the substitution of general and central for local judicatures, and the appointment of judges regularly trained to a knowledge of the law to pre- side in the several courts. Soon after the Conquest great inconveniences appear to have been felt from the administration of justice in the county courts, hundred courts, and courts baron. These incon- veniences arose from various causes, of which the principal, according to Sir Matthew Ha]e,J were the three following: — 1st. The ignorance of the judges, who were the freeholders of the county. " For," says Hale, " although the alderman or chief constable of every hundred was always to be a man learned in the laws, and although not only the freeholders', but the bishops, barons, and great men, were, by the laws of King Henry I., appointed to attend the county court, yet they seldom attended there, or, if they did, in process of time they ne- glected to study the English laws, as great men • MadcMC, p. 131. + Hiid. p 53. } History of the Common Law of Kii<,'laud, c. 7. 570 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. usually do." 2ndly. The great variety of laws, the effect of several independent jurisdictions. Glanville says, " The customs of the lords' courts are so numeroTis and various that it is scarcely possible to reduce them into writing." * 3rdly. The corruption and intimidation practised ; for all the business of any moment was carried by parties and factions. It is probable, however, that we are to seek for the main causes of the subversion of the ancient system in certain changes which the very principle of that system was itself producing, and which we shall now proceed to consider. Of these changes the most important and funda- mental was the establishment of the trial by jury. It has been explained, in the preceding book, that the essential principle of the original Saxon mode of trial was the submission of the matter in dispute, in some fonn or other, to what was held to be the arbitration of Heaven. There was no inter- ference of the human judgment, — no attempt to arrive at the truth by weighing and comparing the adverse probabilities ; the question was not held to be a question of probabilities at all ; it was con- ceived to be capable of a solution as certain as any question in arithmetic. The decision was left not to the fallible judgment of man, but, as was be- .lieved, to the infallible judgment of the Deity. As long as this belief subsisted universally, it is evi- dent, as we have already observed, that no mode of trial proceeding upon a different principle could well come into use. Men would not readily relin- quish a method which afforded them in all cases a certain determination of the matter, for one whicli afforded them only a doubtful determination of it. They would not easily be disposed to remain satis- fied with a decision which might be wrong, while they believed that they had it in their power to obtain one that could not but be right. That belief, however, was so entirely founded in ignorance and superstition, that it of necessity decayed in the liglit of increasing knowledge and civilization ; even the results of the trials at law that were founded on it would themselves be constantly raising suspicions of its fallacy. Nevertheless, there is reason to suppose that it was not any general conviction of the absurdity of the ordeal, or of the vanity of the imagination on which the use of it rested, that led first to its discouragement, and eventually to its entire abandonment. If such a conviction had been arrived at, the practice would have been given up at once, as one wholly irrational and iniquitous. But this was not the course taken. In the first in- stance, the legislature only interfered to narrow the application of the ordeal, and the church to discounte- nance the frequent or indiscriminate resort to it. It is evident that the popular prejudice in its favour could not yet be attacked in front. Its folly was discerned by the ruling and more enlightened part of the community ; and the government and the church, even if either or both may be supposed to have had an interest in keeping it up as a conve- • Lib. xii. c. C.-^eames's Translation. nient instrument of control, must have perceived that it was one which could not be much longer left in their hands ; but they did not, for all that, an- nounce that the supposed judgment of Heaven was really nothing of the kind. If they had, they would have offended \vhat was yet the general sentiment, and their announcement would probably have been received with incredulity and scoru. Besides, there would be a natural reluctance on the part of those by whom the ordeal had been hitherto sanctioned and upheld to make a frank acknow- ledgment that it was all a solemn mockery. They therefore took another covirse. The clergy began to preach against the ordeal, not as being absurd, but as being impious ; they did not deny its effi- cacy, as an appeal to Heaven, but they endeavoured to show that it was an appeal which, in ordinary circumstances, at least, it was sinful in human beings to make. They may possibly also have sometimes insinuated that one of the consequences of its abuse would be its frequent failure, — that the Deity would not consent to favour with a true decision of their cause the parties who thus improperly called upon him. Be this as it may, it was only after a long course of partial opposition to the ordeal that the church ventured finally and distinctly to pro- hibit its use. It did do this at last, however, by the 18th canon of the Fourth Council of Lateran, published in November, 1215. Meanwhile, the ordeal had been gradually falling more and more into disuse under the operation of various causes. The discouragement of it by the church, and the diffusion of the feeling upon which that discouragement was professedly grounded, would, no doubt, have a powerful efiect in indis- posing the public mind towards such a mode of trial except in very extraordinary circumstances. Then, the conviction of its inherent absurdity, and utter unsuitableness in any circumstances, was of course growing and extending itself. Besides, it was not necessary, in order to be opposed altoge- ther to the ordeal as a mode of trying causes, that a person should be a disbeliever in the assumed principle of that kind of trial. That principle was, that the Deity, if fairly appealed to, would work a miracle in vindication of the innocent party — would prevent the boiling water from scalding him, or the red-hot iron from burning him. Tliis might be granted ; and still the ordeal might be objected to on the ground that there was, and could be, no security for its being in any case a fair submission of the matter to the arbitration of Heaven. It might be alleged that, from the way in which the matter was managed, the result was wholly in the hands of the functionaries who superintended the process. The historian Eadmer relates, as an in- stance of the daring impiety of William Rufus, that upon one occasion, when about fifty English- men, of good quality and fortune, whom he had caused to be tried for killing his deer, by the ordeal of hot iron, had all come off unburnt, and were consequently acquitted, that king declared he would have them tried again by another mode, and not by Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 571 this pretended judgment of God, which was made favourable or unfavourable at any man's pleasure. Yet Rufus here did not dispute the efficacy of the ordeal if it had been fairly managed ; he did not deny that Heaven, if appealed to, would pronounce a just decision, and would even, if necessary, work a miracle for that purpose ; lie only denied that the professed appeal to Heaven was really made. And this was a suspicion that was, no doubt, very generally entertained. The gradual extinction, however, of the practice of trying causes by appeal to the judgment of Heaven was mainly brought about by the natural develop- ment of the principle of that mode of trial itself. And this is the most curious point in the inquiry, and that which is most deserving of attention. It has been shown in the former Book that the manner in which what we should now call evidence originally obtained admission in trials at law was by its assuming the form of an appeal to Heaven ; that is to say, it obtained admission on the only principle then recognised, — the principle of the ordeal. In a criminal case, instead of the ordeal of water or iron being at once resofted to, an attempt was made to avoid that expedient, and to decide the case by a contest of oaths between the authors of the charge on the one hand, and the accused party and his friends on the other ; it was only in the event of the charge not being esta- blished by this preliminary process that the trial was carried farther. But the persons who thus swore were not at first witnesses at all : they did not profess to testify to the facts at issue upon their own knowledge ; all that they declared was, those on the one side their belief in the guilt, those on the other their belief in the innocence of the accused. Nor was their testimony considered and weighed by any act of the judgment; their testi- mony, properly speaking, was not estimated at all, but they themselves were counted and valued, each man according to his "were," or the legal worth at which he was rated according to his rank in society. This, therefore, was not the hearing of evidence in any sense ; it was merely another mode of appealing to Heaven, which it was supposed would no more suffer the guilty party to come off victor in this contest of oaths than it would fail to vindicate the innocent in the ordeal of fire or water. Nevertheless, this method of compurgation, as it ^yas called, could scarcely fail to lead, in course of time, to a further innovation. The person pledging his faith in favour of the one side or the other, with an evident or understood knowledge of the facts bearing on the question at issue, would inevitably make a stronger impression upon the court than the person manifestly destitute of such knowledge who presented himself to make a similar or an opposite deposition : this would happen even while the letter and practice of the law made no distinction on that ground between the two depo- nents. The bringing forward of persons to make their depositions who were not acquainted with the facts of the case would, in this way, become disre- putable, and gradually fall into disuse, till at length the deponents on both sides, though still only called upon to make oath to their belief in the statement of the one party or of the other, would be almost always understood to speak not merely from partiality to the party whom their declarations were to benefit, or from a general confidence in his credibility, but from their own knowledge of the disputed facts. In truth, a person ignorant of the facts would, it may fairly be presumed, scarcely dare now to present himself to make oath in oppo- sition to one to whom the facts were well known. Here, then, we have the deponents on both sides already turned into witnesses even before the law yet demands their testimony. But, this point arrived at, it is impossible that the next step should be long delayed. The witnesses, that is the persons having a knowledge of the facts, being thus brought before the court, would naturally be led by degrees to extend their depositions beyond a mere general declaration in support of either party ; they would proceed to state the grounds of the belief which they made oath that they entertained ; in other words, they would state the facts which they knew in relation to the cause, — they would give their testi- mony as well as their depositions. Evidence having thus once obtained admission, however irre- gularly, and with however little legal efficacy in the first instance, would speedily come to be received as of weight in the decision of the cause, and would then be demanded as indispensable. But this change would render necessary other important changes. So long as causes were tried on the principle of submitting the matter in dispute, in some form or other, to the arbitration of Heaven, no functionaries that could properly be called judges were required in the courts of law. There might be a person to preside, and to declare or make publicly known the result of the process which had been gone through; but no exercise of the judgment was demanded either here or in any other part of the proceedings. The whole affair, as already observed, was of the nature of a chemical experiment, or an arithmetical calculation ; it was conducted accord- ing to certain fixed rules, or might be said to carry on itself; and the ascertainment of the result was merely a matter of observation, and of observation of the easiest kind. Under this state of things, therefore, all kinds of causes were tried at popular meetings — at the wittenagemote, and the shiremote, and the other assemblies of the same kind ; and the judgment passed in each case might as truly be said to be that of the attending crowd as that of the members of the court. It was really the judg- ment neither of the one nor of the other, nor was it so considered ; it was called not the judgment of man at all, but the judgment of God. But as soon as the principle of the appeal to Heaven was departed from, by the admission of evidence, the whole system of the administration of the law necessarily assumed a new form. The exercise of judgment by the court now became indispensable. 572 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. It is probable, however, that in the gradual pro- gress of the change, this consequence was not for some time very clearly perceived, and that it came upon the country and" the government before the requisite preparations were made for it. Hence, as occasions arose, expedients of various kinds would be at first resorted to with the view of making the old machinery still answer. It would soon be found, for instance, that the hearing of evidence, unlike the ordeal and the trial by com- purgation, produced difierences of opinion among the ]>ersons present; and it would also become abundantly apparent that a large multitude of persons did not form the most convenient tribunal for weighing and coming to a decision upon the statements of conflicting witnesses. . In these cir- cumstances we might, on the first view of the matter, suppose the most natural course would be to appoint a small committee of the court to ex- amine the Avitnesses and come to a judgment upon the cause. But this is to assume that the proper distinction between the provinces of the court and of the witnesses was already much more distinctly perceived than it could as yet be, when things were only beginning to emerge out of that state in which the court had really never taken any part in the trial of the cause at all. The witnesses, or the persons who came to give evidence, and not the court, would at this time in fact be most na- turally looked upon as the real triers of the cause. A committee of the witnesses, therefore, rather than a committee of the court, would be the select body appointed for its consideration and settlement in the earliest attempts to escape from the confusion and perplexity of conflicting evidence. Those of the witnesses who were conceived to be the persons of greatest probity, or to be those best acquainted with the facts, would be chosen out from among the rest, and left to agree among themselves as to hovv the truth stood,— in other words, to try the cause. The persons thus set apart would probably be called upon to make their depositions with more form and solemnity than ordinary witnesses ; for instance, although the ordinary witness might be lieard merely upon his declaration, the selected witness would be required to give his evidence upon oath. Finally, it would very soon become the custom for tlie selected witnesses, or triers, to be always of the same number ; such a rule would be properly held to conduce to fairness of pro- cedure; and besides, the popular feeling has always attached a certain virtue or importance to particular numbers. In the above deduction we have in fact what appears to be the history of the origin in this country of trial by jury, in as far as it can be col- lected from the scanty notices that remain to us of changes which, however important they were destined to be in their ultimate results, were scarcely deemed worlhy of being recorded by any contemporary chronicler, and the only memory of which that has come down to us has been pre- served more by accident than by design. W'c know that, even in the Saxon times, it was oc- casionally the practice to select for the decision of a civil suit certain of the most reputable of the persons who professed to be acquainted with the facts in dispute, the parties agreeing together in their nomination, and consenting to abide by their decision or vei'dict. In the Norman times this became a more usual mode of trying causes, and it was now consequently subjected to more strict regulation. Nothing is better established than that the original jury, or body of sworn triers, were really the witnesses in the case, and that their verdict was their deliverance upon it from their own knowledge of the facts. At first this mode of trial appears to have been only occasionally and sparingly resorted to. Two instances are recorded in the reign of the Conqueror, one in a suit between the crown and Gundulphus, Bishop of Rochester, in 1078, the other in a suit respecting certain lands claimed for the bishopric of Ely in 1080.* In the svibsequent reigns the instances are more frequent. Sir F. Palgrave is of opinion that in criminal cases the jury was unknown in this country until enacted by the Conqueror. William, in a charter by which he professed to restore the laws of the Confessor, with certain additions, di- rected that, in the particular case of a charge made by an Englishman against a Norman, or by a Norman against an Englishman, the guilt or in- nocence of the accused should be determined by a tribunal of sworn witnesses, " according to the law of Normandy." The first regulation, however, which established the jury as a general mode of trial appears to have been one of the laws, or " assizes," as they were called, enacted by Henry II, at Clarendon, about 1176. By this law, to quote the account of Sir F. Palgrave, " the justices, who represented the king's person, were to make inquiry by the oaths of twelve knights, or other lawful men, of each hundred, together with the four men from each towr.slii[), of all murders, ' robberies, and thefts, and of all who had harboured such offenders since the khig's accession to the throne." Another enactment of the same assizes abolished the trial by compurgation in criminal cases, except in certain boroughs. The verdict of the inquest, however, was not yet made final. The person charged by the twelve knights was still allowed to clear himself, if he could, by the ordeal of fire or water. Other laws of the same king, some of which, however, are only imperfectly pre- served, appear to have established the inquest or "recognition" by the twelve lawful men as the regular mode of trial in various kinds of civil suits. If the trial by battle was at all known in the Saxon times, the earliest record of it in England is subsequent to the Conquest. The duel (or orneste, as its Saxon name appears to have been) would seem to be a still ruder mode of trial than any of those methods that were more peculiarly called the ordeal, as allowing, which they did not, mere phvsical force to be the main arbitrator of the dis- * See Paljjiave's V.ag, Com. p. 2.53, and lUustratioiis. p. clxxviii. Chap. 111.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 573 [lute, and being therefore almost identical in prin- ciple with the mode of deciding quarrels which is proper to a state of nature. It is, probably, in- deed, of greater antiquity than the ordeal ; yet it was neither siqjplanted by the ordeal, nor when that mode of trial was abolished did the duel even share its fate. It continued in common use foT ages afterwards. The duel was undoubtedly looked upon as being, not less than the ordeal, an appeal to the judgment of God, and it was in virtue of this character that it retained its place as one of the allowed modes of trial in association with the ordeal. If it had been deemed to be a mere con- test of physical strength, it is difficult to conceive that it ever should have been adopted as a mode of legal trial at all, and it certainly could not have kept its ground as such after the more refined principle of the ordeal came to be recognised. The belief was that Heaven would by no means allow the issue of the appeal to depend upon the thews and sinews of the two combatants, but would defend the right, if necessary, by enabling the weaker man to overcome the stronger, — that is to say, by working a miracle, just as in the case of the ordeal. The duel and the ordeal therefore stoud in the popular imagination upon the same prin- ciple. Why, then, when the ordeal was prohibited, was not the duel abolished along with it? To be enabled to answer this question we must recollect that the prohibition of the ordeal was by no means distinctly placed by the church upon the ground of tlie inherent absurdity of such a mode of trial, — of the fallacy of the notion that the special interference of Heaven was to be so secured. The practice was discouraged, and at last formally condemned as unlawful, on other grounds altogether, as has been ?hown above. It was denounced as impious rather than as fallacious or absurd. If it was admitted to be in any sense fallacious, it was merely in so far as the supposed appeal to Heaven might by dis- honest management be rendered only apparent instead of real. The generally received opinion that the direct judgment of God in a cause might be obtained by being properly sought for was left Unas sailed. All that was affirmed was, that the ordeal of fire, or of water, was not a proper mode of seeking for such judgment. The condemnation of these modes, therefore, did not necessarily touch the trial by combat. It lay mider none of the objections on account of which they were con- demned. It did not easily admit of collusion or any other species of unfair management. It was from its nature not likely to be resorted to upon trivial occasions, or to be taken advantage of in any circumstances as a mere form, but was always of necessity a solemn encounter, in which neither party could engage without peril of his life. Add to all this the accordance of the trial by combat with the martial spirit of the times, when prowess in arms was looked upon as almost the chief of human virtues ; and we shall be at no loss to understand the favour, or at least the toleration, which was shown to this mode of trial when the not more barbarous or more unjust custom of the ordeal was banished from the judicial practice of Christendom. Yet even within the period now under consideration an important step was taken towards the extinction of the appeal of battle in civil suits by a law of Henry II., which gave to both the tenant and defendant in a writ of right* tlie alternative of having the case tried by what was called the grand assize, which was in fact merely a jury composed of four knights returned by the sheriff, and of twelve other persons named by them. The introduction of the grand assize is ascribed to the advice of Glanville, who has in his book given a very particular description of it, and exjjatiated upon its great importance as an im- provement of the law.f It is obvious that the entirely new form and character assumed by judicial proceedings, after the commencement of the practice of trying and deciding causes by evidence, would render the old machhiery for the administration of the law al- together unserviceable. An exercise of the judg- ment was now called for on the part of the court, instead of merely an exercise of the faculty of observation. Judges were therefore of necessity appointed in all the courts. It is probable that this innovation was i)artially introduced in the Saxon times ; but it was not generally established till after the Conquest. The general character of the Norman domination, under which all authority was held to proceed and to derive its being from the crown, was especially favourable to the com- pletion of the new system. It appears to have been as early as 1118, in the reign of Henry I., that Justices Itinerant, or Justices in Eyre, as they were called, were first appointed to go on circuits through the kingdom for the holding of all pleas both civil and criminal. J They were not how- ever made a regular part of the judicature of the kingdom till 1116,1116 twenty-second year of the reign of Henry II. The court which sate in the king's palace was also, in course of time, divided into several courts, although opinions vary somewhat as to the precise period at which this change took place. According to Madox, whose inquiries into the sub- ject were more minute and accurate than those of Sir Edward Coke and- others, the bank or court of Common Pleas was in being several years before the Magna Charta of the seventeenth of King John, though it was then first made stationary. That the division, as existing at this day, was com- plete in the time of Edward 1. is proved more fully than from any other of the ancient law books from a passage of Brilton, in which he speaks of the • The writ of ri;^ht was tlie proceeding in which the right to land was tried wlieii the claimant, or those under whom he claimed, had lost the possession for more tlian twenty years. The limitation to this custom was sixty years.— ifwoi/i on Rial Actions. ■j- The mode of trial by the grand assize was only abolished in 13J3, by the 3rd and 4th Will. IV. c. 27- VVe may take this op- )^irUinity of mentioning that the othi-r ancient mode of trial by Wager of Law (a remnant of the primitive practice of compurgation), wliich was spoken of by mistake in a former page (-260) as still sub- sisting, was also abolished the same year by the 3rd and 4th Will. IV. c. 42. t Madox, Ilist. Exohcq. c. ii!. 574 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. " clerks of our court of chancery, and of one bench and of the other, and of the exchequer."* Upon the subdivision of the king's court into several separate judicatures, and the increasing cuniplication of legal proceedings, the great officers of state, whom we have enumerated, and who were originally, together with the king, the judges of it, gave up their places in it to regular lawyers. Of the original nature of this great court it will afford some illustration to remark that, as was the case generally in the feudal system, where, from the top to the bottom, the less was shaped after the image of the greater, the court- baron was a model of it on a small scale. The baron had his court, in which, subordinate to him- self, presided his seneschal, dapifer, or steward, precisely as the king had his court, wherein, subor- dinate to himself, presided his seneschal, dapifer, or steward. In the case of the kings of England one portion of the judicial functionst of the steward's office came, as we have shown, first to be executed by a sort of deputy or representative, called the chief justiciary, afterwards to be abo- lished, or rather to be divided among a number of judges; while the other portion of those judicial functions remained with another representative of the original steward, or rather representative of another portion of him, called the Steward of the king's Household. There has been much controversy respecting the origin of what is called the common law of Eng- land. The oldest treatise we have on the English law after the Conquest is the work bearing tlie name of " Glanville," and composed in the reign of Henry II. Doubtless many individual laws and customs passed from the Anglo-Saxon to the Anglo-Norman times. There is still extant, as we have already had occasion to notice, a charter, or body of laws which the Conqueror is said to have granted to the English people, being, says the title, " the same which his predecessor and cousin. King Edward, observed before him. "J These recognise all the main features of the Saxon system, and especially the principle of the '* were," or pecu- niary compensation for personal injuries. We know also, that the system of the frank -pledge continued to be strictly enforced for a long period after the Conquest.§ Still the general features and character of the English law after the Conquest appear to be, on the whole, more Norman than Anglo-Saxon. One striking feature of distinction between Glan- ville and the Anglo-Saxon laws is the detail with which the former enters into the matter of proce- dure or actions at law ; and the minute intricacy of the system which he thus presents to us strangely contrasts with the rudeness and simplicity of that of the Anglo-Saxons, described in the last chapter. We • Britton, f.37.b. + For, orij^'inaUy, as has been shown, the seneschal was the kind's representative universally, in his military as well as his judicial capacity. X These laws of the Conqueror have been preserved both in I.alin and in Romance, or French. The best edition of both texts is to be found (with a valualile Commentary) in the Illustrations to Sir F. Palgrave's Eng. Com. pp. Ixxxviii— cxl. i See Palgrave's Eng. Com. p. 5i?7. find in Glanville the germs of the system of plead- ing which was afterwards carried out into so much greater complexity. In fact, Glanville presents much, both in body and spirit, of the English com- mon law as it existed for many ages, and does in some degree still exist. With respect, however, to the portion of the common law that may be consi- dered of Saxon, and the portion that may be con- sidered of Norman origin, there is a remark of Mr. Hallam's that appears worthy of quotation. " Perhaps," says he, " it might be reasonable to conjecture that the treatise called ' Leges Henri ci Primi'* contains the ancient usages still prevailing in the inferior jurisdictions, and that of Glanville the rules established by the Norman lawyers of the king's court, which would of course acquire a general recognition and efficacy in consequence of the institution of justices holding their assizes periodically throughout the country. "t It is re- markable, and may be taken as some confirmation of what is here advanced, that the pecuniary com- positions are not mentioned in Glanville. However, even by Mr. Hallam's estimate, the Saxon would bear but a small proportion to the Norman element in the compound produced under the name of the common law of England. But to say precisely what the proportion of either element may be, is a very different matter; for we must needs admit thus much at least, with Sir Matthew Hale, that " among all those various ingredients and mixtures of laws, it is almost an impossible piece of che- mistry to reduce every caput legis to its true ori- ginal, as to say this is a piece of the Danish, this of the Norman, or this of the Saxon or British law."J Among the most important of the remaining in- novations in the law and its administration which were introduced in the period now under review may be mentioned the following : — Courts of eccle- siastical jurisdiction were for the first time esta- blished by the Conqueror, the bishops being for- bidden for the future to sit as heretofore with laymen in the county or other civil courts, and all spiritual causes, and all those in which clergymen were concerned, being made over to the new jurisdic- tion. By the time of Henry II. we find express men- tion of the courts of the archdeacon, the bishop, and the archbishop. The contests which soon broke out between the cemporal and the spiritual jurisdictions have repeatedly occupied our attention in the two preceding chapters. These ecclesiastical courts established the partial authority of the canon law in England ; and the principles and rules of the civil, or Roman imperial law being also favoured by the clergy, were introduced into the Court of Chancery and into other jurisdictions where churchmen pre- sided, and ojiposed by them to the common law. Attorneys, or agents for the management of causes at law, are first distinctly mentioned after the Con- quest, and were probably not introduced till then. The series of our judicial records commences with • A summary of Saxon law, in iiiucty-four chapters, found ap- pended to some copies of the charter of Henry I. + Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 463. | Hist, of Com. Law, chap. iy. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 575 the reign of Richard I., and the custom of making any written memorials of legal proceedings does not appear to be of much earlier origin. Down to this time the technical phrase, " to record," meant merely to testify from memory. It is commonly said that after the coming of the Normans all pleadings, at least in the supreme courts, were carried on in French, and that all deeds were drawn and all laws promulgated in the same language. " This popular notion," observes Sir F. Palgrave, " cannot be easily supported. . . Before the reign of Henry III. we cannot discover a deed or law drawn or composed in French. Instead of prohibiting the English language, it was employed by the Conqueror and his successors in their charters vmtil the reign of Henry II., when it was superseded, not by the French, but by the Latin language, which had been gradually gaining, or rather regaining, ground ; for the charters anterior to Alfred are invariably in Latin."* To this it may be added that, according to Ordericus Vitalis, so far was the Conqueror from showing any aver- sion to the English language, or making any such attempt as has been ascribed to him to effect its abolition, that he applied himself to learn it for the special purpose of understanding the causes that were pleaded before him. The common statement rests on the authority of Ingulphus, which is extremely suspicious. Mr. Hallam thinks the subtle and complex cha- racter of English law and legal proceedings attri- butable in some measure to the shrewd and litigious spirit observable in the Normans. f It may, per- haps, be more correctly ascribed to a more ge- neral cause — the state of society then existing in feudal Europe. The practitioners of the law, who were, in a great measure, churchmen, had to deal with men — the iron barons " of the bloody hand " — who were accustomed to obtain every object of their desire by the shortest road — direct violence. In bringing about many alterations in the law, both as regarded the punishment of crimes and the conveyance and descent of real property, each of which alterations might be considered as a step made in the march of civilization, though it, at the same time, either directly or obliquely, struck at the power of the feudal aristocracy, they had to take a circuitous course, so as in a great measure to conceal their real design from the powerful and violent, but for the most part obtuse and unin- structed men with whom they had to deal. We must here note a grand distinction between the Roman aristocracy and the feudal. The Roman patricians, as we before observed, were carefully instructed, not only in the art of war, but in the laws and proceedings of the courts. The feudal aristocracy were mere men of the sword, regarding the habits of study and intellectual in- dustry that would have been necessary to enable them to master a knowledge of their laws as things far beneath their consideration. The consequence • Kn?. Com. p. 56. f Middle Ages, vol. ii. p. 468. was, that the more complicated the legal net be- came which was woven around them, the less powerful they became, and the more dependent upon the subtle men of the gown, whose power proportionally rose, till they were at last reduced somewhat to the condition of an animal which, though physically stronger than a spider, has be- come the spider's prey, by being caught in its cunningly-devised net. In short, what M. Guizot has remarked of the Roman lawyers (meaning rather those under the empire, when the practice of the law had become a distinct profession, than the patrician lawyers alluded to some sentences back) is applicable, with very slight modification, to the English. The English as well as the Ro- mans troubled themselves little about the founda- tions and the general principles — about the philo- sophy of law. They set out with certain axioms — with certain legal precedents ; and their ability consisted in tracing with subtlety the consequences of these, in order to apply them to particular cases as such presented themselves. Thus the English, as well as the Roman lawyers, were dialecticians of wonderful acuteness, but never philosophers. As to what has been said of the English lawyers bor- rowing less than those of any other civilized people from the writings of philosophers, it just amounts to nothing at all, seeing that in the works of the Roman jurisconsults and their modern commenta- tors (however admirable as expositors both may be) there is not a particle more of the philosophy of laAV than in the writings of the English lawyers. The most important part of the history of the legislation of this period consists of the history of those great Charters which are usually regarded as the bulwarks of English liberty. As we have before remarked, the Norman barons, from the circumstances in which they were placed in England, formed a compact body, of which body the Norman king was the undisputed head. When the necessity which kept this body together ceased to exist, when the invaders began to feel themselves tolerably secure in their possessions, feudalism again resumed its natural character. Each fief-owner sought to isolate himself on his own lands, and to enrich himself by violence and robbery. The kings took advantage of this to increase their own power. If Henry I. and Henry IL cannot be called absolute sovereigns, they possessed more power than any other contem- porary king. But the barons, although they had no longer the same motives — namely, their common safety — to rally round the king, which they had formerly, had not lost the recollection of how they had thus been banded together to side with the king; and they now thought that they might again assemble and unite, when the purpose was no longer to defend themselves and the king against the Saxons or English, but to defend themselves against the encroachments of the royal power, becoming every day more formidable. Several circumstances favoured the tendency which we have above alluded to. Three usurpers 576 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. in less than fifty years, William Rufus, Henry I., and Stephen, had occasion to have their title ac- knowledged by the barons, and consequently made general promises respecting their liberties. After- wards, in the reign of Richard I., from the dis- putes about the regency, and the intrigues of John, factions of all sorts arose. In this state of things the government fell into the hands of a council of barons. Hence one portion of the barons acquired the habit of governing, the other portion that of resisting the government, composed only of their peers; and when, in 1199, John mounted the throne, the face of things was quite changed. Though the amalgamation of the two races, the Normans and Saxon?, was by no means completed, the principal war was no longer between the Normans and Saxons, but between royalty and aristocracy; the former desiring to retain the power, very nearly absolute, which it had held for a little time, — the latter confederating to compel the recog- nition of certain rights whicli they claimed. Some barons joined the king ; and without that there covdd have been no struggle. And the struggle, when it came, was not, as on the continent, a series of combats between individual interests, — it was truly a contest between two general inde- pendent forces. The concession of the charters was the result of that struggle. The confirmation of the laws of Edward the Confessor by the Conqueror, mentioned above, may be considered as the first charter granted by the Anglo-Norman kings. It is assigned by the old chroniclers to the year 1070. Henry I. having usurped the throne from his elder brother Robert, who remained duke of Nor- mandy, occupied a less firm position than his father. Soon after his coronation he granted a charter, which enumerates the abuses of the pre- ceding reigns, and promises the redress of them. Many of its enactments have reference to the rela- tions of feudalism ; biit one of its clauses expressly restores the laws of Edward the Confessor, " with those emendations," adds Henry, "with which my father amended them, by tiie advice of his barons." Most of the engagements contained in this charter were very indiflerently observed ; but it is of im- portance in the history of the Constitution, as having served in some respects for the model of that which was afterwards extorted from John. Matthew Paris informs us that when the barons took arms, in 1215, their demand was that those rights and liberties should be conceded to the church and the kingdom which were set down in the charter of Henry I . and in the laws of Edward the Confessor. Lord Lyttelton remarks that, " in some respects, this charter of Henry I. was more advantageous to liberty than Magna Charta itself." Stephen, likewise a usurper, granted two char- ters — one to the barons, the other to the clergy — both short, and confined to a renewal of the pro- mises before made, but not kept. Henry II. again renewed those promises in a fourth charter, also short, and also inefficacious. The Anglo-Norman barons, under their first kings, were not in a condition to undertake a struggle, even if they had wished to do so. Under Henry II. circumstances were somewhat changed. The extent of Henry's possessions on the continent drew him into long wars, into which the Anglo-Norman barons were not always disposed to follow him. Nor were they much more disposed to submit patiently to the heavy imposts he levied on them to support the numerous mercenary troops lie was obliged to employ. The strong and firm hand of Henry IL, however, suppressed, for a time, this insurgent spirit, which, on that account, only broke out with the more violence under his feeble, cowardly, and vicious son John. It would seem that the circumstances most favourable to liberty's making a step in its progress are those of a power- ful and arbitrary ruler, follow^ed by a feeble suc- cessor, who fancies that he has an undoubted right to all that liis predecessor claimed, without pos- sessing any of the qualities that made good that claim. Such were the circumstances in which John assumed the crown of England. The strong hands of the two first Plantagenets — Henry II. and Richard Cceur de Lion, his father and brother — were in the dust, and the iron sceptre which they had wielded lay rusting among the heavy armour which an imbecile and a coward could not wear. Magna Charta was granted on the 15th of June, 1215. The enactments of it may be arranged under three heads: — 1. Rights of the clergy. 2. Rights of the barons or fief-holders. 3. Rights of the people at large. I . With regard to the clergy, the charter merely gives a general confirmation of their immunities and privileges. II. It carefully enumerates and confirms the rights of the barons. In particular, the right of imposing an escuage, or any extraordinary aid, is formally confined to the great national council; and the occasions and modes of convocation of tliat council are carefully determined. ni. The rights of the freemen of the kingdom are attended to in the following provisions : " The court of common pleas shall not follow the king's court, but shall be held in a certain fixed place.* — Justice shall not be sold, refused, or delayed to any one.f — We, or if we are absent from the kingdom, our chief justiciary shall send four times a year into each county two judges, who, with four knights, chosen by each county, shall hold the assizes at the time and place appointed in the said county. J — No freeman shall be arrested or impri- soned, or dispossessed of his tenement, or out- lawed, or exiled, or in anywise proceeded against, unless by the legal judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.§ — No freeman, or merchant, or villain^ shall be unreasonably fined for a small offence : the first shall not be deprived of his tene- ment ; the second of his merchandise ; the third of his implements of husbandry."! — Tliis last is An. 17. § Art. 39. t Alt. 18. Art. 20. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 577 OWG^ tee- €omm^.yJV€iDO . p wpdW^XJ/twIlr^ .'fo mw w Dalvu)^ yvw? Iwj wj^ w. uKtt^uwcr homo o^\)A^uf v*»<|>nlOfiet?,a«rt\Iia\ftat. AutvtWe^. Attt- e}iuC?S^<^vit jJuvuo moboS^jW^.t^fc tup eunt tWrnul n^ciog eatrv tntrteifittlnift^ vno ceamo. Specimen of Maona Charta, engraved from one of the Original Copies in the British Museum. The passages arc a portion of the Preamble, the Forty-sixth Clause, and the Attestation, as follows: — Johannes dei gratia rex Anglie, dominus Hybernie, dux Novmannie, Aquitanie, et comes Andegavie, archiepiscopis, episcopis, abbalibus, comitibus, bai-onibus, justiciariis, forestariis, vicecomitibus, prepositis, roinistris, et omnibus ballivis, et fidclibus suis, sahUem. 46. Nullus liber homo capialur, vel imprisonetur, aut dissaisiatur, aut utlagetur, aut exulelur, aut aliquo modo destruatur, nee super cum ibimus, nee super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium parium suorum, vel per legem terre. . . Data per manum nostram in pralo quodvocatur Ruuiugmede inter Windlesorum et Slanes quiuto decimo die Jimii anno regai nostrt septimo decimo. the only clause which relates to the interests of the class of villains, — probably, as Hume observes, at that time the most numerous in the kingdom. The king, also, promised to appoint none but able and upright judges ; to reinstate in his pos- sessions every man unjustly ousted; to compel no one to make or support bridges but by ancient customs ; that the goods of every freeman should be disposed of according to his will, or, if he died intestate, that his heirs should succeed to them ; and that no officer of the crown should take any horses, carts, or wood, without the consent of the owner. Upon the whole, we are inclined to agree with Barrington, that the main object of those who framed and obtained Magna Charta was not so much the restoration of the Saxon laws in general, or those of Edward the Confessor in particular, as the continuance of the Norman and feudal law in- troduced with the Conquest, and the preservation of their own feudal privileges, which the great power of the early Anglo-Norman kings threatened to destroy. " In Magna Charta," says Barring- ton, " there is not one Saxon term for anything that relates to feudal tenures, which are the great object of many of the chapters. It appears by the last chapter of the Charter, that all the attesting witnesses not in holy orders were of Norman ex- traction. Whence, then, could arise the induce- ment to make it an express article that the Saxon laws should be restored?" The Norman barons, he adds, " could never mean to abolish the Nor- man and feudal law, whicli was in every respect so higJily advantageous to them."* In reading Magna Charta, we are struck with the even lawyer-like precision with which it is worded. It was evidently drawn up by men with intellects as sharp as the swords of tlie iron barons who wrested it from the reluctant king, who had the will, but not the courage and al)ility, to be a tyrant. But though the provisions of this famous charter were as complete as the knowledge of that age could make them, and though they were then and there solemnly signed and sealed, they had many fortunes to go through, many reverses to encounter, many violations to endure, before they were destined to operate quietly and securely. These it will be our business to give some account of in the sequel / contenting ourselves here with the cheering reflec- tion, that though the movement of free institutions is an oscillating one, it is, upon the whole, a de- cided progress— an advance in the course of a cer- tain number of years, and that " Freedom's battle, once begun. Though baffled oft, is ever won." We have now to give a short account of the famous • Observations upon the Statutes, p. 3. 2 K 578 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Specimen of Domesday Book. From the page engraved iu the Report on the Public Records. The reading is as follows :— Rex tenet in Dominio Stoch*:. De firma Regis K. fuit. Tunc se defendebat pro 17 Hidis. Nichil geldaverunt. Terra est 16 Carucatae. In Dominio sunt 2se Carucatae & 24 Villani and 10 Bordarij cum 20 Carucis. Ibi Eclesia 'qua; Willelmus tenet de Rege cum dimidia Hida iu Elemosina. Ibi 5 Servi & 2 MoHui de 25 sol. & 16 Acree Prati. Silva 40 Porcorum & ipsa est in parco Regis. T. R. E. & post valebat 12 lib. Modo 15 lib. Tamen qui tenet reddit 15 lib. ad pensum. Vicccomes habet 25 solid. record called Domesday, which remains so remark- able a monument of the extensive and statesman- like genius of the Conqueror. Domesday Book con- sists of a general survey of all the lands in the kingdom, with the exception of the northern coun- ties, Westmoreland, Cumberland, Northumberland, Durham, and part of Lancashire ; specifying their extent in each district ; their proprietors, tenures, value; the quantity of meadow, pasture, wood, and arable land, which they contained; and, in some counties, the number of tenants, villains, cottarii, and servi who lived upon them. "All this," says Sir H. Ellis, in his 'Introduction to Domesday,' " was to be triply estimated ; first, as the estate was held in the time of the Confessor; then, as it was bestowed by King William ; and, thirdly, as its value stood at the formation of the survey. The jurors (upon whose oaths it was made) were, moreover, to state whether any ad- vance could be made in the value." The making of this survey was determined upon, after much deliberation, at a great council held at Gloucester in 1085, and it was finished in the course of the following year. The particulars were collected by Commissioners appointed by the king, on the ver- dicts of sworn inquests, or recognitions ; and this important application of the jury (in the form in which it then existed) may probably be considered to have had much influence in establishing the ■general use of that mode of trial. Domesday Book, perhaps the most valuable monument of its kind possessed by any nation, is still preserved. It consists of two volumes — a greater and a less ; the greater comprehending all the counties of England except those specified above, which were never surveyed, and except Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, which are contained in the lesser volume. The name Domesday has been by many, and, among others, the author of the ' Dialogue on the Exchequer,' supposed to allude to the final day of judgment. But " if this whimsical account of the name was the real one," says Barrington, " the Latin for it would be Dies Judicii; whereas, in all the old chronicles, it is styled either Liber JuDiciALis, or Censualis. Bullet, in his Celtic Dictionary, has the word DoM, which he renders Seur, Seigneur, and hence the Spanish word Don ; as also the words Deya and Deia, which he tran- slates Proclamation, Advertisement. Domes- day, therefore, may signify the lord's or king's advertisement to the tenants who hold under him ; and this sense of the word agrees well with part of the contents of this famous survey."* Anotlier account given by Stow, from an old monastic chro- nicle — the ' Book of Bermondsey' — is, that Domes- day is a corruption of Domus Dei (or God's house), the name of the apartment in the king's Treasury where the volumes were kept. As some specimen of so curious and important a document may be acceptable to our readers, we select the following examples of the manner of entering the lands in it, and subjoin an English translation. "Essessa. Terra Regis. Dimid. Hundred de Witham. Witham tenuit Haroldus t. R. E. pro maner. et pro 5 hidis. Modo custodit hoc mane- rium Petrus vicecomes in manu regis ; tunc 2 car. in diiio, modo 3; tunc 21 villan. modo 15; tunc 9 bordar. modo 10; tunc 6 servi, modo 9; tunc 23 sochemanni, et modo similiter; tunc 18 car. hominum, modo 7 ; tunc inter totum valebat 1 lib. modo 20 ; sed vicecomes inter suas consuetudinis et placita de dimid. hundred, recepit inde 34 lib. et 4 lib. de gersuma .... In hoc manerio adj ace- bant t. R. E. 34 liberi hominis, qui tunc reddebant 10 sol. de consuetudine et lid. Ex illis tenet Ilbodius 2, de 45 acr. et val. 6 sol. et redd, maner. suam consuetudinem. Tcdricus Pointel 8, de dimid. hid. et 22 acr. dimid. reddentes consuetu- dinem. Ranulph Piperel 10 de 2 hid. et 45 acr. non reddentes consuetudinem. Willielmus Grosse 5, et unus tantum reddit consuetudinem, et val. 3 lib. 13s. Rad. Baignard 6, et unus reddit consuetud. etval. 20s. Hamo dapifer 1. de dimid. hid. ct val. • Barrington on the Statutes, p. 232, note. Chap. III.3 CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 579 20s. Goscelinus Loremarius habet terrata unius, et non reddit consuetud* Thus in English : — " Essex (title in the top of the leaf) ; the king's land ;" and before the parti- cular manor or town, the hundred is noted, as here, "The half-hundred of Witham. Harold held Witham, in the time of King Edward, for a manor and for 5 hides. Now, Peter, the sheriff, keeps this manor in the king's hand. Then there were 2 carucates in the lord's hands, now 3. Then there were 21 villeins, now 15 (for they recorded what was in Edward the Confessor's time as well as in that of the Conqueror) ; then there were 9 bordars, now 10 J then 6 slaves, now 9; then there were 23 sochemans, now the same number; then 18 carucates among the men, now 7 : then the whole was valued at 10 pounds, now 20 pounds ; but the sheriff, for his customs and mulcts from the half- hundred, received on account of this manor (inde) 34 pounds, and 4 pounds for fine. In this manor there were, in the time of King Edward, 34 free- men, who then paid an accustomable rent of 10 shillings and 1 1 pence. Of these, Ilbods holds 2, who had 45 acres, and they were worth to him 6 shillings, and paid their old rent to the manor. Tedric Pointel holds 8, who had half a hide, and 22i acres, paying custom or old rent. Ranulph Piperel holds 10, who had 2 hides and 45 acres, not paying custom or old rent. William Grosse holds 5, and only one of them pays custom, and were worth 3 pounds 13 shillings. Ralph Baig- nard holds 6, and one pays custom; they were worth 20 shillings. Hamo, the seneschal or steward, holds 1, who has ^ hide, and is worth 20 shillings. Goscelin Loremar has the land of 1, and pays no custom." We give another example, which diflFers some- what from the former : — " Essessa Terra Regis Hund. de Beventre. Haveringas tenuit Haroldus t. R. E. pro 1. maner. et pro 10 hid. Tunc 41 villan. modo 40 ; semp. 41 bordar. et 6 servi, et 2 car. in dominio ; tunc 41 car. hominum, modo 40 ; sylv. d. pore. c. acr. prati ; modo 1 molen. et 2 rune, et 10 animalia, et 160 pore, et 269 ov. Huic maner. adjacebant 4 lib. homines, de 4 hidis t. R. E. reddentes con- suetudinem ; modo ten. 3 hid. Rob. fil. Corbu- tionis, et Hugo de Montafori quartam hidam, etnon reddidere consuetudinem ex quo eas habuere, &c. Hoc maner. val. t. R. E. 361. modo 40 ; et Petrus vicecomes inde recepit 801. de censu, et 101. de gersuma.f Thus in English : — " Essex (title as before), the king's land; the hundred of Beventre. Harold held Haveringe, in the time of Edward the Con- fessor, for 1 manor and 10 hides. Then there were 4 1 villeins, now 40 ; there were always 41 bordars, and 6 slaves, and 2 carucates in demesne, or the lord's lands; there were 41 carucates among the men (or vassals or tenants), now 40; wood sufficient for 500 hogs, 100 acres of meadow ; now 1 mill, and 2 working-horses or pack-horses, and • Domesd. torn. ii. fol. 16. \ Ibid. torn, ii, fol. 2 b. 10 young gTowing beasts, 160 hogs, and 269 sheep. To this manor there belonged 4 freemen, who had 4 hides in the time of Edward the Confessor, paying an accustomable rent ; now Robert, son of Corbutio, holds 3 of those hides, and Hugh Mont- fort the fourth, and have paid no rent since they held them. This manor was worth, in the time of King Edward, 36 pounds, now 40 ; and Peter the viscount, or sheriff, receives from it 80 pounds for rent, and 10 pounds for an income or fine." Domesday Book was formerly kept by the side of the Tally Court in the Exchequer, under three different locks and keys ; one in the custody of the treasurer, and the others of the two chamberlains of the Exchequer. In 1696 it was deposited in the Chapter-house at Westminster, where it still re- mains.* In 1767, in consequence of an address of the house of lords, his majesty gave directions for the publication, among other records, of the Domesday Survey. " In the following year," says Sir Henry Ellis,t " specimens — one executed with types, the other by engraving — were submitted, by command of the lords of his majesty's Treasury, to the presi- dent and council of the Society of Antiquaries, for their opinion ; and an engraved copy of the work appears to have been at first considered as the most proper and advisable. At the close, however, of 1768, the fairest and most perfect letter having been selected from different parts of the survey, a resolution was taken to print it with metal types. h. fac- simile type, uniform and regular, with tole- rable exactness, though not with all the correspond- ing nicety of the original, was at last obtained, and the publication was entrusted to Mr. Abra- ham Farley, a gentleman of learning as well as of great experience in records, and who had had almost daily recourse to the book for more than forty years. J It was not, however, till after 1770 that the work was actvially conmienced. It was com- pleted early in 1783, having been ten years in pass- ing through the press. The type with which it was executed was destroyed in the fire which con- sumed Mr. Nichols's printing office, in the month of February, 1808." We shall subjoin here a few explanations of the terms made use of in the above extracts which have not been already noticed. 1. LiBERi HOMINES (Free men). — In this term, besides the freemen or freeholders of a manor, ap- pear to have been included all the ranks of society above these, ^. e., all holding in military tenure. " The ordinary freemen before the Conquest, and at the time of compiling Domesday," says Kelham, " were under the protection of great men ; but what their quality was, further than that their persons and blood were free, that is, that they were not nativi, or bondmen, it will give a knowing niau trouble to discover to us."§ In Domesday, the • Sir II. Ellis's Introduct. to Domesday, i. 354. + Iiitrod. V. i. p.359. X " He was for many years the principal deputy in the Tally Court of the Receipt of the Exchequer." § Domesday Book, lUust. p. 254. 580 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Hberi hoviines are mentioned as distinct from the SocHEMANNi, Or Socmen ; but by the time of Magna Charta, they would seem not to have been distinct ; at least the three classes of society speci- fied in the famous 20th article of that, are the free men, the merchants, and the villains. 2. The SocHEMANNi, or Socmen. — In regard to these, whatever may be the disputes about the origin of their name (some deriving it from soca, a plough; others from soc, a franchise) and their condition, one thing is certain, that they held their land by a tenure of a different and inferior kind to military tenure. Littleton defines tenures in socage to be, where the tenant holds his tenement of the lord by any certain service, in lieu of all other services, so that the service be not knight's service ; and Blackstone describes the " grand criterion and distinguishing mark of this species of tenure" to be, "the having itsjrendefs or services ascertained." 3. The BoRDARii. — Respecting these, opinions vary. Coke calls them boors, holding a little house with some land of husbandry, bigger than a cottage.* " The Bordarii, often mentioned in the Domesday Inquisition, " says Bishop Kennett, " were distinct from the Servi and Villani, and seem to be those of a less servile condition, who had a hord or cottage, with a small parcel of land allowed to them, on condition they should supply the lord with poultry and eggs, and other small provisions for his board and entertainment. " •' Bordarii," adds Sir H. Ellis, " it should seem, were cottagers merely ; and in the Ely manuscript, we find Bordarii where the Breviate of the same entry in Domesday itself reads Cotarii." 4. Servi. These, as distinguished from the villani, seem personal, the latter being territorial bondmen ; or, in the English law language, villains in gross, as distinguished from villains regardant. The term serf, which is used on the continent as the translation of servus, is not recognized in Eng- lish law, though it is sometimes loosely used in common discourse to designate villain regardant. 5. Homines is synonymous with vassals, or feudatory tenants, and seems, in fact, a literal translation of the Saxon *' men ;" to be any one's man being the same as being his vassal. 6. Terra Regis. " The Terra Regis of Domes- day," says Mr. Allen, " was derived from a va- riety of sources. It consisted in part of land that happened at the time of the survey to be in the king's hands by escheat or forfeitures from his Norman followers. It was constituted, in part, of the lands of Saxon proprietors, Avhich had been confiscated after the Conquest, and had not been granted away to subjects. But it was chiefly com- posed of land that had been possessed by the Con- fessor in demesne, or in farm, or had been held by his thegns and other servants. Of the last de- scription, part was probably the private bocland of the Confessor, which had belonged to him as his private inheritance. But if we compare the num- ber of manors assigned to him as his demesne lands • 1 lost. p. 5. b. in Domesday, with the estates of bocland possessed by Alfred, it seems incredible that the whole should have been his private property. A great part must have been the folcland or public property of the state, of which, though the nominal proprietor, he was only the usufructuary possessor, and, with the license and consent of his witan, the distributor on the part of the public. The land which is called terra regis in the Exchequer Domesday, is termed, in the original returns of the Exon Domesday, demesne land of the king belonging to the king- dom* " 7. Terra.—" Put simply," says Sir H. Ellis, " uniformly signifies arable land, as distinct from wood, meadow, and common pasture."! 8. Hide. — The quantity of land it contained is uncertain. " Gervase of Tilbury," says Bishop Kennett, " makes it 100 acres. The Malmsbury MS., cited by Spelman, computes it at 96 acres, 1 hide, 4 vigates; and every vigate 24 acres. And yet the history of the foundation of the abbey of Battle makes 8 vigates go to 1 hide. But Poly- dorc Vergil blunders most, who reduces a hide to 20 acres. The truth seems to be, that a hide, a yard-land, a knight's fee, &c., contained no certain number of acres, but varied according to different places."J 9. Carucate. — The carucale was of Norman introduction, and probably nearly corresponded in Norman to hide in Saxon. Its measure is involved in as much uncertainty as that of tlie hide. Bishop Kennett gives instances of its application to quan- tities of land varying from 60 to as much as 1 50 acres. We now proceed to give some account of the royal revenue in this period. The complete establishment of the feudal system after the Norman conquest, put the kings of Eng- land in possession of revenues greatly more ample than their predecessors had enjoyed. The crown, in the first place, as appears from Domesday Book, acquired the entire property of above 1400 manors, the rents of which must have formed a large in- come altogether independent of casualties. These were in addition to 68 royal forests, 13 chases, and 781 parks, in different parts of the country, which were retained to serve as hunting grounds, and only became a source of revenue in conse- quence of the penalties to which the people were subjected for trespasses upon them in breach of the forest laws. But a very considerable annual return must also have been derived from the various feudal dues that remained payable even from the lands that were granted to his followers by the Norman conqueror. The crown, it is to be remembered, still retained to itself what was called the dominium directum, or property of these lands : the persons to whom they were granted held them only as tenants under the crown ; and, besides the services which they were bound to • Inquiryinto the Kisi! and Growth of the Rojal Prerogalive iu England. '8vo. Lond. 1830, ji. 160. + Introd. to Domesdiiv, v. i. p. 95. t Par Atiliq. Gloss. llidc. Chap. TIL] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 106G-1216. 581 render as vassals, they were subjected to the pay- ment both of quit-rents, which were regulai-ly col- lected by the sheriffs, and of other dues to the lord superior, which, although only exigible upon certain extraordinary occasions, were generally of much greater amount than the annual quit-rents. Of these, the principal were, the Relief, or fine, which, on the death of every tenant, his heir was obliged to pay to the lord before entering upon the possession of the lands — being the same thing that was known in the Saxon times by the name of the Heriot, that is, the suit of armour, a certain quan- tity of warlike weapons being the original exaction ; the Primer Seisin, a species of additional relief, consisting in some cases of a whole, in others of half a year's profits of the lands, which was pay- able only by tenants of the crown ; Fines of Aliena- tion, paid on the sale or grant by the tenant of any purt of the lands to a stranger; and Aids, which were called for to ransom the king whenever he was taken prisoner in war, to furnish a portion for any of his daughters when she was married, and to defray the expense incurred when his eldest son was made a knight. Every tenant of the crown also was bound, whenever the king went to war, to furnish an armed soldier, and to maintain him in the field for forty days, for each knight's fee that he possessed — the whole kingdom, as appears from Domesday Book, containing 60,215 such fees. This law, therefore, enabled the crown to raise and keep on foot a numerous army in times of war at no cost. The burden which it imposed upon the tenants of the crown was afterwards commuted by Henry II., into a money-payment of twenty shil- lings for each knight's fee, which was called an escuage, or scutage, that is, literally, a tax for fur- nishing a soldier armed with a bow.* The crown, besides, drew large profits from its prerogatives of wardship and of marriage, by the first of which it took the custody and drew the rents of all estates held of it so long as the tenant, if a male, was under twenty-one ; if a female under sixteen years of age : and by the second of which it disposed of all female heiresses, and also of all widows, of its tenants in marriage, or exacted a fine for the relinquishment of the right. Both of these, indeed, were rights of all lords of manorsjover their vassals ; and that of marriage was extended in the thirteenth century to heirs male as well as female. Another right which the king possessed in com- mon with other lords was, to all escheats, that is, to all the landed property of persons who either died without heirs or whose blood was attainted by the commission of treason or felony. The numerous forfeitures of the estates of the large proprietors, who were all tenants of the crown, that were constantly occurring in the first ages after the Conquest, must have brought immense wealth into the royal treasury. The estates of which the crown acquired possession in this manner formed the only fund from which it could legally make new grants — the alienation of any • See Barringlon's Observations on the Statutes (2nd edit.) p. 277. part of the original royal demesne being prohibited by lavv; and although this restriction was often violated, it was also at other times taken advantage of by the king, and made a pretext for resuming the illegal grants of his predecessors. It was in this way that Henry II., on his accession, reco- vered from the crown all the estates (with the ex- ception oidy of those acquired by the church) that had been alienated in the preceding times of con- fusion, whether by Stephen or by his own mother, the empress. The profits of the estates of all idiots also belonged to the crown, as well as all the personal effects of persons who had died without known heirs. The crown had likewise a right to all treasure trove, or money, plate, or bullion found hidden in the earth ; to all waifs, or stolen goods thrown away by the thief in his flight; to all estrays, or cattle found wandering without an owner; to all royal fish — that is, whales and stur- geons — either thrown ashore, or caught close to it; to all goods wrecked to which the owner did not establish his claim within a certain time ; and to all spoil taken in war. The crown also possessed various other regular sources of income, besides the produce of the crown lands, and the different dues from its vassals. There were various descriptions of what we should now call taxes, either permanently established, or occasionally imposed. In 1083, the Conqueror is said to have revived the old Saxon land-tax, or hideage, called the danegeld, of which an account has been given in the preceding book,* and to have advanced it to six shillings on each hide ; a rate at which, if the common account of the num- ber of hides of land in England may be depended upon, it would have produced above 80,000/., an amount of silver equal to what is contained in 240,000/. of our present money. Gervase of Til- bury, or the author of the ' Dialogue on the Ex- chequer,' commonly attributed to him, says that William would not revive this tax as an annual supply, nor yet would he entirely give it up, but reserved it to answer extraordinary and unforeseen occasions; for which reason it was rarely taken either by him or his successors, and only when actual wars with foreign nations, or the fear tliereof, came upon them. A land-tax, however, can be traced to have been repeatedly collected, either un- der this or another name, by all the succeeding kings. Such a tax appears, indeed, to have been regularly levied throughout a great part of the reign of Stephen ; it was occasionally revived by Henry II. ; and Richard I. is recorded to have, in the tenth year of his reign, collected it at the rate of five shillings on each hide. The aids, mentioned above, and also the scutages, appear to have been sometimes exacted under the name of a hideage, or carucage. A species of house-tax is mentioned in Domesday Book under the name of Hearth-money, and seems to have been collected both before and after the Conquest. Another species of hearth-money, of • Set; ante, p. 203. )82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Norman origin, which was collected till its aboli- tion on the accession of Henry I., was that called Moneyage, being a tax of a shilling on each hearth, payable every three years, as a recompense to the king for not exercising his prerogative, as he was entitled to do, in altering or debasing the coins. Customs, or duties upon the import and export of articles of merchandize, seem to have existed from the earliest times, and were no doubt continued after the Conquest. Similar duties appear to have been also paid by merchants selling their goods within the kingdom, for the use of the king's ware- houses, weights, measures, &c. Another perma- nent tax consisted of the tallages, that is, the cuttings, being a certain assessment upon their property, annually exacted from the inhabitants of the towns and boroughs throughout the kingdom. The first general personal tax, however, is said to have been imposed by Henry II., in 1166, for the support of the war in the Holy Land : it amounted only to sixpence in the pound upon each man's personal effects, to be collected in five years, at the rate of twopence the first year, and a penny each of the four years following. It was followed, in 1 188, on the news of the expulsion of the crusaders from Jerusalem, by another tax of the same kind, but much heavier in amount, being an exaction of the tenth of the personal property of all those who should not join the expedition which it was pro- posed to send to regain the holy city. This tax, which came to be known by the name of the Saladin tithe, is said to have produced 130,000/., of which the Je^vs contributed 60,000/. Some years after another new species of general taxation was intro- duced by Richard I., under the form of a scheme for the sale of licenses, which persons of different degrees were obliged to obtain before being per- mitted to engage in the exercise of the tournament ; an earl being called upon to pay twenty marks of silver, a baron ten marks, a knight having lands, four marks, and a knight without lands, two marks. Much additional revenue was also obtained by means of various prerogatives of the crown that yet remain to be mentioned. By that of purveyance and pre-emption the king's purveyors were entitled to take such provisions and other necessaries as were wanted for the use of his household at a certain fixed price, without the owner's consent, and also to impress the carriages and horses of the subject to do the king's business on the public roads. Considerable profits were derived from the tolls and other dues exacted at public fairs and markets ; from the coining of money, and, in later times at least, from the superintendence of weights and measures, for which fees were received ; and from the grant of patents and monopolies. All fines and amerciaments paid by persons convicted of breaches of the law also went to the king ; and this was one of the most productive sources of revenue in early times. The maintenance of the Saxon system of pecuniary expiation for crimes, including both compensation to the party injured and a fine to the king, was no doubt recommended to the Conqueror, among other considerations, by the supplies it provided for the royal coffers. It has even been suspected that Henry II ., in the insti- tution of the itinerant justices, looked, more to the benefit of the revenue than to any other object. The instructions given to them certainly show a great solicitude to turn their administration of the law to account in the augmentation of the royal profits. But the fines exacted for offences by no means formed the only revenue that the crown drew from its power of administering and executing the law. Privileges of all kinds were matter of open purchase from the king or the royal officers, by what were called oblations or offerings, which was really only another name for bribes. If the dealers, for instance, in any commodity in a particular place wished a certain price to be fixed upon it below which it might not be sold for a certain time, they bought an order to that effect. Numbers of persons are recorded in the rolls of the Exchequer to have paid large sums merely to obtain the favour or good will of the king, or to induce him to remit his displeasure. Other pay- ments were made to purchase his direct inter- ference with law proceedings. " Even in the reign of Henry II.," observes Lord Lyttelton, "we have instances of fines being paid to the king, from several of his subjects, for stopping or delaying of pleas, trials, and judgments, or for expediting and speeding them, or to have seisin or restitution of their lands or chattels, or to be replevied or bailed, or to be quit of certain crimes or certain methods of trial (as, for instance, by hot iron), or to have the assistance of the king in recovering their debts." The right of being tried by a jury was at first often purchased by a money payment. Fines were often paid for permission to hold or quit certain offices : and in some reigns all offices under the crown were sold. In the reign of John we find the wife of Hugh de Neville paying a fine of two hundred hens for permission to sleep one night with her husband; she was probably a ward of the crown who had married without the king's consent. It appears also to have been customary, when any of these bribes were paid to the king, for an acknowledgment of smaller amount, which passed under the name of the queen's gold, to be paid to his consort.* To all these irregular sources of revenue may be added the sums that were repeatedly obtained by actual extortion and robbery. The Conqueror, ac- cording to Matthew Paris, possessed himself in this way of great quantities of wealth by plundering the churches and monasteries, and seizing not only the money that had been deposited in these buildings for security, but even the shrines and chalices, and other furniture of the altars. Both Rufus and Stephen are accused of obtaining money by the same open disregard of all law and right. Tlie victims of the most frequent exactions of this • Mention in also found of the aurum reglnce, or queen's goUl, in the Saxon times. See Palgia.ve's Eng. Com., p. Go2. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1066-1216. 583 description, however, were the Jews. " As they fleeced the subjects of the realm," says Madox, " so the king fleeced them." Besides the general impositions that were laid upon them, so constant a stream of fines and amerciaments was derived from individuals of their body, that a particular office of the Exchequer was set apart for the management of the revenues thus obtained. In the same class of irregular gains may be placed the profits accruing from vacant church livings retained in the hands of the crown, which were sometimes very great. William Rufus is stated to have been at his death in the receipt of the temporalities of an archbishopric, four bishoprics, and eleven abbeys. Under this head, too, may be reckoned the sums first extracted from individuals in the same reign under the name of Benevolences, and the disguise of being free gifts, although they were in fact com- pulsory ; and the Loans, equally free and equally gifts with the benevolences, the credit of the con- trivance of which is assigned to Richard I. An- other of the expedients adopted by this king for raising money is said to have been the causing a new great seal to be made, under the pretence that the old one had been lost, and then declaring all existing royal grants to be invalid unless the holders should take out renewals and confirmations of them at the cost of a second payment of the fees. But it would be endless to enumerate all the forms of royal extortion of which the records of the period furnish instances. Any contrivance, however es- sentially iniquitous or oppressive, to which the thinnest colour of a legal character could be given, would appear to have answered the purpose when an urgent occasion arose ; and indeed at all times the sovereign seems to have been less restrained in his exactions from the subject by any barriers that the law presented, than by his own sense of the length to which it was prudent to go, or by the sibsolute failure of sources from which to feed his rapacity. It cannot be doubted that the annual returns which flowed into the royal treasury through all these channels must have been very great. Ordericus Vitalis, who was a contemporary of the Conqueror, assures us that the daily income of that prince amounted to above 1060/., without including the casual profits arising from the redemption of of- fenders and the other prerogatives of the crown. This would make a fixed ordinary revenue of about 400,000/. a-year in the money of that day, which would be equivalent in weight of silver to nearly 1,200,000/. of our money, and in real efficacy, no doubt, to a much larger sum. This statement of Ordericus has been rejected as incredible by Hume and other modern writers ; but from its precision and formality (the exact sum is set down, after the manner of keeping accounts in the Exchequer books, at one thousand and sixty pounds, thirty shillings, and three farthings, and that in words at full length), it would seem to have been taken from an official record, and it can only be reason- ably disputed on the supposition of some corruption having crept into the text. William is said to have left at his death, in the royal Treasury at Winches- ter, 60,000 pounds of silver, besides gold, jewels, vestments, and other articles of great value ; and this was probably only part of his accumulated wealth, much, if not most, of which we may sup- pose, he would have with him in Normandy, where he died. Nor is the account of the Conqueror's income given by Ordericus inconsistent with almost the only other notice of a similar kipd relating to this period that has been preserved, — that which is found in Hoveden of the revenue of Richard I. This historian relates that when Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, resigned the office of High Jus- ticiary in 1196, he proved from his books that the revenue he had collected for the king during the two preceding years amounted to not less than 1,100,000 marks, or about 750,000 pounds of silver. The revenue of the Conqueror in all probability considerably exceeded that of Richard. According to the author of the ' Dialogue on the Exchequer,' the rents of the crown lands were paid in kind from the Conquest till the latter part of the reign of Henry I., when, in consequence of the complaints of the vassals of the great oppressions they sufi'ered in being obliged to bring provisions for the royal household to different parts of the country ftom their own dwellings, that prince, with the advice of his great council, sent commissioners over the kingdom to estimate the money value of all the rents ; after which the sheriff" of each county was appointed to collect them, and to account for them to the Exchequer. It is certain, however, that they were partially paid in money before this time. The institution of the Exchequer, we may add, is ascribed by the author of the ' Dialogue ' to the Conqueror, who took the plan of it, he says, from the Exchequer of Normandy, yet with many differences, and some even in points of great im- portance. " The authority of this court," the writer proceeds, " is very eminent, as well in respect of the image of the king impressed on his great seal, which is constantly kept in the Treasury, as of the persons who sit there, by whose wisdom the whole state of the realm is preserved and main- tained in safety ; for there resides the king's chief justiciary, who is next to the king in jurisdiction; and all the greatest men of the kingdom, who are of his privy council, have also places there ; that whatsoever is decreed or determined in the pre- sence of so august an assembly may remain in- violable." This treatise appears to have been written in the reign of Henry II. 584 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY. HE Norman Con- quest, by the closer connexion which it ^established between Our island and the continent, must have laid the foundation for an ultimate extension of English commerce ; but a revolution which so completely over- turned the established order of things, and produced so much suffering to the body of the population, could not be favourable, in the first in- stance, or until after the lapse of a considerable space of time, either to the foreign trade of the country, or to the national industry in any of its other branches. For the first four reigns after the Conquest, accordingly, the notices that have come down to us on the subject of the present chapter are very few and unimportant. When the Normans first came over, however, they found England a country possessed of consi- derable capital, or accumulated wealth, and also, as it would seem, of a flourishing foreign commerce, which had, no doubt, chiefly grown up in the long, and, for the greater part, tranquil reign of the Con- fessor. We have already quoted the account given by William of Poictiers of the quantities of gold and silver and other precious effects which the Conqueror carried with him on his first visit to Normandy, and of the admiration which these spoils excited both in the Normans themselves and in strangers from other parts of the continent by whom they were seen.* The writer expressly testifies that merchants from distant countries were at this time wont to import to England articles of foreign manufacture that were unknown in Nor- mandy. He mentions also in other passages, the great wealth of the native or resident merchants, both of London and Winchester. Exeter was another town distinguished for its opulence ; and Ordericus Vitalis relates, that when it was attacked by the Conqueror, in ]068,t there were in the harbour a great number of foreign merchants and mariners, who were compelled by the citizens to assist them in their defence. These notices occur incidentally in the relation of political transactions or military events ; no chronicler has thought it worth his while to enumerate either the various points at which this foreign commerce was carried on, or • See ante, p. 364. t Ibid. p. 366. the articles in the exchange of which it consisted. If our information were more complete, we should pro- bably find that it was shared by various other towns besides those that have been mentioned. There is reason to believe that Hastings, Dover, Sandwicli, and the other towns on the coast nearest to France, which afterwards came to be distinguished as the Cinque Ports, and also Lincoln, and York, and other places in the more northern parts of the kingdom, all at this time maintained some com- mercial intercourse with the continent — with Italy, and perhaps also with Spain, as well as with France and the north of Europe or Germany. An active trade also seems to have existed between Ireland and both Bristol and Chester on the west coast. The principal exports at this early period were probably the same that for many ages after consti- 4 tuted the staples of our trade with foreign countries, namely, the natural productions of the island — its tin and lead, its wool and hides, and sometimes perhaps also its beeves, and the other produce of the same description reared in its pastures and forests. We find a regular trade in these and other articles established at the most remote date to which it is possible to carry back the history of English commerce ; and it may be safely presumed that they were the commodities for whicli the island was resorted to by foreign merchants from the earliest times. As for corn, it was probably at this date, as it long afterwards continued to be, sometimes an article of export, sometimes of import. The articles we have enumerated were, no doubt, those in the production of which the industry of the great body of the people was employed. The only manufac- ture for their skill in which the English were then eminent was the working in gold and silver ; and William of Poictiers states that the best German artists in that department found themselves encou- raged to come and take up their residence in the country. From this, we may presume that the chief demand for their productions and those of the native artists of the same class was among the English themselves ; but from the high repute of the English workmanship, some of the embroidered stuffs, of the vases, ornamented drinking-cups, and other similar articles fabricated here, would, no doubt, also be sent abroad. Considerable quan- tities of the precious metals must have been con- sumed in the manufacture of these articles ; and it is not unlikely that the supply was in great part obtained from Ireland, where it is agreed on all hands, that, whencesover it may have been obtained — whether from native mines, or from the ancient Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. intercourse of the island with the East, or from the Northmen, enriched by the spoils of their piracy, who had conquered and occupied a great part of the island in the period immediately preceding that with which we are now engaged — there was formerly an extraordinary abundance of gold and silver, of the former especially.* William of Malmsbury, it may be observed, seems to speak of the trade be- tween England and Ireland as one which the for- mer country could dispense with without any serious inconvenience, but upon which the latter was dependent for the necessaries of life. He tells us that upon one occasion, when the Irish monarch, Murcard (or Murtach O'Brien) behaved somewhat haughtily towards Henry I., he was speedily hum- bled by the English king prohibiting all trade between the two countries ; " for how wretched," adds the historian, " would Ireland be if no goods were imported into it from England." Perhaps English agricultural produce was exchanged for Irish gold. In the violent transference and waste of pro- perty, however, that followed the Conquest, and tlie long struggle the invaders had to sustain before they made good their footing in the country, the wealth, and commerce, and general industry of England, must all have received a shock from which it was not possible that, they could rapidly recover. The minds and the hands of men were necessarily called away from all peaceful pursuits, and engaged in labours which produced no wealth. Nor was the system of government and of society * " It appears that tliere were greater stores of the precious metals in Ireland than could well be supposed. Large sums of gold and silver were frequently given for the ransom of men of rank taken in battle; and duties or rents, paid in gold or silver, to ecclesiastical establishments, occur very often in the Irish annals. At the conse- cration of a church in the year 1157, Murha O'Lochlin, king of Ire- land, gave a town, 150 cows, and 60 ounces of gold, to God and the clergy: a chief. called O'Carrol gave also 60 ounces of gold; and Tiernan O'Ruark'swife gave as much — donations which would have been esteemed vei'y great in that age in I'ngland or upon the continent. What superstition so liberally gave, some species of industry must have acquired , and that was most probably the pasturage of cattle . . . unless we will suppose that the mines of Ireland, which, though unnoticed by any writer, seem to have been at some time very productive, were still capable of supplying the sums collected in the coffers of the chiefs and the clergy." — Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, p. 334, See also ante, p. 14, that was at last established favourable, even after its consolidation and settlement, to trade and in- dustry. It was a system of oppression and severe exaction on the one hand, depriving the industrious citizen of the fruits of his exertions and of the motive to labour ; and, on the other hand, it was a system of which the animating principle was the encouragement of the martial spirit, to which that of trade and industry is as much opposed as crea- tion is opposed to destruction. Tvvo charters were granted to the city of London by the Conqueror, and a third by Henry I. ; but it is remarkable, that not even in the last-mentioned, which is of considerable length, and confeirs numer- ous privileges, is there anything relating to the subject of commerce, with the exception of a clause, declaring that all the men of London and their goods should be exempted throughout England and also in the ports from all tolls and other customs. There is no reference to the city itself as a great mart, or to either its shippfng or its port. Even in the general charter granted by Henry I., on his accession, there is not a word in relation to com- merce or merchants. It is stated, however, by William of Poictiers, that the Conqueror invited foreign merchants to the country by assurances of his protection. The numerous ships in which the Conqueror brought over his troops — amounting, it is said, in all, to about 700 vessels of considerable size, be- sides more than three times that number of inferior dimensions — must have formed, for some time, a respectable royal navy. William of Poictiers in- forms us that the first care of the duke, after disem- barking his men, was to erect defences for the pro- tection of his sliips ; and most of them were, doubt- less, preserved, and afterwards employed in war or commerce. It is the opinion of a late writer, that the numerous fleet thus brought over by the Con- queror, " when not engaged in ferrying himself and his armies to and from the continent, was probably employed in trading between his old and new territories and the adjacent coasts of France Ship Bcildino. Royal MS. 2 B vii. 586 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. and Flanders, whicli were all now connected with the new masters of England."* We find a naval force occasionall}^ employed in the wars even of the first English kings after the Conquest. The Saxon Chronicle states, that when the Conqueror made his expedition against Scotland in 1072, he sent a fleet to attack that country hy sea, at the same time that he invaded it in person at the head of his army. The good service done for Rufus against his brother Robert by the privateers which he per- mitted his English subjects to fit out in the begin- ning of his reign, has been mentioned in the nar- rative of civil and military transactions. f A fleet was also equipped by Henry I., to oppose the threatened invasion of Robert, on his accession, the greater part of which, however, deserted to the enemy. J Provision, indeed, was made by the Conqueror for the defence of the kingdom, when- ever it should become necessary, by a naval force, by means of the regulations which he established in regard to the Cinque Ports — originally Hastings, Hythe, Romney, Dover, and Sandwich — each of which towns was bound, upon forty days' notice, to furnish and man a certain number of ships of war, in proportion probably to its estimated wealth or population. Other towns in different parts of the coast also appear to have held of the crown by the same kind of service. One of the old Saxon laws revived or continued by the Conqueror, and the only one in the collec- tion of enactments which passes under the name of his charter, having any reference to trade, is the prohibition against all purchases above a certain amount, except in the presence of witnesses. " No one shall buy," it is declared, " either what is living or what is dead, to the value of four pennies, without four witnesses, either of the borough or of the village. "§ We have already mentioned the establishment by Henry I. of the colony of Flemings in the dis- trict^of Ross, in Pembrokeshire. (| These foreigners had come over in the reign of the Conqueror, driven from their native country, it is said, by an inun- dation of the sea, and they had been settled, in the first instance, chiefly about Carlisle and the neighbouring ports, and as it would seem, with a view merely to the service their hardihood and skill in war might be of in the defence of the northern frontier of the kingdom. But they were as dexterous in handling both the plough and the shuttle as the sword. Henry is said to have been induced to remove them to Wales, by finding that they and the English, with whom they were mixed, did not agree well together. In the dis- trict of which he put them in possession, and which he had taken from the Welsh, they maintained their ground against all the efibrts of the hostile people by whom they were surrounded, to dislodge them, and soon came to be regarded as the force to be mainly depended upon for keeping the Welsh in • Macpherson's Annah of Commerce, i. 307. + See ante, p. 394. } Ibid. p. 409. § See ante, p. 270. || Ibid. p. 412. I check. By these Flemings the manufacture of woollen cloths appears to have been first intro- duced into this country ; and it is supposed that they soon came to be made for exportation as well as for home consumption. Giraldus Cambrensis describes the foreigners as " a people' excellently skilled both in the business of making cloth and in that of merchandize, and always ready with any labour or danger to seek for gain by sea or land."* It is probable that they also introduced some im- provements in agriculture; and, altogether, the example of industry, activity, and superior acquire- ments set by this interesting colony — the last, as it has been remarked, of any consequence settled in any part of the island till the coming over of the French Protestant silk-weavers, after the revoca- tion of the edict of Nantes, in 1685 — could not fail to be of high public benefit. Their language was very nearly the same with the English ; and the district in which they dwelt, it seems, used to be called Little England beyond Wales ; in fact, they made the whole county of Pembroke, though lying at the further extremity of Wales, an English county. Henry TI. afterwards added to their numbers by permitting some of those of their coun- trymen who had served as mercenaries under Ste- phen to settle among them. It is said that the descendants of these Flemings may still be distin- guished from their Welsh neighbours. The Flemings were indebted, both for the wel- come reception they met with in the first instance, and for the permanent settlement they obtained, to their martial more than to their commercial skill — to their being a people, as Giraldvis expresses it, equally most ready, now at the plough — now at the sword. t The Jews, who came over in great num- bers soon after the Conquest, were a people of altogether another stamp. Precluded by their re- ligion from engaging in the wars of any of the European nations among whom they had settled, they had become mere traders, and were, indeed, men of peace in a more strict sense than any other class of persons in those days, the clergy themselves not excepted. Independently, therefore, of the odium to which their faith exposed them, their habits made them in a peculiar degree objects of hatred and contempt to the warlike population of England and the other countries in which they took up their residence. Yet almost wherever commerce had taken any root, there were they to be found, pursuing perseveringly, under obloquy, danger, and the cruellest oppression, their peculiar trade. To draw down upon them still more of the popular suspicion and dislike in a rude and igno- rant age, that trade was not any species of industry by which produce of any kind was visibly created; it did not necessarily imply even the exertion of any peculiar powers or acquirements ; it was labour neither of the hand nor of the head. Yet it was, in truth, a trade as essential to the creation of • Itinerar. Carab. i. ii. Giraldus adds, tliat they were admirably- skilled in soothsaying, by the inspection of the entrails of beasts 1 t Nunc ad aratra, nunc ad arma, gens promptissima. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 587 wealth as any labour. The Jews were the capital- ists of those times ; they were the dealers in that other element, by a combination with which alone it is that labour itself can, in the creation of wealth, accomplish any extraordinary results. Even in that dark and turbulent age the inherent power of property was strikingly evinced in their case, by the protection which it long secured to them, not- withstanding all the hostility of the popular feeling, and the disregard of them by the law itself. It was early found necessary to support them in their rights over their debtors ; and, while affairs went on in their ordinary course, it does not appear that a Jew ever had any greater difficulty in recovering the money owing to him than a Christian. The law, indeed, seems to have considered the Jews as the property of the king ; and he oppressed and plundered them to any extent that he deemed pru- dent. But he did not usually allow them to be injured by others; and perhaps, indeed, they were more secure under the royal protection than they would have been under that of the law. Some of the kings, William Rufus in particular, excited much popular clamour by favouring them, as it ^\as alleged, too much. Their wealth enabled iiiem, at different times, to purchase charters from the crown. For one which they obtained from King John, and which is styled a confirmation of their charters, they are recorded to have paid four thousand marks ; and it refers to previous charters which they had received both from Henry I. and Henry II.* There are traces, as we have already had occasion ) observe, of an intercourse having subsisted ■tween these islands and the East from the remotest mes. The mere derivation of the people of -urope from Asia most probably, of itself, had always kept up some connexion between the East and the West ; neither the Gothic nor the earlier Celtic colonists of Europe seem to have ever alto- gether forgotten their Oriental origin ; the memory of it lives in the oldest traditions alike of the Irish and of the Scandinavians. But even within the historic period we find a succession of different causes operating to keep up a connexion between Britain and the East. As long as the country was Tuider the dominion of the Romans it was of course united by many ties, and by habits of regular intercourse, with all the other parts of the extended empire to which it belonged. Afterwards, in the Saxon times, the establishment of Christianity in the country contributed in various ways to keep up its connexion with the East. The Greek learning, and probably also some of the Greek arts, were introduced by Archbishop Theodore and other churchmen from Asia : at a later date we find Alfred despatching a mission to the Christians in India ; and not long afterwards we find pilgrimage to the Holy Land becoming a common practice. From this practice we may most properly date the commencement of our modem trade with the East ; it has ever since been a well-established and * Madox, Hist. Excheq., p. 174. regular intercourse. The pilgrims, from the first, very generally combined the characters of devotees and merchants. Then, towards the close of the eleventh century, commenced the crusades, which for nearly two hundred years kept, as it were, a broad highway open between Europe and Asia, along which multitudes of persons of all sorts were continually passing and repassing. Some curious evidences of the extent to which eastern commodities now began to find their way to the remotest extremities of Europe may be col- lected from the records of the times. One very remarkable notice occurs in the Register of the Priory of St. Andrew, in Scotland, in which it is related that Alexander I., when bestowing a certain endowment of land upon the church of that city, presented at the same time an Arabian horse which he was wont to ride, with his bridle, saddle, shield, and silver lance, a magnificent pall or horse-cloth, and other Turkish arms (arma Turchensia) of various descriptions. He caused the horse, arrayed in its splendid furniture, to be led up to the high altar of the church ; and the chronicler adds that the Turkish armour, the shield, and the saddle were still preserved there, and shown to the people, who came from all parts of the country to behold them. Alexander reigned from 1107 till 1124; and this account is written in the reign of his brother and successor, David I.* But the most precious gift which Europe ob- tained from the East within the present period was the knowledge of the art of rearing and managing the silk-worm. Cloth of silk had long been known in England and other European countries, to which it was brought in a manufactured state from Greece and other parts of the East. Afterwards the Sara- cens introduced the art of weaving silk into Spain. The silk-worm, however, was first brought from Greece, in 1 146, by Roger, the Norman king of Sicily, who, in an expedition which he led against Athens, Thebes, and Corinth, carried off a great number of silk-weavers from these cities, and settled them in his capital of Palermo. From them the Sicilians learned both how to weave the cloth and how to rear the worm ; and within twenty years from this time the silk fabrics of Sicily were celebrated over Europe. It is not till some centuries later that we have any accounts of the establishment of any branch of the manufacture in this country ; but from about this time we find silks becoming much more abundant in England as well as in the other countries of Europe than formerly — and they must now have been imported, probably from Spain, Sicily, and Italy, as well as from Asia, in considerable quantities. It so happens that rather more information has come down to us respecting the commerce of Scot- land than of England during the first half of the twelfth century. We have not only some very interesting notices respecting David I., who reigned • Extracts from the Ilet;ister of St. Andrew's, printed in Pinkerton's Inquiry, i. 464. The circtirastance is also mentioned by Wyntoii, who is, however, a much later authority. 588 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. from 1 124 till 1153, from the historian Ailred, or Aldred, who was educated in Scotland along with Prince Henry, David's eldest son ; but we have also a collection of the laws and customs of the burghs of Scotland, which professes to be as old as the reign of the same king, and is generally admitted to be, in the greater part, of that anti- quity. Ailred celebrates the attention of David to foreign commerce. He exchanged, he says, the produce of Scotland for the wealth of other king- doms, and made foreign merchandize abound in his harbours. Among the laws of the burghs attributed to him the following may be quoted as referring to trade with other countries : — By chap. 1 0, all goods imported by sea are ordered not to be sold before being landed, except salt and herrings; by chap. 18, foreign merchants are pro- hibited from buying wool, hides, or other goods, from any but burgesses; and by chap. 48, the lands of all persons trading to foreign countries are exempted from seizure for any claim whatever during their absence, unless they appeared to have withdrawn on purpose to evade justice. From this regulation it would appear that some of the Scottish merchants already traded themselves to foreign parts. Another of these burgh laws pro- hibits all persons except burgesses from buying wool for dyeing, or making into cloth, or for cutting cloth for sale, except the owners of sheep, who might do with their own wool what they chose. The manufacture of woollen cloth had, therefore, been by this time introduced into Scot- land. The art had probably been taught to the inha- bitants of that country by settlers from England. William of Newbury, writing about twenty years after the death of David, says that the towns and burghs of Scotland were then chiefly occupied by English inhabitants. We know, too, that in the next reign numbers of Flemings left England and took refuge in Scotland. " We can trace the settle- ment of these industrious citizens," says Mr. Tytler, " during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in almost every part of Scotland ; in Berwick, the great mart of our foreign commerce ; in the various towns along the east coast ; in St. Andrews, Perth, Dumbarton, Ayr, Peebles, Lanark, Edinburgh ; and in the districts of Renfrewshire, Clydesdale, and Amiandale. There is ample evidence of their industrio\is progress in Fife, in Angus, in Aber- deenshire, and as far north as Inverness and Ur- quhart. It would even appear, from a record of the reign of David II., that the Flemings had pro- cured from the Scottish monarchs a right to the protection and exercise of their own laws. It has been ingeniously conjectured that the story of Malcolm IV. having dispossessed the ancient in- habitants of Moray, and of his planting a new colony in their stead, may have originated in the settlement of the Flemings in that remote and re- bellious district.* The early domestic manufactures of our country, the woollen fabrics which are men- tioned by the statutes of David, and the dyed and • See ante, p. 543. shorn cloths which appear in the charter of Wil- liam the Lion to the burgh of Perth, must have been greatly improved by the superior dexterity and knowledge of the Flemings ; and the constant commercial intercourse which they kept up with their own little states could not fail to be beneficial in imparting the knowledge and improvements of the continental nations into the remoter country where they had settled."* A manuscript in the Cottonian Library, the work of a contemporary writer, is quoted by Mr. Macpherson for the fact, that, in the reign of David I., the Frith of Forth was frequently covered with boats manned by English, Scottish, and Belgic fishermen, who were attracted by the great abundance of fish (most pro- bably herrings) in the neighbourhood of the island of May. Anderson speaks of the Netherlanders resorting to Scotland so early as about the year 836, for the purpose of buying salted fish of the Scotch fishermen ;t but his authority for this state- ment is not known. Mr. Macpherson considers the passage in the Cottonian Manuscript to be " the very first authentic and positive notice of a fishery, having any claim to consideration as a commercial object, upon the North-British coast." He also doubts if it be not " the earliest notice of English fishermen going so far from their own ports, on a fishing voyage, if they were indeed subjects of England; for in the age of the writer here quoted the Scottish subjects on the south side of the Frith of Forth were called English."! The long reign and able and successful govern- ment of Flenry II. not only enabled the commerce of England to recover from the depression under which it had languished during the w'hole of the turbulent and miserable reign of liis predecessor, but eventually raised it to an extent and importance which it had certainly never attained either since the Conquest or before it, at least since the de- parture of the Romans. The intercourse, in par- ticular between this country and France, must immediately have been placed upon a new footing, and no doubt greatly augmented, both by the resto- ration of the old connexion with Normandy, and still more by Henry's acquisition through his marriage of the great Duchy of Aquitaine, which gave the English crown the dominion of all the French coast from Picardy to the Pyrenees. Some years afterwards the conquest of Ireland, and the establishment in that island of a numerous English population, must have also considerably extended the range, or at least added to the activity, of English commerce in that other direction. In several contemporary writers we find notices of the commerce of London, and also of other English cities, in this reign. Henry II., in a charter which is without date, but which was pro- bably granted soon after he came to the throne, confirmed to the citizens of London all the privi- leges which they enjoyed under his grandfatlier, • Historv of Scotland, ii. 287. t Originof Commeice, i. 77. (Edit. on7S7.) j Annals of Commerce, i. 323. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 589 witli some others in addition, none of which, how- ever, have any particular reference to the commerce of the city. The fullest and most curious account we have of London at this period is that given in the inti'oduction to a Latin Life of Becket hy a monk of Canterbury, of Norman descent, named William Fitz- Stephen, or Stephanides, as he calls himself in Latin, which appears to have been written about 1 1 74. He says that no city in the world sent out its wealth and merchandize to so great a distance ; but lie has not recorded either the description of goods that were thus exported or the countries to which they were sent. Among the articles, however, which were then brought to London by foreign merchants, he enumerates gold, spices, and frankincense from Arabia; precious stones from Egypt; purple cloths from India; palm-oil from Bagdad ; furs and ermines from Norway and Russia; arms from Scythia; and wines from France. The citizens he describes as distinguished above all others in England for the elegance of their manners and dress and the mag- nificence of their tables. It was in this reign, it may be observed, that London first became de- cidedly, what Fitz-Stephen calls it, the capital of the kingdom of England {i-egni Anglorum sedes). Winchester, the ancient royal seat of the West Saxons, although it was the place where the early Norman kings kept their treasury, had begun to decline even before the Conquest, and had sus- tained such calamities in the civil wars of the time of Stephen that it was never afterwards in a con- dition to dispute the ascendancy of its rival on the Thames. At this time, according to Fitz-Stephen, and his account is confirmed by Peter of Blois, there were, in the city and suburbs, thirteen large conventual churches and 126 parochial ones. The archdeacon says that the population was only 40,000 ; but this is not absolutely inconsistent with the statement of Fitz-Stephen, that in the reign of Stephen there issued fi'om the city, of fighting men, no fewer than 60,000 foot and 20,000 horse, since the army assembled in the city, or raised under the orders of its authorities, might very possibly greatly exceed the number of the actual inhabitants. It is most probable, however, that there is an error in the numbers found in Fitz-Stephen's text as it has come down to us. He adds, that the dealers in the various sorts of commodities, and the la- bourers and artizans of every kind, were to be found every day stationed in their several distinct places throughout the city, and that a market was held every Friday in Smithfield for the sale of horses, cows, hogs, &c. At this time Ludgate, now far within Temple Bar, was the west end of London ; the space from thence to Westminster was a tract of fields and gardens : Moorfields was a large lake of water, into which ran several streams turning mills ; the rising grounds towards Penton- ville and Islington were covered with corn and grass ; and a large district of country beyond was a forest, that had probably stood since the creation, in which the citizens hunted wild-boars and other game. According to Fitz-Stephen, the citizens of London were distinguished from those of other towns by the appellation of barons ; and Malms- bury, an author of the same age, also tells us that, from their superior opulence and the greatness of the city, they were considered as ranking with the chief people or nobility of the kingdom. " It is filled," he adds, " with merchandize brought by the merchants of all countries, but chiefly those of Germany ; and, in case of scarcity of corn in other parts of England, it is a granary where the article may be bought cheaper than anywhere else." It was in London that the Jews chiefly resided, and many of them were no doubt among its wealthiest citizens. The following are some of the most remarkable particulars that are to be collected from contem- porary authorities respecting other English cities at this period. Exeter, according to Malmsbury, was a magnificent city, filled Avith opulent citizens. Henry of Huntingdon states, that in consequence of its being the principal port for the mineral pro- ductions of the adjacent country, it was so much resorted to by foreign merchants, that everything that could be desired might be purchased there in abundance. Bristol is mentioned by Malmsbury as having a great trade, not only with Ireland, but also with Norway and other foreign countries. Both Gloucester and Winchester are celebrated for the excellence of their wines made from the grapes of the country. For foreign wines, again, Chester would appear to have been one of the chief ports, if we may trust the testimony of a monk of that city named Lucian, whom Camden quotes. According to this authority, ships repaired to Chester in great numbers, not only from Ireland, but also from Gascony, Spain, and Germany, and supplied the inha1)itants with all sorts of commodities ; " so that," adds Lucian, " being comforted by the favour of God in all things, we drink wine very plenti- fully ; for those countries have abundance of vine- yards." Dunwich, on the coast of Suffolk, now reduced by the encroachments of the sea to an in- significant village, is described by William of New- burgh as a famous sea-port town, stored with various kinds of riches ; and in the reign of John this town is stated to have paid twice as much rent to the king as any other upon the neighbouring coast. Norwich is described in general terms by Malmsbury as famous for its commerce and the numbers of its population. Lynn is described by Newburgh as a city distinguished for commerce and abundance, the residence of many wealthy Jews, and resorted to by foreign vessels. Lincoln, Malmsbury speaks of as having become one of the most populous seats of home and foreign trade in England, principally in consequence of a canal of about seven miles in length, made by Henry I., from the Trent to the Witham, which enabled foreign vessels to come up to the city. Grimsby is noted by the Norwegian, or Icelandic writers, as an empo- rium resorted to by merchants from Norway, Scot- land, Orkney, and the Western Islands. York is 590 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. mentioned by Malmsbury as resorted to by vessels both from Germany and Ireland, though surely it lay very much out of the way of any trade with the latter country. Whitby, Hartlepool, and some other towns on the same part of the east coast, appear to have possessed shipping. Berwick, as already noticed, was the most eminent of the Scottish towns for foreign commerce. It had many ships. Perth, however, was at this time, properly speaking, the capital of Scotland ; and Alexander Neckham, abbot of Cirencester, a Latin poet of this age, says that the whole kingdom was supported by the wealth of that city. Inverleith (now Leith), Striveling (now Stirling), and Aberdeen, are also mentioned in charters as places at which there was some ship- ping and trade, and where customs were collected.* Glasgow was as yet a mere village ; it was made a burgh, sul)ject to the bishop, by William the Lion, in 1175 ; but in the charter there is no mention of a guild, of any mercantile privilege, or of any trade whatever, except the liberty of having a weekly market. Edinburgh, though it was probably made a burgh by David I., was of little note till the middle of the fifteenth century. In Ireland, Dub- lin, which Henry II. granted by a charter in 1172 to be inhabited by his men of Bristol, is spoken of by Newburgh as a noble city, which, it is added, somewhat hyperbolically, might be considered as almost the rival of London for its opulence and commerce. There are two laws of Henry II. relating to commerce, that deserve to be here mentioned. Henry I. had so far mitigated the old law or custom, which made all wrecks the property of the crown, as to have enacted, that if any human being escaped alive out of the ship, it should be no wreck ; and his grandson still farther extended the operation of the humane principle thus introduced, by decree- ing, that if either man or beast should be found alive in any vessel wrecked upon the coasts of Eng- land, Poictiers, Gascony, or the isle of Oleron, the property should be preserved for the owners, if claimed within three months. The other law is the last clause of the statute called the 'Assize of Arms,' published in 1181: it very emphatically commands the Justices in Eyre in their progress through the counties, to enjoin upon all the lieges, as they love themselves and their property, neither to buy nor sell any ship for the purpose of its being carried out of England, and that no person should convey, or cause to be conveyed away any mariner out of England. It has been inferred, from these regulations, that both English ships and English seamen were already held to be superior to those of other countries-; but they can only be considered as showing that the naval force of the kingdom had now come to be looked upon as an important arm of its strength, and was the object of a watchful and jealous superintendence. The only articles that are mentioned as imported into England from foreign countries in this period, * See these and other fiicts collected, and the authorities cited, by the laborious and accurate Macpherson, Ann. of Com. i. 330—333. are the spiceries, jewels, silks, furs, and other luxuries enumerated by Fitz-Stephen, of which there could not be any very extensive consump- tion ; some woad for dyeing, and occasionally corn, which was at other times an article of export. The exports, on the other hand, appear to have been of much greater importance and value. Henry of Huntingdon enumerates as being annually sent to Germany by the Rhine, great cargoes of flesh and of different kinds of fish (especially herrings and oysters), of milk, and, above all, of what he calls " most precious wool." He also mentions mines of copper, iron, tin, and lead as abundant; and it appears from other authorities that there was a large exportation both of lead and tin. The roofs of the principal churches, palaces and castles, in all parts of Europe, are said to have been covered with English lead ; and the exports of tin from mines belonging to the crown in Cornwall and Devon- shire furnished at this time and for ages afterwards a considerable portion of the royal revenue. It is probable also that hides and skins, and woollen cloths were exported, as well as wool. All this could not be paid for by the few articles of luxury above enumerated ; and it may, therefore, be con- cluded that a large part of the annual returns de- rived by the country at this time from its foreign trade was received in the form of money or bullion. This supposition is confirmed by the account of Huntingdon, who expressly informs us that the Germans paid for the wool and provisions they bought in silver ; on which account, he adds, that metal is even more plentiful in England than in Germany, and all the money of England is made of pure silver. The balance of trade, then, was what is commonly called in favour of England, unreasonably enough, as if nothing were wealth but gold and silver. The country at this time did not really become richer by exchanging its produce for money, than it would have done by taking foreign produce or manufactures in exchange for it. Nor, even if we should hold money to be the only true wealth, could it have accumulated in the country with more rapidity or to a greater amount vmder the one system than under the other ; for a country in a given social condition can only retain a certain quantity of money in circulation within it, and that quantity it always will obtain, if it is able to obtain anything else of equivalent value. Money is ne- cessary, and profitable, to a certain extent, just as shoes or hats are ; but beyond that extent, neither they nor it are either profitable or necessary — that is to say, something else for which the article could be exchanged would be more useful. The money anciently obtained by England through its foreign trade did not enrich the country, or even remain in it ; so much of it as was not required for the pur- poses of circulation was as sure to find its way abroad again, as the stone thrown up into the air is to return to the ground. If the commerce of England had not struck far deeper root, and grown to far greater magnitude and strength at the time of the death of Henry II. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 591 than at that of Henry I., somewhat more than half a century before, the reign of Richard would have been, in proportion to its length, nearly as ruinous to it as was the disorderly and distracted reign of Stephen. All the activity and resources of the country were now turned from trade and in- dustry to the wasteful work of war, which was carried on, indeed, in a foreign and distant land, and therefore did not produce the confusion and deso- lation within the kingdom that would have re- sulted from a civil contest ; but, on the other hand, was, doubtless, on that account attended with a much larger expenditure both of money and of human life. Yet even from Richard's warlike preparations, and the pecuniary burdens which his expedition in other ways brought upon his people, we may collect a few notices of interest in regard to the progress of the commerce, navigation, and wealth of the coun- try. The fleet which carried out his troops to the Holy Land was probably, as already observed, by far the most magnificent that had ever as yet left the English shores, although some of those of for- mer times may have consisted of a greater number of vessels. But the barks, amounting, it is said, to some thousands, in which the Conqueror brought over his army from Normandy, and the four hun- dred vessels in which Henry H. embarked his forces for the conquest of Ireland, not to speak of the more ancient navies of Edgar and Ethelred in the Saxon times, must have been craft of the smallest size, or what would now be merely called boats. Besides a crowd of vessels of this descrip- tion — the immber of which is not given — Richard's fleet, when it assembled in the harbour of Messina, is said to have consisted of thirteen large vessels, called busses or dromons, fifty-three armed galleys, and a hundred carricks, or transports.* All these vessels were constructed both to row and to sail, the dromons having three sails, probably each on a separate mast, and both they and the galleys having, as it would appear, in general two tiers or banks of oars. " Modern vessels," says Vinisauf, " have greatly fallen off from the magnificence of ancient times, when the galleys carried three, four, five, and even six tiers of oars, whereas now they rarely exceed two tiers. The galleys, anciently called lihurncc, are long, slender, and low, with a beam of wood fortified with iron, commonly called a spur, projecting from the head, for piercing the sides of the enemy. There are also small galleys called galeons, which, being shorter and lighter, steer better, and are fitter for throwing fire."t The fire here alluded to is the famous Greek fire, the great instrument of destruction at this time, both in en- counters at sea, and in assaults upon fortified places on shore. This expedition of Richard was the first in v/hich an English fleet had accomplished so long and various a navigation ; and, under the conduct of so energetic a commander, it could not fail to give an impulse to the naval progress of the • See ante, p. 494. I Translation in Macpherson, Ann. of Com, i. 3>')2, country, and to raise both the military skill and the seamanship of English sailors. The kingdom had not yet recovered from the ex- hausting exertions it had made in fitting out this great fleet and army, when it was called upon to raise what was in those days an immense sum for the king's ransom. The agreement was, that before Richard's liberation, his gaoler, the emperor, should be paid 100,000 marks of silver, besides 50,000 more afterwards — an amount of money then deemed so great, that a contemporary foreign chronicler, Otto de St. Bias, declines mentioning it, as he could not, he says, expect to be believed. It does not clearly appear how much of the 150,000 marks was paid in all ; but it is stated that 70,000 marks of silver, equal in weight to nearly 100,000/. of our money, were remitted to Germany before the king was set free. The grievous exactions by which this mo- ney was raised have been alluded to in a former chapter.* It was not all obtained till three suc- cessive collections had been made. Four years before this, it may be noted, in the beginning of Richard's reign, the much poorer kingdom of Scotland had repurchased its independence at the cost of 10,000 marks. A few laws for the regulation of trade are re- corded to have been enacted by Richard after his return home. The same year in which he returned, a prohibition was issued against the exportation of corn, " that England," as it was expressed, " might not suflfer from the want of its own abundance." The violation of this law is stated to have been punished in one instance with merciless severity : some vessels having been seized in the port of St. Valery, loaded with English corn for the king of France, Richard burned both the vessels and the town (which belonged to that king), hanged the seamen, and also put to death some monks who had been concerned in the illegal transaction. He then, after all this wild devastation, divided the corn among the poor. In 1197 also, a law was passed for establishing a uniformity of weights and measures, and for regulating the dyeing and sale of woollen cloths. The business of dyeing, except in black, it was enacted, should only be carried on in cities and boroughs, in which alone also any dyeing stuff's, except black, were allowed to be sold. It appears that the duties upon woad imported into London in 1 195 and 1 196, amounted to 96/. 6,?. Sd. " If London alone," observes Macpherson, " im- ported woad to an extent that could bear such a pay- ment (and it will afterwards appear that but a small part of the whole woad imported arrived in Lou- don), the woollen manufacture, to which it was ap- parently mostly confined, must have been somewhat considerable. But there is reason to believe, that but it-vffine woollen goods were made in England, and that the Flemings, who were famous at this time for their superior skill in the woollen manu- facture, as is evident from the testimony of several of the English historians of this age, continued for a series of ages to supply most of the western • See ante, p, 510. 592 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. parts of Europe, and even some of the Mediterra- nean countries, with fine cloths, which the Italians called French cloths, either as reckoning Flanders a part of France (as, indeed, in feudal language it was), or because they received them from the ports of the south coast of that country." Much of the wool used in Flanders, however, appears to have been obtained from England. In the History, in- deed, which bears the name of Matthew of West- minster, it is said that all the nations of the world used at this time to be kept warm by the wool of England, which was made into cloth by the Fle- mish manufacturers. In the patent of incorporation of the guild of weavers in London by Henry II., granted in the thirty-first year of his reign, there is a prohibition against mixing Spanish with English wool in the making of cloth, from which it may be inferred that the wool of England was in this age of superior quality to that obtained from Spain. From the commencement of his reign, John appears to have affected to favour the interests of the part of the community connected with trade, now daily rising into more importance, and to have courted their support against the power of the nobility and the clergy. Immediately after his accession, he granted three charters to the citizens of London ; the first generally confirming all their ancient rights and privileges ; the second empower- ing them to remove all kidells, or wears, for catch- ing fish, from the rivers Thames and Medway, the navigation of which had been much impeded by these erections, set up by the keeper of the Tower and others; and the third confirming to them the fee-farm of the sheriffwicks of London and Middle- s.ex at the ancient rent, and also giving to them the election of the sheriifs. For these charters he received 8000/. He also, probably at the same time, addressed letters to the most important com- mercial towns throughout the kingdom, promising that foreign merchants of every country should have safe conduct for themselves and their mer- chandize in coming into and going out of Eng- land, agreeably to the due right, and usual customs, and should meet with the same treatment in Eng- land that the English merchants met with in their countries.* The places to which these letters were sent were the towns of London, Winchester, South- ampton, Lynn, the Cinque Ports, and the counties of Sussex, Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, Dorset, Somer- set, Hants, Hertford, Essex, Devon, and Cornwall; *' whence it appears," observes Macpherson, " that the south coast, and the east coast only as far as Norfolk, were esteemed the whole, or at least the chief, of the commercial part of the country." It is certain, however, that several towns beyond these limits had already risen to considerable com- mercial importance. In a list of towns which in the year 1205 paid the tax called the quinzieme, or fifteenth, which appears to have been a spe- cies of excise or tallage exacted from merchants, we find enumerated the following places in the northern part of the kingdom: — Newcastle in * Maitland's Hist, of London, i. 73-75. -Hakluyt's A'oyagos, i. 129. Northumberland ; Yarum, Gotham, AVhitby, Scar- borough, Headon, Hull, York, and Selby, in Yorkshire; and Lincoln, Barton, Ymmingham, Grimsby, and Boston, in Lincolnshire. The other towns in the list are Lynn, Yarmouth, and Norwich, in Norfolk ; Dunwich, Orford, and Ipswich, in Suffolk ; Colchester in Eseex ; Sandwich and Dover in Kent ; Rye, Winchelsea, Pevensey, Seaford, and Shoreham, in Sussex; Southampton in Hampshire ; Exmouth and Dart- mouth in Devonshire ; Esse (now Saltash), and Fowey, in Cornwall; and London. It will be observed, however, that these are all coast towns, or places having a river communication with the sea ; and it surely cannot be supposed that there were not at this time some trading towns in the interior of the country. Either the quinzieme was not a duty payable, as has been asserted, by " all persons who made a business of buying and selling, however trifling their dealings might be,"* or this is not a complete list of the places from which it was collected. Besides, not a single place on the western coast of the kingdom is mentioned, not even Bristol or Chester. We should be disposed to conjecture that the quinzieme was only an impost upon foreign commerce, and even perhaps only upon some particular branch or branches of that. This supposition would make somewhat more intelligible the proportions of the wliole amount collected which are set down as received from particular towns. It appears that the whole tax at this time yielded about 5000/. per annum ; while of this total Lynn paid 651/., Southampton 112/., Boston 1801., and London only 836/. It cannot for a moment be believed that in their general mercantile wealth London and Boston stood in this relation to each other. To add to the per- plexity, we find that three years after this time the merchants of London purchased from the king an entire exem])tion from paying the quinzieme for the small sum of 200 marks, that is to say, for less than a sixth part of the amount of the tax for one year. We must, in these circumstances, suppose the exemption to have been accorded as a mark of royal favour to the city, and the 200 marks to have been paid merely as an acknowledgment. New- castle is the only other town the amount paid by which is mentioned ; it is set down as paying 158/., and must therefore have already grown to consider- able consequence, although only founded, as we have seen, little more than a century before this time.f Hull also appears for the first time as a place of trade only in the close of the last reign. Tliat several of the Scotch burghs were at this period possessed of very considerable opulence is testified by their having, in 1209, contributed 6000 marks of the 15,000 which William the Lion bound himself to pay to John by the treaty of Ber- wick.]: In this age Mr. Macpherson calculates that 6000 marks would have purchased in Scotland * Macpherson. Ann, of Com. i. 371. + See ante, p. 536. t Ibid. p. 545. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066— 121G. 593 about 240,000 bolls of oats, or 60,000 bolls of wheat. Among other countries, a trade with Nor- way is known to have been carried on by the Scotch in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Among the articles which are mentioned in the monastic chartularies of the country as paying tithe at this time are wool, corn, butter, cheese, cattle, fish, and flax. From the occurrence of the last article it may be inferred that some linen was already made in Scotland. It was in the reign of John, as already related, that their first great naval victory was gained by the English, at the battle of Damme, or of the Sluys, as it is sometimes called, fought in 1213.* As yet, however, the country possessed nothing that could properly be called a navy. The royal navy usually consisted merely of merchant ships collected from all the ports of the kingdom, each of which, as we have seen, was bound, when required by the king, to furnish him with a certain number. In pressing emergencies, indeed, the king seized upon the whole mercantile shipping of the kingdom, or as much of it as he required; " so that in those times," as the historian of commerce observes, " the owners could never call their vessels their own. A striking illustration of the king's claim of right to the services of all merchant ships appears in a letter, written by Edward II. to the king of Nor- way, upon the detention of three English vessels, which he concludes by saying, that he cannot quietly put up with the vessels belonging to his kingdom, which ought at all times to be ready for his service, being detained in foreign countries. "f John appears to have possessed merely a few galleys of his own. In this reign we find the earliest mention of what may be called letters of credit, the first form, it may be supposed, of bills of exchange, the introduction and general employment of which very soon followed. In a document printed in the Fcedera, John, under date of 2.5th August, 1199, at Rouen, engages to repay in four instalments, in the course of two years, a sum of 2125 marks, which had been advanced by a company of mer- chants of Placentia to the bishops of Anjou and Bangor, on the faith of the letters of King Richard. Afterwards John himself repeatedly raised money by such letters, addressed to all merchants, whereby he bound himself to repay the sums advanced to his agents to the amount named, at such time as should be agreed upon, to any person presenting his letter, together with the acknowledgment of his agents for the sum received by them. Mr. Macpherson is of opinion that, as there isno men- tion of interest in any of those letters, it must have been discounted when the money was ad- vanced. It is remarkable that although at this time, in England, no Christian was permitted by law to take interest, or visury as it was called, even at the lowest rate, upon money lent, the .lews in this respect lay under no restriction whatever. * See ante, p. 525. t Macpherson's Ann. of Com. i. 379. The interest which they actually received, accord- ingly, was sometimes enormous. In the large profits, however, which they thus made the crown largely shared, by the power of arbitrarily fining them, which it constantly exercised. William of Newburgh frankly speaks of them as well known to be the royal usurers ; in other words, their usury was a mode of suction, by which an additional portion of the property of the subject was drawn into the royal treasury : and this sufficiently ac- counts for the manner in which they were tolerated and protected in the monopoly of the trade of money-lending. Very few direct notices of the state of trade in this reign have come down to us. Licenses are recorded to have been granted to the merchants of various foreign countries to bring their goods to England, on due payment of the quinzieme, which would thus appear to have been a customs duty, payable probably both on the import and export of commodities. The Flemings were the chief foreign traders that resorted to the country, and next to them, apparently, the French. In 1213 the duties paid on woad imported from foreign countries amounted to nearly GOO/. ; of which the ports in Yorkshire paid 98/. ; those in Lincoln, 47/. ; those in Norfolk and Suffolk, 53/. ; those in Essex, 4/. ; those in Kent and Sussex (exclusive of Dover), 103/.; Southampton, 72/. ; and other places, not named, 214/. The woad, it may be presumed, was almost wholly used in dyeing cloths ; but much cloth would also be both exported and worn at home without being dyed. The freedom of commerce was sought to be secured by one of the clauses of the Great Charter (the forty-first), which declared that all merchailts should have safety and security hi going out of, and coming into England, and also in staying and travelling in the kingdom, whether by land or by water, without any grievous impositions, and ac- cording to the old and upright customs, except in time of war, when, if any merchants belonging to the hostile country should be found in the land, they should, at the commencement of the war, be attached, without injury of their persons or pro- perty, until it should be known how the English merchants who happened to be in the hostile country were treated there : if they were uninjured, the foreign merchants should be equally safe in England. This was as reasonable and even liberal a regulation as could have been desired on the subject. By other clauses, it was declared, that the debts of a minor should bear no interest during his minority, even if they should be owing to a Jew ; that London and other cities and towns should enjoy their ancient privileges ; that no fine should be imposed upon a merchant to the de- struction of his merchandize; and that there should be a uniformity of weights and measures throughout the kingdom. The only coined money of this period, as far as is certainly known, was the silver penny, which, ad at present, was the twelfth part of a shilling ; 2 L 594 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. the shilling being also, as it has ever since been, the twentieth part of a pound. The pound, how- ever, was still a full pound of silver, according to the ancient Saxon or German standard of eleven ounces and a quarter troy, or 5400 grains to the pound. * The same amount of silver is now coined, as explained in the former Book, into 21. 16s. 3d. sterling; and that, therefore, was the amount of money of the present denominations in the early Norman pound. The shilling, conse- quently, being the twentieth part of this, was equivalent to 2s. 9|c/. of our present money ; and the penny, being the twelfth part of the shilling, or the 240th part of the pound, was still of the same value as in the Saxon times, and contained an amount of silver equal to a trifle more than what might be purchased by 2|rf. of our money. But both the pound and the shilling were only money of account ; there were no coins of these denomi- nations. It is doubtful, also, if there were any coins of inferior value to the silver penny ; no spe- cimens of any such have been discovered. Both halfpence and farthings, however, are mentioned in the writings of the time ; and a coinage of round halfpennies by Henry I. is expressly mentioned by Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, and Hoveden. It has been supposed that the people before, and also perhaps after this, used to make halfpence and farthings for tliemselves, by breaking the penny into halves and quarters, which, it has been said, they were more easily enabled to do from the coin having on one side of it a cross very deeply indented. Leake, however, has remarked that " the story of the cross being made double, or so deeply impressed for the conveniency of break- ing the penny into halves and quarters, is dis- proved by the coins now extant, whereon the crosses generally terminate at the inner circle, and, instead, of being impressed, are embossed, which prevents their being broken equally." t It is most pro- CoiNER AT Work.— From the Capital of a Pillar at St. Georges de Bocherville, Normandy, • See ante, pp. 271-2. + Historical Account of English Money (2nd edit.), p. 33. bable, perhaps, that both halfpence and farthings were actually coined, though none have come down to us. Other denominations of money, however, than the above are also mentioned. In the early part of the period, and especially in the reign of the Conqueror, the Saxon mode of reckoning appears to have remained in general use. " In his laws," says Ruding, " the fines are regulated by pounds, oras, marks, shillings, and pence. The shillings are sometimes expressly stated to be English shil- lings of four pennies each. But in Domesday Book various other coins or denomhiations of money are to be found, such as the mite, farthing, half- penny, mark of gold and silver, ounce of gold, and marsum. There seems also to have been current a coin of the value of half a farthing, which was probably the same as the mite above mentioned."* The values of the Saxon coins here enumerated have been stated in the former Book.f The mark, it may be added, long remained a common deno- mination, and was at all times reckoned two-thirds of the pound. Some foreign coins, especiallv Byzantines, which were of gold, are also supposed to have been still in use, as in the Saxon times. The coins of the earlier Norman kings are of great rarity. Those issued by the Conqueror SlLv.tu Penny of William I. From specimen in Biit. Mns. " were made," Ruding thinks, " to resemble those of Harold in vv'eight and fineness, and some of them in type," in conformity with the policy upon which William at first acted, of affecting to be the regular successor of the Saxon kings. The coins of the two Williams can scarcely be distinguished, the Silver Penny of William II. From specimen in Brit. Mas. numerals being for the most part absent. The same is the case with those of the two Henrys. Royal mints were still established in all the principal Silver Penny of Henry I,— From specimen in Brit. Mus. • Annals of the Coinage (2nd edit.) + See ante, pp. 271—273. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 595 towns ; and the name of the place where it was struck continues to be commonly found on the coin. In the lawless times of Stephen all the bishops and greater barons are said to have very generally coined and issued money of their own ; every castle had its mint; and the money thus thrown into circulation is alleged to have been so debased that, in ten shillings, not the value of one in silver was to be found. Stephen himself is ."Silver Penny of Stephen. From specimen in Brit. Mus. also charged with having, in his necessities, resorted to the expedient of diminishing the weight of the penny. When Henry II. came to the throne, however, he put down all this base money ; and Silver Penny of Henry II. From a line specimen iu Brit. Mu«. The coins of this reign are very numerous, but in most cases b*illy struck. none of the baronial coins of Stephen's reign arc now known to exist, with the exception of a few bearing the names of his son Eustace, and of his brother, the Bishop of Winchester, which were probably issued by the royal license. Henry I., on his accession, abolished the tax of moneyage, which had been introduced either by the Conqueror or his son Rufus ; and he afterwards effected a reform of the coinage, which had been greatly corrupted by the frauds of the moneyers. Henry II. also called in all the old coins in circu- lation in the year 1180. No coins are known to be in existence either of Richard I. or John, as kings of England, although there are some of the former as Earl of Poictou and as Duke of Aqui- taine, and of the latter as lord of Ireland. An English penny of Richard's is given in various collections of plates of coins, but is admitted to be a forgery. Mr. Ruding, .speaking of it and another of John, says — " These two pennies are now well known to be the fabrication of a late dealer in coins, who pretended to have discovered tliem amongst some which were found upon Brain- liam Moor in Yorkshire. He sold one of them for thirty guineas ; the other remained in his posses- sion, and was disposed of with the rest of his col- lection, after his death." The man's name was White. * The earliest Scotch coins that have been discovered • See Ruding's Ann. of the Coinage, ii. 35 and 50, and v. 98 and 262. are some of Alexander I., who began his reign in 1107. The Scotch money appears to have, at this period, entirely corresponded with the English ; Irish Silver Penny of John. From a specimen in Brit. Mus. and, indeed, the circulation of Scotland probably consisted in great part of English coins. In regard to the real or efficient value of the money of those days, as compared with that of our present money, it is, as we have before had occa- sion to remark, impossible to make any statement which shall be universally applicable. The ques- tion of the value of money at any given period is merely a question of the price of a particular com- modity — namely, the metal of which the money is made. But we have no means of estimating with precision the price of any commodity whatever, in the scientific sense of that term. All that we can do is to state it relatively to the price of some other commodity. This is all that we really do when we state the money-price of anything. That is only a statement of the relation between the price of the article in question and the price of the other article called money. It is no expression either of the general price of either, or of the relation of the price of either to that of any other article whatever. Commodities of all kinds, from causes sufficiently obvious, are constantly changing their relative posi- tions in regard to price ; and, therefore, the rela- tion between the prices of any two of them can be no permanent index of the relation between the prices of any two others. In other words, the money-price of any one article at a particular time will give us no certain information as to the money-price either of all other articles, or of any other article. Although no precise estimate, however, can be arrived at of the general value of money in former times as compared with its present value, many important conclusions in regard to the state of society, and the command possessed by the several classes of the population over the necessaries and comforts of life, may be drawn from the notices that have been preserved of the money-prices of commodities and labour at different periods. But these inferences will be more fitly introduced in our chapter on the Condition of the People. The only point which properly belongs to our present subject is that of the relative values of gold and silver in the period we have been reviewing. The relation between the values of these two metals has fluctuated considerably in different ages. In ancient Rome, about the commencement of our era, it seems to have been usually as one to ten. About the fourth century, however, silver had become so much more plentiful, or gold so much scarcer, that fourteen pounds eight ounces of the 596 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. former were exchanged for a pound of the latter. In England, in the Saxon times, the legal propor- tion appears to have been as one to twelve. After the Conquest, however, gold became cheaper; and, about the middle of the twelfth century, one pound of it was exchanged for nine pounds of silver. In the beginning of the thirteenth century we find the value of silver rated to that of gold in the proportion of ten to one. At present the pro- portion is about as fourteen to one. Our notice of the useful arts within the six cen- turies which the Saxon period comprises will, in some degree, render it unnecessary to enter into a lengthened account of their state from the Con- quest to the death of King John. A century and a half is an interval sufficiently long to produce and consolidate political changes ; but the arts of life, under ordinary circumstances, move with a slower step, and their progress is thwarted by indi- vidual habits, and prejudices, and old customs. The power which effects, with little difficulty, alterations of a constitutional nature cannot be brought to act Avith the same force upon the com- mon course of life, and time is required to work silently any material changes in its character. The devastations of the Conqueror at the commence- ment of the present period, the wretchedness of the people during the nineteen turbulent years of Ste- phen's reign, and the lawlessness which distin- guished the unprincipled reign of King John at its close, together with many intermediate causes arising from the unsettled state of society, were sufficient to retard improvement either of handi- crafts or agriculture. There were, however, some other causes of a beneficial kind which served to counteract the evils of the thiies. The instability of Stephen's position led to concessions which w-ere subsequently favourable to improvement. Stephen's reign had been preceded by five-and-thirty years of comparative tranquillity, and it was fortunately followed by a reign of the same length, presenting the same contrast to the intermediate period. As in the Anglo-Saxon times, land was still held during the present period in large masses, the great landowners residing in the midst of their posses- sions, and reserving to themselves a portion of their Reaping and Gleaning. Eoyal MS. 2 B vii. demesne, which tliey cultivated by their own hinds. The following are the descriptions of rural labourers mentioned in Domesday Book, from which we may infer the ordinary divisions of rural employments soon after the Conquest : ploughmen, shepherds, neat-herds, cowherds, goatherds, swineherds, and keepers of bees.* The population to be fed from the produce of the soil was probably under two millions, and an unfavourable season always occasioned severe dis- tress; while in our own time the soil of Great Britain is capable, in ordinary seasons, of sustain- ing a population of si.xteen milUons. Still the importance of agriculture was highly estimated. The Conqueror seems to have been fully aware of the capabilities of the soil, and did not neglect the means of deriving the utmost advantage from its resources. The Saxon chronicler complains of • Sir n. Ellis, Tulrod. to Domesday Book. the rapacity which he exercised towards his te- nants : — " The king (he says) let his land at as high a rate as he possibly could ; then came some other person, and bade more than the former one gave ; and the king let it to the man that bade him more. Then came the third, and bade him yet more ; and the king let it to liand to the man that bade him most of all; and he recked not how very sinfully the stewards got it of w'retched men."* The use of manures was carried to a greater extent than before, as not only was the old practice of marling the land continued, but the more ex- pensive application of chalk was not uncommon. t Ingulphus notices the spirit with which one of the great landowners, Richard de Rulos, lord of Brunne and Deeping, and chamberlain of the Conqueror, carried on his agricultural operations. Ingram's Sax. Chrou., p. 291. t Teterof Blois, Ep. v. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 5.97 Threshino. Royal MS. 2 B vii. Corn-sacks and Store-basket. Royal MS. 2 B vii. "He was," says Ingulphus, "miicli addicted to agriculture, and delighted in breeding horses and cattle. Besides enclosing and draining a great extent of country, he embanked the river Welland (which used every year to overflow the neighbour- ing fields) in a most substantial manner, building many houses upon the bank, which increased so much that, in a little time, they formed a large town called Deeping, from its low situation. Here he planted orchards, cultivated commons, and converted deep lands and impassable quag- mires into fertile fields, rich meadows, and pastures. " To the monks belong tlie praise of efi^ecting the greatest improvements in the agriculture of this period. They were, many of them, ac- quainted with the best modes practised in Nor- mandy, and their intelligence enabled them to apply their knowledge with skill in the cultivation of their own ample estates. Land was the cheapest means of obtaining the favours of the church, and it was rich in this description of property ; but it was the skill and labour of the monks which gave it value, which drained the marshes, and cleared the woodland. They engaged actively in the labours of husbandry ; and even Becket, while he filled the see of Canterbury, was accustomed, during harvest, to go into the fields with the monks of the monasteries where he happened to reside, and to join them in reaping their corn or in making their hay.* Further to illustrate the part which the clergy took in husbandrv, the twenty-sixth canon of the third Council of Lateran, held a.d. 1179, may be quoted. This canon decreed " that all presbyters, clerks, monks, converts, pilgrims, and peasants, when they were engaged in the labours of hus- bandry, together with the cattle in their ploughs, and the seed which they carried into the field, should enjoy perfect security ; and that all who molested or interrupted them, if they did not desist when they had been admonished, should be excommunicated." f • Chron. Gervas, col. 1400. t Idem. col. 1456. 598 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Tlie draining of the fens of Cambridgeshire and Lincohishire, which was commenced at this period, proves that, in spite of the insecurity arising from various causes, the spirit of agricultural im- provement existed in considerable vigour, and that it only waited for tranquillity and the stimulus of commerce to put forth greater powers. Agricul- ture does not seem to have been in so advanced a state in Scotland; for we find that, in 1214, a law made respecting the cultivation of the land directed that those who did not possess a sufficient number of oxen should delve as much with hand and foot as would produce enough of corn to support them- selves and their families. It would seem, there- fore, that at this time a considerable part of the country was only cultivated by the method of spade husbandry. At the same time a law was passed requiring farmers carefully to destroy a weed called " guilde. " In Ireland, somewhat earlier, agriculture was probably not much further advanced than amongst the ancient Britons. The food of the people was flesh, fish, and milk ; and it is even said that neither bread nor cheese formed any part of their diet.* It is impossible, at this distance of time, to obtain any certain knowledge of the processes of agriculture in England at this period. In most parts of the country they ploughed their lands twice in summer and once in winter, to prepare them for wheat ; but in Wales they were ploughed only once a-year, in March or April, in order to be sown with oats, f Summer fallowing and careful ploughing were confined to England, and the produce would be large in proportion to the care bestowed. The description of stock upon a farm would be regulated by the state of the land. If there were much wood-land many hogs would be kept ; while sheep would be more profitable on the uplands and wolds. Goats were kept in parts of the country where they are now seldom seen. The authority for these inferences rests upon a single statement in Domesday Book, in which the stock upon a farm is enumerated. The land was in Hertfordshire, and was held by Hunfrid, who, it appears, possessed 68 head of cattle (animalis), 350 sheep, 150 hogs, 59 goats, and 1 mare. The number of sheep is larger than could have been expected, being greater that that of liogs.J Horses, it will be recollected, were not commonly em- ployed in field labour. Hunfrid had as much household stuff (pannos et vasa) as was worth twenty shillings. § Licenses to export corn, as has already been mentioned, were not unfrequently granted during this period ; and though there were frequent famines, they seem to have been occasioned rather by untoward seasons and warlike devastations than by defective husbandry. This part of the sub- • Ghaldus Cambrensis. + Giraldus Cambrensis, c. viii. p. 887. t At Kempsford, Gloucestershire, 120 weys of cheose were paid as rent for a sheep-walk. — Bawdwen's Domesday, p. 60. § Translation of Domesday j Hertfordshire, p. 51. By Rev. W. Bawdweu. ject, and the casualties which agriculture expe- rienced, may be illustrated by a reference to some of the notices in the Saxon Chronicle, in which years of scarcity are carefully recorded. In 1070, four years after the Conquest, and before the Conqueror had firmly established liis power, there weis a great famine. In 1082, 1086, and 1087, there were also famines ; but these were owing either to one or other of the causes before alluded to. The year 1086, the Chronicler remarks, " was a very heavy season, and a swinkful and sorrowful year in England in murrain of cattle ; and corn and fruits were at a stand, and so much untowardness in the weather as a man may not easily think." The following year "was a very heavy and pestilential year in this land ;" and the cause is attributed " to the badness of the weather." Then came, says the writer, " so great a famine over all England, that many men died a miserable death through hunger." The year 1089 "was a very late year in corn, and in every kind of fruits, so that many men reaped their corn about Martinmas and yet later." In 1095 the weather was " very unseasonable ; in consequence of which, throughout all this land were all the fruits of the earth reduced to a moderate crop." The year 1096 "was a very heavy-timed year through all England ; both through the manifold tributes, and also through the very heavy-timed hunger, that sorely oppressed this earth." The succeeding year was " in all things a very heavy-timed year, and beyond measure laborious from badness of weather, both when men attempted to till the land, and afterwards to gather the fruit of their tilth." Again, 1098 " was a very troublesome year, through manifold impositions ; and from the abundant rains that ceased not all the year, nearly all the tilth in the marsh-lands perished." Five years afterwards (a.d. 1103) was " a very calamitous year." There was a murrain among the cattle, and a deficiency of the crops of every kind; but the latter misfor- tune seems to have laeen occasioned by a violent storm of wind on St. Lawrence's day, which " did so much harm to all fruits as no man remembered that ever any did before." In 1105 the produce of the soil was also injured by the weather. In 1110 the weather was again unfavourable, "by which the fruits of tlie earth were very much marred, and the produce of the trees over all this land almost entirely perished." In 1111 "was the winter very long, and the season heavy and severe; and through that were the fruits of the earth sorely marred, and there was the greatest murrain of cattle that any man could remember." The next year was fortunately " a very good year, and very fruitful in wood and in field. " It was, how- ever, accompanied by a severe mortality amongst men. In 1116 occurred a "very heavy-timed winter, long and strong for cattle, and for all things." The chronicler adds, that " this was a very vex- atious and destructive year with respect to the fruits of the earth, through the immoderate rains that fell soon after the beginning of August, ha- Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 5.99 rassing and perplexing men till Candlemas day." It was also noted for a deficiency of the woods in mast, to such an extent "that there was never known such in this land or in Wales,"* The next year was " a very blighted year in corn, through tlie rains, that scarcely ceased for nearly all the year." In 1124 "the seasons were very unfa- vourable in England for corn and all fruits." A famine ensued in the following year. In 1131 " was so great a murrain of cattle as never was before in the memory of man over all England. That was in neat-cattle and swine ; so that in a town where there were ten ploughs going or twelve, there was not one left ; and the man that had two or three hundred swine had not one left. After- wards perished the hen-fowls ; then shortened the flesh-meat and the cheese." In 1137 (in Stephen's reign) the writer of the Chronicle observes, — " then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter. The earth bare no com," — in consequence of the pervading rapine. It seems impossible to read these notices with- out entertaining the conviction that the vicissi- tudes of tlie seasons were greater in those days than in our own. Years of plenty and scarcity still occur, and with something like regularity, but there is no comparison in the averages of the two periods. An unfavourable season tries severely the present highly-improved system of agricul- ture ; but it is easy to see that when the means of stall-feeding were exceedingly limited, the back- •wardness of vegetation would be fatal to numbers of cattle which had been supported with difficulty throughout a protracted winter. It appears from Domesday Book, which was completed twenty years after the Conquest, that there was generally "pasture for the cattle of the village" on land where all pnjoyed rights of common. The owners of woodland were accus- tomed to let at a fixed sum the right of turning hogs into the woods. The charge for pamiage was often defrayed by taking one hog in ten : this sys- tem also prevailed in Scotland. But money was also paid. The value of a wood was ascertained by the number of hogs it would support ;t and a wood yielding neither acorns nor beech-naast was comparatively of little value. We find, however, that there were in some parts of the country young plantations ; a fact which seems a little inconsist- ent with this notion. The oak is mentioned in Domesday Book only once ;{: a grove of ash-trees occurs in one county, and many osieries existed. • The fluctuation in produce of this description, which we have now ceased to notice, was of great importance in this and the pre- ceding period. The mast which fell in the woods in the autumn might be of more value than timber, on account of its use as food for liogs ; and it is not longer ago than the year 1764 since a year of great abundance in acorns had a very sensible effect upon tlie meat markets of the metropolis. In consequence of the great abundance two years before, the feeders had been induced to fatten tlieir whole stock of hogs, and an extraordinary number were in consequence slaughtered. The number had not been replaced in the subsequent two years, and the meat markets not receiving the usual supply, prices rose to an unusual height. + Nichols, vol. i. p. 63. — Hist. Leicester. X Sir H. Ellis, Introd. to Domesday Book. " Wood for the hedges" is often mentioned in the survey of the southern counties. Gardens, orchards, and vineyards are mentioned in the Conqueror's survey ; and if the improve- ments that took place in agriculture were in a great measure owing to the skill of the monks, still more was the kindred art of gardening in- debted to them. The objects of culture to which the husbandman directs his care are few in number, but there is a much greater diversity in those which claim the attention of the horticulturist. The introduction of a foreign clergy at the Con- quest could not fail to be immediately followed by the transplanting of the arts with which they were acquainted; and gardening was one of those which the soil and climate of Normandy had alike encouraged. Vineyards are men- tioned in thirty-eight different places in the Sur- vey.* The vine had been cultivated in the time of Bede, and is noticed in the laws of Alfred, but probably its culture was but little attended to. In several parts of Middlesex vineyards are men- tioned in the Survey as being " newly planted." The vale of Gloucester is represented as being rich in vineyards and fruit-trees. William of Malms- bury describes it in glowing terms : — "This vale," he says, " is planted thicker with vineyards than any other province in England ; and they produce grapes in the greatest abundance and of the sweetest taste. The wine that is made in these vineyards hath no disagreeable tartness in the mouth, and is very little inferior in flavour to the wines of France." It was not, however, until a subsequent period that additions were made to the number of culinary vegetables, or that the number and quality of fruits underwent much change ; but the work of improve- ment had commenced. At Fulham, now celebrated for the number and productiveness of its market- gardens, there were in the days of the Conqueror " eight cottagers with their gardens;" and it is stated, that in the village where the church of St. Peter (Westminster Abbey) is situated, there were forty-one cottagers who paid forty shillings for their gardens. In addition to the food furnished by the field and the garden, a considerable supply would be obtained from the woods and forests after the forest-laws had become less rigorous. Parks of " beasts of the wood " were kept by persons of distinction. The " Haise " belonging to manor-houses were enclosed places, hedged or paled round, into which beasts were driven for catching.f A warren of hares occurs in the Survey of Lincolnshire. By a letter of grace respecting the forests, in 1215, proprietors of land were permitted to form rabbit-warrens on their own land. The coasts, rivers, and meres were also productive of food. In Kent, Sussex, Norfolk, and Suffolk, herring-fisheries are noticed as existing at the period of the Survey. Sandwich yielded annually 40,000 herrings to the monks of Christ Church, Canterbury ; and in Cheshire and • Sir H. Ellis, Introd. + lUd. 600 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Fishing with a Seine Ket. Royal MS. 2 B vil. Devonsliire tliere were salmon-fisheries. In the former comity one fishery paid 1000 salmon annually as rent. Stews or fish-ponds are also frequently mentioned. One at Tudeuuorde (Tud- worth), Yorkshire, yielded 20,000 eels annually. The rent of marsh or fen-land was generally paid in eels. Another source of natural riches which the industry of the age rendered productive, existed, as already mentioned, in mines and quarries. In Gloucestershire, mines of iron were worked ;* and in the king's demesne, in Derbyshire, the mines of lead supplied ore which was smelted and rolled into sheets, and used for roofing the churches and other purposes. The progress of cultivation had not • Giraldus Cambrcnsis, lib. i. c. 5, yet rendered wood the dearest description of fuel, and though coal was consumed to a small extent, yet wood and turf continued to be used for fuel in this as it had been in the preceding period. Stone- quarries are but seldom mentioned in the Survey, and the stone used in many of the ecclesiastical edifices was brought from Normandy. Salt was not obtained in a fossil state until the seventeentlr century, before which time it was procured by evaporation in salt-pans on the coast, and from the salt-springs in the interior parts of the country. The management of these salt-pans was an import- ant branch of industry. But few changes in the common handicrafts took place within the century and a half subsequent to the Conquest. The arts of the miller and baker Corn Hand-mit.l. Royal MS. 2 B vii. were necessarily in constant exercise. No de- scription of building is so frequently mentioned in Domesday Book as water-mills. They were in every case the property of the lord of the manor, and his tenants were not permitted to grind at any other mill; a restriction which has not been abolished in some cases even at the present day. Hand-mills had not, however, gone out of use. The lord of the manor monopolised also the privilege of baking his tenants' bread at the common fourne ; but the necessity of the case put an end to this restriction at an early period. VVaier-mills were known on the continent at the end of the sixth century : they existed in Eng- land before the Conquest, and were applied to other purposes besides that of grhiding corn. The corn- mills are described by Strutt as square weather- boarded houses, sometimes without a covering at the top, the water-wheel being at one end. The machinery was simple enough, as the process of separating tlie bran from the meal was not per- formed by the machinery, but by a sieve with the Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1066—1216. 601 hand. Wind-mills were not known in England at the Conquest,* but were introduced in less than a century afterwards. Those who did not bake at the common fourne made the dough into cakes and baked them on the hearth. The law fixed the assize of bread, and the price at which it was to be sold by the bakers ; and they were severely punished for " lack of size," the first offence sub- jecting them to the loss of the bread, the second to imprisonment, and a third oifence to the pillory or tumbrell. In the year 1202 the assize of bread was fixed on the principle that in a qiiarter of wheat, supposed to weigh 512 lbs., the baker should make a profit of three pennies. The price of wheat at this period ranged from two to six shillings the quarter, and a scale was framed which fixed the weight of the farthing loaf at each fluctu- ation. Thus, when wheat was sold at two shillings the quarter, the loaf of white bread was to weigh three lbs., and the loaf of brown bread four lbs., and the weight was diminished at each successive increase in the price of wheat, f The fabrication of armour now gave a new and • In the year 1143 there was in Northamptonshire an abbey, situated in a wood, which, in the course of 180 yearsiWas entirely de- stroyed. One of the causes of this destruction was said to be, that, in the whole neislibourhood, there was no house, water-mill, or " vfind-miU" built, for which timber was not taken from this wood. — Bockmanu, Hist, of Inventions, vol. i. p 250. f Lingard's Hist, of England, vol. ii. p. 13. higher direction to the art of working in metal. The shoeing of horses with iron is supposed not to have been usual before the Conquest.* The number of builders and artificers employed in the construc- tion of domestic, ecclesiastical, and defensive edifices was far greater than it had been at any previous time, and their skill was much superior, as will be evident from the notice of the progress of architec- ture in the subsequent chapter. Norman piety displayed itself in founding cathedrals, abbeys, and monasteries, and the insecurity of society every- where led to the erection of strongholds for pro- tection. In Stephen's reign, " every one who was able (says the Saxon Chronicler) built a castle ;" and he adds, that " the whole kingdom was covered with castles." The progress of one art inevitably lead's to improvements in others, as obstacles which have never before been encountered stimulate in- genuity, and lead to inventions for overcoming them. Thus, we are told, that William of Sens, whom Lanfranc the archbishop employed as an architect, constructed machines for loading and unloading vessels, and for conveying heavy weights by land. In the reign of Rufus, a bridge of timber was thrown across the Thames, the old one having been carried away by a flood; and in 1209 this timber bridge was replaced by one of stone. • Ueckmann, Hist, of Inventions, vol, ii. p. 310. Brii.DiNO A House. Koyal MS. 2 B vii. The Architect explaining his Plan and receiving instructions ; the Builders raising and laying stones with a crane ; Carving, Plumbing the Work, &c. The textile arts were also improved. The in- troduction of the art of weaving woollen cloth by the Flemings has been mentioned above. In 1197 this manufacture had become of sufficient consequence to call forth laws for its proper regu- lation, in regard to both the fabrication and the sale of the cloth. In the unprincipled reign of King John the merchants and manufacturers obtained licenses for permission to manufacture cloth under the prescribed measure.* Linen was also manu- factured. The weavers and fullers, and the bakers, were amongst the earliest of the incorporated trades or guilds. In the reign of Henry I. the weavers • Hovcden, Aunal. p. 467, rol. 2. 602 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. and fullers had guilds at Winchester and Oxford as well as in London.* Subsequently many other trades were incorporated ; but the next period was tlie era in which these incorporations generally took place. In 1180, the saddlers were an incor- porated body, but the goldsmiths, glovers, butchers, and curriers, who had established themselves as corporate bodies without permission from the king were fined.f The oldest charters of incorporation now existing are of a later date. The object of the Saxon guilds was rather to afford each other mutual succour than to regulate trade. The art of dyeing was necessarily of considerable importance in connexion with the woollen manu- facture. The Jews in some instances are said to have followed the trade of dyeing ; but the art was probably in a very imperfect state, and persons of rank are said to have maintained dye-houses on their own account. Embroidery was the chief occupation of ladies of rank as it had been in the Anglo-Saxon period. Christina, Abbess of Markgate, is mentioned as having worked three mitres and a pair of sandals, which she sent as a present to Pope Adrian. The vestments of the higher ranks of the clergy were embroidered, and it was regarded as a pious work to be thus occupied. The churches on festival days were many of them hung with tapestry, which illustrated • Madox, Ferma Burgi. + Madox. the lives of saints and holy men. It is not per- haps of much importance to determine whether these works were the production of professed artizans, or of the pious industry of the inmates of convents and the higher class of females. The art of refining and working in metals was perhaps, as already observed, carried to greater per- fection than any of the useful arts ; and a superior class of men was engaged in this department of industry. Two candlesticks, made of gold and silver, which Robert, Abbot of St. Alban's, sent to his countryman. Pope Adrian, are stated to have excited the warm admiration of the pontiff, who declared that he had never seen more beautiful workmanship.* A large cup of gold, made by order of the same abbot, by a goldsmith named Baldwin, is described by Matthew Paris as being " adorned with flowers and foliages of the most delicate workmanship, and set around with precious stones in the most elegant manner." Native arti- zans were always to be found to execute the vessels required in the services of the church and the costly and curious ornaments with which shrines and altars were adorned. The precious metals were lavished on works of this description. Otho, a goldsmith, received orders from William Rufus to ornament his father's tomb out of the gold and silver which formed a part of the royal treasure at Winchester. • Matthew Paris, Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 603 CHAPTER V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS. T is probable that learning in England had begun before the Norman Conquest to recover from the state of depression into which it had fallen in the calamitous period of the last Danish in- vasions. The Danish Conquest, as com- pleted by the acces- sion of Canute, pre- ceded the Norman by exactly half a century, and during the whole of this space, with scarcely any interruption, the country had enjoyed a govern- ment which, if not always national, was at least acknowledged and submitted to by the whole nation. The public tranquillity was scarcely dis- turbed either by attacks from abroad or by domes- tic commotions. Such of the latter as occurred were either merely local or of very short duration. During this period, therefore, many of the monas- tic and other schools that had existed in the days of Alfred, Athelstan, and Edgar, had probably been re-established. The more frequent com- munication with the continent that began in the reign of the Confessor ought also to have been favourable to the intellectual advancement of the country. Accordingly, as we have before re- marked, the dawn of the revival of letters in Eng- land may be properly dated from about the com- mencement of the eleventh century.* Still, at the time of the Norman Conquest, there is reason to believe that literature was at a very low ebb in this country. Ordericus Vitalis, a contemporary writer, and himself a native of England, though of French descent and educated abroad, describes his countrymen generally as having been found by the Normans a rustic and almost illiterate people. The last epithet may be understood as chiefly intended to characterize the clergy, for the great body of the laity at this time were every where illiterate. In fact we know that, a few years after the Conquest, the king took advantage of the general illiteracy of the Saxon clergy to deprive great numbers of them of their benefices, and to supply their places with foreigners. His real motive for making this substitution was probably not that which he avowed ; but he would scarcely have alleged what was notoriously not the • See ante, pp. 289 and 306. fact, even as a pretence. No names eminent for learning, it may be observed, are recorded in this age of the annals of the Saxon church. The Norman Conquest introduced a new state of things in this as in most other respects. That event made England, as it were, a part of the con- tinent, where, not long before, a revival of letters had taken place scarcely less remarkable, if we take into consideration the circumstances of the time, than the next great revolution of the same kind in the beginning of the fifteenth century. In France, indeed, the learning that had flourished in the time of Charlemagne had never undergone so great a decay as had befallen that of England since the days of Alfred. The schools planted by Alcuin and the philosophy taught by Erigena had both been perpetuated by a line of the disciples and followers of these distinguished masters, which had never been altogether interrupted. But in the tenth century this learning of the West had met and been intermixed with a new learning originally from the East, but obtained directly from the Arab conquerors of Spain. The Arabs had first become acquainted with the literature of Greece in the beginning of the eighth century, and it instantly exercised upon their minds an awakening influence of the same powerful kind with that with which it again kindled Europe seven centuries afterwards. One diffiirence, however, between the two cases is very remarkable. The mighty efifects that arose out of the second revival of the ancient Greek literature in the modern Vorld were produced almost solely by its eloquence and poetry; but these were precisely the parts of it that were ne- glected by the Arabs. The Greek books which they sought after with such extraordinary avidity, were almost exclusively those that related either to metaphysics and mathematics on the one hand, or to medicine, chemistry, botany, and the other departments of physical knowledge on the other. All Greek works of these descriptions that they could procure they not only translated into their own language, but in course of time illustrated with voluminous commentaries. The prodigious magnitude to which this Arabic literature even- tually grew will stagger the reader who has adopted the common notion with regard to what are called the middle or the dark ages. " The royal library of the Fatimites" (sovereigns of Egypt), says Gibbbn, " consisted of 100,000 manuscripts, ele- gantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear 604 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. moderate if we can believe that the Ommiades of Spain had formed a Hbrary of 600,000 vokimeg,44 of which were employed in the mere catalogues. Their capital Cordova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more than 300 writers, and above 10 public li- braries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom."* The difficulty we have in conceiving the existence of a state of things such as that here described arises in great part from the cir- cumstance of the entire disappearance now, and for so long a period, of all this Arabic power and splendour from the scene of European affairs. But long extinct as it has been, the do- minion of the Arabs in Europe was no mere momentary blaze. It lasted, with little diminu- tion, for nearly 500 years, a period as long as from the age of Chaucer to the present day, and abun- dantly sufficient for the growth of a body of lite- rature and science, even of the wonderfvd extent that has been described. At the time of which we are now writing Arabic Spain was the fountain- head of learning in Europe. Thither students were accustomed to repair from every other country to study in the Arabic schools ; and many of the teachers in the chief towns of France and Italy had finished their education in these seminaries, and were now diffusing among their countrymen the new knowledge which they had thence acquired. The writings of several of the Greek authors, also, and especially those of Aristotle, had been made generally known to scholars by Latin versions of them made from the Arabic. There is no trace of this new literature having found its way to England before the Norman con- quest. But that revolution immediately brought it in its train. " The Conqueror himself," ob- serves a writer who has illustrated this subject with a profusion of curious learning, " patronized and loved letters. He filled the bishoprics and abba- cies of England with the most learned of his coun- trymen, who had been educated at the University of Paris, at that time the most flourishing school in Europe. He placed Lanfranc, abbot of the mo- nastery of St. Stephen at Caen, in the see of Can- terbviry — an eminent master of logic, the subtleties of which he employed with great dexterity in a famous controversy concerning the real presence. Anselm, an acute metaphysician and theologian, his immediate successor in the same see, was called from the government of the abbey of Bee, in Nor- mandy. Herman, a Norman, bishop of Salisbury, founded a noble library in the ancient cathedral of that see. Many of the Norman prelates preferred in England by the Conqueror were polite scholars. Godfrey, prior of St. Swithin's at Winchester, a native of Cambray, was an elegant Latin epigram- matist, and wrote with the smartness and ease of Martial ; a circumstance which, by the way, shows that the literature of the monks at this period was of a more liberal cast than that which we commonly annex to their character and pro- • Decline and Full of the Rom. Emp. c. Hi. fession." Geoffrey, also a learned Norman, who came over from the University of Paris, and esta- blished a school at Dunstable, where, according to Matthew Paris, he composed a play, called the ' Play of St. Catherine,' which was acted by his scholars, dressed characteristically in copes borrowed from the sacrist of the neighbouring abbey of St. Alban's, of which Geoffirey afterwards became abbot. " The king himself gave no small countenance to the clergy, in sending his son Henry Beauclerc to the abbey of Abingdon, where he was initiated in the sciences under the care of the abbot Grymbald, and Farice, a physician of Oxford. Robert D'Oilly, constable of Oxford Castle, was ordered to pay for the board of the young prince in the con- vent, which the king himself frequently visited. Nor was William wanting in giving ample reve- nues to learning. He founded the magnificent ab- beys of Battle and Selby, with other smaller con- vents. His nobles and their successors co-oper- ated with this liberal spirit in erecting many monasteries. Herbert de Losinga, a monk of Normandy, bishop of Thetford, in Norfolk, insti- tuted and endowed with large possessions a Bene- dictine abbey at Norwich, consisting of sixty monks. To mention no more instances, such great institu- tions of persons dedicated to religious and literary leisure, while they diffused an air of civility, and softened the manners of the people in their respec- tive circles, must have afforded powerful incen- tives to studious pursuits, and have consequently added no small degree of stability to the interests of learning."* To this it may be added, that most of the suc- cessors of the Conqueror continued to show the same regard for learning of which he had set the example. Nearly all of them had themselves re- ceived a learned education. Besides Henry Beau- clerc, Henry II., whose father Geoffrey Planta- genet, earl of Anjou, was famous for his literary acquirements, had been carefully educated under the superintendence of his admirable uncle, the Earl of Gloucester ; and he appears to have taken care that his children sliould not want the advan- tages which he had himself enjoyed ; for, at least, the three eldest, Henry, Geoffrey, and Richard, are all noted for their literary as well as their other accomplishments. What learning existed, however, was still for the most part confined to the clergy. Even the nobility — although it cannot be supposed that they were left altogether without literary instruction — appear to have been very rarely initiated in any of those branches which were considered as properly constituting the scholarship of the times. The familiar knowledge of the Latin language in parti- cular, which was then the key to all other erudition, seems to have been almost exclusively confined to churchmen, and to those few of the laity who em- braced the profession of schoolmasters, as gome, at • Warton's Dissertation on Introduction of Learning into Ei!^- liinil, prefixed to History of English I'oeiry, p. cxliii. (Kdit. of 1824.) Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 605 least on the continent, were now wont to do. The contemporary writer of a Life of Becket relates, that when Henry II., in 1164, sent an embassy to the Pope, in which the Earl of Arundel and three other noblemen were associated with an arch- bishop, four bishops, and three of the royal chap- lains, four of the churchmen at the audience to which they were admitted, first delivered them- selves in as many Latin harangues ; and then the Earl of Arundel stood up, and made a speech in English, which he began with the words, " We, who are illiterate laymen, do not understand one word of what the bishops have said to your holi- ness." The notion that learning properly belonged ex- clusively to the clergy, and that it was a possession in which the laity were unworthy of participating, was in some degree the common belief of the age, and by the learned themselves was almost uni- versally held as an article of faith that admitted of no dispute. Nothing can be more strongly marked than the tone of contempt which is ex- pressed for the mass of the community, the un- learned vulgar, by the scholars of this period; in their correspondence with one another espe- cially, they seem to look upon all beyond their own small circle as beings of an inferior species. This pride of theirs, however, worked beneficially upon the whole : in the first place, it was in great part merely a proper estimation of the advantages of knowledge over ignorance; and, secondly, it helped to make the man of the pen a match for him of the sword — the natural liberator of the human race for its natural oppressor. At the same time, it in- timates very forcibly at once the comparative rarity of the highly-prized distinction, and the depth of the darkness that still reigned far and wide around the few scattered points of light. Schools and other seminaries of learning, how- ever, were greatly multiplied in this age, and also elevated in their character, in England as well as elsewhere. Allusion has been made in a pre- ceding chapter to the exertions made by Arch- bishop Laiifranc to establish proper schools in connexion with the cathedrals and monasteries in all parts of the kingdom. Both he and his suc- cessor, Anselm, laboured for this praisewortliy ob- ject with great zeal; and it was one which was also patronized and promoted by the general voice of the church. In 1119 it was ordered by the third general council of liateran, that in every cathedral should be appointed and maintained a head-teacher, or scholastic, as was the title given to him, who, besides keeping a school of his own, should have authority over all the other school- masters of the diocese, and the sole right of granting licenses, without which no one should be entitled to teach. In former times the bishop himself had frequently undertaken the office of scholastic of the diocese ; but its duties were rarely efficiently performed under that arrangement, and at length they seem to have come to be generally altogether neglected. After the custom was intro- duced of maintaining it as a distinct office, it was filled in many cases by the most learned persons of the time. Besides these cathedral schools there were others established in all the religious houses, and many of the latter were also of high repu- tation. It is reckoned that of religious houses of all kinds there were founded no fewer than five hundred and fifty-seven between the Conquest and the death of King John ; and, besides these, there still existed many others that had been founded in the Saxon times. All these cathedral and con- ventual schools, however, appear to have been intended exclusively for the instruction of persons proposing to make the church their profession. But mention is also made of others established both in many of the principal cities, and even in the villages, which would seem to have been open to the community at large ; for it may be presumed that the laity, though generally excluded from the benefits of a learned education, were not left wholly without the means of obtaining some ele- mentary instruction. Some of these city schools, however, were eminent as institutes of the highest departments of learning. One in particular is mentioned by Matthew Paris as established in the town of St. Alban's, which was presided over by Matthew, a physician, who had been educated at the famous school of Salerno, in Italy, and by his nephew Garinus, who was eminent for his know- ledge of the civil and canon laws, and where we may therefore suppo.-e instructions were given both in law and in medicine. According to Pitz- Stephen there were three of these schools of a higher order regularly established in London, besides several others that were occasionally opened by distinguished teacliers. The London schools, however, do not seem to have been academies of science and the higher learning, like that of St. Alban's. Fitz-Stephen's description would rather lead us to infer that, although they were attended by pupils of different ages and degrees of proficiency, they were merely schools of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics. " On holidays," he says, " it is usual for these schools to hold public assemblies in the churches, in which the scholars engage in demon- strative or logical disputations, some using enthy- mems, and others perfect syllogisms ; some aiming at nothing but to gain the victory, and make an ostentatious display of their acuteness, while others have the investigation of truth in view. Artful sophists on these occasions acquire great applause ; some by a prodigious inundation and flow of words, others by their specious but fallacious arguments. After the disputations other scholars deliver rhetorical declamations, in which they observe all the rules of art, and neglect no topic of persuasion. Even the younger boys in the different schools contend against each other, in verse, about the principles of grammar, and the preterites and supines of verbs." The twelfth century may be considered as pro- perly the age of the institution of what we now call Universities in Europe, though many of the 606 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III, establishments that then assumed the regular form of universities had undoubtedly existed long before as schools or studia. This was the case with the oldest of the European universities, with Bologna and Paris, and also, in all probability, with Oxford and Cambridge. But it may be questioned if even Bologna, the mother of all the rest, was entitled, by any organization or constitution it had received, to take a higher name than a school or studium before the latter part of this century. It is admitted that it was not till about the year 1200 that the school out of which the University of Paris arose had come to subsist as an incor- poration, divided into nations, and presided over by a rector.* The University of Oxford, properly so called, is probably of nearly the same antiquity. It seems to have been patronized and fostered by Richard I., as that of Paris was by his great rival, Philip Augustus. Both Oxford and Cambridge had undoubtedly been eminent seats of learning long before this time, as London, St. Alban's, and other cities had also been ; but there is no evidence that either the one school or the other had at an earlier date become anything more than a great school, or even that it was distinguished by any assigned rank or privileges above the other great schools of the kingdom. In the reign of Richard I. we find the University of Oxford recognized as an establishment of the same kind with the Uni- versity of Paris, and as the rival of that seminary. Of the state of the school at Cambridge through- out the twelfth century we have the following distinct account from a contemporary writer : — " In the year 1109," says Peter of Blois, in his ' Continuation of the History of Ingulphus, ' " Joffrid, Abbot of Croyland, sent to his manor of Cottenham, near Cambridge, Master Gislebert, his fellow monk, and professor of theology, with three other monks who had followed him into England ; who being very well instructed in philosophical theorems, and other primitive sciences, went every day to Cambridge, and, having hired a certain public barn, taught the sciences openly, and in a little time collected a great concourse of scholars ; for, in the very second year after their arrival, the number of their scholars from the town and country increased so much that there was no house, barn, nor church capable of containing them. For this reason they separated into different parts of the town, and imitating the plan of the Studium of Orleans, brother Odo, who was eminent as a grammarian and satirical poet, read grammar, according to the doctrine of Prisciau and of his commentator Remigius, to the boys and younger students, that were assigned to him, early in the morning. At one o'clock, brother Terricus, a most acute sophist, read the logic of Aristotle, according to the Introductions and Commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes,t to those who were • See Crevier, Hist, de I'Univ. de Paris, i. 255. ' + The works of Averroes, however, who died in 1193, were cer- lainly not in existence at tlie time here referred to. Either Peter of HUiis must have been ignorant of this, or — if he was really the author of the statement — the name must have been the insertion of some later transcriber of his text. further advanced. At three, brother William read lectures on Tully's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Institutions. But Master Gislebert, being ignorant of the English, but very expert in the Latin and French languages, preached in the several churches to the people on Sundays and holidays." There is here no hint of any sort of incorporation or public establishment whatever ; the description is merely that of a school set on foot and conducted by an association of private individuals ; and even this private school would seem to have been first opened in the year 1109, although there may pos- sibly have been other schools taught in the place before. It may be gathered from what the writer adds, that at the time when he wrote (in the latter part of the same century), the school founded by Gislebert and his companions had attained to great celebrity ; but there is nothing to lead us to suppose that it had even then become more than a very distinguished school. " From this little fountain," he says, " which hath swelled into a great river, we now behold the city of God made glad, and all England rendered fruitful, by many teachers and doctors issuing from Cambridge, after the likeness of the holy Paradise." Notwithstanding, however, the rising reputation of Oxford and Cambridge, the most ambitious of the English students continued to resort for part of their education to the more distinguished foreign schools during the whole of the twelfth century. Thus, it is recorded that several volumes of the Arabian philosophy were brought into England by Daniel Merlac, who, in the year 1185, had gone to Toledo to study mathematics. Salerno was still the chief school of medicine, and Bologna of law, although Oxford was also becoming famous for the latter study. But, as a place of general instruc- tion, the University of Paris stood at the head of all others. Paris was then wont to be styled, by way of pre-eminence, the City of Letters. So many Englishmen, or, to speak more strictly, subjects of the English crown, were constantly found among the students at this great seminary, that they formed one of the four nations into which the members of the university were divided. It would appear from the following verses of Negel Wircker, an English student at Paris in 1170, that his countrymen, whom they describe, were already noted for that spirit of display and expense which still makes so prominent a part of their continental reputation : — Moribusegrcgii, verbo vultuque venusti, Ingenio pollent, consilioque vigent. Dona pluuut populis, et detestuutar avaros, Fercula multiplirant, et sine lege bibunt. Of graceful inien and manners, gracious speech. Strong sense, with genius brightened, shines in each. Their free hand still rains largess; when they diiio Course follows course, in rivers flows the wine. Among the students at the University of Paris in the twelfth century are to be found nearly all the most distinguished names among the learned of every country. One of the teachers, the cele- brated Abelard, is said to have alone had as pupils Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 607 twenty persons who afterwards became cardinals, and more than fifty who rose to be bishops and archbishops. It has already been mentioned that Thomas a Becket received part of his education here. Several of the most eminent teachers were Englishmen. Among these may be particularly mentioned Robert of Melun (so called from having first taught in that city), and Robert White, or Pullus, as he is called in Latin. Robert of Melun, who afterwards became Bishop of Hereford, dis- tinguished himself by the zeal and ability with which he opposed the novel views which the rising sect of the Nominalists were then intro- ducing both into philosophy and theology. He is the author of several theological treatises, none of which, however, have been printed. Robert White, after teaching some years at Paris, where he was attended by crowded audiences, was induced to return to his own country, where he is said to have read lectures on theology at Oxford for five years, which greatly contributed to spread the renown of that rising seminary. After having declined a bishopric that was offered to him by Henry I., he went to reside at Rome in 1143, on the invitation of Celestine II., and was soon after made a cardinal and chancellor of the holy see. One work written by him has been printed, a summary of theology, under the then common title of ' The Book of Sentences,' which is said to be distinguished by the superior correctness of its style and the lucidness of its method. Another celebrated name among the Englishmen who are recorded to have studied at Paris in those days is that of Nicolas Breakspear, who afterwards became pope by the title of Adrian IV. But, above all others, John of Salisbury deserves to be here mentioned. It is in his writings that we find the most complete account that has come down to us not only of the mode of study followed at Paris, but of the entire learning of the age. At this time, it is to be observed, those branches of literary and scientific knowledge which were specially called the Arts were considered as divided into two great classes, — the first or more ele- mentary of which, comprehending Grammar, Rhe- toric, and Logic, was called the Trivium; the second, comprehending Music, Arithmetic, Geo- metry, and Astronomy, the Quadrivium. The whole seven arts, so classified, used to be thus enumerated in a Latin hexameter : — Lingua, Tropua, Ratio, Numerus, Tonus, Angulus, Astra; or, with definitions subjoined, in the two still more singularly constructed verses — Gram, loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat, Mus. cudit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit astra. John of Salisbury speaks of this system of the sciences as an ancient one in his day. " The Trivium and Quadrivium," he says, in his work entitled ' Metalogicus,' " were so much admired by our ancestors in former ages, that they imagined they comprehended all wisdom and learning, and were sufficient for the solution of all questions and the removing of all difficulties ; for whoever understood the Trivium could explain all manner of books without a teacher ; but he who was farther advanced, and was master also of the Quadrivium, could answer all questions and unfold all the secrets of nature." The present age, however, had outgrown the simplicity of this arrangement ; and various new studies had been added to the ancient seven, as necessary to complete the circle of the sciences and the curriculum of a liberal education. It was now, in particular, that Theology first came to be ranked as a science. This was the age of St. Bernard, the last of the Fathers, and of Peter Lombard, the first of the Schoolmen. The distinction between these two classes of writers is, that the latter do, and the former do not, treat their subject in a systematizing spirit. The change was the consequence of the cultivation of the Aris- totelian Logic and Metaphysics. When these studies were first introduced into the schools of the West, they were wholly unconnected with theology. But, especially at a time when all the learned were churchmen, it was impossible that the great instrument of thought and reasoning could long remain unapplied to the most important of all the subjects of thought — the subject of reli- gion. It would appear, as was formerly stated, that John Erigena and other Irish divines intro- duced philosophy and metaphysics into the dis- cussion of questions of religion as early as the eighth century ; and they are consequently entitled to be regarded as having first set the example of the method afterwards pursued by the schoolmen. But although the influence of their writings may thus probably be traced in preparing the way for the introduction of the scholastic system, and also afterwards, perhaps, in modifying its spirit, it was derived immediately, in the shape in which it appeared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from another source. Erigena was a Platonist ; the spirit of his philosophy was that of the school of Alexandria. But the first schoolmen, properly so called, were Aristotelians ; they drew their logic and metaphysics originally from the Latin translations of the works of Aristotle made from the Arabic. How far, if at all, they may also have been indebted to the commentaries of the Arabic doctors, would be a curious inquiry. But whether they took their method of philosophy entirely from the ancient heathen sage, or in part from his modern Mahomedan interpreters and illustrators, it could in neither case have at first any necessary or natural alliance with Christianity. Yet it very soon, as we have said, formed this alliance. Both Lanfranc and Anselra, although not commonly reckoned among the schoolmen, were imbued with the spirit of the new learning, and it is infused throughout their theological writings. Abelard soon after, before he was yet a churchman, may almost be considered to have wielded it as a weapon of scepticism. Even so used, however, religion was still the subject to 608 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. which it was applied. At last came Peter Lom- bard, who, by the publication in the latter part of the twelfth century of his celebrated Four Books of Sentences, properly founded the system of what is called the Scholastic Theology. The schoolmen, from the Master of the Sentences down to Francis Suarez, who died after the com- mencement of the seventeenth century, were all theologians. Although, however, religious specu- lation was the field of thought upon which the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy chiefly ex- pended itself, there was scarcely any one of the arts or sciences vipon which it did not in some degree seize. The scholastic logic became the universal instrument of thought and study ; every branch of human learning was attempted to be pursued by its assistance ; and most branches were more or less affected by its influence in regard to the forms which they assumed. John of Salisbury went to complete his education at Paris in the year 1136. " When I beheld," he writes in a letter to his friend Becket, " the reve- rence paid to the clergy, the majesty and glory of the whole church, and the various occupations of those who applied themselves to philosophy in that city, it raised my admiration as if I had seen the ladder of Jacob, the top of which reached to Hea- ven, while the steps were crowded with angels ascending and descending." The first master whose lectures he attended was the renowned Abelard, still, after all the vicissitudes of his life, teaching with undiminished, glory, in the midst of a vast confluence of admiring disciples, on the Mount of St. Genevieve. " I drank in," says his English pupil, " with incredible avidity, every word that fell from his lips ; but he soon, to my infinite regret, retired." Abelard lived only a few years after this date, which he spent in de- votion and entire seclusion from the world. John of Salisbury then studied dialectics for two years under other two masters, one of whom was his countrymen, Robert de Melun, mentioned above. After this he returned to the study of grammar and rhetoric, which he pur- sued for three years under William de Couches, of whose method of teaching he has left a par- ticular account. It appears to have embraced a critical exposition both of the style and the matter of the writers commented upon, and to have been well calculated to nourish both the imderstand- ing and the taste. After this he spent seven years under other masters, partly in the further prosecu- tion of his acquaintance with the writers of an- tiquity and the practice of Latin composition, partly in the study of the mathematics and theo- logy. The entire course thus occupied twelve years ; but some, it would appear, devoted the whole of this time to the study of dialectics, or logic, alone. One of the treatises of John of Salis- bury, that entitled ' Metalogicus,' is intended prin- cipally to expose the absurdity and injurious eft'ects of this exclusive devotion to the art of wrangling ; and although it must be considered as Avritten with some degree of satirical license, the representation which it gives of the state of things produced by the new spirit that had gone abroad over the realms of learning is very curious and interesting. The turn of the writer's own genius was decidedly to the rhetorical rather than the metaphysical, and he was not very well qualified, perhaps, to perceive certain of the uses or recommendations of the study against which he directs his attack; but the ex- travagances of its devotees, it must be confessed, fairly exposed them to his ridicule and castigation. " I wish," he says in one place, " to behold the light of truth, Avhich these logicians say is only revealed to them. I approach them, — I beseech them to instruct me, that, if possible, I may become as wise as one of them. They consent, — they pro- mise great things, — and at first they command me to observe a Pythagorean silence, that I may be admitted into all the secrets of wisdom which they pretend are in their possession. But by-and-by they permit, and even command me, to prattle and quibble Avith them. This they call disputing ; this they say is logic j but I am no wiser." He accuses them of wasting their ingenuity in the dis- cussion of such puerile puzzles as whether a person in buying a whole cloak also bought the cowl ? or whether, when a hog was carried to market with a rope tied about its neck and held at the other end by a man, the liog was really carried to market by the man or by the rope ? It must be confessed that if their logic had been worth nuich, it ought to have made short work with these questions, if their settlement was deemed worth any thing. Our author adds, however, that they were declared to be questions which could not be solved, the arguments on both sides being perfectly equal. But his quaiTcl with the dialecticians was chiefly on the ground of the disregard and aversion they manifested, in their mgthod of exercising the in- tellectual powers, to all polite literature, to all that was merely graceful and ornamental. And there can be no question that the ascendancy of the scholastic philosophy was fatal for the time to the cultivation of polite literature in Europe. So long as it reigned supreme in the schools, learning was wholly divorced from taste. The useful utterly rejected all coiuiexion with the beautiful. The head looked duwn with contempt upon the heart. Poetry and fiction, and whatever else belonged to the imaginative part of our nature, were left altoge- tlier to the unlearned, to the makers of songs and lays for the people. It was probably fortunate for poetry, and tlie kindred forms of literature, in the end, that they were thus left solely to the popular cultivation for a time ; they drew nourishment and new life from the new soil into which they were transjjlanted ; and their produce has been the richer and the racier for it ever since. The re- vival of polite literature probably came at a better time in the fifteenth, than if it had come in the twelfth century. Yet it was not to be expected that when it vvas threatened with blight and ex- tinction at chc earlier era, its friends should cither Chap, v.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 609 have been able to foresee its resurrection two or three centuries later, or should have been greatly consoled by that prospect if they had. John of Salisbury's chief work in his ' Polycra- ticon,' or, as he farther entitles it, ' A Treatise in eiglit books, on the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footsteps of Philosophers.' (De Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum.) It is, says Warton, " an extremely pleasant miscellany, replete with erudition, and a judgment of men and things, which properly belongs to a more sensible and re- flecting period. His familiar acquaintance with the classics appears not only from the happy faci- lity of his language, but from the many citations of the purest Roman authors with Avhich his works are perpetually interspersed."* He also wrote Latin verses with extreme elegance. John of Salisbury died bishop of Chartres in 11 82. Ano- ther distinguished cultivator of polite literature in the same age was Peter of Blois, to whose letters, abounding as they do in graphic descriptions of the manners and characters of the time, we have already more than once had occasion to refer. Neither in elegance of taste and style, however, nor in general literary accomplishment, is the Frenchman to be compared with his illustrious English contemporary. The classical knowledge of this period, however, was almost confined to the Roman authors, and some of tlie most eminent of these were as yet unstudied and unknown. Even John of Salisbury, though a few Greek words are to be found in his composi- tions, seems to have had only the slightest possible acquaintance with that language. Both it and the Hebrew, however, Avere known to Abelard and Eloisa ; and it is probable that there were both in England and other European countries a few stu- dents of the oriental tongues, for the acquisition of which inducements and facilities must have been presented, not only by the custom of resorting to the Arabic colleges in Spain, and the constant in- tercourse with the East kept up by the pilgrim- ages and the crusades, but also by the numbers of learned Jews that were everywhere to be found. In England the Jews had schools in London, York, Lincoln, Lynn, Norwich, Oxford, Cambridge, and otlier towns, which appear to have been attended by Christians as well as by those of their own per- suasion. Some of these seminaries, indeed, were rather colleges than schools. Besides the Hebrew and Arabic languages, arithmetic and medicine are mentioned among the branches of knowledge that were taught in them ; and the masters were generally the most distinguished of the rabbis. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the age of Sarchi, the Kimchis, Maimonides, and other distin- guished names, rabbinical learning was in an emi- nently flourishing state. In regard to the state of the other branches of knowledge that have been mentioned, only a few words more require to be added. There is no certain evidence that the Arabic numerals were • IiitroJ. of Learning into Eiig. p. 153. yet known in Europe ; they certainly were not in general use. Although the Elements of Euclid and other geometrical works had been translated into Latin from the Arabic, the mathematical sciences appear to have been but little studied. " The science of demonstration," says John of Salisbury, in his Metalogiciis, " is of all others the most difticult, and alas! is almost quite neg- lected, except by a very few who apply to the study of the mathematics, and particularly of geometry. But this last is at present very little attended to amongst us, and is only studied by some persons in Spain, Egypt, and Arabia, for the sake of astronomy. One reason of this is, that those parts of the works of Aristotle that relate to the demonstrative sciences are so ill translated, and so incorrectly transcribed, that we meet with insur- mountable difficulties in every chapter." The name of the mathematics at this time, indeed, was chiefly given to the false science of astrology. " Mathe- maticians," says Peter of Blois, " are those who, from the position of the stars, the aspect of the fir- mament, and the motions of the planets, discover things that are to come." Astronomy, however, or the true science of the stars, which was zealously cultivated by the Arabs in the East and in Spain, seems also to have had some cultivators among the learned of Christian Europe. Latin translations existed of several Greek and Arabic astronomical works. Ingulphus gives the following curious description of a sort of scheme or representation of the planetary system called the Nadir, which he says was destroyed when his abbey of Croyland was burnt in 1091 : " We then lost. a most beau- tiful and precious table, fabricated of different kinds of metals, according to the variety of the stars and heavenly signs. Saturn was of copper, Jupiter of gold, Mars of iron, the sun of latten. Mercury of amber, Venus of tin, the moon of silver. The eyes were charmed, as well as the mind in- structed, by beholding the colure circles, with the zodiac and all its signs, formed with wonderful art, of metals and precious stones, according to their several natures, forms, figures, and colours. It was the most admired and celebrated Nadir in all England.'' These last words would seem to imply that such tables were then not uncom- mon. This one, it is stated, had been presented to a former abbot of Croyland by a king of France. John of Salisbury, in his account of his studies at Paris, makes no mention either of medicine or of law. With regard to the former, indeed, he expressly tells us that the Parisians themselves used to go to study it at Salerno and Montpellier. By the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, we find a school of medicine established at Paris, which soon became very celebrated. Of course there were, at an earlier date, persons who practised the medical art in that city. The physicians in all the countries of Europe at this period were gene- rally churchmen. Many of the Arabic medical works were early translated into Latin ; but the 2 Ji •T \ B R A K Of THE 610 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Parisian professors soon began to publish treatises on the art of their own. The science of the phy- sicians of this age, besides comprehending whatever was to be learned respecting the diagnostics and treatment of diseases from Hippocrates, Galen, and the other ancient writers, embraced a considerable body of botanical and chemical knowledge. Che- mistry in particular the Arabs had carried far beyond the point at which it had been left by the ancients. Of anatomy little could as yet be accu- rately known, while the dissection of the human subject was not practised. Yet it would appear that physicians and surgeons were already begin- ning to be distinguished. Both the canon and civil laws were also introduced into the routine of study at the University of Paris soon after the time John of Salisbury studied there. The canon law was originally considered to be a part of theology, and only took the form of a separate study after the publication of the systematic compilation of it called the ' Decretum of Gratian,' in 11 5 1. Gratian was a monk of Bologna, and his work, not the first collection of the kind, but the most complete and the best arranged that had yet been compiled, was immediately introduced as a text-book in that uni- versity. It may be regarded as having laid the foundation of the science of the canon law, in the same manner as the system of the scholastic phi- losophy was founded by Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences. Regular lecturers upon it very soon appeared at Orleans, at Paris, at Oxford, and all the other chief seats of learning in western Chris- tendom ; and before the end of the twelfth century no other study was more eagerly pursued, or attracted greater crowds of students, than that of the canon law. One of its first and most cele- brated teachers at Paris was Girard la Pucelle, an Englishman, who afterwards became bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. Girard taught the canon law in Paris from 1 160 to 11*77; and, in consider- ation of his distinguished merits and Avhat was deemed the great importance of his instructions, he received from Pope Alexander III. letters exempt- ing him from the obligation of residing on his pre- ferments in England while he was so engaged; this being, it is said, the first know^l example of such a privilege being granted to any professor.* The same professors who taught the canon law taught also, along with it, the civil law, the syste- matic study of which, likewise, took its rise in this century, and at the University of Bologna, where the Pandects of Justinian, of which a more perfect copy than had before been known is said to have been found, in 1137, at Amalphi,t were arranged and first lectured upon by the German Irnerius, — the Lamp of the Law, as he was called, — about the year 1150. Both the canon and the civil law, however, are said to have been • Crevier, Hist, de I'Univ. de Paris, i. 244. + " The discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi," says Gibbon, " is first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus, on the faith of a Pisan chronicle, without a name or date. The whole story, though unknown to the twelfth century, embellished by ignorant ages, and suspected by rigid criticism, is not, however, destitute of much in- ternal probability." taught a few years before this time at Oxford by Roger, surnamed the Bachelor, a monk of Beck, in Normandy. The study was, from the first, vehemently opposed by the practitioners of the common law, but, sustained by the influence of the church, and eventually also favoured by the government, it rose above all attempts to put it down. John of Salisbury affirms that, by the blessing of God, the more it was persecuted the more it flourished. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, gives us the following curious account of the ardour with which it was pursued under the superintendence of Archbishop Theobald : — " In the house of my master, the Archbishop of Can- terbury, there are several very learned men, famous for their knowledge of law and politics, who spend the time between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and debating causes. To us all the knotty questions of the kingdom are referred, which are produced in the common hall, and every one in his order, having first prepared himself, declares, with all the eloquence and acuteness of which he is capable, but without wrangling, what is wisest and safest to be done. If God suggests the soundest opinion to the youngest amongst us, we all agree to it without envy or detraction." Study in every department must have been still greatly impeded in this period by the scarcity of books ; but their multiplication now went on much more rapidly than it had formerly done. We have already alluded to the immense libraries said to have been accumulated by the Arabs, both in their oriental and European seats of empire. No col- lections to be compared with these existed any- where in Christian Europe ; but of the numerous monasteries that were planted in every country, few were without libraries of greater or less extent. A convent without a library, it used to be pro- verbially said, was like a castle v^^ithout an armoury. When the monastery of Croydon was burnt in 1091, its library, according to Ingulphus, consisted of 900 volumes, of which 300 were very large. " In every great abbey," says Warton, " there was an apartment called the Scriptorium; where many writers were constantly busied in transcribing not only the service-books for the choir, but books for the library. The Scriptorium of St. Alban's Abbey was built by Abbot Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be written there, about the year 1080. Archbishop Lanfiranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the support of the Scriptorium .... I find some of the classics written in the English monasteries very early. Henry, a Benedictine monk of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, transcribed, in the year 1178, Terence, Boethius, Suetonius, and Claudian. Of these he formed one book, illuminating the initials, and forming the brazen bosses of the covers with his own hands." Other instances of the same kind are added. The monks were much accustomed both to illuminate and to bind books, as well as to transcribe them. " The scarcity of parchment," it is afterwards observed, " undoubtedly prevented Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 611 the transcription of many other books in these societies. About the year 1120, one Master Hugh, being appointed by the convent of St. Ed- mondsbury, in Suffolk, to write and illuminate a grand copy of the Bible for their library, could procure no parchment for this purpose in Eng- land."* Paper made of cotton, however, was cer- tainly in common use in the twelfth century, though no evidence exists that that manufactured from linen rags was known till about the middle of the thirteenth. We have already had occasion to notice the in- correctness of a statement frequently made which attributes to the Conqueror the deliberate design of abolishing the Saxon language in England. The oldest authority for this statement appears to be a writer of the name of Robert Holkot, who lived in the fourteenth century; and his account is not more improbable in itself than it is in opposition to the testimony of the earlier historians. But although the Norman appears neither to have made any efforts to extirpate the English tongue, nor even to have introduced the French as the lan- guage of the law and of public documents, the substitution of French for English must have fol- lowed to a great extent, as one of the inevitable consequences of the Conquest. Indeed, causes that helped to bring about this change were in operation even before that event. The Confessor himself, according to Ingulphus, though a native of England, yet, from his education and long resi- dence in Normandy, had become almost a French- man ; and when he succeeded to the English throne, he brought over with him great numbers of Normans, whom he advanced to the highest digni- ties in the church and the state. " Wherefore," it is added, " the whole land began, under the in- fluence of the king and the other Normans intro- duced by him, to lay aside the English customs, Tha was Engle-land suithe todeled. sume helden mid te king. & sume mid themperice. for tha the king was in prisun. tha wenden the eorles & te rice men that he nevre mare sculde curame ut. & saehtleden wyd themperice. & brohten hire into Oxenford. and iauenhire the burch. Tha the king was ute. tha herde that ssegen. and toe his feord & besaet hire in the tur. & me lapt hire dun on niht of the tur mid rapes. & stal ut & sese fleh & ia3de on fote to Waling- ford. Tha3r efter scse ferde ofer sse. & hi of Nor- mandi wenden alle fra the king to the eorl of Angseu. sume here thankes & sume here unthankes. for he besaet heom til hi aiauen up here castles. & hi nan helpe ne hajfden of the king. Tha ferde Eustace, the kinges sune. to France. & nam the kinges suster of France to wife, wende to bigseton Normandi thser thurh. 00 he spedde litel. & be gode rihte. for he was an yuel man. for ware se he wes dide mare yuel thanne god. he reuede the landes & laeide micel gildes on. he brohte his wif to Engle-land. & dide hire in the castle of . . teb. god wimman scse wses. oc scse hedde litel blisse raid him. & xpist ne wolde that he sculde lange rixan. & wserd ded and his moder beien. & te eorl of Angseu wserd ded. & his sune Henri toe to the rice. And te cwcn of France * Introd. of Learning into Eng., p. 146. and to imitate the manners of the French in many things ; for example, all the nobility in their courts began to speak French as a great piece of gentility, to draw up their charters and other writings after the French fashion, and to grow ashamed of their old national habits in these and in many other par- ticulars." The establishment of the Norman domi- nion of course perpetuated and added much addi- tional force to this tendency, in various ways. The king himself, and, vdth few exceptions, all the nobility, could speak no language but French. The residence of the Norman nobles and great pro- prietors in all parts of the country must have spread the language of the court. Above all, it would be diffused over the land by the clergy, who were now brought over in great numbers from Normandy, both to serve in the parochial cures, and to fill the monasteries that were multiplying so rapidly. These churchmen must have been in constant intercourse with the people of all classes. Besides, they were not only the instructors of the people from the altar, but the teachers of all the schools. This last circumstance sufficiently ac- counts for the fact mentioned by Ingulphus, that it now became the practice for the elements of grammar to be taught to boys at school, not in English, as formerly, but in French. All this would soon make the French language universally familiar to the educated classes even of the Saxon population, while to the Norman part of the nation it was the only language known. The English or Saxon, however, still continued to be the common language of the great body of the people ; and for nearly a century after the C(!hiquest it appears, though considerably modified from its form in earlier times, to have preserved what may still be called a decidedly Saxon character. We give as a specimen the following passage from the Saxon Chronicle, relating to the close of Stephen's reign : Then was England very much divided : some held with the king, and some with the empress ; for when the king was in prison, the earls and the rich men supposed that he never more would come out : and they settled with the empress, and brought her into Oxford, and gave her the borough. When the king was out, he heard of this, and took his force, and beset her in the tower.f And they let her down in the night from the tower by ropes. And she stole out, and fled, and went on foot to Wallingford. Afterwards she went over sea ; and those of Normandy- turned all from the king to the earl of Anjou ; some willingly, and some against their will ; for he beset them till they gave up their castles, and they had no help of the king. Then went Eustace, the king's son, to France, and took to wife the sister of the king of France. He thought to obtain Normandy thereby ; but he sped little, and by good right ; for he was an evil man. Wherever he was he did more evil than good ; he robbed the lands, and levied heavy guilds upon them. He brought his wife to England, and put her into the castle of . . . Good woman she was ; but she had little bliss with him ; and Christ would not that he should long reign. He therefore soon died, and his mother also. And the earl of Anjou ■ The tower of the castle at Oxford, built by D'Oyley, which still remains. 612 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. todselde fra the king. & scse com to the iunge eorl Henri. & he toe hire to wive. & al Peitou mid hire. Tha ferde he mid micel faerd intoEngle-land, & wan castles. & te king ferde agenes him raid micel mare ferd. & thoth woethere fuhten hi noht. oc ferden the aercebiscop & te wise men betwux heom. & makede that sahte. that te king sculde ben lauerd & king wile he liuede. & aefter his daei ware Henri king, and he helde him for fader & he him for sune. & sib & ssehte sculde ben hetwyx heom & on al Engle- land. This and te othi-e forwardes that hi makeden suoren to halden the king & te eorl. and te hiscop. & te eorles. & ricemen alle. Tha was he eorl under- fangen set Wincestre and aet Lundene mid micel wurtscipe. and alle diden him manred. and suoren the pais to halden. and hit ward sone suithe god pais sua that neure was here. Tha was the king strengere thanne he aeuer ther was. & te eorl ferde ouer sae. & al folc him luuede. for he dide god justise & makede pais.*. An. MCLiv. On this gaer wserd the king Stephne ded. & bebyried ther his wif and his sune wgeron bebyried set Fauresfeld. thait rainstre hi makeden. Tha the king was ded tha was the eorl beionde sse. & ne durste nan man don other bute god for the micel eie of him. Tha he to Engle-land com. tha was he underfangen mid micel wurtscipe. & to king bletcsed in Lundene on the sunnen dsei beforen mid- winter dsei. and ther held he micel curt. [Book III died, and his son Henry took to the earldom. And the queen of France parted from the king ; and she came to the young earl Henry, and he took her to wife, and all Poictou with her. Then went he with a large foixe into England, and won some castles ; and the king went against him with a much larger force. Nevertheless, fought they not; but the archbishop and the wise men went between them, and made this settlement: that the king should be lord and king while he lived, and after his day Henry should be king : that Henry should take him for a father, and he him for a son : that peace and union should be betwixt them, and in all England. This, and the other provisions that they made, swore the king and the earl to observe, and all the bishops, and the earls, and the rich men. Then was the eai'l received at Winchester, and at London, with great worship : and all did him homage, and swore to keep the peace. And there was soon so good a peace as never was here before. Then was the' king stronger than he ever was before. And the earl went over sea ; and all people loved him ; for he did good justice, and made peace. A.D. 1 1 54. In this year died the king Stephen ; and he was buried where his wife and his son were buried, at Faversham, which monastery they founded. When the king died, then was the earl beyond sea ; but no man durst do other than good, for the great fear of him. When he carae to England, then was he received with great worship, and blessed to king in London on the Sunday before mid-winter day. And there he held a full court. The short composition which follows appears to present a specimen of our language and poetry at the latest period at which they could fairly be denominated Saxon. It is from a volume of Homilies in the Bodleian Library (MS. 343), supposed to have been written in the time of Henry II. It was first communicated to the Society of Antiquaries, in ISH, by the late Rev. John Josiah Conybearc. "The wes bold gebyld Er thu iboren were, The wes mold imynt Er thu of moder come The hit nes no idiht Ne thes deopnes imeten Nes til iloced, Hu long hit the were, Nu me the bringseth Wer thu been scealt, Nu me sceal the meten And tha mold seoththa • Ne bith no thine hus Healice itimbred, Hit bith unheh and lab ; Thonne thu bist therinne The helewages beoth lage, Sidwages unhege. The rof bith ybild Theie brost full neh, Swa thu scealt in mold Winnen ful cald, Dimme and deorcse. Thet clen fulaet on hod. Dureleas is tha)t hus. And deorc hit is withinnen Daer thu bist fest bidyte And Dajlh hefth tha cspge. Lathlic is thset eorth hus. And grim innc to wunien. Ther thu scealt wunien And wurraes the to deleth. For thee is a house built Ere thou wert born. For thee was a mould shapen Ere thou of (thy) mother earnest. Its height is not determined, Nor its depth measured. Nor is it closed up (However long it may be) Until I thee bring Where thou shall remain Until I shall measure thee And the sod of earth. Thy house is not Highly built (timbered). It is unhigh and low ; When thou art in it The heelways are low, The side-ways unhigh. The roof is built Thy breast full nigh ; So thou shalt in earth Dwell full cold. Dim, and dark. That clean putrefies. Doorless is that house. And dark it is within : There thou art fast detaiued. And Death holds the key. Loathly is that earth- house, And grim to dwell in ; There thou shalt dwell. And worms shall share thee. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066— 121G. 613 Thus thu bist ileyd. And ladoest thine Ironden, Nefst thu nenne freond The the wylle faren to, Thset sefre wule lokien Hu the thaet hus the hke, Thset sefre undon The wule tha dure. And the sefter haten For sone thu bist ladlic And lad to iseonne. From about the middle of the twelfth century, the Saxon language is commonlj' considered to have begun to take a form in which we may discover the beginning of the present English * We are not, however, in possession of any undoubted spe- cimens of the language in the latter part of the twelfth century. Of the pieces which Warton has given as belonging to this period, the late able and learned editor of the ' History of English Poetry' has remarked that, " judging from internal evi- dence, there is not one which may not safely be referred to the thirteenth century, and by far the greater number to the close of that period. "f In these circumstances we shall reserve the consider- ation of what may be called the birth of the Eng- lish language for the next book. We shall there also find the most convenient opportunity of noticing the rise and progress of the poetry of the Provencal troubadours, and of the French and Anglo-Norman romance minstrelsy. The Latin, during the whole of the jHCsent period, was the chief language of literary com- position. It was in Latin that the teachers at the chief seats of learning (many of whom were foreigners) delivered their prelections in all the sciences, and that all the disputations among the students were carried on. English and French churchmen of this age appear to have generally been as familiar with Latin as with their native tongue, and to have usually employed it in their intercourse with each other. Nay, some of them who could not speak English seem to have been accustomed to preach to the people in Latin, and, what is remarkable enough, sometimes with much acceptance and effect. Peter of Blois, as we have seen, speaks of this having been done by the French monk Gislebert, or Gilbert, who was one of the founders of the University of Cambridge. So Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that, in a progress which he made through Wales in 1186, to assist Archbishop Baldwin in preaching a crusade for the recovery of the Holy Land, he was always most successful when he appealed to the people in a Latin sermon ; it never failed, although they did not understand a word of it, to melt them into tears, and to make them come in crowds to take the cross. Much poetry was also writteii in Latin, in various styles. Joannes Grammaticus, Laurence, • See History of the English Language, prefixed to Johnson's Dictionary. + Warton's Hist, of Eng. Poetry, i. 7. (Edit, of 18-24.) Thus thou art laid And leavest thy friends ; Thou hast no friend That will come to thee. Who will ever inquire How that house hketh thee ? Who shall ever open For thee the door. And seek tl)ee ? For soon thou becomest loathly, And hateful to look upon. prior of Durham, Robert Dunstable, the historian, Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Eadmer, William of Malmsbury, John Hanvil, Giraldus Cambrensis, Alexander Neckham, Walter Mapes, and, above all, Josephus Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, are enumerated and celebrated by Warton as flourishing within the present period. Joseph of Exeter Warton characterises as " a miracle in classical composition :" of his epic poem on the Trojan war he says, " the diction is generally pure, the periods round, and the numbers harmonious ; and, on the whole, the structure of the versification approaches nearly to that of polished Latin poetry. The writer appears to have possessed no common command of poetical phraseology, and wanted nothing but a knowledge of the Virgilian chastity." Some of the compositions of this age, especially some of those of Walter Mapes, who has been styled the Anacreon of the eleventh century, are written in the rhyming Latin called Leonine verse. Mapes's drinking song, in particular, beginning — " Mihi est propositum in taberna mori," is well known. This jovial bard was Archdeacon of Oxford. But by far the most precious literary remains of this age are the numerous historical works it has left us. So large a body of early contemporary history as that formed by the writings of the English chroniclers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries is probably not possessed by any other nation. We will briefly mention some of the chief names. That venerable monument, the Saxon Chronicle, in the first place, comes down to the end of the reign of Stephen. We have the Life of the Conqueror from the pen of William of Poictiers, his chaplain. Doubts have been cast upon the authenticity of the liistory which passes under the name of Ingulphus, Abbot of Croyland, and indeed it may now be con- sidered as established that the work is not what it professes to be ;* but if a forgery in respect to its title and the form it is made to assume, it is im- possible not to believe that it is founded upon genuine records of the times to which it relates, and that much of the information contained in it is as trustworthy as it is curious. It narrates the history of the abbey of Croyland, and, to a certain extent, that of the kingdom, from the foundation of that abbey in A.r. 664 to a.d. 1091. The Eccle- siastical History of Ordericus Vitalis comes down • See an able Article on llie sources of early Englisli History, in the Quarterly Ueview, No. Isvii. pp. 289—297. 614 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. to the year 1121, and is interspersed with many notices of civil transactions. The History of Ead- mer, the monk of Canterbury, which embraces the period from the Conquest to the year 1122, is especially valuable for the original papers preserved in it, and for the great number of facts related upon the author's own knowledge. The work of Florence of Worcester, though in what he has given of English history he is little more than a translator of the Saxon Chronicle, is not to be the less prized on that account. " He understood the ancient Saxon language well," says the learned critic to whom we have referred above, " better, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries ; and he has furnished us with an accurate translation from a text which seems to have been the best of its kind."* He comes down to the year 1117 j and the work is continued to the year 1141 by another monk of the same place. The excellent histories of William of Malms- bury, his five books of the Acts of the English kings, and the sequel, in two books, under the title of ' Historia Novella,' extend over the time from the first arrival of the Saxons to the year 1143, in which the author died. Simeon of Durham, and his continuators John and Richard, successively priors of Hexham, have preserved much infor- mation, especially respecting the northern part of the kingdom, that is nowhere else to be found: their narrative comes down to the year 1156. Another highly valuable work relating to the latter part of the same period is the anonymous account of the reign of Stephen, entitled ' Gesta Stephani.' The eight books of the History of Henry of Huntingdon, which, beginning with the earliest accounts of Britain, also come down to the end of the reign of Stephen, and are continued by another writer for ten years farther, derive a high value from the numerous ancient authorities, now lost, which appear to have been consulted in their preparation ; some fragments of very early Saxon compositions appear to be almost literally translated and fitted into the text. William of Newbridge, or Newburgh (also known by the names of Little, or Parvus, or Petit), has written with great ability a history of the events from the Norman conquest to the year 11 97. The Annals of Roger de Hove- den, from a.d. 731, where Bede's Ecclesiastical History ends, to a.d. 1202, present an immense repertory of minute details. It has been supposed also that the work entitled the Flowers of History, and attributed to Matthew of Westminster, who appears to be a fictitious personage, most probably belongs to this age. The critic quoted above is inclined to believe that the author of the greater part of the work was anterior even to Florence of Worcester, t To these might be added a long list of other names : — Brompton, Turgot, Ailred, Gervase of Canterbury, Ralph de Diceto, Benedict, abbot of Peterborough, Giraldus Cambrensis, Richard of • Quarterly Review, vol. Ixvii.p. 281, t Ibid. p. 281. Devizes, Walter of Coventry, Ralph, abbot of Cog- geshall, &c. ; not to mention the foreign writers, William of Jumieges (Gulielmus Gemeticensis), Vinesauf, William of Tyre, and others ; and the Chronicle of Mailros, the Annals of Burton, Mar- gan, Waverley, and other monastic registers.* Few nations, in any period of history, have been more distinguished than the Normans by a taste for magnificent buildings. At the period of their establishment in Neustria, the later Romanesque architecture — the origin of which has been ad- verted to in the preceding book — had already taken its ultimate form and character ; and in this style, which they adopted, and continued to practise for above two hundred years, many examples remain to attest their proficiency as early as the tenth cen- tury. But in the early part of the eleventh century, which was to them an interval of comparative peace and tranquillity, when they began to enjoy the benefits of permanent security in their possessions, the Normans appear to have been seized with a mania for founding monasteries. The nobility emulated each other in erecting churches on their domains, and the period immediately preceding the descent upon England is distinguished by the erection of the most magnificent edifices in this style remaining in Normandy. Among these may be cited the two celebrated abbeys at Caen, founded by William the Conqueror and his wife Matilda, of which one at least was nearly completed at the time of the Conquest, and the other immediately after. The success of the Nonnan arms in Eng- land was immediately followed by the general diffusion of Norman arts ; and when the land was parcelled out among Norman barons, and appro- priated to the endowment of Norman monasteries, and when the sees and religious establishments were filled with Norman bishops and monks, edi- fices rivalling those of their continental dominions speedily rose in every part of the country. Such was the activity and zeal with which the Normans exerted themselves in securing their acquisitions by the construction of fortresses, and in displaying • The principal of the works mentioaed above are to be found in the following collections : — 1. llerum Britannicarum, id est, AngliEC, ScotiEE, Vicinarumquc [nsularum ac Regionum, Scriptores Vetustiores ac Praecipui : (a HiEB. CoMMELiN'o). Fol. Heidelb. & Lugd. 1587. 2. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam Prsecipui, ex Vetus- tissimis MSS. nunc primum in lucem editi : (a Heij. Savile). Fol. ton. 1596, and Francof. 1601. 3. Anglica.Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica,aveteribus Sciipta, ex Bibl. GuiLiELMi Camdeni. Fol. Francof. 1603. 4. Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores X. ex Vetustis MSS. nunc primum in lucera editi ; (a Roo. Twysden et Joan. Seldbn). Fol. Lou. 1652. ^^j 5. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptorum Veterum Tomus 1 ; Quorum Ingulfus nunc primum integer, ceteri nunc primum prodeunt : (a Joan. Fell). Fol. Oxon. 1684 (sometimes cited as the 1st vol. of Gale's Collection). 6. Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Quinque, ex Vetustis Codi- cibus 5ISS. nunc primum in lueem editi (a Thom. Gale). Fol. Oxon. 1687. (This is called the 2nd vol. of Gale's Collection.) 7. Historiae Britaiinicce; Saxonica;, Anglo-Dauicffi, Scriptores XV. ex Vetustis Codd. MSS. editi. Opera. Thom.ts Gale. Fol. Oxon. 1691. (This is called the 1st vol. of Gale's Collection-.) 8. Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Varii, e Codicibus manuscriptis nunc primum editi : (a Jos. Sparke.) Fol. Lon. 1723. 9. Historiae •Normannorum Scriptores Antiqui ; studio Anpre^; DU Chesne. Fol. Paris, 1619. 10. Gesta Dei per Francos: (a Jacob. Bonoarsio), 2 torn, fol. Hanov.l6U. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS : A.D. 1066—1216. 615 their piety by the foundation of monasteries, and the erection and restoration of ecclesiastical build- ings, that before the end of the eleventh century their strongholds were scattered over the kingdom to its remotest parts ; and in addition to the nume- rous religious establishments originating from the munificence of the Normans, many of those already existing were refounded, and the buildings demo- lished for the purpose of restoring them on a more extensive scale. However rapaciously the Nor- mans may have possessed themselves of the wealth of England, they certainly applied it with good taste, and, by a liberal expenditure, encouraged the arts, and restored the forms of religion. " You might see," says William of Malmsbury, " churches rise in every village, and monasteries in the towns and cities, built in a style unknown before. You might behold the country flourishing with reno- vated sites, so that each wealthy man accounted that day lost to him, which he neglected to sig- nalize by some magnificent action." The twelfth century was still more productive in works of architecture, especially of the military class. Henry I. was a great builder both of castles and monasteries; but in the following turbulent reign the country became, in the words of the Saxon Chronicle, " covered with castles — every one built a castle who was able." So that before the death of Stephen they are reckoned to have amounted to the number of 11 15, Church archi- tecture flourished in nearly an equal degree in the more tranquil part of this century; and to this period, accordingly, we are indebted for a large proportion of our principal ecclesiastical edifices. Of the resources which the clergy of this period brought to the work of founding and constructing churches and monasteries, we may form an idea from the example of Bishop Herbert Losing, who removed the episcopal see of Thetford to Norwich in 1094. Besides settling a community of Clugn- iac monks at Thetford, he established an exten- sive and numerous monastery at Norwich, defray- ing the expense entirely out of his private fortune, and erected the splendid church which still re- mains a monument of his wealth and liberality ; and yet William of Malmsbury, to whom we owe these particulars, expressly says, that he was by no meant a rich bishop. This church, however, was much surpassed in size by others of the same date ; and the enlarged ideas of Mauritius, bishop of London, appear to have astonished even his con- temporaries. He began to rebuild his cathedral in 1086, upon a plan so vast and magnificent, that it was censured as a rash undertaking, never likely to be completed ; and though this building be lost to posterity, the accounts we have of its form and dimensions would go far to justify these feelings of wonder and incredulity. Roger, bishop of Sarum (1107 — 1139), was another munificent builder. Besides his cathedral, which he rebuilt in such a manner " that it yielded to none, and surpassed many, he erected several castles," says Malmsbury, " and splendid mansions on all his estates, with such unrivalled magnificence, that in merely main- taining them, the labour of his successors will toil in vain." The abbey of Malmsbury was also the work of this great prelate ; and its ruins and some fragments of Sherborne castle are all that remain of the numerous works which drew forth these high encomiums from the historian. To particularize all the ecclesiastical edifices founded during this period, would be to enumerate most of the cathedrals and principal abbeys in Eng- land. So solid and well constructed are these works, that wherever the hand of time has not been assisted by violence or neglect, they remain to this day entire, and apparently imperishable. It is true that in many instances the alterations and additions of succeeding periods have done much to obliterate the original character of the Norman style, yet there are few of the buildings in which it cannot be distinctly traced, and in a considerable number it still predominates. In this latter class, besides the cathedral of Norwich already men- tioned, we may notice those of Durham, founded by William de Carilepho (1093); Chichester, by Bishop Ralph (1091); Peterborough, by Ernulph (1107); Rochester,by Gundulph (1077); Here- ford, by Robert de Losing (1079) ; Gloucester, by Abbot Serb (1088); and Oxford, by Prior Guy- mond (1120). There are also considerable re- mains of this period at Ely, in the nave and tran- septs (1081 — 1106); at Exeter, in the two noble towers built by Bishop Warelwast (1112); at Winchester, in the tower and transepts, the work of Bishop Walkelyn (1070) ; and in the cathedral of Canterbury, of which the whole of the eastern part was erected before the end of the 12th century. Many other examples will be noticed incidentally as we proceed. It is not only as the munificent founders of so many noble buildings, and the patrons of the artists by whom their erection was superintended, that these prelates have a claim upon our admiration. In an age when all arts, sciences, and learning were confined to the clerical order, there is great reason to believe that it was their architectural skill which produced the designs which their wealth contributed to carry into execution. Gundulph, bishop of Rochester, is recorded to have been the most able architect of his day, not only in the eccle- siastical, but also in the military style. The cathe- dral and castle of Rochester, though neither was completed in his lifetime, and the Tower of Lon- don, are sufficient evidence of his talents. Peter of Colechurch, architect of the first stone bridge across the Thames at London (1176), was also an ecclesiastic. To these may be added, though on less direct evidence, the names of Henry de Blois, bishop of Winchester, who, besides continuing the works at his cathedral, founded the monasteries of St. Cross and Romsey, in Hampshire, where the churches still retain their original architectural character ; the bishops Roger and Ernulph, already mentioned, and Alexander, bishop of Lincoln (from 1124 to 1147). The list might be much further 616 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. extended, upon at least probable grounds. William of Sens, however, who rebuilt part of Canterbury cathedral in 1174, appears to have been a pro- fessional architect, as well as another William, an Englishman, Avho succeeded him, and completed his works. As the Norman style of architecture forms an intermediate link between the Roman and the Gothic, and as its transition into the latter is ex- tremely gradual, we find in it, as may be expected, much that recalls the memory of the one, and much which connects it with the other. Its prin- cipal characteristic feature is the circular arch, springing either from a single column, varying in every degree from a cylinder of two diameters high to a proportion nearly classical, or from a pier decorated with half columns or light shafts, the evident origin of the clustered pillar of a later date. Both these forms are frequently used in the same building, as in the cathedral of Durham, where they support the main arches alternately. Polygonal shafts and plain rectangular piers are also to be met with, but they are less common. The walls are so massive as to render buttresses unnecessary — the projections so called being rather for ornament than utility. The windows are small in proportion, and generally simple in form, though sometimes divided by a column into two lights within the external arch. Circular windows were also used, and in their simple division by 1. Southwell Miuster. Norman Windows. 2. St. Cross, Hants. 3. Caston Churcli, Nortliamptonshire. small shafts, we may see the outline of the elaborate wheel windows of the Gothic style. The cornices WiNnow OF Castle Hewnoham Church, are often extremely bold, and supported by corbels in a variety of forms, of which grotesque and mon- strous heads are the most common. Another sort of cornice consists merely of a band, indented un- derneath, and forming a parapet : this cornice is usually of the same projection as the buttresses, which die into it. The former style of cornice was generally used to terminate towers, and perhaps originally to support an acut^-angled stone roof, many of which remain in Normandy ; though in England, so universal has been the taste for alter- ations, as various styles of architecture succeeded to each other, it would be difficult to find an example in its original state. These roofs are probably the origin of the spire ; and in that of the church of Then, the angles are decorated in a manner in which the germ of a crocket may be distinguished. But the general pitch of the Norman roof is moderate ; the acute pitch accompanied the establishment of the pointed arch. Tower of Then Chuiich, Normanct. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 10G6— 1216. 617 The details of the Norman style are extremely varied, yet the mouldings are few and simple, and may be traced to a Roman origin. The bases of the columns are also usually simple and regular. In the capitals we constantly find imitations of the classical orders (except, perhaps, the Ionic), from the plainest to the most elaborate. Other forms of the most frequent occurrence a])pear to be peculiar to the style, whilst in a very large class, possessing the general resemblance of a sort of campanulate form with a massive square abacus, the imagi- nation seems to have exhausted itself in devising the ornaments with which they are sculptured. In the main columns of buildings the shai'ts are for the most part plain, and a certain degree of uniformity is observed in the capitals, as in those of the cathedral of Oxford, where they are foliated and of the same general aspect, though varied in the details with much taste ; but when columns are used as decorations only, as they frequently are to a great extent, it is common to find a studied variety not only in the capitals, but even in the shafts. The running decorations are also extremely various, and, like the capitals, may often be traced to a classical origin. The antique scroll is re- produced in a variety of modifications. But the most characteristic ornament of the style is the chevron, or zigzag, which is used in the greatest profusion equally in the earliest and latest exam- ples, and even lingers after almost every other trace of the style has disappeared. Aiter this almost universal decoration, frets and reticulations of various forms, right-angled, triangular, and lozenge-shaped, are the most common; and the billeted moulding, described by Bentham, " as if a cylinder should be cut into small pieces of equal length, and then stuck on alternately round the face of the arch." Another common and peculiar decoration is a range of beaked heads lying over a hollow moulding. Cabled and spiral mouldings are also frequent. These decorations, and an infinite number of others, of which many may be gathered from the accompanying illustrations, were frequently used in great profusion, both in arches and horizontal bands. But in Anglo-Norman works the greatest display of ornament was lavished on the door- ways, the arch of which often consists of a repe- tition of many enriched bands, one within another, surrounded by an archivolt, sometimes resembling that member in classical architecture, sometimes partaking more of the form of a label. Square- headed doors are common ; but this form is gene- rally (the exceptions are rare) inclosed within an arch, and the space filled up with sculpture. NoMrAN Capitals. 1. Jumieges. 2. Sansou-sur-Rille. 3. St. Peter's, Northampton. 4. Stcetly, Derbyshire. .-., and 1) St John's Chester 6, 7, and 10. Rochester Cathedral. S.Canterbury, 9. St. Georges de Bocherville. 12. Oxford. "' 618 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. tBooK III. 1 m 1 to 8. Shafts of Columns. Norman AacHiTECTURAi Decobations. 9 to 16, and 24. Arch-mouldings. 17 to 23. Strings and Imposts. 25 and 26. Cornices. 27 to 30. Ornaments on Flat Svirfaces. These particulars will be best understood by refer- ence to the engravings. The mode of ornament- ing the archivolt with figures in compartments, as in the doorway of Barfreston church, is not uncommon. As the windows in the Norman style are small, and there are no salient buttresses to break the external outline of the building, several kinds of decoration are appropriated to ornament the face of the walls, which would otherwise exhibit a large extent of plain surface. Of these the most con- spicuous is a series of small columns and arches, sometimes simple, and sometimes interlaced. One or two tiers of these graceful arcades are very common, either introduced as a dado (both inside and out), as at Canterbury, Christ Church, and Winchester, or as a band between the upper and lower windows, as at Norwich ; but some facades present a mass of this beautiful arch- work ; such are the west fronts of Rochester Cathedral and Castle Acre Priory, and the ancient parts of Lin- coln. Sometimes these arches are richly deco- rated, and even the flat surfaces within them ; as in the tower of St. Augustine at Canterbury, now destroyed, of which a representation has been given in a preceding page. The Latin cross had become at this period the established form for churches of the larger class, terminating at the east end in a semicircular apsis. The circular form also predominated in the ap- pendent chapels, as may be observed in the cathe- drals of Canterbury, Norwich, and Gloucester, and still more distinctly in their prototypes in Normandy, which have undergone less alteration. The internal elevation consists of three divisions — the lower arches ; the triforium, occupying the space between the vaulting and external roof of the side aisles ; and the clerestory. These parts may be considered invariable ; and the interior of Durham Cathedral may be taken as an example of their arrangement. But their forms and propor- tions differ in different buildings; the triforium Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND PINE ARTS: A.D. 1066— 121G. 619 DooK-WAY, Koitsjiy Abbey, Hants. DooR-WAT OF Barfiieston Chuech, Kent. Jiu^jiby i J i W i lll iBillBHBBBli U I J I lJlJiyiJ I JIJIUU 1. Lincoln Minster. DlXOllATlVK KORIIAN AUCHI'.S. 2. Castle Acre Priory. 3. St. Augustine, Canterbury. 620 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. being sometimes a spacious open arch, as at Waltham Abbey, and sometimes a very insig- nificant member of the composition, as at Tewks- bury. The windows of the clerestory also vary from a single to a triple light. The internal roofs are sometimes vaulted and sometimes left open to the timbers. In the former case the groins most commonly spring from a lofty shaft, either rising from the ground, or super- posited on the capitals of the main columns. The intersection of the cross generally supports a tower, low in proportion, and much decorated with arches pierced for windows. Within it is open to the roof, and forms a lantern. The west end is often flanked by two other towers, as at Southwell Minster, Worksop Abbey, and Durham Cathedral. The angles of the building very com- monly break forward before the face of the wall, and are surmounted by square or octangular turrets, formed of groups of columns and arches, and ter- minating in a pinnacle, of which examples remain at Rochester, Bishop's Cleeve in Gloucestershire, and a few other places; but their mutilation is almost universal. The smaller parish churches of this period con- sist of a nave and chancel, without side aisles or transepts, with a tower, generally at the west end, but sometimes, as at Iffley and Stewkeley, at the junction of the two divisions of the buildma- In all churches of this class which possess a deco- rative character a great share of enrichment is bestowed upon the arch which spans the building between the nave and chancel, as at Tickencote and Barfreston. The east end sometimes terminates in the semicircular apsis, as at Steetly in Derby- shire, but is more commonly square. In this view of Norman ecclesiastical architec- ture it has been deemed expedient to dwell at some length upon its details. In tlie most import- ant structures of this class, the dates, as we have had occasion to see, are generally to be ascertained ; but we shall not find the light of history so clearly thrown upon the other branches of our inquiry : analogy must often supply its place, and then a knowledge of detail will be our only guide. ^ But, previously to entering into the subject of the military and domestic architecture of this period, it may not be uninteresting to offer a few remarks upon a point which has caused some em- barrassment to antiquaries, — namely, that in some particulars there is a marked difterence between the Anglo-Norman style and that of the continent. Wk.st Front of KociiKsiKU Cathf.drai.. The centre window is an addition of much later date. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 621 iSAVK OF Durham Catiikdi;ai.. 'J'hus the common occvirreiice of the enriched door- ways that have been described is peculiar to England; for though highly-decorated examples are to be found in Normandy, yet they are rare ; whereas on our side of the Channel they abound, and seem at all periods to have been respected and thought worthy of preservation, since nothing is more common than to find an enriched Norman doorway remaining in a parish church of which every other part has been altered or rebuilt at a subsequent period. In fact, the exterior of our principal churches of this date is generally in a more decorative style than those in Normandy. The front of the church of St. Stephen at Caen* (as high at least as the towers) is not merely plain, but mean, especially the windows, to a degree imknown in any Englit^h structure of equal im- portance, — a circumstance difficult to be accounted for, since there is no appearance of parsimony or of imperfection in the style in any other respect ; and the instance is by no means singular. On the other hand, the details are more regular, better drawn, and more skilfully executed in Normandy than in England, where we shall seek in vain for so near an approach to the graceful forms of antiquity • Page 390. 622 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. as in the two first examples of capitals. The style of these capitals, and of many other specimens of architectural sculpture to be found in France, may lead to an explanation of the difficulty. The architectural Avorks of this period, and throughout the middle ages, must have been the result of a division of labour. The share the cle- rical architect took in the work was probably con- fined to the general dimensions, outline, and cha- racter of the building ; the actual construction was the business of the master mason ; while the subor- dinate parts, with their various details, were con- fided to a class of operative artists unknown in the present age, whose minds as well as hands were occupied upon the mouldings and decorations, which they invented as well as executed, each man's province being, perhaps, extremely limited. It is difficult upon any other theory to account for the combination of unity of design and prodigious variety of detail in the works of the middle ages. We shall find, upon examination, what has been incidentally noticed in a former Chapter, — that Byzantine sculpture abounds in the architecture of this period on the continent, but is of extreme rarity in England. A people so far advanced as the Anglo-Saxons in an original style of decorative painting might be independent of foreign aid in architectural sculpture ; general designs would naturally be modified by the means of execution at hand ; and we may fairly conclude that, though we undoubtedly owe our greatest works to the energy and magnificence of the Normans, yet much that is valuable about them is due to genuine native talent. The military structures of this period must not be confounded with the extensive fortified resi- dences which came into vogue toward the end of the thirteenth century. The palatial character of the castles of the feudal barons, the vast halls and lightsome oriels which the records and fictions of chivalry and romance have inseparably associated with them, had no existence in those of the twelfth century, which were essentially fortresses, in which everything was sacrificed to security. At this period the principles upon which such places were constructed were of necessity essen- tially different from those adapted to the modern art of war, and in some respects even totally op- posite, the chief strength of the fortress lying in the height and inaccessibility of the defences. For resistance to the modes of attack then in use the buildings in question were admirably calculated, and though the form and arrangement of the strongholds of the Anglo-Norman barons were as various as the positions in which they were erected, yet it is not difficult to perceive in their scattered remains a common resemblance from which the general system of their construction may be de- duced. The Anglo-Norman castle occupied a consider- able space of ground, sometimes several acres, and usually consisted of three principal divisions, — the outer or lower Ballium (Anglic«i Bailey) or court, A Norman Castle. From an Ancient Brawing publislied iu Grose's Military Antiquities. 1. Tlie Dungeon. 2. Chapel. 3. Stable. 4. Inner Bailey. 5. Outer Bailey. 6. Barbican. 7. Mount. 8. Soldiers' Lodgings. — The Mount is supposed by Grose to be the Court-hill, where the lord dispensed justice, and where it was also executeci. the inner or upper court, and the keep. The outer circumference of the whole was defended by a lofty and solid perpendicular wall, strengthened at intervals by towers, and surrounded by a ditch or moat. Flights of steps led to the top of this ram- part, which was protected by a parapet,* embattled and pierced in different directions by loop-holes or chinks, and ceillets, through which missiles might be discharged without exposing the men. The ramparts of Rockingham Castle, according to Leland, were embattled on both sides, " so that if the area were won the castle keepers might defend the walls." The entrance through the outer wall into the lower court was defended by the barbican, which in some cases was a regular outwork, cover- ing the approach to the bridge across the ditch ; but the few barbicans which remain consist only of a gateway in advance of the main gate, with which it was connected by a narrow open passage com- manded by the ramparts on both sides. Such a work remained until lately attached to several of the gates of York, and still remains, though of a later date, at Warwick Castle. The entrance archway, besides the massive gates, was crossed by the portcullis, which could be instantaneously dropped upon any emergency ; and the crown of • See ante, p. 368. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 628 Plan and Elevation of Monk Bab, York- a Outer Gate. 6 Barbican, c Groove for Portcullis, d Inner Gate. / City Walls, g Stairs to ditto, h Guard-room, t Sally-port. the arch was pierced with holes, through which melted lead and pitch, and heavy missiles, could be cast upon the assailants below. A second rampart, similar to the first, separated the lower from tlie upper court, in which were placed the habitable buildings, including the keep, the relative position of which varied with the nature of the site. It was generally elevated upon a high artificial mound, and sometimes inclosed by outworks of its own. The keep bore the same relation to the rest of the castle that the citadel bears to a fortified town. It Avas the last retreat of the garrison, and contained the apartments of the baron or commandant. In form the Anglo-Nor- man keeps are varied, and not always regular ; but in those of the larger size rectangular plans are the most common, and of the smaller class many are circular. The solidity of their construction is so great that we find them retaining at least their outward form in the midst of the most dilapidated ruin. Time and violence appear to have assaulted them in vain, and even the love of change has respected them through successive generations. In those towers much judgment is shown in dis- posing of the limited space they afford so as to obtain the best accommodation in a manner com- patible with security ; and as it was also necessary to provide for the subsistence of a garrison in- dependently of all external communication, they invariably contain a well, which is sometimes con- trived with a funnel in the wall to supply water to each story separately. There are generally three stories, and often four, of which the lowest is a dark, vaulted basement, traditionally assigned to the custody of prisoners of war. To such a use these dungeons were undoubtedly too often put, but their general destination was more probably for store-rooms. This story communicated from above with the second, on which was the entrance, acces- sible only by a steep and narrow flight of steps. The upper floor was the principal apartment, and often the only one possessing the advantage either of a window or a chimney. There was always one, and in the larger keeps two rooms, on each floor, as large as the extent within the walls would admit ; and, in the upper story, a variety of closets and conveniences contrived in the projections and thickness of the walls. At Conisborough, the keep, which is four stories high, is a circle of about twenty-two feet diameter inside, with walls fifteen feet thick, flanked by six projecting turrets. In this example both the third and fourth stories con- tain fire-places, and were therefore both intended for lodging rooms, though the former is very imperfectly lighted. From the latter, though the state-apartment has but one window, opens a small but well-decorated hexagon room, occu- pying one of the turrets, with a closet adjoin- ing. A piscina or basin for holy-water in the wall indicates the former to be the chapel, a necessary appendage to every castle. Six other closets, opening to the platform on the top of the building, are obtained in the six turrets, which rise above the parapet, one of which, from the appearance of an oven within, seems to have been used as a kitchen. The floors have been of timber, and the stone corbels upon which the beams rested still remain. In its extent and arrangement this build- ing may be taken as a fair representation of the Norman keeps of the smaller class. The greater keeps are often enormous masses of building. That of the Tower of London is a pa- rallelogram of one hundred and sixteen feet by ninety-six, • and sixty-nine high. Rochester oc- cupies a square of about seventy feet, and rises to the immense height of one hundred and four. Dover, Colchester, Castle Rising, Kenilworth, Richmond, Bamborough, and others too numerous to be separately distinguished, are of the same 624 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. CoNisBonouoH Cast/,e, Yorkshire. A Plan of the Second.orEntnince Story. 1. Steps. 2. Entrance. 3. Stairs to Tliird Story. 4. Opening to tlie Vaulted Story below. B The Third Story. 5. Stairs i'rotn the Second Floor. 6. Window. 7. Chimney. 8. Privv. 9. Stairs to Fourth Story. C, The Fourth Story. 10. Chapel. 11. Stairs from Third Floor, 12. Window. 13. Chimney. 14. Stairs to I'latform. CONISBOROUGH CaSTLE. class and on a similar plan. Their vast surfaces are relieved by shallow buttresses, and in some instances, as at Norwich,* by ornamental arches. Their angles are broken by turrets containing stair- cases, and a projecting tower of entrance with the chapel in the upper story is a feature common to many.f In their internal accommodation they differ from the smaller keeps only in extent. The principal rooms are larger, and the secondary ones more numerous, but they are in no respect more conveniently arranged or less gloomy. Dark and comibrtless as these towers were, the incessant warfare which' rendered their construction necessary also compelled the Anglo-Norman ba- * See ante, p, 380. + See ante, p. 395. rons to inhabit them with their families and re- tinue. In Scotland, and particularly in the border country, where society long remained in a similar state, even the private houses continued for cen- turies to be erected in the form of towers, with windows reduced to loop-holes ; the ground-floor, strongly barricaded, being used to secure the cattle at night, and the family dwelling in the ill-lighted apartments above, where they were sometimes obliged to shut themselves up for days together. These Peel houses, as they are called, abounded on the frontier; and Hoddam Castle, a fortalice of this description, was erected by John, Lord Herries, as late as the reign of Mary Stuart. The long continuance of the feudal system in the Chap, v.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 625 The KEEf of Richmond Castle. northern parts of Great Britain has had the effect of bringing down many ancient customs to a recent date, its lately as the year 1740, the notorious Simon Frazer, Lord Lovat, maintained all the customs of his ancestors in his residence of Castle Dunie ; and his manner of living, described on the authority of Ferguson (the astronomer), who in his youth had passed several months there, may serve to explain by what means the Norman barons and their numerous retainers could find even temporary accommodation in the confined buildings that have been described. " The residence of this powerful laird was a sort of tower, forming at best such a house as would be esteemed but an indifferent one for a private country gentleman in England. It had in all only four apartments on a floor, and none of them large. Here, however, he kept a sort of court and several public tables, and had a very numerous body of retainers always attending. His own constant res-idence, and the place where he received company and dined with them, was in one room only, and that the very room in which he lodged. His lady's sole apartment was also her bedchamber. The only provision made for lodg- ing either the domestic servants or the numerous retainers was a quantity of straw, which was spread every night over the lower rooms, where the whole of the inferior part of the family, con- sisting of a very great number of persons, took up their abode. Sometimes above 400 persons attend- ing this petty court were kennelled there." It is not, however, to be doubted th it the ex- tensive circuit of the Norman castles inclosed sub- sidiary buildings, and those not always confined to such as were requisite for the mere accommodation of the garrison, their horses, and their live-stock. Portchester Castle protected a religious community within its walls, whose church remains to attest its early date. A similar structure is to be traced at Bamborough. At Okeham Castle, a great liall erected before the end of the twelfth century, is still extant, and Robert Earl of Gloucester, who died in 1147, is said to have built a baronial hall in his castle of Bristol. All such appendages must, however, be absolutely distinguished from those which were afterwards incorporated with the main edifice. The extensive and connected residentiary buildings which form the upper ward of such Norman castles as were subsequently retained for habitation, are invariably in a later style than the keep. The castle of Newark, built by Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, is a rare example of any de- parture from the established system of fortification at that period, and its remains may indicate a first step toward that union of habitable space with strength, which afterwards expanded into the magnificence of Warwick, Kenilworth, and Aln- wick. There are few remains of the domestic buildings of this period, but a suflBcient number exist to prove that even those of the greatest extent and solidity were buildings of a character altogether distinct from the 2n ' 626 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. strong holds that have just been described. This fact may also be inferred from the incidental testi- mony of ancient writers. At an earlier period we find that Edward 'the Confessor had a hunting- seat, and Harold a country-house. William of Malmsbury, in a passage already quoted, dis- tinguishes the mansions erected by Bishop Roger from his castles ; and from the same passage we may also infer, that they were in a style of mag- nificence corresponding to that of the otlier descrip- tions of Norman architecture. Of the Palatial style of the period, William Rufus's hall at West- minster survives, a splendid monument ; for though no feature of its original character remains in view, yet there is indisputable evidence that the dimen- sions of the building are unaltered. It is supposed, with much reason, to have been originally divided by columns into a centre and side aisles. This at least appears to have been the general construction of the great halls of the Norman period, as far as there are means of judging. Such was the hall of Henry I.'s palace at Oxford ; that of Okeham Castle is on the same plan ; and the remains of a similar hall existed until lately at the Norman manor- house of Barnack, in Northamptonshire. Of the smaller class of country-houses there are sufficient remains to warrant some general conclusions as to their usual form and distribu- tion, which we shall find to have been mainly influenced by the necessity for protection from hos- tile attacks. The manor-house of Boothby Pagnel, which, though degraded to baser uses, remains nearly in its original state, is built in the form of a parallelogram, with a gable at each end; the lower story is vaulted, and has no communication with the habitable apartment above, which was originally divided into two rooms, of which one only had a chimney ; the entrance was by an external stair, probably moveable. In the roof was a loft, access- ible only by a ladder, for there is no appearance of an internal staircase in this building or any other of the same class. The structure called Pytha- goras's school, at Cambridge, has been a domestic edifice, in all respects similar ; and another was destroyed near the church of St. Olave, in South- wark, during the alterations consequent upon re- building London Bridge. These confined and comfortless dwellings evi- dently bear considerable analogy to the keeps of the same period, and we must suppose them to have been placed within enclosures, and surrounded by offices and outbuildings, which were probably, for the most part, of timber; upon the general use of which material in domestic architecture, now and long after, some observations have appeared in a former chapter.* In town houses it was certainly the principal material, but that stone was sometimes employed, and a high degree of decorative character bestowed upon street architecture at this period, • See ante, p. 317. Jew's HorsE at Lincoln. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 627 Staircase in the Conv-entual Buildings, Caniekbuky. iniir"^ 10 10 so 30 40 r.O CO 70 no 90 100 feet 1 ] n 1 1 1 M 1 11 Pr,AN OF KlIiKSTALT. Abbey, YOSK^HinE. A ThP rhurch B QuadraiKTle. C, Cloister, over which was the Dormitory. D, Chapter-house. E, An addition of later date. A, The ^"'^f^j^gfg^jj^^f '''"^^{f; Kitchen and Offices. II, Remains of the Abbot's lodgings. I, Biuldmgs of later date. 628 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. several instances remain to prove, especially that remarkable building at Lincoln, known by the name of the Jew's house, in which the position of the chimney clearly shows the same distribution to have been followed, of placing the principal apart- ment in the upper floor. Another Norman house, on precisely the same plan, but in a less perfect state, remains within a short distance ; and a third in the same city (vulgarly called John of Gaunt's stables), of which the lower part remains intact, shows the ground-floor to have been lighted on the outside by loopholes only. This latter is an exten- sive building, and encloses a court-yard, with a large ornamented gateway. Moyses Hall, at Bury St. Edmund's, another Norman domestic building, agreeing in every respect with the general conclu- sions that have been stated, is further remarkable for the form of the windows, which are square- headed (within the circular arch), and divided, not by a column, but a mullion. These windows are undoubtedly original. The conventual buildings of all ages may be ex- pected to throw considerable light upon contem- porary domestic architecture ; but of those of the period under consideration subsequent alterations have left little but what is peculiar to the mo- nastic style. The systematic use of external stair- cases is, however, proved by several instances, and especially by the very remarkable one remaining in the conventual buildings at Canterbury. The distribution of the conventual buildings of the twelfth century will be best understood by refer- ence to the accompanying plan of the remains of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, the principal features of which are common to all similar edifices, whe- ther on a larger or smaller scale. The quadrangle, which adjoins the transept, and extends westward, is always placed on the south side of the church, unless local circumstances prevent it. The posi- tion of the chapter-house is invariable, and the arrangement of the larger apartments about the quadrangle differs but little in any instance. This edifice and that of the Norman abbey of Jervaux, in the same county, are nearly similar in plan, and the conjectural references in the one are supplied by comparison with the other. Much architectural splendour was at all times displayed in the abbey gate-houses. That of Bury St. Edmund's is the most perfect remaining of this period, and exhibits in its plain rectangular outline the unvarying cha- racter of the Norman style. The Norman chimneys are of the same con- struction as those now in common use. It is only in some very early examples that we find the flues carried through the wall, and continued merely for a few feet upward outside. The fire-place consists of a spacious hearth, with a projecting funnel on brackets above. Those at Conisborough are re- markable for their close resemblance to the modern style of chimney-piece?. With this perfect know- KlRB-I'LACK, BOOUIBY PaGNEL MaNOK-HOUSE. Abdey Gateway, Bury St. Edmunds. Fir.E-rLACE, CONI.SBOUOUOII Castlk. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 629 ledge of their construction, it seems astonishing that the Norman builders should have introduced chimnej's so sparingly ; but when we see that the builders of the middle ages down to a much later period gave the preference to warming their halls by a central hearth, leaving the smoke io blacken the roof, and escape as it best might by an open lantern, we can only wonder at the different ideas of domestic convenience which have prevailed in different ages. The conclusions which have been drawn as to the general system of the military and domestic architecture of the Normans will be strikingly cor- roborated by a reference to the Bayeux Tapestry. In the compartment relating to the embarkation of Harold, he is represented setting out with his suite from a house precisely like those that have been described, arched below, a large apartment above (in which several persons are drinking), and an external stair, which two of the party are descend- L i:^^:s^^¥ rw% \l L A A Elktaiiox of a Norman House. — From the Bayeux Tapesti'y. ing to join those who are on their way to the ships. Further on is a building, which, from the connexion of the history, must be the palace of Rouen, repre- sented by a gate-house in advance of the hall in which William receives the embassy, the architec- tural character of which is distinctly marked by the long range of windows above. Subsequently we have several fortified places, of which Dol, Dinant, and Bayeux are identified by the inscriptions. They are represented, according to the ancient custom, both in the classical and middle ages, of putting a part for the whole, as castles, consisting in every case, of the mound, the tower, and the steep approach by steps : that of Dinant is also surrounded by palisades, to which the assailants are setting fire. In this general view of the architecture of the Norman period, the great change of style which took place before its conclusion by the introduction of the pointed arch, has not yet been adverted to. The Norman style of architecture expired with the twelfth century; and in the reign of John, the lancet Gothic had entirely superseded it. To enter into a description of that style in the present chapter would be to extend it to an undue length, and to anticipate much that properly belongs to the ensuing period, to which it may be deferred without inconvenience ; since the transition led to no immediate alteration in those general outlines, characteristic of the manners and customs of the age into which it is more especially the province of history to inquire. The origin of the pointed arch, and the priority of invention of the style with which it became identified, are questions which it would be foreign to our purpose to discuss. None of the theories which have been propounded with regard to the origin of the pointed arch have succeeded satisfactorily in assigning it to any remote source, and the latter question can scarcely be settled but by the assistance of a mass of precise dates which are known to be unattainable. The first introduction of the pointed arch certainly brought with it no change of style, either in Nor- mandy or England, but was merely incidental, as in the example of St. Bartholomew the Great, in Lon- don, founded in 1 133, where the arches of the tran- sept at their intersection being narrower than those of the nave, are, for convenience, thrown into the pointed form in preference to using the horse-shoe arch, which is very common in similar cases. But it was not long before the pointed arch came to be introduced systematically, as in the church of St. Cross, in Hampshire, and the abbeys of Malms- bury and Kirkstall ; in all of which examples the main arches are pointed, though the style is essen- tially Norman in every other respect. After the middle of the twelfth century, a new mode of treating the detail may be observed, sometimes altogether independent of the pointed arch, as in the chapel of St. Leonard, near Stamford, in which the detached and slender shafts, the band which encircles them, the uniform foliated capitals, the circular abacus, and the lightness and deep under- cutting of the arch mouldings, all approaching the character of the lancet Gothic, and tending to an entire revolution in style, are applied to forms of the purest Norman design. During the latter DooK-WAY OF St. Lkonaud's Chapel, Stamiord. This door was originally square, as may be seen by the abutments of the flat arch. part of the twelfth century the two styles are blended in every possible variety, and apparently with a caprice subject to no rule. The eastern part 630 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. of Canterbury cathedral, from the choir to the ex- tremity called Becket's Crown, is an interesting example of the transition during the reign of Henry II. In the latter the lancet Gothic is nearly complete ; but the square abacus and the chevron ornament still remain to connect it with the Nor- man.* Of the same date is the round church in the Temple, one of the imitations of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem which resulted from the crusades. But the mixture of style in this example is greater ; for though the main arches are pointed, and spring from a cluster of four detached shafts, yet the door and windows are circular, the triforium displays the interlaced arch, and the dado is ornamented with billets. After the reign of Henry II. the new style is dominant. The architecture of Scotland during this period is identical in character with that of the southern portion of Great Britain; but there are few ex- amples of the Norman style in an unmixed state. Notwithstanding the introduction of the Norman arts of civilization under Malcolm Can-more, and the foundation of Dunfermline Abbey, of which the style indicates its early date, architecture seems to have been little cultivated until the time of David I., since, in the reign of his predecessor, magic was supposed to have assisted in the construction of an arch somewhat beyond the ordinary proportions. The reign of David I. is the great architectural era of Scotland ; and the buildings of the numerous monastic institutions founded by that munificent prince and his nobles during the twelfth century, rival those of England, and exhibit the same struggle between the circular and pointed styles of architecture. The churches of Kelso, Dry- • See ante, p. 656. burgh, Jedburgh, Dundrennan, and Dunkeld may be cited as examples. AH these were founded before the middle of the twelfth cen- tury j and if no delay took place in the erection of the buildings (and there is no reason to suppose aiiy), it would appear that the transition style was introduced into Scotland in a more for- ward state than it had attained in England at the same date, — a fact very difficult to be accounted for, since there is no room to believe that the Scots at this period drew their style of architec- ture from any source independent of the Anglo- Norman school. Kelso, which exhibits a considerable mixture of the pointed arch, was founded in 1128, and was certainly completed in the lifetime of David I., since his son was buried there. In Dundrennan Abbey, founded in 1142, the arches are mixed, though the circular form predominates; and the transition proceeded regularly till the latter part of the twelfth century, when the lancet Gothic, as in England, became completely established. The abbeys of Aberbrothick and Glenluce, the one founded by William the Lion in 1178, and the other by Roland, lord of Galloway, in 1190, are both in that style. The system of military architecture in Scotland at this period is also the same as that of the Anglo- Normans. The construction of the Scottish keep- towers differs in nothing from those already de- scribed, but they do not generally possess an equal degree of architectural character, being for the most part plain rectangular masses, without breaks or buttresses, or any decorations on the arches. Sculpture did not flourish during the Norman period. Statues hold no place in the composition 1, 2. Stone CoFFiNS.-Ixworth Abbey, Suffolk. j 4. Koger, Bishop of Sarum, 1193— SaUsbury Cathedral. 3. One of the early Abbots of Westminster.— Cloisters, Westminster. | 5. Andhkw, Abbot of Peterborough, 1199.— Peterborough Cathedral. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS : A.D. 1066— 121 G. 631 of Norman architecture. A few examples of such an imperfect approach to a figure in a niche as that of Herbert Losing, at Norwich, cannot be con- sidered as exceptions. Those of Henry I. and his queen, under the porch at Rochester, form one of extreme rarity ; and the feeble artists of the age seldom ventured upon the human figure otherwise than in relief, in which manner we sometimes find the second person of the Trinity in glory, repre- sented in the heads of doorways. Even in monu- mental sculpture the effigy was rarely introduced before the twelfth century, and then in a very im- perfect manner. The earliest sepulchral monuments of the Norman period consist merely of the stone coffins in general use with all who could afford them ; the lids of which were shaped in a ridge, or, as it is com- monly called en dos d'dne. Such coffins being let into the ground no lower than their depth, which was the usual mode of interring persons of conse- quence, the covering-stone stood above the level of the pavement ; and they thus became a memorial as well as a receptacle for the dead. Monuments of this kind were frequently quite plain. When they bore an inscription, which was seldom, it ran round the edge of the covering- stone. The custom of sculpturing them with a cross is nevertheless of great antiquity, and was by no means confined to the clergy, as it has been supposed, though Gough imagines that some peculiar forms may have been appropriated to them to mark not only their profession but their rank. Thus a cross-flory in a circle may denote a rector, as a cross-patt5e may probably indicate a Templar. Crosiers, chalices, and other eccle- siastical insignia, are also introduced for the same purpose. Stone coffins were often placed entirely above ground, in the manner of a sarcophagus, in which case the sides are sometimes sculptured. Archi- tectural decorations were afterwards introduced, but probably not earlier than the middle of the twelfth century. Of this kind is the monument at Canterbury assigned to Archbishop Theobald, who died in 1161. And here it may be remarked, Sakcopuaqus, assiguecl to AicLbishop Tli(iobalU, at Canterbury. with reference to this monument, that in all i?-an- sitions the new style first shows itself in a perfect form in smaller works, such as tombs and shrines ; and we must not be surprised at finding in such works the trefoil arch, and other forms peculiar to the lancet Gothic, at an earlier date than the esta- blishment of that style in works of architecture generally. The earliest monumental effigies are sculptured on the covering slabs of coffins in low-relief, the ground being sunk into the stone, and the figure level with the surrounding margin. A specimen of this kind, probably a very early one, remains, though in the last stage of dilapidation, in the cloister at Westmii:ister. It was not long, how- ever, before a bolder style was adopted ; and the monumental effigies of the tAvelfth century are mostly in half -relief. With the Gothic style of architecture, canopies were introduced over the head of the effigy, con- sisting of a trefoil arch supported by columns, to which was added the pediment and other charac- teristics of that style as it advanced. Of this class several monuments of the abbots remain at Peter- borough, Most of the effigies which remain of this period represent ecclesiastics. There is little variety in the manner of treating the subjects. The figures are generally represented treading on a dragon, emblematic of the evil principle, and piercing it with the pastoral staff or crosier they bear in the right hand ; the left frequently holds a book : or the left hand bears the crosier, and the right is elevated in the act of benediction. The two angels supporting the head of the effigy were intro- duced at this period, and are to be found in early examples. The full recumbent effigy caimot be assigned to a 'date much earlier than the thirteenth century. King John is the first of our raonarchs for whom such a memorial was executed in England, though his two predecessors were so commemorated at Fontevraud. The effigy of Robert, Duke of Nor- mandy, who died in 1134, in Gloucester Cathedral, is admitted not to be contemporary, and that of Geoffrey de Magnaville, Earl of Essex, in the Temple church, assigned to about the middle of this century, must be considered more than doubtful. The armorial bearing on the shield seems sufficient to invalidate its claims to so early a date, inde- pendently of its similarity to other statues in the same place, which indisputably belong to the suc- ceeding period. In addition to these, the circum- stances attending his death and burial render it not improbable that a delay took place in executing the monument. In the higher departments of the art of painting this period is destitute of monuments and scanty in records. The most industrious collector of authen- tic documents on the subject, Vertue, could find none bearing even remotely upon it until the reign of Henry III., when a precept appears to the sheriff of Southampton, directing that the wainscot of the king's room in the castle of Winchester shall be painted with the same pictures as for- merly. This, as Walpole observes, implies that history painting had been in use at an earlier date ; 632 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. « and we may, moreover, reasonably conclude that the artists who designed the Bayeux Tapestry would not flinch from any historical subject, however extensive or complicated. Nothing, however, is certain but that painting and gilding vvere used abundantly, especially in the decoration of ceilings. William of Malmsbury, in a curious passage, calls Godfrey of Bouillon " a brilliant mirror of chivalry, in which, as in a splendid ceiling, the lustre of every virtue was reflected." Both this author and Gervasius extol highly the painted roof of Canterbury Cathe- dral, completed by Prior Conrad in 1114, but give us no insight into the style in which it was exe- cuted further than that it represented Heaven, though the latter is very particular in his descrip- tion of the building. A reference to Normandy will afibrd no better satisfaction. The portraits of William the Conqueror and his family, formerly at Caen, might be cited ; but their authenticity, the antiquity of the wall on which tliey were painted, and the accuracy of Montfaucon's engraving, by which alone they are preserved to the present day, are alike doubtful. Nor is any trace left of the paintings on the tomb of Walter Giffbrd, Earl of Buckingham (buried at his own foundation of the Priory of Longueville, in 1102), though they existed to a comparatively recent date. With this deficiency of examples in its more important branches, we must again have recourse to illuminated manuscripts for information upon the state of the art as regards composition and drawing ; and upon these points it will be sufficient to refer to the numerous engravings from these manuscripts that are elsewhere given in illustration of the manners and costumes of the period. The manuscripts of the twelfth century are described by Sir F. Madden* " as remarkable for a profusion of ornament^ and a graceful but intricate mode of illuminating capital letters, which renders it more easy to recognise manuscripts of this period than any other. This style, by the aid of gold and silver, was carried to an excess of extravagance scarcely to be conceived. In elegance and ela- borate art the decorations of this century will yield to none, but they occasionally betray a portion of that false taste which gradually crept into the patterns of a later period. About this time it became the practice with the scribes to leave blanks for the initial letters, to be filled up by one or more limners ; and this accounts for the imper- fect state, and sometimes total omission of them, which we find in manuscript volumes of this and the two succeeding centuries. The fashion, also, of writing books of a size and magnitude almost incredible, was adopted toward the end of the twelfth century." • Introduction to Shaw's Illuminated Ornaments. SPECUIEN Oi' OllJiAX'EXTAL LeTTEK OP THE PeEIOD. Pra\ni from a MS. of the Period in the Royal Library. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1066—1216. 633 A short time before the commencement of the present period, a new form was given to the science of music by the improved scale of musical notation invented by the celebrated Guido of Arezzo. This invention was first published by the author in his * Micrologus,' which appeared about 1030. It was not, however, till after the introduction of a correct method of marking time that the full benefit from Guide's invention was felt. In the present period great attention was paid to church music by the clergy, some of whom composed pieces for the use of the choirs. Thomas, the first archbishop of York after the Conquest, who had doubtless become ac- quainted with the Italian scale, is described as fre- quently employing his leisure in singing or in play- ing upon the organ ; and " in making organs, and in teaching his clergy to make them, and to set hymns both in prose and verse to music."* When the archbishop " heard any of the secular minstrels sing a tune which pleased him, he adopted and formed it for the use of the church, by some neces- sary variations."! The trouveurs and troubadours were also active in contributing to the improvement of secular music during the twelfth century. During the thirteenth century, it is not unlikely, from the increasing popularity of minstrels and troubadours, that secular music, having a wider field for its exercise, underwent greater improvement than church music. Attempts were made to force the latter beyond the limits to which it had been con- fined during an earlier period. John of Salisbury complains of this change, and says that in the churches '* the singers endeavour to melt the hearts of the admiring multitude with their eiFemi- nate notes and quavers, and with a certain wanton • Stubbs.de Poutific. Ebor. f William of Malmsbury. luxuriancy of voice."* But at this period the choral services were not the same in all parts of the country. Each cathedral had its own formu- lary, or as it came to be called, " use." In the northern counties the " use" of the archiepiscopal church of York prevailed ; in South Wales that of Hereford; in North Wales that of Bangor; and in other places the " use" of other principal sees, particularly that of Lincoln. In Canterbury, where the monks of St. Augustine had introduced their church music, the" use" of Salisbury was almost general throughout the province. Secular music was still more likely to be modified by local cir- cumstances. The music of the English was grave and measured, and that of the Scotch, Irish, and Welsh of a more lively kind. In the country about York, and generally beyond the Humber, the popular music resembled that of Wales. The organ was the instrument used in sacred music. The harp, used as an accompaniment to the popu- lar minstrels, was the most common instrument in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland ; and there were but few others in those countries. "The Irish,'' says the writer just quoted,t " use only two musical instru- ments — the harp and the timbrel ; the Scotch use three — the harp, the pib-corn, and the bagpipe. The Irish harps have brass strings." " It is the opinion of many," he adds, " that the Scotch music at present not only equals, but even very much excels the Irish ; for which reason they go to Scotland as to the fountain-head of perfection in that art." The English were acquainted with a greater variety of instruments — a fact which may be accounted for by their more intimate and exten- sive intercourse with the continent. • J. Sarisburien. Policrat- f Giraldus Cambreusis, Topog. Hiberuiae, 1. 3. 634 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book III. CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. E shall begin the pre- sent chapter as we did the last under the same title, with a no- tice of the few facts 'that are to be col- lected respecting the furniture of the houses and other domestic accommodations of the period. In as far as we can judge from the Bayeux Tapestry and the various illuminated MSS. of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it would appear that very few additions or improvements were made by the Nor- raans to the stock of English household furniture. We perceive the same description of tables, long and oval, bearing the same sort of plates, dishes, cups, and knives ; the fowls and roast meats being still served up upon the spit to the guests seated at the festive board. In the reign of King John we find mention of saltcellars. A mark of gold is ordered in the Close Rolls to be furnished to make a saltcellar for the king's use ; and twenty- nine shillings and sixpence to be paid for a silver saltcellar, gilt within and without. The chairs of state, the seats of regal and eccle- siastical personages, are similar to those already described of the Anglo-Saxons ; and though some appear to be more elaborately carved and orna- mented, it is a question whether such was, indeed, the fact, or if the improvement is not rather in the art of the delineator than in that of the maker of the article itself. The chairs in which are seated the kings and bishops of the set of chess-men of the twelfth century, found in the isle of Lewis, in 1831, and engraved in the 24th volume of the Chairs. Ancient Chessmen, from Specimens in the British Mu%eura. Ckadlb. Eoyal MS. 2 B vii. Chap. Vl.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 635 Archaeologia, are amongst the best specimens of the ornamental carved furniture of that period. The hangings of needlework and embroidery which adorned the walls of the Anglo-Saxon palace seem to have been partially superseded in the course of this period by the fashion of painting on the walls themselves, or the wainscot of the chamber, the same historical or fabulous subjects which had hitherto been displayed in threads of colours and gold ; for in the early part of the reign of Henry III., as mentioned in a preceding page, the sheriff of Hampshire is commanded to take care that the wainscoted chamber of the king in the castle of Winchester be painted with the same histories and pictures with which it had been previously painted, tliereby showing that this style of decora- Candlestick. Archaeologia, vol. 23. Cup fot.'nd in the Ruins op Glastonbury Abbey, tion had been introduced prior to that date. Thus, says an old French romance : — " Lors cambres et lors grans sales font tambroissier peindre et pourtraire." They caused their chambers and great halls to be wainscoted and painted with figures. In the 23rd volume of the Arch^logia is engraved one of a pair of candlesticks of the twelfth century, now at Goodrich Court. They are of copper, engraved and gilt, and ornamented with enamel of seven colours let into the metal, display- ing figures of men, women, and animals. They have spikes at top, on which the candles were fixed, the socket to contain them being of much later date. Limoges, in France, was celebrated as early as 1187 for the art of enamelling ; and boxes, cups, and dishes, ornamented like the candlesticks above mentioned, are occasionally met with, and may be considered of the same period. Ypres, in Flanders, was equally famous before the year 1200 for its manufactures of fine linen, and from thence the term Diaper, or D'Ypres, i. e. of Ypres, which was afterwards applied to all similar cloths wherever fabricated. Thus, in the 'Roman d' Alexandre,' written about 1200, we find the expression '* Dyapres d'Antioche,"* and we may presume the napkins and cloths of the Anglo- Normans were scarcely inferior to those of the present day. In the Close Rolls of the reign of King John forty-nine shillings and eight pence halfpenny are ordered to be paid for three pieces of taffety and one and a half of fustian, and five pounds of silk or fine cotton for three couches or beds for the king and for the workmanship of the same. Linen sheets were also used at the same period : there is an order to the sheriff of Southampton to deliver to Norman Esturmy, the king's valet, amongst other gifts, because he had become a knight, a couch or bed, and a pair of linen sheets. Slender as the information is that we possess upon this subject, it affords some indications of the advance of refinement ; and if our materials were more ample we should no doubt find that the aug- mentation of wealth and the improvement of taste made themselves visible in many more particulars than we can now discover, though it is not proba- ble that the progress of comfort and elegance in either the useful or decorative furniture of the houses of the period at all corresponded to that which took place in the magnificence of their external architecture. The art of architecture was fostered by the passion for erecting ecclesiastical buildings into what we may almost call a premature development as compared with any of the other arts, — certainly as compared with those whose pro- vince it is to minister to the convenience of the great body of the people. But the spirit of show which belonged to the time found ample oppor- • To diaper was also understood in heraldry to signify the mode of covering the field with a pattern of flower-cheequers or scroll-work quite independent of the charge placed upon it. The shield of Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, engraved in Stothard's Monumental EiBgies, exhibits a fine specimen of this style of ornament. 63G HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. tunity of displaying itself in what we are next to describe, the fashions of dreBs which prevailed, and which had already acquired not a little of the mutability for which this characteristic is still pro- ver])ial above all other fashions. The Anglo-Saxons during the reign of Edward the Confessor had aped so much the dress and manner of the Normans, that, at the time of the Conquest, little difference seems to have existed between the two nations in their appearance, if we except that produced by the singular fashion amongst the Normans of not only shaving the upper lip as well as the rest of the face, but also of shaving, or cropping the hair at the back of their Gkoups of SoLDiK.Ks, Selected from the Bayeux Tupestry, to show the Norman fashion of shearing the back of the head. heads, a custom they had themsel vcs horrowed of the Poictevins, as Glaber Rodolphus informs us, and which induced the spies of Harold to declare Matilda, Quken op Henry I., from a Statue in the West Door-way of Rochester Cathedral, exhibiting the mode of plaiting the hair. that the army of William appeared to'fce composed wholly of priests.* The general habit of the Normans consisted of the tunic, the cloak, the long tight hose, called by them chausses, the leg bandages and shoes, or short boots. A greater variety of caps appear in the Anglo-Norman illuminated MSS. ; but the Phrygian -shaped and a flat sort of bonnet, like that of the modern Scotch, are those most frequently • William of Malmsbury, lib. iii. and Wace, Roman de Rou. William de Percy, who came over with the Conqueror, was called Alsgernon, i. e., witli the whisliers, from his not being shaven so closely as the rest of the Normans. Costume of Hohmah-English Ladiks of thk Twkuth Cektuey. Ckjtton MS. Nero, C iv. Chap. YL] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 637 met with. The Saxon subjects of William con- tinued for some time after the Conquest to be dis- tinguished by their long flowing locks and the rich embroidery of their dresses.* In the female costume the change was more in name than in garment. The gunna or gown became the robe, and the veil or head-cloth the couvre-chef, from whence the modern word ker- chief. The hair is rarely seen in illuminations of this period, but occasionally it appears long, and sometimes plaited, after the ancient Gothic or in the modern Swiss fashion. During the reigns of Rufus and Henry I. the dress of the higher classes became much more costly in material f and extravagant in shape. Some most ridiculous fashions are reprobated and caricatured by the historians and illuminators of that period. The sleeves of the tunics were made long enough to cover and hang considerably below the hand. Peaked-toed boots and shoes of the most absurd shapes, some terminating like a scorpion's tail, others stuffed with tow and curling round like a ram's horn, are mentioned by the monkish historians. Ordericus Vitalis says thev were invented by some one deformed in the foot. The mantles and tunics were worn much longer and fuller, and the former lined with the most expensive furs. Henry I. is said to have had one presented to him by the Bishop of Lincoln, lined with black sable with white spots, and which cost 100/. of the money of that day. The English now, both Saxon and Norman, suffered their hair to grow to an immoderate length instead of being cropped ridiculously short ; and William of Malmsbury, who has previously complained of his countrymen having imitated the latter fashion, now laments over the long hair, the loose flowing garments, the pointed shoes, and effeminate appearance of the English generally. Even long beards were worn during the reign of Henry I. ; and Ordericus Vitalis compares the men of that day to " filthy goats." Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, refused his benediction on Ash Wednesday to those who would not cut their hair^ Councils were held on this important matter.§ The razor and the scissors were not only recommended ex cathedra, but posi- tively produced sometimes at the end of a sermon, against the sinfulness of long locks and curling moustaches. Serlo d'Abon, Bishop of Seez, on Easter Day, 1105, after preaching against beards before Henry I., cropped not only that of the king but those of the whole congregation with a pair of scissors he had provided for the occasion. But nothing could long repress these fashions, which in the time of Stephen again raged to such an extent • William of Malmsbury. — William of Poictiers. + The well known story, told by William of Malmsbury and Robert of Glosler. of Rufus, that he threw away with disdain a pair of new hose because they only cost three shillings, is very characteristic. " A king," said he, " should not wear anything so cheap ; fetch me some worth a mark of silver !" t Eadmer, p. 23. { At Limoges, in 1031; by Pope Greg-iry Vll., in 1073; and at Rouen, ia 1095. that the fops of the day suffered their hair to grow till they looked more like women than men ; and those whose ringlets were not sufficiently luxurious added false hair to equal or surpass in appearance their more favoured brethren. The female dress of those times appears to have had its share of their preposterous and expensive fashions. The sleeves of the ladies' robes, and their veils or kerchiefs, appear, in the illuminations of FtMALE Costumk of THE 'iiME OF Kuius AND Henky I., from a Psalter of the twelfth century. The long and knotted sleeves are very remarkable. this period, knotted up, to prevent their trailing on the ground. Some of the sleeves have cuffs hang- ing from the wrist down to the heels, and of the most singular forms. The ancient heraldic maunch is evidently copied from them. A garment called the Laced Bodick and Knotti-.d Sleeves, from a Satirical MS. Illu- mination of the Twelfth Century. Cotton MS. Nero, C iv. 638 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. surcote (surcoat) was worn as an upper robe or tunic, as its Latin name implies (^super-tunica) ; and the under garment was laced up the front, a custom often alluded to in the romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In an illuminated manuscript of the close of the eleventh century,* the sarcastic painter has represented the devil so attired; the skirts as well as the sleeves of the robe being tied up in knots, as before mentioned. The surcoat was frequently richly embroidered, and the edges escalloped or indented, a fashion exceedingly pre- valent during the middle ages, and which provoked many legislative attempts to put it down. The first enactment against its being followed by the lower classes appeared during the latter part of the reign of Henry II. The hair was still worn in long plaited tails, and sometimes encased in a sort of silken pipe, or bound with ribbon like a pigtail. With the reign of Henry II. a more becoming and graceful, although equally splendid style of attire, seems to have made its appearance. The monumental effigies, which begin now to aflford us their valuable information, exhibit the sovereign and the nobles of this period in full and flowing robes of a moderate length, girded with a richly • Cotton, Nero, C iv. ornamented waist-belt, mantles fastened by fibulae on the breast or on the shoulders, chausses or long hose, and shoes or boots, the, latter sometimes beautifully embroidered, caps of various forms (the Phrygian style predominating), and jewelled gloves. In the illuminated manuscripts we still see the leg bandages crossing each other all the way up the leg from the very point of the toes, sandal- wise, as they are seen in the latest Saxon and earliest Norman manuscripts, the Bayeux Tapestry, &c. They are generally represented as made of gold stuff or leather. Henry II. introduced, or, we should rather say, re-introduced the short cloak of Anjou, and was in consequence sumamed Court- manteau or Curt-mantell ; and also the old Norman fashion of close cropping and shaving, which was adhered to pretty generally till the latter part of the reign of Richard I., when the beard and mous- tache were again worn. In the reign of John the laity were at length liberated from all legislative interference upon this point, and allowed to consult their own fancy or convenience. The hair in the reign of King John was curled with crisping-irons, and bound with fillets or ribbons ; the beaux of the day wearing no caps, in order that its beauty might be seen and admired. Effigy of Henry II. From the Tomb at Fontevi-aud ElEANOB, QlKEN OF IIenry I. From the Tomb at Fontevra-ad. Berengaria, Queen of Richard I. From the Tomb at Fontcvraud. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 639 The ladies, following the example of the men, or having set them the example (for we confess we have no authority for deciding that part of the question), appear in the reign of Henry II. to have discarded their long cuffs and trailing skirts, their knotted sleeves, kerchiefs, &c., and adopted a more rational appearance altogether. The robe, like that of the men, girdled round the waist, and having long but tight sleeves reaching to the waist, a mantle gracefully depending from the shoulders, and the hair again almost entirely concealed by the veil, kerchief, or wimple, which is frequently brought together under the chin, or fastened by a band passing beneath it, give altogether a conventual appearance to the costume. There is nothing requiring notice in the ecclesi- astical costume of the present period, except that the form of the mitre begins to approach that now in use. The armour of the Anglo-Normans, judging from the figures in the Bayeux Tapestry, does not appear to have differed very materially from that of the Saxons. During the eleventh century the hauberk of flat rings gewn upon leather, or of small pieces of iron similarly secured, was appa- rently the defensive body armour of the Saxons, the Danes, the Franks, and the Normans. It was called, as we have observed, the gehrin^ed hyrne by the first, hrynio by the second, and by the Normans halbers and haubcrt, or hauberk. Latin- ized halbercum, the word being generally derived from halsberg^ a protection for the throat ; and as at this period we perceive that the mailed tunic is furnished with a cowl which protects the neck behind, and is hooked up occasionally over the chin, and fastened to the nasal before, it may owe its Norman denomination to that additional safe- guard. The word mail, too, so familiar to our ears, is of this period, the French word mailles being derived, according to some authors, from the Latin macula, sometimes used for the mesh of a net.* Several hauberks represented in the Bayeux Tapes- Mascled Aemouh. — Seal of Milo I'it/- Waller, Constable of England and Governor of Gloucester under Henry I. try, and in the illuminated manuscripts of this period, appear marked with transverse lines, which, • There is a British word mael, signifying iron generally, but it may hare had the same derivation. P2XAMPI.ES0F Mascled AiiMoUR. Cotton MS. Caligulii, A. 7. The Illumination represents the Slaughter of the Innocents. if they were not intended to depict the quilted panzar worn by the Danes, and therefore most likely by the Normans and Saxons also, would seem to be lozenge-shaped pieces of iron or steel sewn, like the rings, upon a leathern or woollen foundation; a species of defence which Sir S. Meyrick has denominated mascled armour,* and which still more resembles the meshes of a net. Instances of that peculiar mail composed of rings set up edgewise, which came generally into use towards the close of the twelfth century, occur as early as the close of the eleventh. In Kerrick's collection of notes and drawings in the British Museum, there is a highly curious sketch of the marble figure of a knight under one of the lions which support the choir of the cathe- dral of Modena, armed in a hauberk of rings set edgewise, the front hooked up to the nasal of the helmet, which is of a very early shape, and laced or buckled under the throat by double thongs of leather. His shield is of the pear or kite shape, and has a ridge down the centre like that of King Knioht of Modena. Kerricli's Collect. 6738. Stephen on his great seal. The long-pointed slice, the prick spur, and the great breadth of the sword- blade near the hilt, are all indicative of a period corresponding with that of our early Anglo-Norman monarchs, Rufus, Henry I., and Stephen.f • Vide Letter on the Body-armour anciently worn in England. Archaeologia, vol. xix. t Mr. Kerrick remarks, in his note to this sketch, " I take this to be the most ancient figure I have yet seen in carving." 640 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. Scale armour, the lorica squamata, in fact, of the ancients, was also worn during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and in some instances the overlapping plates are of a square form, instead of being rounded or plumated. This description has been denominated by Sir S. Meyrick the tegulated, — and a specimen is presented in the seal of Richard, constable of Chester, temp. Stephen. TEGfLATKD AllMOru. Seal of Richard, Constable of Chester in the time of Stephen. Anna Comnena mentions the French knights at the close of the eleventh century as wearing both ringed and scale armour ; and Bohadin, the Sara- cen historian of the Crusades, describing the in- fantry of Richard I. says, " they were covered with thick strong pieces of cloth, fastened together with rings, so as to resemble dense coats of mail.* The Anglo-Norman helmet was conical, with a nose-guard, called the nasal, to which, as we have remarked, the front of the collar of the hauberk was occasionally looped up, so as to leave no part of the face exposed but the eyes. Cheek-pieces were afterwards added; and in the reign of Richard I. we find the helmet assume a cylindrical or barrel shape, flat at the top, with an oval open- ing for the face, which was, during combat, covered Avantaii.es. a Helmet of Richar<l I. b Ualdwin, Count of Flanders, 1 192. c ,. „ „ 1203, with a perforated plate or grating, removable at pleasure, and called the avantaille er ventaille. • Vide Turner's Hist, of Vm^., vol. i. p. S82, note. In some lately discovered perfect impressions of the second great seal of Richard I., the monarch's helmet of this form is surmounted by a sort of crest composed of a semicircle of rays or points, in the centre of which is portrayed a lion passant gardant. The shield was, from the time of the Conquest to that of Henry II., of the form called kite or Geoffuey Plantagenet. (Le Bel.) Kerrick's Collect. 6723. pear-shape ; and, from its similitude to those seen in the Sicilian bronzes, is imagined to have been brought by the Normans from that part of Europe after their Italian conquests. Those in the Bayeux Tapestry are perfectly flat, and ornamented with rude figures of animals, crosses, rings, &c. About the time of Stephen it appears curved, but desti- tute of heraldic bearings. On the first great seal of Richard I. it is considerably shortened, and bent till it is almost a semi-cylinder ; and this is the first of our regal seals which presents us with an undoubted armorial bearing, — nameh', a lion heraldically termed counter-rampant, i. e., facing the sinister or left side instead of the dexter or right side of the shield. The form of the military standard is shown in some of the great seals, and also by the annexed representation. A short notice of the rise and progress of English heraldry may here not inappropriately find a place. Most writers on the subject worthy of attention consider the close of the eleventh century as the period when armorial bearings, properly so called, became the distinctions of the royal and knightly families of Europe; but until the middle of t)ie Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1006—1216. 64 1 AViLOAM I. AND TONSTAIN BEARING THE CONSKCUATKI) BaNMER AT THE Battle of Hastings. Bayeux Tapestry. twelfth we have no positive authority for tlieir existence in England. The rude and fanciful figures upon the shields of the Normans, in the Bayeux tapestry, can no more be called coats of arms than the better executed lions and griffins on the bucklers of the Greeks and Remans. A monk of Marmontier, -svho is said to have lived in the reign of Henry I., describes that monarch, upon the occasion of the marriage of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou, with his daughter Matilda, a.d. 1122, as hanging about the neck of his son-in-law " a shield ornamented with little golden lions," and the count is said also to have worn shoes em- broidered with similar animals. But neither the number of the lions nor the colour of the field is mentioned, and they are spoken of more as fanciful ornaments than as insignia having any distinct signification, not the slightest allusion behig made to the arms of England, of Henry himself, or of any particular family.* The shield of Stephen on liis great seal is per- fectly plain, having only a ridge down the centre ; and that of Richard, constable of Chester during his reign, is covered with a pattern resembling the tegulated hauberk he wears. It may be intended to represent tliat charge which the heralds after- wards called checqinj, but we know not who would venture to assert its title to be considered an armo- rial bearing. Henry II., on his great seal, presents us but with the interior of his shield.f John of Salis- bury, however, who wrote during his reign, speak- • The worfls are simply " Clypctis leunciilos aureos imaginarios habens coUo ejus suspenditur" (a shield is suspfiided from his ueck, havinf; upon it the likenesses of little lions in gold). The samu author speaking afterwards of a combat of this priuci?, aijain men- lions the lions on his shield.— " Piclos leones prajferens in clypeo, veris leonibus nulla erat inferior fortitud.." (bearing painted lions on liis shield, his courage wag not inferior to that ot real lions).— Menestrier, Origiue des Armoiries. . . , . , + A proof, in our opinion, that it bore no particular device by which tliat monarch was distinguished, or tlie artist would surely have so disposed the shield as to have rend.-rod the bearing at h'ast partly visible. The same inference may be drawn from those of William I. and 1 1., Henvy I., and the various knights and nobles of those rei"ns. whose seals are extant, on wliich the interior if the Bliield alon • is uniformly represented. It is not improbable, however, that Henrv II. may have oceasioii.iUv borne lions on his sliiei<l, as his father'Geoiriey did before him, aud thus transmitted tliern to his sons, Hicharii and John. ing of the luxuriousncss and effeminacy of the English knights, says, " if a piece of gold, minium, or any colour of the rainbow, by any chance or blow should fall out of their shields, their garrulous tongues would make it an everlasting memorial ;" and, further, he remarks that they " gild their shields ;" but he intimates nothing of armorial bearings. It is nevertheless during the reign of this monarch that the first undoubted description of English heraldic devices occurs. Gulielmus Brito, or William the Breton, the author of the Latin poem on the exploits of Philip Augustus, called the ' Philippeis,' not only describes Richard Cceur de Lion, while Count of Poictou, as being recog- nised by his antagonist, William de Barr, by " the lions grinning on his shield," * but he also mentions the swallows borne by an ancestor of the Cornish family of Arundel, and which his descend- ants display to this hour.f The first great seal of Richard I. presents us, as we have already mentioned, with a shield on which is distinctly seen a lion counter-rampant, leaving it dovibtful, according to some writers, whether this alone constituted the whole ch.arge of the field, or that the remaining half unseen, in consequence of the curve of the shield, was charged with another lion-rampant, making the device two lions combatant, and therein bearing out the description of the old Latin writer above quoted. On Richard's second seal, and after his return from captivity, we find his shield emblazoned with three lions passant regardant, as tliey have ever since been quartered in the English arms. The shield of his brother John exhibits before his accession to the throne two lions passant regardant, and to these a third was added when he became king. In the reign of Henry III. heraldry appears to hav'e become a science. A roll of arms of that period is in existence, and from that time the prin- cipal terms of blazon are to be found in the fabliaux and romances of France aud England. The singular combination of the military and the religious spirit, which forms the most striking characteristic of the present period, was especially exemplified in those usages which constituted tlie system of knighthood or chivalry. The youth of noble birth was placed, while yet in his boyhood, under the care of some distinguished knight, in the quality of a page. In this capacity he waited upon his preceptor, by whom he was treated as a son, and carefully instructed in the forms of cour.t,esy and the military exercises. Even the sons* of princes attended in this manner upon knights of inferior rank, but redoubted prowess and great military accomplishments, under whose severe instruction they were trained for future eminence. • Kcce comes I'ictavus agro nos provocat, ccce Niis ad bidlavocat; rictus agnoscu Lennum liliui in Clypeii. Gul. lirito, lib. ill. t Hirundclee velocior alite, (luai dat Hoc agnomen ei, fcit cujus in atjide sitjnum. Gul. Btito, lib. iii. riiis is one of the earliest specimens of what are called caiitlrg arms, or armcs }y.irUinU'S. 2o 642 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. After the youth had finished this stage of his noviciate, and was deemed qualified for a higher grade, he was advanced to the rank of squire. He was now perfected in the necessary arts of riding and tilting, and also in. the accomplishments of hunting and hawking, and frequently of music ; and if war broke out, he then follow ed the banner of his instructor into actual service. The rank, but more especially the military renown of the knight, contributed to swell his train of pages and squires ; and while the houses of some might be considered as schools, those of others might be termed colleges of chivalry. Fitz-Stephen de- scribes their pupils during the reign of Henry II. as exhibiting, on horseback, before the citizens, all the active evolutions of a battle, on the Sun- days during Lent. Yoviths, so educated, and constituting one household, naturally formed strong attachments for each other, and each se- lected his future companion in arms, between whom and himself there was from thenceforth to subsist a reciprocity of affection and interest. The connexion between the members of these associ- ations, who were ttrmed fratres conjurati, or s\\ orn brothers, often superseded the ties of common re- lationship.* When the pupil ha,d spent seven or eight years in the capacity of squire, and was considered fit to receive the high distinction of knighthood, a so- lemn and imposing ceremony took place. The candidate passed several nights in prayer and watching, in a church or chapel, and the sacraments of religion were administered during this period of probation. At length, when the longed-for day of consummation had arrived, the sacred building was arrayed in all its splendour ; the youth, accompanied by his patron, his kindred, his friends and companions, and followed by an eager crowd, repaired in procession to the chui'ch, with his sword of knighthood dependent from his neck in a scarf; the weapon was blessed by the officiating priest at the altar, and the oaths of the highest order of chivalry were administered. He swore that he would be loyal and obedient to his prince ; that he would defend the church and clergy ; and be the champion of virtuous ladies, and especially of the orphan and the widow. When he had thus pledged himself to fulfil the duties of a true knight, the warriors of noble rank, or sometimes the high-born ladies, who attended the spectacle, first buckled on his spurs, then clothed him in the various pieces of a suit of armour, and, lastly, girded his sword to his side. The prince or noble from whom he was to receive the honour of knighthood then advanced, and giving him the accolade, which consisted of three gentle strokes with the flat of a sword upon the shoulder, exclaimed, " In the name of God, St. Mi- chael, and St. George, I make thee a knight ; be brave, hardy, and loyal !" After the impressive cere- mony was thus finished, the young cavalier, all armed as he was, leaping into the saddle of his war- • Ducange. steed, pranced up and down within the church, and then issuing forth, galloped to and fro before the spectators, brandishing his weapons to display his strength, gracefulness, and skill. LI is educa- tion was now complete ; he had assumed an im- portant rank in society ; and from thencefoith he might aspire to its highest offices and distinctions.* It is not, however, till an age considerably later that we are to look for the full development of the principles of chivalry ; what we have now described of it is perhaps as much of the system as existed at the close of the present period. The knightly virtues incvdcated by this cof.rse of education, as has been already mentioned, were finally impressed by the solemn sanction of caths ; and chiefly consisted in devotion, in courtesy to females, and in gentleness towards the weak. The general practice of the age, however, and, what is more strange, even that of most of the persons who took upon themselves the vows of knights, was certainly very little in accordance with the elevated theoretical morality which was thus taught and professed. Still, amidst the disorder and licen- tiousness that prevailed, we meet with occasional instances of true knightly excellence, proving that noble principles could not be announced, even in a form the most fantastic, and in a state of society the most unfavourable, without producing some beneficial eflect. The science of heraldry arose naturally out of the usages of knighthood and war. The adoption by each knight of some peculiar mark or cogni- zance was rendered necessary by the sort of pano- ply in which he was wrapped up, which otherwise, especially after the introduction of the aventaile, or the vizor, would have made it impossible to dis- tinguish him in the fight or the tournament. The Saxon and Norman warriors, therefore, like their savage ancestors in the vvilds of Germany, were probably early accustomed to wear upon their crests the figure of some animal. As the parts of de- fensive armour were multiplied, and chivalry assumed a more regular form, additional cogni- zances were painted upon the shield. These were chiefly animals, or emblerhatic devices, rudely delineated, and which seem for a long period to have been assumed at the caprice of each individual. At first also, it was, probably, only the individual, and not the family to which he belonged, that was to be distinguished by the blazonry upon a shield. The case, however, was altered by the wars of the crusades. As romantic valour was displayed to the uttermost in the well-fought fields of the East, while a peculiar sacredness was supposed to belong to those warlike devices by which the brave knights who wore them were distinguished, a feeling of honourable pride as well as piety induced the son to assume the hallowed escutcheon of his crusading parent ; and thus the bearings upon the shield, from a merely personal, became a family and hereditary distinction. It was from this period that heraldry as- sumed the form of a regular science,while the bezant, • .Mcmoires sur l;i Chevaleiic, par M. do St. Paliiye. torn. i. Chap, VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 643 the crescent, and other Asiatic emblems, became its choicest distinctions. Contemporaneously with this practice on the part of the princely and lordly leaders, the natural custom was copied by such of their followers as were by their birth entitled to that privilege, of adopting all or a part of the military distinctions of their patron. Those who had followed the banner of a distinguished noble, or who even held lands of him as their lord, thus indicated the illustrious house with which they were connected, and perpetuated the tie to their posterity. AVhen a motto was added to the figures upon the shield, it was generally taken from the war-cry with which the leader summoned his followers to the rescue or animated them in the conflict. As for the crest, it docs not appear to have been used at this period as a family cognizance. It was only when the refinements of heraldry had so overloaded the shield with figures as to make its frequent delinea- tion a work of labour and difficulty that the crest was adopted as the more summary distinction of a noble family.* It does not appear that the Normans assumed family names at the same time that they adopted family escutcheons. The former distinction was as yet unknown even to the royal house, and such additions as the Bastard, the Red, the Fine Scholar, the Son of the Empress, the Lion-heart, and the Landless, were the only surnames by which the proud sovereigns of the Norman race were dis- tinguished. We find, however, that their chief vassals had been, from an early period, accustomed to use an addition to their Christian name, as may be seen by the roll of Battle Abbey. This was generally derived from the birthplace or patri- monial possession of the individual, on which account so many names of our noble English families are derived from towns or estates upon the continent. Sometimes, also, the office held at court supplied the possessor with the necessary dis- tinction, such as the Steward, the Seneschal, the Warden, &c. What is properly termed a family- name, however, was scarcely introduced within the present period. The nearest approach to it was the assumption of the father's Christian name in addition to his own, by which the man who per- haps had neither office nor landed property, still announced his Norman descent. The only species of surname known among the English, for some time after the Conquest, appears to have been an epithet descriptive of some quality of the individual, distinguishing him from others of the same bap- tismal name. But this addition was not regarded as a family name, and did not descend to the pos- terity of the person who bore it. The generality of the people had only one name. The Normans, on the contrary, soon came universally to assume second names, usually commencing with a De, or Le, or Fitz (that is, Fils, or son), taken eitlier from the estate, the birth-place, the office, or tlie immediate parentage of the individual, till it be- came a mark of low birth or of bastardy to be • liryJson's Summary View of Heraldry. — Camden's Remains. without such a distinction. Thus, it is related by one of tlie old chroniclers that the daughter and heiress of a great lord, named Fitz-Haman, refused at first to give her hand to Robert, the bastard son of King Henry I., for no other reason except that lie had no second name. " My father and my grandfather," said the lady, " had each two names, and it were a great shame to me to marry a man who has only one." This was, in other words, declaring that she would not consent to accept the husband pro- posed for her until the stain of his illegitimate birth should be as far as possible wiped off. The king on this gave him the surname of Fitzroy, which amounted to a distinct acknowledgment of liini for his son. He is the same who makes so great a figure ill the succeeding reign under the title of the Earl of Gloucester, and who, if he was not, as Camden has called him, " the only worthy of his age in England," was certainly one of the very few characters entitled to that epithet, and the first of those few. During the ages of chivalry, personal distinction was eagerly attempted to be secured, not merely by names and heraldic insignia, but also by numerous and splendid retinues ; these formed the guard of the prince or noble in war and his ornament in peace ; and as tlie Norman chiefs, from their national habits as well as the immense possessions they acquired in England, were able as well as willing to indulge in tliis species of ostentation, we find that their attendants were sometimes multi- plied to an incredible amount. But, after all, these cavalcades more resembled an Asiatic caravan toil- ing through the desert than a well-ordered princely procession. Such was the case even at the court of Henry H., incontestably the richest and most powerful monarch in Europe. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, gives a description of one of these royal processions, which is sufficiently start- ling to every idea of modern refinement. There were knights and nobles, — throngs of cavalry and foot-soldiers, — baggage-waggons, tents, and pack- horses, — players, prostitutes, and the marshals of the prostitutes, — gamesters, cooks, confectioners, mimics, dancers, barbers, pimps, and parasites, — and in the rising at morn of this tremendous med- ley to commence the march of the day, he adds, that there was such justling, overturning, shouting, and brawling, that you would have imagined hell itself had let loose its inhabitants. Such was the real squalidness that lay beneath so much super- ficial glitter ; a kingly array was but a mob, in which everything pertaining to taste and order was unknown or disregarded. The train of Becket, notwithstanding the waggons of ale and furniture with which it was encumbered, and the monkeys on horseback,* was immeasurably superior in point of dignity and true elegance to that of his royal master, and perhaps was the choicest specimen of this kind of magnificence which the taste of the age could have produced. When a royal pro- cession travelled through the country the ])vir- * See I'-igy 447. 644 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. veyors swept the district in every direction of its provisions, which, in virtue of the prerogative, were seized for the king's use at any price they chose to offer ; and the powerful barons were not slow to imitate the example of their sovereign. The greatest of the English nobles travelled with trains scarcely inferior to that of the king ; and, in time of war, their retainers composed formidable armies. William Longchamp usually travelled, in the time of peace, with above 1000 horse;* and we may suppose that the same vanity operated through all the inferior ranks of nobles down to the knight who could muster a few spears under his peimon, and that in most cases there was the same want of order, economv, and elegance. We are not, however, to attribute tliis mode of travelling altogether to a passion for show and magnificence. From the scarcity of places for the entertainment of travellers, and the wild state of many parts of the country, it was often difficult to find the articles of subsistence, or at least the instruments with which to cook them ; and even materials for setting up tents in which they might lodge had to be pro- vided and carried along with them by personages undertaking any considerable journey with a nu- merous train of attendants. During part of this period, also, in the reign of Stephen, the land was dotted with fortresses, the abodes of predatory nobles, who were ready to dart out upon those whom they were able to outnumber, while the forests, on the other hand, embosomed numerous bands of Saxon outlaws who regarded every Nor- man as an object of hate and vengeance. When we descend from the public to the domes- tic life of this period, we find the same uncouth combination of grandeur and discomfort. The Normans, indeed, introduced a more stately and durable style of architecture than had hitherto been practised in the island ; and it is probable that, with these exterior improvements, they added largely to the elegancies and comforts of domestic life. But still this improvement was only com- parative, and, in its best condition, was sordid and ])oor when measured by the present standard of living. Thus the stately palaces and castles of those days had no better carpets tlian a litter of straw or rushes, and no better beds than a rug laid ui)on a wooden bench, or spread upon the floor. The kingly or noble banquet, although it blazed with a rich profusion of gold and silver plate, could not even furnish the necessary accommodation of a fork ; the fingers of the eaters were thrust into the rich dishes, or employed in tearing the flesli into morsels ; and the luxuries that were collected at tlie greatest expense were laid upon a huge table of plain oak, while the princes and lords sat upon clumsy benches, and partook of the good cheer. Several English estates were held upon the con- dition of supplying fresh straw for the royal beds, and litter for the apartments of the palace ;t and Fitz-Stephen, describing the splendid hospitality of Becket while chancellor, adds, as a special proof * Hiomi)tcn. + liloimt's Ancient Ten mo of his munificence, that he caused his servants to cover the floor of his dining-room with clean straw or hay every morning in winter, and green branches of trees in summer, that those guests who could not find room at table might sit on the ground without spoiling their fine clothes. It is a curious fact that the official situation of rush-strewer remained to a very late period on the list of the royal household. From these few hints we may conjecture that the rest of the domestic accommodations of this age were mean and scanty ; but we must remember, also, that as yet household comfort was a word not understood, or at least of very limited signification ; and as the Normans were an active out-door people, independent of domestic conveniences, it was enough for theta if they possessed stately buildings, large retinues, rich armour, and splendid tourna- ments. This rude simplicity, however, sometimes degenerated into extreme coarseness. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, thus vents his ire at the discomforts of the English courtiers while waiting upon their sovereign : " To say nothing of other matters, I cannot endure the annoyances of the marshals. . , I have seen very many who have been most generous to them ; and yet, when after the fatigue of a long journey, the persons had got a lodging, when their meat was half-dressed, or when they were actually at table, nay, sometimes when they were asleep on their rugs, the marshals would come in with violence and abuse, cut their horses' halters, tumble their baggage out of doors without any distinction, and (with great loss to the owners) turn them out of their lodgings shainefuUy ; and thus, when they had lost every thing which they had brought for their comfort, at night they could not, though rich, find a place to hide their head in."* The Normans, however, are stated to have intro- duced into England a fashion of more delicate living and solemn banqueting than had previously been known in the country. The Saxons, as we have already seen, were a people of large and gross appetite, who spent the chief part of the day at feasts, in which excess was considered to compensate for elegance ; while their thirst was at least com- mensurate with their hunger ; so that drunkenness had become their national reproach. The Normans, on the other hand, notwithstanding their Danish descent, appear to have, in a great degree, re- nounced the coarse habits of their ancestors ; so that at their arrival in England, their moderation and refinement in eating and drinking distinguished them from the natives. This is testified, not only by incidental hints of the mode of living that are scattered through the writings of the period, but by the express testimony of William of Malmsbury. He tells us that the Normans were delicate in the choice of meats and drinks, but seldom exceeded the bounds of temperance ; so that they lived with greater elegance, and at less expense than the English. Peter of Blois, indeed, would seem to intimate that, by the time of Henry II., • Tiansldtiuu in the Qiiarti'ily l?fvit'\v, vul. Iviii. ClIAP. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216'. 64- tliev had considerably degenerated in this par- ticular : he describes the knights going forth to battle laden with all kinds of provisions, carrying- cheeses instead of lances, and Avine-skins and spits instead of swords and spears. But this ludicrous description, wliich more than realises Falstaff's preparations for the battle of Shrewsbury, is evi- dently a caricature. Either the v.'orthy archdeacon had established in his own mind a romantic staiid- ard of abstinence with which the expeditions of tlie period were incompatible, or these recreant sons of chivalry were a few of the younger sort whom the wealth which their fathers had won in England had excited to such whimsical extravagance. The feasts of the Norman nobles, however, after they came to England, soon came to be distin- guished by the rarity and costliness of their mate- rials. According to John of Salisbury, the Con- queror used to send into every country, from whence he collected all that was rich and difficult to be procured for the furnishing of his table. The same author also mentions that he was present at a great entertainment where there were served up the choicest luxuries of Babylon and Constan- tinople, of Palestine and Alexandria, of Tripoly, Syria, and Phenicia. But, still, that the Normans were contented with little, compared with the Saxons, is attested by their common proverb, which gives us not only the number of their meals, but the hours at which they were eaten : — Lever a cinque, diner a. neiif, Sonper a cinque, coucher a ncuf. Fait vivre dans iiuuaiite et ueiif. To rise at five, to dine at nine. To sup at five, to bed at nine, Makes a man live to ninety-nine. Among a people so choice in their diet as the Normans are declared to have been, we can ima- gine that cookery, as a science, was held in parti- cular estimation. We find, accordingly, tliat some of the English estates were held by the tenure of dressing a particular dish. Among the dishes of which the names are recorded we find Maupigir- niin, Diligrout, Kariimpie ;* but we are ignorant of their particular composition. Indeed, of their preparations in cookery in general, nearly all we know is, that rich spices were plentifully nsed in the greater part of them. Among their most esteemed dainties seem to have been the peacock and the crane ; the former of which was only pro- duced at solenni chivalric banquets, while the latter was served up at the common meals of the Norman princes. The boar's head was regarded as a truly regal dish ; and we are told that it was brought to the table of Henry II. in great pomp upon the coronation of his son, and, as it was brought into the hall, musicians went before it sounding upon their trumpets. The bread which was used w^is of various kinds. Tlie panis inperaius was a sort of spioe-cake com- ])Osed of the finest flour; and, at the tables of the rich and noble, simnel and wastel cakes were also in general use. But while the finest of the wheat • mount's .A.ncieiit Tenures. was only used for the bread of the aristocracy, the common people were contented with their brown bread, made of rye, oats, and barley. It is liicely that the Saxon papulation still adhered to the homely cookery and rough dishes of their ancestors. The drinks used by the rich of both nations were spiced wines and hippocras, pigment, morat, and mead ; while the poorer classes were satisfied with cider, perry, and ale. Excess in the use of liquor still continued to form the national vice of the Saxons, as we find from the revival of the laws against " drinking at pins," which were espe- cially directed against their rural clergy. But whatever the refinements in Norman gastro- nomy may have been, we are justified in suspect- ing that they were too exclusively confined to set banquets and solenni occasions. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, speaking of the wretched ac- commodation aft'orded to those iinibrtunate knights and nobles who attended the court of Henry II., says, " I often wonder how one who has been used to tlie service of scholarship and the camps of learning can endure the annoyances of a court life. Among courtiers there is no order, no plan, no moderation, either in food, in horse exercise, or in watchings. A priest or a soldier attached to the court has bread put before him which is not kneaded, not leavened, made of the dregs of beer; bread like lead, full of bran, and unbaked ; wine spoiled either by being sour or mouldy, — thick, greasy, rancid, tasting of pitch, and vapid. I have sometimes seen wine so full of dregs put before noblemen, that they were compelled rather to filter than drink it — with their eyes shut, and their teeth closed ; with loathing and retching. The beer at court is horrid to taste, and filthy to look at. On account of the great demand, meat, whether sweet or not, is sold alike : the fish is four days old, yet its stinking does not lessen its price. The servants care nothing whatever whether the unlucky guests are sick or dead, provided there are fuller dishes sent up to their masters' tables. Indeed, the tables are filled (sometimes) with carrion, and the guests' stomachs thus become the tombs for those who die in the course of nature. Indeed, many more deaths would ensue from this pulrid food, were it not that the famishing greedi- ness of the stomach (vv'hich, like a whirlpool, will suck in anything), by the help of powerfvd exercise, gets rid of everything. But if the cour- tiers cannot have exercise (which is the case if the court stays for a time in town), some of them always stay behind at the point of death."* We have seen from the proverb quoted above, that the customary hour of retiring to rest in Eng- land was nine o'clock in the evening ; and it has been commonly supposed that, by a regulation established by the Conqueror, the people were compelled to put out their fires and all other lights on the ringing of the curfew-bell (or couvre-feu, that is, cover-fire), which took place at sunset in summer, and about eight or nine o'clock in winter. • Translation in Quarterly Review, vol. iviii. 646 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. But there is really no good authority for believing that any such regulation as this was introduced by tlie Conqueror. The curfew appears to have pre- vailed in early times not only in England, but in Scotland, France, Spain, Italy, and perhaps most of the other countries of Europe ; and it w^as pro- bably in use in England, as elsewhere, long before the Norman Conquest. Such a i-egulation was rendered expedient by the combustible materials of which the houses were generally composed, and the frequency of conflagrations in the towns and pillages. Notwithstanding the precaution of the curfew law, Fitz-Stephen, in his account of London, mentions frequent fires as one of the great incon- veniences of the metropolis. It may be added that the curfew was continued in England as a useful police regulation till after the beginning of the sixteenth century. In the article of popular superstitions, both the Normans and Saxons might furnish a chapter suffi- ciently copious. From their northern descent, their ancient traditions, their recent and imper- fectly understood Christianity, and the habits of a chivalrous life among the great, as well as the general rudeness and ignorance of the common people, the path of their existence was bestrown with omens, prodigies, and superstitious observ' ances. People were afraid to meet a hare in their path, as the omen of some coming calamity. A woman with dishevelled hair, a blind man, a lame man, or a monk, were all, strangely enough, regarded as equally indicative of misfortune. On the contrary, if a wolf happened to cross them, if St. Martin's bird flew from left to right, if they heard distant thunder, or met a hump-backed or leprous man, these omens were considered as pro- mises of good fortune.* We find that certain particular forms charac- terised the practice of sepulture at the present period. The nearest relative, as in the earliest ages of antiquity, closed the eye-lids of the dead. The face was then covered with a linen cloth, and afterwards the body was washed, anointed, and laid out for burial. A suit of apparel which the deceased had been accustomed to wear frequently, sufficed for a shroud ; the body was carried to the place of interment upon the shoulders of the mourners, or, when the distance was considerable, upon a sledge or car ; and, com- monly, the remains were deposited in the grave without the protection of a coffin. We do not find coffins in general use until the reign of Henry III. ; and for some time before this date they seem to have been confined to people of high rank. But at first they were dispensed with even in the case of princes themselves. The Conqueror appears to have been interred in this primitive fashion, except that the grave itself was a sort of chest or coffin formed of solid masonry. A more decent and respectful ceremonial was observed in the funerals of the succeeding kings. A rude and unskilful attempt was made to embalm the body of • Petor of Blois. Henry I. After the brains and bowels had been carefully extracted, it was saturated with salt, and en- closed in a skin of v/ool. A triple funeral graced the obsequies of Richard I. ; and Carlisle, Fonte- vraud, and Rouen, had each the honour of receiving a portion of his remains for sepulture. The body of young Henry, the junior king (son of Henry II.), was wrapped up in those linen clothes that had been used at his coronation, and upon which the sacred oil had flowed. But the most splendid of all the royal funerals in England, during this period, appears to have been that of Henry II., which is particularly described by Matthew Paris. The body was arrayed in royal robes ; the face was uncovered, and the head was adorned with a golden crown ; the hands were covered with gloves, and the feet with shoes embroidered with gold-work ; spurs were buckled to the heels, and a sword was girded upon the side of the dead, while the fingers, on one of which was a large ring, were closed upon a sceptre. The royal coffins seem to have been lined with lead ; at least such is stated to have been the case with that of Stephen. As kings were thus buried with the insignia of their rank, the same rule w^as probably followed in the funerals of the nobility. At all events we know that it prevailed in the sepulture of ecclesiastical dignitaries ; primates, bishops, and abbots were always placed in their graves attired in their canonical robes, and having beside them the several symbols of their rank in the church. * Such were the practices that generally prevailed in the royal, noble, and common burials, during this period, and by which the living endeavoured to display their respect and affection for the dead. But the case was very diflferent with those who died under excommunication. The body, now regarded as the special property of Satan, was viewed with fear and abhorrence ; no sacred earth could receive it, or hallowed rites be performed over it; it was thrown forth like a polluted thing, or hurried into some obscure spot, and interred in silence and secrecy by those who were ashamed of so humane and necessary a deed, Tiius, in the case of an unfortunate Templar, during the reign of Henry I., — one Geoffi-ey Mandeville, who had been excommunicated, and who had died without being reconciled to the church, — it is related that his brethren, equally afraid to bury and unwilling to degrade the corpse of their departed member, adopted a singular compromise by which it might be reduced to its kindred dust within tlieir sacred precincts. They inclosed the body in a pipe or coating of lead, after which they hung it upon a tree in the orchard of the old Temple.f It is chiefly, however, in the sports and pastimes followed by the different classes of the people that we discern the spirit of the national character and of that of the times. In an age of martial habits and imperfect civilization, the excitements of a game, during the short intervals of jieace, are • Strutt's Horda Angel CynnaniTol.ii. t "-"'l' Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.l). 10G6— 121G. 647 Hunting Stag. Koyal MS. 2 B vii. The Huntsman, followed by a Servant on foot with Bow and Arrows. adopted as the natural substitutes for those of real war. The chase was pursued by the Normans, from the time they obtained possession of England, with an eagerness to which the conquered race owed some of their worst sufferings. The history of the formation of the New Forest, and of the depopulation and misery wrought by that act of despotic power, has already been detailed.* The Conqueror was so jealous of his kingly prerogatives • See ante, p. 38?. Koyal Party hunting Rabbits. UoyalMS. 2 B vii. in this, his favourite recreation, that the royal chases were guarded from the intrusion of both Saxon and Norman by the severest penalties: every offender detected in hunting the king's deer was subjected to the loss of life or limb ; and the dog that strayed into the king's enclosures was lamed by the amputation of one of its claws, unless redeemed by the owner. The nobles followed the example of their sovereigns by surrounding exten- sive parks Avith walls, for the preservation of game ; in doing which they frequently, by a lawless exercise of power, drove the unfortunate peasantry from their meadows, fields, and pasture lands ; and when these ferocious hunters burst through enclosures and swept over corn-fields in pursuit of the flying deer, the wretched cottagers were com- pelled to hurry to their doors with provisions and refreshments, lest they should be reckoned disaf- fected, or punished as traitors.* The Conqueror, in his paternal fondness for wild beasts, is said to have collected and imported many from abroad, with which he stocked the New Forest. As the habits and interests, however, of the • W. New I). -L^- '\.^\ Ladies hunting Deeb. Koyal MS. 2 B vii. A Lady seems to have roused the Deer by a blast from a horn, while another prepares to discharge an arrow at it. 648 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. two races became more closely united, the law- lessness of these tyrannical Nimrods was restrained, and after the reign of Rufus tlie severity and restrictive character of the game-laws were consi- derably abated. It has been already mentioned that, by a charter of Henry I., the citizens of London were allowed to have their chases to hunt as well and fidly as their ancestors had had, in the Chiltern hundreds, in Middlesex, and in Surrey. The Norman prelates and clergy, it would appear from the records of the times, were as keen hunters as the laity. Females, also, seem to have some- times pursued this diversion. Hawking was another favourite sport of this period. This amusement had been keenly fol- lowed in England before the period of the Con- quest ; so tliat, by some writers, the cause of Harold's unfortunate voyage to Normandy is attri- buted to the straying of a favourite falcon which he wished to recover ; and in the Bayeux Tapestry, as we have seen, he is represented as journeying to the court of William with one of those birds on his wrist. After the Cunquest the common people seem to have been prohibited even from keeping hawks ; to hunt with them was considered an amusement fitting only for kings and nobles. Thus those birds became as distinct marks of high rank as the spurs of knighthood or the emblazonry upon a shield. The nobles carried their favourite falcons along with them on journeys, arid even to battle. These feelings and habits, which at that time prevailed throughout Europe, will account for the extravagant conduct of Richard when he seized by force, as already related, the splendid hawk of the peasant in Calabria.* By the Great Charter, however, granted by King John, liberty was given to every freeman to have in his woods eyries of hawks, spar-hawks, falcons, eagles, and herons. Stores of good hawks were generally kept in the monasteries for the recreation of their reverend inmates ; and many of the ecclesiastical dignitaries were so enamoured of the sport of hawking, that one of the favourite topics of decla- mation with the censors of the manners of the time was the conduct of those pastors who cared for birds, not sheep (aves, non oves), and hallood the falcon upon its quarry with the same voice tliat had been consecrated to chant the praises of God.f From the gentle exercise which this sport pro- mpted, it seems to have been endeared not only to churchmen, but also to the female sex ; and in the twelfth century we find that they excelled the men in dexterity in hawking, — a proof, says John of Salisbury, that it is an eiieminate amusement. When the hawk was carried it was generally upon the wrist, whicli was protected by a thick glove ; the head of the bird was covered with a hood, and its feet were secured to the wrist by straps of leather called jesses, and to its legs were fastened small bells toned according to the musical scale. Another of the sports of the time, which as yet however was practised only on a small scale, was • See ante, p. 4S3. + Letters of Pi'ter of IJlois. that of horse-racing. Fitz-Stephen has given us a description of the London horse-races, which were held in Smithfield, then, as in the present day, the great cattle-mart of the city. " Wlien a race," he says, "is to be run by this sort of horses (hackneys and war-steeds), and perhaps by others which also, in their kind, are strong and fleet, a shout is immediately raised, and the common horses are ordered to withdraw immediately out of the way. Three jockeys, sometimes only two, according as the match is made, prepare them- selves for the contest (for such, as being used to ride, know how to manage the horses with judg- ment) : the grand point is to prevent a competitor from getting before them. The horses, on their part, are not without emulation, — they tremble, are impatient, and continually in motion ; and at last, the signal once given, they strike, devour the course, hurrying along with vmremitting velocitv. The jockeys, inspired with the thoughts of applause and the hopes of victory, clap spurs to the willing horses, and brandish their whips, and cheer them with their cries. You would think, according to Heraclitus, that all things were in motion, and that the opinion of Zeno wa, certainly wrong, as he held that there was no such thing as motion, and that it was impossible to reach the goal."* But the chief of all the amusements of those ages, and that which was the most characteristic of the chivalric period, was the tournament. The origin of this great military spectacle is lost in the darkness of the middle ages ; but we find that tournaments were practised in France and Nor- mandy previous to the Norman conquest of Eng- land. It might have been expected, that after the Norman invasion they would have been speedily established in England; but instead of this, we find that William and his immediate successors absolutely forbade them. Tiie reason assigned for this prohibition was, the expense and danger with which tournaments were attended. But it may be suspected that the true reason was of a dilieient kind. It is probable that the Norman kings appre- hended danger from such concourses as those which a tournament would have occasioned, where the hard-ruled nobles would have learned their own strength, and found every facility for plotting against their sovereign. During the unsettled reign of Stephen, when the royal authority was re- laxed, these prohibitory laws were disregarded, and tournaments were frequently held by the nobility, at which it is probaljle they alternately conspired against him and his rival Matilda, as circumstances inclined them. This license, however, with many others, was restrained on the accession of Henry II. He revived the prohibitions that had formerly been in force; so that his sons, when arrived at manhood, were obliged to rep.iir to the tournaments on the continent, at which they exhibited the reck- less daring of knights-errant, and gathered many trophies of their valour and skill. A partial revival of the tournament took place in England under • Tiuus'.aliou by I'ogjii.'. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 106G— 1216. 649 the reign of the Lion-hearted Richard. After his truce with the French king in 1194, he permitted tournaments to be held in his own kingdom, in consequence of having seen the insults and nume- rous foils which his own unskilful knights had suflered at the hands of those of France.* Still, however, this chivalrous monarch had the policy to restrict these dangerous assemblages, so that they could only be held at five places in England, which were particularly specified ; and as money was at all times welcome to him, he cjutrived that they should be conducive to the replenishment of his empty exchequer, by compelling those who attended them, as we have had occasion to mention in a pre- ceding chapter, to purchase each a license, the price of which varied with the rank of the party. t By the same law, all foreigners were prohibited from entering the lists, probably in consequence of their superior experience and skill. From this era, the tournament rose in importance in England, and speedily occupied a prominent place in the national institutions and history. During the long interval that elapsed before these military spectacles were sanctioned by law, we find that the young students of chivalry in Eng- land improved their strength and skill by certain military sports, which still continued to be prac- tised after the tournament was legalized. One of these was the Pel (in Latin, pains}, practised with a post, or the stump of a tree, about six feet in height, which the youth, armed at all points, attacked vigorously on foot ; and while he struck or thrust at the different parts which were marked * W. Newb. f See ante, p, 582. to represent the head, breast, shoulders and legs of an antagonist, he was taught to cover himself care- fully with his shield in the act of rising to the blow. Similar to this was the Quintain, where the attack was made on horseback. A pole or spear was set upright in the ground, with a shield strongly bound to it, and against this the youth tilted with his lance in full career, endeavouring to burst the ligatures of the shield, and bear it to the earth. A steady aim and a firm seat were acquired from this exercise, a severe fall being often the con- sequence of failure in the attempt to strike down the shield. This, however, at the best, was but a monotonous exercise, and therefore the pole, in process of time, was supplanted by the more stimu- lating figure of a misbelieving Saracen, armed at all points, and brandishing a formidable wooden sabre. The puppet moved freely upon a pivot or spindle, so that unless it was struck with the lance adroitly in the centre of the face or breast, it rapidly revolved, and the sword, in consequence, smote the back of the assailant in his career, amidst the laughter of the spectators. Every blow in the centre of the figure was numbered from one to three, according to its ascertained effectiveness in unhorsing a real enemy, while the false strokes that only sufficed to turn the figure were counted against the player as forfeits. In addition to these exercises, the young squires and pages were taught to career against each other with staves or canes ; and sometimes a whole party exhibited on horse- back the various evolutions of a battle, but with- out the blows or bloodshed of a tournament. The elegant practice of riding at the ring, which was an Anxii:.N"1' Qri.NTAix, now standinur on the Green of Oft'ham, Knt, 630 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. improvement upon the quintain, was the refine- ment of a later age.* As for the tournament itself, it was generally held in honour of some important event, such as a coronation, a marriage, or great national victory ; and previous to the celebration, heralds were de- spatched in every direction to announce the place of meeting, and invite all good knights and true to repair to the solemnity. The joyous summons roused the neighbouring counties — the hut and the castle equally sent forth their inhabitants, and every road to the place of meeting was thronged with those who repaired to the appointed spot as com- batants or spectators. Even from distant lands, when the event commemorated was of general im- portance, the noblest in rank were accustomed to attend, either to grace the spectacle by their pre- sence, or win honour in the lists. TJie space marked out for the combat was a level piece of ground, cleared of every impediment that might annoy the feet of the horses, and strongly paled in, to prevent the intrusion of the crowd ; the in- closure was entered by two gates, one of which was at the east, and the other at the west end of the barriers ; and round the whole paling scaffolds were erected for the high-born dames and maidens, the princes, the nobles, and the elected judges of the conflict. A throng of heralds, troubadours, and minstrels, dressed in their gorgeous and pic- turesque attire, were also present to discharge their several offices, and give order and solemnity to the assembly. As so much importance was attached to the tournament, various precautions were adopted to prevent tlie intrusion of the unworthy ; the shields of those who were competitors for the ho- nours of the combat were, for some days previous to the event^ hung up in the neighbouring church ; and if any candidate was charged with an offence against the rules of chivalry, the accusation was sometimes made by a lady touching his shield with a wand. Even when the lists were filled, and when the combats had commenced, the same anxiety was manifested to guard the tournament from profanation ; and if a knight behaved himself discourteously to the assembled ladies, or infringed upon the fair and chivalrous rules of encounter, he was driven from the inclosure as a recreant by the spear-staves of the combatants. It sometimes happened that a favoured knight was led to the gate of the barrier by the lady of his love, in whose honour he had vowed to contend, and whose colours he wore in his crest and upon his scarf. Two different kinds of fighting were practised at the tournament. The first was called justing — an en- counter performed with the lance ; the second was either a close hand-to-hand duel, or a desperate, general pell-mell, hi which the combatants, divided into two parties, hewed, struck, and thrust at each other with battle-axes, two-handed swords, maces, and daggers. The simple just was not reckoned so honourable as the latter kind of engagement, which properly constituted the tournament. T!ie • Stiutfs Sports of the English. [Book III. just, however, from the superior grace and dexte- rity which it was qualified to display, and ])erhaps on account of its less hazardous nature, outlasted the more formidable melee of the tournament, and continued to be practised with sharpened or head- less lances till a very late period. The chief ex- cellence of a combatant in tliis kind of exercise consisted in bearing the point of his spear against the breast or helmet of his adversary, so as to throw him backward out of the saddle to the ground— or, failing in this, to shiver his ov/n weapon in the en- counter, by which he avoided a similar downfall for himself. The lists, as has been already mentioned, were guarded from intruders ; but every knight or squire who entered them was allowed to bring with him a page, who stood aloof from the contest, and supplied his master, at need, with a sword or truncheon. Such were the laws and usages of the tourna- ment, and the circumstances devised to give them splendour and importance. We now proceed to describe the encounter : — The combatants, in two parties, having entered the barriers, the one by the eastern, and the other by the western gate, arranged themselves in order for battle ; and at the sonorous cry of the heralds — " To achievements ! to achieve- ments!" — they closed their vizors, couched their spears, and impatiently waited the signal of onset. This was given by the president dropping his wand or truncheon, and the trumpets at the same instant sounding the charge; and then commenced the furious hiu'tling together of men and horses, the shivering of spears, and the clashing of helmets and shields. As the conflict proceeded, and the confusion deepened, the ground was gradually covered with fallen knights, some deeply wounded, and others endeavouring to continue the strife on foot ; or, where they were utterly disabled, the pages endeavoured to extricate them from amidst the rushing and trampling of the horses' hoofs. When the battle had continued for some time, knight after knight from either party might be seen retiring to the palisade, to open his aventaile, and take breath for a few moments ; and it was considered ignoble and vmlawful to assail him while so occupied. Ghastly wounds, lameness, ai;d death, generally summed up the disasters of the day ; but victory had been won, and the lustre of the wreath was only enhanced by the blood that stained it. At the close of each day (for sometimes the tournament continued for several days) the names of those who had most distinguished them- selves were proclaimed by the heralds, and the re- wards distributed by the ladies ; after which, the joys of the banquet succeeded : the successful com- batants, after being unarmed by those fair hands that had diBtributed the prizes, were advanced to an honoured place at the board, where their valour was commended by princes and redoubted warriors, and sung by attendant minstrels. Such was the nature of that solemn festival, which may be regarded as the great master-piece of chivalry, and by which knightly bravery and skill were iin- Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 651 proved to their utmost capability. The church, indeed, denounced the tournament on account of the bloodshed with which it was attended, and the priests directed their spiritual thunder against all who engaged in it or favoured it ; but this opposi- tion had little effect against a species of amusement so accordant with the whole bent of the spirit and habits of the times.* As noble birth was so indispensable a qualification for these heroic exercises, that none under the rank of an esquire could engage in them, the yeomen and burgesses consoled themselves with certain other warlike amusements, in all probability derived from those of the Norman aristocracy ; and although these homely sports were inferior in solemnity and high excitement to the tournament, they were cer- tainly superior in merriment and freedom. One of these was similar to the quintain of the young nobility. A pole was strongly fixed in the ground, and across its top was fixed, to turn upon a spindle, a piece of wood, having at one end of it a board, and at the other a sand-bag. The peasants who repaired to the sport galloped against the quintain by turns, coviching their staves, and striking the board in their rapid career. But unless a dexterous escape immediately followed the blow, the heavy sand-bag at the other extremity came round with a furious counterbufF, and struck the tilter between the shoulders, amidst the jeers and shouts of the spectators. Another sport in use among the English, and similar to the foregoing, has been called the water-quintain, and is thus described by Fitz-Stephen, as practised by the Londoners. A shield was nailed to a mast that was set up in the midst of the Thames, against which a boat was impelled swiftly by vigorous rowers, and a man standing upright in the stern of the boat couched his lance against the shield, and struck it in pass- ing. If the spear shivered while the champion maintained his place, the prize was won ; but if, on the contrary, the stave did not yield to tlie en- counter, the boat glided from beneath his feet, and he fell back into the water. To avoid a tragic close, however, to such mirthful exhibitions, two boats filled with men were always in readiness beside the quintain, to rescue the baffled wight. There was also practised what may be called the water tourna- ment, in which the combatants, armed with staves and shields, tilted against each other in boats, in the same manner as, in the common land tourna- ment, the knights were wont to do on horseback. These sports, in their natural course^ descended, with the necessary modifications, to the children, who had also their own quintains, by which they trained themselves to the exercises of manhood and to dexterity in war. One of these is mentioned by Fitz-Stephen. In winter, he tells us, the young boys tied the shank-bones of sheep to their feet, upon which they skated along the ice, and tilted against each other with staves in full career. Such, • Memoires siir I'Ancicnne ChpTalerie, par M. de St. Pelaye. — Du- canije in ToKrnffmtMt.— Mills's History of Chivalry, — Strutt'g Sports of the Enjilish. it would appear, was in those days the substitute for skates. Water Tournament. Eoyal MS. 2 B viL In addition to these exciting sports, the pea- santry amused themselves with archery, throwing large stones, darting spears, wrestling, running, leaping, and sword and buckler playing ; and in large towns, the citizens frequently tiiverted them- selves with boar and bull -baiting. Cock-fighting, which as yet had not been exalted into a noble or even a manly amusement, was confined to children. On the Tuesday of Shrovetide, each schoolboy was allowed to bring a fighting-cock to tlie school, which for a day was turned into a cockpit for the diversion of the urchins. Tlie game of football was general in England during the reign of Henry II., and seems to have possessed equal attractions for men and children.* Of the sedentary or within-doors amusements that were known in England in this period, a very brief notice will be sufficient. Among them, we find certain diversions then possessing attractions for persons of the highest rank which, in a more refined age, are exclusively confined to the lowest. 1'J^e juggler, with his feats of dexterity and slight- of-hand was an important personage even in the royal court, when men had not yet learned to dis- tinguish between the natural and the supernatural. The buflbon, with his ribald jests, was a welcome substitute, where more refined wit was wanting, alono- with the power to appreciate it ; and the mime, with his antic personifications, added enjovment to the luxuries of the feast. To these may be added dra- niatic exhibitions. Plays founded upon romantic, historical, or passing evei,ts,were already represented before the nobles and citizens ; but these primitive attempts were so completely in accordance with the gvossness and licentiousness of the age, both in lan- guage and manner- of acting, that they were con- demned by the church, and all priests were prohi- bited from attending them.f Tiie actors of those days appear to have strolled from town to town, and from castle to castle, attended by a congenial fraternity composed of jongleurs, tumblers, dancers, jesters, and mimics.J The immorality of these theatrical exhibitions awoke not only the ire, but the inventive powers of the church, and the clergy endeavoured to supersede the secular by tlie reli- • Fitz-Stephen's London, ■t J. Sarisbur. do Na<'is Curialium. Idem. 6.52 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. gious drama; and hence the origin of those pro- ductions called miracles and mysteries. These were composed of scriptural incidents ; or, as Fitz- Stephen informs us, " representations of those miracles that were wrought by holy confessors, or those passions and sufferings in which the martyrs so signally displayed their fortitude." The actors were the scholars of the clergy ; the church itself was frequently used as the place of exhibition ; and the rich vestments and sacred furniture employed in the church service were sometimes permitted to be used by the actors, to give superior truth and lustre to their representations. In a propensity to gambling, the Normans and Saxons equally evinced their northern origin : they had ten different games that were played with dice ; of which, howevor, we have no particular account ; and the large sums that were lost, as well as the quarrels that were stirred up by what the clergy of those days emphatically called the " damnable art of dicing," may be surmised from the curious en- actments on this head by Richard I. and Philip Augvistus, on their expedition to the Holy Ijand.* Matthew Paris also is careful to reproach the Eng- lish barons who revolted against John, with their fondness for dice ; and the same charge was brought against the clergy in general by those ecclesiastics who censured the vices of the age. The intellectual game of chess, we may also notice, which is un- doubtedly of oriental origin, is commonly sup- posed to have been imported into England and the other countries of Europe in this period by the Crusaders. There is some reason, however, for believing that it was known to our Saxon ancestors before the Norman Conquest. • Sec ante, y. 491. Ancient Chessmen, preserved in the British Museum. Allusion has been already made to the bands of Saxon glee-men, dancers, and jugglers, that traversed the kingdom, and found a ready welcome from burgher and noble. The following group represents one of these peripatetic bands, consisting of a laborer, a bagpiper, three dancers, and a singer or glee-man. CouNTKY Kevel. Royal MS. 2 B vli. The juggler was generally the superintendent of the party ; and his feats of slight-of-hand, which passed for supernatural,, and by which he asto- nished the unskilful peasants and equally illiterate nobles, were similar to those exhibited in the pre- sent day. A part of the exhibitions of these jugglers consisted in feats of balancing, of which the following engraving is a representation. Here, two Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 653 Balancing. — Strutt, from various ancient MSS. in the Bodleian and private Collections. men support a large board, on which a girl kneels, and balances three swords, resting upon their hilts, with the points in contact. The steadiness of nerve requisite for such a feat, in the female, but more especially in her supporters, is evident at a glance. The other figures of the group are employed in such trials of balancing as are witnessed among us every day, with the exception perhaps of the per- son who is attempting, in rather an unfavourable attitude, to make two swords stand upright on the ground. The women who formed a part of the juggler's train balanced, danced, and tumbled. and performed those feats of agility or gracefulness for which they were better qualified than the more robust sex. These females, as may be sup- posed, were of very light reputation, on which ac- count the daughter of Herodias was classed among them by our ancestors. When she procured the death of John the Baptist, she is said, in the Saxon translation of the Gospels, to have " tumbled before Herod;" and in an ancient illuminated MS , she is thus represented at her exercise, attended by her maid-servant. In addition to such displays of human strength and The Daughter of Herowas tu.mbling.— Strutt, from an ancient MS. dexterity, the ingenuity of the jugglers trained the inferior animals to co-operate in their exhibitions : bears were taught to dance and tumble, and horses ar.d monkeys to imitate, or rather ape the actions of humanity. The following sketch, copied from an ancient MS., represents a monkey imitating the action of playing on the harp, and a second mi- micking the violin-player ; a third is riding on a bear, which is dancing to the imaginary music ; and a fourth monkey is tumbling under the direc- Playino Monkeys and Bears. Ilarl. MS. COS.— Eoyal .MS. 2 B vii.— Bodleian MS. 2G4. 654 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. tions of its teacher. In another drawing we have a glee-woman dancing round an unmuzzled bear, that endeavours to seize her, while the bear-keepei is scourging the animal, and exciting it to greater Playino Bears. H.-iil. MS. 603.— Royal MS. 2 B vii. fury. The docility also of that noble animal the horse did not escape the notice of these ingenious tormentors : it was taught to dance, to fence with its fore-feet against a man armed with a staff and buckler ; to put a trumpet to its mouth as if about to sound a charge ; and to beat a war -point with its Equesteian Exercisks. Horse tutored to beat time with liis fore and hind feet on a taljor.— Strut t, from an ancient MS. hoofs upon a drum or tabor. A still more cruel sport appears to have been sometimes exhibited, in which a horse, haltered to a stake or tree, was baited by dogs. HoHSE-BAiTiNG. Royal MS. 2 B vil. The jugglers also made the science of defence a pan of their public exhibitions. On this account they are frequently called ^/adja^or.s by the writers of the time. They not only exhibited feats of skill at sword and Imckler, but they were also the teachers of the art of fencing. Fitz-Stephen men- Chap. VL] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. Cy55 tions this as a common exercise hi the reign of Henry II. ; and in the following engravings from ancient manuscripts we have representations of tlie principal wards and feints that were practised : SwoaD Fight. Royal MS. 20 E vi. SwouD Fight. Royal MS. 14 E iii. Ft-xw-NG. Royal MS. 2 B vii. The combatants here appear to be in riglit earnest, and the kind of combat in which they are engaged was, no doubt, attended witii some danger. In other cases the mock encounter was practised in a fashion much less perilous. In the following engraving, two youths, who ap- BucKLER Play. Strutt, from an ancient MS. in the Douce Collection. pear to be studying the defensive part of the science merely, are crouching safely behind their buck- lers, while each is armed with nothing better than a light cudgel. The Saxons also appear to have learned from their German ancestors to play grace- fully with their weapons in the sword-dance^* where dexterity could be exhibited without dangerous con- sequences. The sword-dance of the Anglo-Saxons which we have already described,t continued to be practised long after the Norman Conquest. In the following delineation two men are wielding sword and buckler, and directing their movements by the music of the bagpiper. Wrestling was also practised in various forms. One mode of a very peculiar kind is also said to have been in use among the ancient Greeks. In this game, two persons, mounted each on the back of a companion, encountered each other like knights on horseback ; and he who could throw his • Tlie sword-dance described by Tacitus (de Mor. German!, c. 24) was among naked weapons witli tlie points upwards. The fashion in which it was periormed by the Saxons was much less dangerous. t See ante, p. 313. Sword Dance. Royal MS. 14 E iil. 656 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. antagonist to the ground was declared the con- queror. WiuiSTLiNG. Eoyal MS. 2 B vii. BowHng is another amusement which we find represented in the manuscripts of this period. In the annexed drawing two small cones are set up to serve as marks for the bowl. Similar to this was the game of kayles (in French quilles), probably of Norman origin, and from which the game of nine-phis was perhaps derived. A number of pins were set up — not in three row's, however, but in a line — and these the player endeavoured to strike down by throwing a ciulgel: The same amuse- ment, with slight variations, is common at our fairs in the present day. Three pins are placed upright, surmounted by toys ; at these the player, standing at a considerable distance, throws a stick, and whatever he can manage to knock down be- comes his own. Most of the amusements still practised by our peasantry in some parts of the country on the eve of All-Hallows are probably much older than the BowLlxo. Roj-al MS. 20 Ed. IV. Kayle Pixs. Royal MS. 2 B vii. Norman, or even the previous Saxon conquest. | game of boh-apple is found in a manuscript of tlie The following representation of the well-known | present period. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1066—1216. 657 BoB-APrr,K. Royal MS. 2 B tH. While the prohibitions of their Norman masters were so severe against tlie English using dogs and hawks for the purposes of hunting and fowling, we may presume that the conquered people (when they dared to pursue these sports) would betake themselves to gins, snares, and nets. In the fol- lowing representation we have birds taken by the clap-net. In another drawing we see the cross- BiitD-c.vTcuiNo BY C'LAP-jfET. Koyal MS. 2 B vii. bow employed in shooting at small birds. This instrument was introduced into England by the Conqueror, whose soldiers did great execution with it at the battle of Hastings. The second Council of liateran afterwards forbade the use of it in wars between Christian nations, and it was, in conse- quence, for some time laid aside; but Richard I. reintroduced it in his French wars after his return from Palestine. His death, which took place soon after by an arrow discharged from a crossbow, was of course considered as a judgment which he had thus brought upon himself by his disregard of the authority of the church. Cross-bow Shooting at sauli, Bir.us. Boral MS. 2 B vli. VOL. I.^ OfTHK UNIVEBfif-i 658 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. CHAPTER VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. T is no justification, on the one hand, of the spirit of wrong and violence in which the enterprises in question may have originated, nor any- con demnation, on the other, of the resist- ance that was made to them, to admit that all the successive foreign conquests of England have turned out, in the end, to be fortu- nate events for the country. We do not include under that term the temporary ascendancy of the Danes, which lasted only for a quarter of a century in all, and was then followed by the re-establish- ment of the Saxon power — although the country probably made greater progress in wealth and civilization, and enjoyed in every way more of the advantages of good government, during the twenty years of the reign of Canute than it had done in any period of the same length since the death of the great Alfred ; but, confining our view to the permanent conquests of the original Britons by the Romans, — of the Roman provincials by the Saxons, — and of the Saxons by the Normans, — it is im- possible to doubt that, of each of these revolutions, severe as was the immediate suffering which they occasioned, the eventual result was an immense addition to the civilization, the power, and the general prosperity of the country. It was by the Romans that the arts and habits of civilized life were first introduced into and planted in the island. There is no reason to sup- pose that, but for their subjugation by the arms, and annexation to the empire of Rome, the ancient Britons would have attained a condition much superior to that of their contemporaries inhabiting the forests of Germany or Scandinavia. The esta- blishment of the Roman dominion substituted for this state of rudeness and comparative destitution an empire of the arts and of letters, which con- tinued to flourish unimpaired for a longer space of time than has elapsed from the Reformation to the present day, and which, even after its decay and ruin, left behind it many enduring benefits. It is not probable, however, that the Romanized Bri- tons, if they had been left to themselves after the fall of the Western Empire, would have succeeded in working out their emancipation from the anarchy into which they were thrown by the dismember- ment of the mighty system of which they had formed a part ; the stroke of fate had fallen upon the heart of that system, and it was impossible that any of its extremities should escape disso- lution. The Saxons brought along with them no new arts or additional intellectual culture ; they swept away, in the violence of their first seizure of the country, much of the civilization that had pre- viously been established in it ; and they were in- debted for the communication of the light of reli- gion and letters long after their settlement to that very Rome whose old institutions and monuments they had at first thrown down and trampled upon. But they brought with them what was better than any literary civilization, the spirit, at least, and elementary forms of a new system of political arrangements, founded upon larger and juster views of human rights and duties, and, in its final development, more favourable to the general secu- rity of person and property, and to the promotion of all the other ends of good government and social union, than any with which antiquity had been acquainted. The soil of the national character is to this day mainly Saxon, with our institutions, our manners, our language, our literature, and whatever else has sprung out of it. The conquest of the country by the Saxons has made its population in all things essen- tially a Teutonic race, and, as such, partakers in the most vigorous and productive species at least of modem civilization. This is a distinction which no subsequent revolutions or changes have been, and which it is not probable that any ever will be, able to obliterate. But various causes contributed to hinder the Saxons from rearing a superstructure of state, in their kingdom of England, of a height and pro- portions at all corresponding to the broad and deep foundations they had laid. The better part of their original energy they would seem to have ex- pended in the long and arduous contest they had to sustain before they made good their possession of the country ; when, after this was over, they found themselves in the undisturbed occupation and enjoyment of the settlements their swords had won, the cessation of the only excitement to exertion they had ever hitherto known, and the want, owing to their unacquaintance with letters and the arts, of any new stimulus to svipply its place, would naturally have the efi^ect of allowing them to subside into habits of indolence and sensuality. Then followed a long succession of miserable con- tests, sometimes between one state and another, Chap. VIL] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1066—1216. 659 sometimes between adverse factions in the same state, — in either case having almost equally the rancorous character of civil strifes. Thus were consumed three hundred and fifty years of the six hundred which make up what is commonly called the Saxon period. The destructive ravages of the Danes extend, with some interruptions, over nearly the whole of the remaining two centuries and a half : the several states had, indeed, been conso- lidated into one kingdom, and their ferocious con- tention with one another was at an end ; but for the greater part of this space the old scene of blood- shed, desolation, and public distraction was kept up by the restless plague of a foreign enemy, either hovering upon the coasts and making descents now at one point, now at another, throughout their whole circuit, or permanently stationed in the heart of the kingdom and sweeping it in all direc- tions with fire and sword. Even during the only considerable interval for which this long contest with the Danes was suspended, the space that elapsed from the time of Alfred to that of Ethelred, the numerous foreign population which had forced its way into the country was only kept quiet by Ijeing allowed to divide the possession of it with its previous occupants. How precarious was the subjection that was thus obtained from them was at length testified by the renewal of the old contest between the two races in the reign of Ethelred, and its obstinate prosecution by the Danes till they placed their own king on the English throne. In short, of the whole six hundred years that intervened from the coming of the Saxons to the coming of the Nor- mans, the quarter of a century forming the reign of the Confessor is almost the only portion that can be referred to as that in which the country enjoyed the blessings of a national government and a united people. Nearly all the rest of the period was spent in the contest of the invaders with the previous inhabitants, in the wars that the several bands of the invaders afterwards carried on among themselves, and, finally, in the long struggle they had to sustain with their foreign competitors for the possession of the country, the course of which was only an alternation of hard fighting and reluctant concession, of the din and confusion of arms and of occasional intervals of an insecure and uneasy calm, attempted to be main- tained by truces and oaths which quenched no hostile feeling, and which either party was con- stantly on the watch for the first fair occasion to break. It was impossible that in such circumstances the national character should not have become deterio- rated, and that the country should not have lagged behind in the career of wealth, of the arts, of li- terature, and of every other line of public prosperity and greatness. Accordingly, at the era of the Norman invasion, England was still a country of no account in the political map of Europe. Some foreign commerce it was beginning to have ; but still its intercourse, either commercial or of any other description, with other parts of the world was ap- parently very limited. A certain degree of ex- cellence indeed seems to have been attained by its artists in some kinds of ornamental work, in the fabrication of trinkets and other articles of luxury, a taste for which probably prevailed among its few wealthier inhabitants, — and on a first view we might be disposed to conjecture that other and more necessary descriptions of industry must needs have also flourished where there was room and encouragement for the exercise of this species of refined and expensive ingenuity ; but nothing can be more unsafe and fallacious than such a mode of inference, by which some particular feature is taken to indicate in one age, or country, or state of society, the same thing which it would indicate in another. It would be quite unwarrantable to as- sume the existence of any general wealth or refine- ment among the Anglo-Saxons of the eleventh century merely from their passion for show and glitter, which, in its lower manifestations, is an instinct of the rudest savages; and, even when directed with very considerable taste, may co-exist both with the most imperfect civilization and with much general poverty and squalor, as we see it doing in eastern countries at the present day. No other species of art or manufacture, except the ordinary trades required for the supply of their most common necessities, appears to have been practised among them. But the backward and declining condition of the country was most expres- sively evinced by the lamentable decay of all liberal knowledge among all classes of the people. The oldest historians are unanimous in their attestations to the general ignorance and illiteracy that pre- vailed among the English of this age. To the testimony of Ordericus Vitalis, which has been already adduced,* may be added that of Malms- bury, who, writing within sixty or seventy years from the time of the Conquest, may be considered to speak almost with the authority of a contem- porary. He was an Englishman as well as Vitalis, and, as he informs us himself, as much a Saxon as a Norman by descent. He assures us that, when the Normans first came over, the greater number of the English clergy could hardly read the church service, and that, as for anything like learning, they were nearly to a man destitute of it : if any one of them understood grammar, he was admired and wondered at by the rest as a prodigy. The rest of his account represents the upper classes in general as sunk in sloth and self-indulgence, and addicted to the coarsest vices. Many of the no- bility, he says, had even given up attending divine service in churches altogether, and used to have matins and mass said to them in their chambers while they lay in bed, and as fast as the priests could hurry them over. Besides other gross prac- tices, they were universally given to gluttonous feeding and drunkenness, continuing over their cups for whole days and nights, and spending all their incomes at riotous feasts, where they ate and • See ante, p. 603. 660 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [^BOOK drank to excess, without any display either of refinement or of magnificence. The dress, the houses, and the domestic accommodations of the people of all ranks are stated to have been mean and wretched in the extreme. Whatever judgment may be formed as to the comparative moral qualities of the two races, the Normans, at the time of their conquest of England, were undoubtedly much farther advanced than the Saxons in that sort of cultivation to which the name of civilization is commonly applied. They introduced into the country not only a higher learning, but improved modes of life. They set an example of elegance and magnificence, to which the Saxons were strangers, in their festivities, in their apparel, and in their whole expenditure. Instead of wasting the whole of their wealth in eating and drinking, their pride was to devote the greater part of it to works of permanent utility or embellishment, to the building of castles, and churches, and monasteries. The art of architec- ture in* England may be said to have taken its rise from them. By them, also, it is probable that the agriculture of the country was improved, and its commerce extended. Under their government, after it was fairly established, the kingdom for the first time had its natural strength and resources turned to account, and came to . be recognized as of any importance in the political system of Europe. Tliese eventual benefits, however, were purchased at a heavy immediate cost. No national revolution, brought about by violence can take place without occasioning much misery to individuals, and also giving a severe shock for the moment to the whole fabric of the public interests. But the Norman conquest of England, from the manner and circum- stances in which it was effected, swept the land with an uprooting and destructive fury far trans- cending that of ordinary tempests of this descrip- tion. It was much more than a mere transference of the dominion of the country into the hands of foreigners; along with the dominion nearly the whole property of the country was torn from its former possessors, and seizfed by the conquerors, A handful of aliens not only wielded the powers of the government, and recast at will the whole system of the national institutions, but the natives were, for the most part, stripped of their estates as well as of their political rights, and driven forth to destitution and beggary, at the same time that they were made to pass under the yoke. The distinc- tion of this conquest was, that it was to an almost unexampled extent one of confiscation and plunder. It w-as not merely the establishment of a foreign prince upon the throne, but the surrender of the country to a swarm of foreign robbers, who divided it among them like so much spoil, and, settling in all parts of it, treated the unhappy natives as their thralls. The necessity of satisfying the claims of the troops of hungry and rapacious adventurers from all countries, by whom he had been assisted in his enterprise, compelled the Norman thus extravagantly to overstretch and abuse even the hateful rights of conquest; and the system thus entered upon could only be maintained by a perse- verance in the sternest and most grinding tyranny. It was impossible that the moderation and cle- mency with which William at first affected to treat the conquered people should be long kept up. His spoliations and incessant exactions could not fail to provoke a spirit of resistance, which was only to be reined in by the steadiest and most determined hand. After some time, accordingly, he seems to have thrown away all scruples, and, resigning himself to the necessities of his position and the current of events, to have relinquished every view of governing his English subjects by any other means than force and terror. The con- sequence was, the establishment of a system of government Avhich, in so far as respected the great body of the people, was certainly as iron a de- spotism as ever existed in any country calling itself civilized. The constitutional changes introduced by the Norman Conquest do not appear to have greatly altered the legal position of the different ranks of the population. The labouring classes, and the great body of the occupiers and cultivators of the soil, remained, as before, partly serfs or bondmen, entirely the property of their masters, — partly villains, attached to the estates on which they resided, so as neither to have the power of removing at their own will nor to be removable at the will of their lord. Of these latter there appear to have been a variety of descriptions, whose conditions and rights probably differed in some subordinate par- ticulars; but the distinctions implied by the various names which we find used to designate them are very imperfectly imderstood. Some of them, perhaps, were entitled only to a maintenance from the land, — others to the occupation of a cottage, — others to a certain portion of the estate to cultivate for their own profit, for it would appear that some descriptions of the villains at least were capable of possessing and accumulating private property. There is no proof that all of them might not have done so, although some classes of them may have been more advantageously placed than others for saving or otherwise acquiring wealth. Glan- ville, indeed, informs us that whatever money or goods a villain possessed were considered by the law to belong to his lord, and therefore he could not emancipate himself, or purchase his freedom, with his own money ; but all that can be meant by this is, that the lord had perhaps the legal right if he chose of taking from his villain whatever pro- perty the latter might have acquired. This very statement is an evidence that the villain might possess money or other property, Avhich was his own at least so long as his lord refrained from demanding it. It is probable that custom, if not the law, imposed some limitation upon the lord's power of exaction, and that, even althougli all that the villain had might strictly or technically be said to belong to his master, it rarely or never hajjpcncd Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1066—1216. 661 that, if he paid from his earnin2:s or his savings the ordinary dues, he was disturbed in the possession of what remained. The great and conspicuous distinction at all events of his peculiar position was, as explained in the last book,* that on the one hand he was bound to remain on the estate on which he was born, and to perform certain labours or services, and to pay certain dues to the lord or proprietor of the estate ; and that on the other hand he could not be removed by the lord from the soil to which he was thus attached, nor deprived of what was substantially his tenure or holding in it, which no doubt always implied at least lodging and maintenance for himself and his family, and probably in many cases more extensive rights- Besides the villains, however, there was a con- siderable class of persons designated as freemen or free tenants. These, it may be presumed, were in no respect bound to the soil, or otherwise subjected to a qualified servitude, as the villains were. They held apparently the same legal position that all commoners hold in the present day, modified only by the very different constitution of society and state of the law generally which then prevailed. The villains, though by no means excluded from the protection of the law, seem not to have pos- sessed any political rights ; these were exclusively confined to freemen. They alone were the legates homines, or lawful men, of whom the laws and other writings of the time so often make mention. Such of the freemen as occupied land which was not their own property may be considered as having nearly corresponded to our modern tenantry, in the popular acceptation of that term. The tenants of those days again were, what tenants still are in the language of the law, the pro- prietors of estates ; and were called either tenants- in-chief (in Latin, tenentes in capite), by which expression were meant holders under, that is, by direct grant from the king, or tenants under a mesne (that is, a middle) lord, under which de- scription was included all other proprietors. The higher political rights seem originally to have been exclusively confined to the tenants-in-chief. The common freeholder, or freeman, for instance, might exercise municipal functions ; might be a deputy from his township to the hundred or the county-court, and might sit upon an inquisition or jury ; in other words, he might take part in various ways in the execution or administration of the law ; but with the making of the law, or with the function of legislation in any form, he seems to have been considered as having nothing to do. That was a right reserved to the tenants of the crown, though in what degree it was participated in, or in what manner exercised, by all the descrip- tions of persons who belonged to that class, has given rise to much difference of opinion. It may certainly be reasonably doubted if all the tenants- in-chief were ever considered as barons, in the sense of what we now call noblemen, and were summoned as such to the meetings of the great * See ante, p. 353, <S:e. council or parliament. It seems to be more pro- bable that such a barony as entitled to this pri- vilege was a distinct honour conferred by the crown only upon certain of the tenants-in-chief. The others, who had no such privilege, might be con- sidered as lesser barons. It may be added, that the existence of allodial property* ceased altoge- ther in England from the time of the Norman Con- quest. The establishment of the feudal system was made complete by the Conqueror assuming to himself the dominium directum, or original and supreme property, of all the lands in the kingdom, at the same time tliat he took possession of the throne. " If we compare the constitution esta- blished here by the Normans with that of the Anglo-Saxons," says a learned historian of this period, " the greatest difference between them will be found to arise from many estates which were allodial being made feudal, and from others which approached the nearest to fiefs, and were indeed of a feudal nature, but not lands of inheritance, being rendered hereditary, and in consequence of that change subjected to burdens to which they had not been liable in their former condition. "f The suflferings of the nation under the Norman dominion, therefore, were not principally occa- sioned by any new form or element of slavery that was introduced into the constitution of the kingdom or of society. The legal restrictions and disabilities by which the great body of the people were fettered all existed before the Conquest, nor was any portion of the community deprived by that revolution of rights which it had previously exercised, or depressed to a lower position in the state than it had previously held. The laws and institutions of the country, in short, remained in all essential respects nearly the same as before. But in that immature state of society compara- tively little of the substance of liberty resided in its mere forms. As yet the spirit in which the law was administered was of infinitely greater importance than the letter of its enactments. The government of the Normans proved a yoke of grievous bondage to the English in manifold ways. First, it was a government of foreigners, and, therefore, intolerably hateful to every feeling of patriotism and national honour. Secondly, it was a system which put a mark of exclusion and degradation upon all native Englishmen, ejecting and debarring them from every office of honour or profit in the state, and treating them in every way as aliens and outcasts in their own land. Thirdly, feudalism now bound the land, and all degrees of men in it, with a much firmer grasp than for- merly; it was the difference between the waters beginning to congeal, with the ice, indeed, floating here and there upon their surface, but still free and flowing in the greater part, and their state when hardened into one vast floor of fixed and impenetrable rock. There was no escape now anywhere from the embrace and pressure of the • See .inte, p. 248. + I.yttelton's Henry 11., vol. ii. p. 189. 662 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. system, — no retiring out of its way, or assuaging its force by a mixture of yielding and resistance ; — the closely fitting iron bolt was driven forward to the bottom of its cavity, and crushed every obstacle to dust. Fourthly, it was a frightful national calamity, and one that, for the time, must have disorganized society as completely as the most convulsive overthrow of old laws and insti- tutions could have done, for nearly the whole body of the landed proprietors of the country to be suddenly stripped of their possessions, and new families to enter everywhere upon the lordship of the soil and of its cultivators. Domesday Book shows the extent to which this spoliation of the natives was carried by the Norman conquerors. It is not correct to assert, as has been some- times done, that the English were indiscriminately deprived of their lands ; for a few of them appear to have been left in almost every county even as tenants-in-chief, and a considerable number more are mentioned as holding of mesne lords. But still the deprivation was so sweeping and general as to produce nearly the same amount of change and misery as if it had been universal; it was substantially the overthrow of the whole order of native proprietors, and the transference of the lordship of the soil into new hands. The suffer- ings of the numerous individuals who were the immediate victims of this policy would be but a part of the misery it inflicted ; the shock of their downfall would be felt in some degree by all their connexions and dependents ; and in the violent and simultaneous tearing asunder of so many old ties, and unlinking of men from the anchorages by which they had been accustomed to hang, the entire frame of society must have been loosened and weakened. But, fifthly, the conquered people were made, by the rapacity and incessant exactions of their new masters, to groan under a permanent load much more burdensome and op- pressive, there is reason to believe, than they had ever before experienced. Their foreign govern- ment and their foreign landlords ground them to the earth at the same time with their separate extortions. The government especially was essen- tially a government of extortion and rapine ; the main principle upon which it was conducted was to wring from the country the utmost revenue it could be made to yield ; to meet the demands of the government upon themselves, again, the nobles and other landed proprietors were compelled in their turn to become the fleecers of all under them ; and thus, in every way, the miserable people were harassed and robbed of the earnings of their industry. Sixthly, there was the occa- sional occurrence of such terrible excesses of reckless and unbridled tyranny as the formation of the New Forest, by which the government made open profession of its contempt for all the restraints of law, and right, and common humanity; and might be said actually to wage unprovoked war upon its subjects. Finally, there was the long succession of wars that grew out of the Conquest, — first between the two races nearly throughout the reign of the Conqueror, and afterwards between the two factions that divided the country in the time of Stephen, — by which the lives of two out of the first three generations that followed the establishment of the Norman dominion were made to pass in the sadness of continual anxiety and fear, the land was everywhere drenched with blood, and large districts of it were repeatedly laid desolate with fire and sword. The sufiferings of the people from all these causes have been very imperfectly detailed in the accounts that have come down to us ; but they are expressively indicated by the demand that was constantly made for the restoration of the laws of the Confessor, in other words, of the comparatively happy state of things that had existed before the arrival of the Normans. It is remarkable that these supposed laws of the Confessor were really, as has been already noticed, the laws which had been first collected and reduced to a system by the Danish king Canute ; so that the popular cry was the expression of a strong preference even for the Danish over the Norman dominion. And, in fact, there can be no question that the nation was much happier under the government of Canute than under that of the Norman conqueror. Domesday Book also is the faithful record both of the extent of the spoliation which followed upon the Norman Conquest, and of part of the general depression of the national prosperity which was the immediate consequence of that great revolu- tion. By the statements there given, almost all the principal towns throughout the kingdom ap- pear to have been greatly reduced in their popu- lation and the number of houses they contained, at the end of the reign of the Conqueror, from their condition in the time of the Confessor; while the rents, customs, and other payments exacted from them had been in most cases seriously augmented. Part of this diminution appears to have been brought about by the ravages of war or accidental conflagrations — part by mere decay and neglect. In either case it equally told the miseries through which the country had passed, and the heavy weight that pressed upon all the springs of the national industry. This will be more clearly shown by the enumeration of a few particulars. The city of York — -as yet the only town in the vast county to which it gives name — is set down as containing, at the date of the survey, only 967 inhabited houses out of 1607 which it had contained before the Conquest. Of the six scyrse, or wards, into which it was divided, one is described as laid waste for building the castles, or military strongholds for overawing the town. Besides the 640 houses pulled down or quite waste, 400 others are stated to be so much decayed as to be capable of paying to the crown only an annual tax of a penny each, or even less. In Lincoln there were formerly 1150 inha- bited houses ; of these, 166 were now laid waste for building the castle, and other 74 were also in ruins, having been reduced to that state by fire or Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 10G6— 1216. 663 the poverty of their proprietors. In Dorchester, of 188 houses, 100 were totally destroyed. In Ox- ford, out of 721 houses which the town formerly contained, 478 were so decayed as not to be in a condition to pay any geld or tax. In Cambridge, 28 houses had been pulled down to build a castle. In Northampton, of 45 houses — all that the place appears to have contained — 14 were lying waste. In many of the towns also a considerable propor- tion of the houses were now occupied by French- men, as the Normans are called, who, in most in- stances, appear to have contributed no part of the tax exacted from the place by the crown. Thus, in the city of Shrewsbury, it is noted as a com- plaint of the English burgesses, that they were still compelled to pay the whole of the royal dues they paid in the time of King Edward, although, of the 252 houses of which the town consisted, there were 51 destroyed for the earl's castle, and 50 others lyhig waste, besides 43 that were occu- pied by French burgesses, who paid nothing, and 39 given by the earl to an abbey, which were in like manner exempted from taxation. The annual geld exacted from this town, and now, according to this statement, to be paid by little more than a fourth of the number of persons who formerly contributed to it, was 11. 16s. 8d. But the geld or tax paid by the burgesses was far from being the whole of what each town paid to the king. From Shrewsbury, for instance, the entire profits of the crown were estimated at 30^. annually. In Derby, 103 houses were destroyed out of 243. In Ipswich, 328 houses are set down as now waste, which had yielded geld in the time of King Edward. Of 210 burgesses which remained out of 808, 100 were so poor as to be able to pay only a penny each. The entry respecting the city of Chester presents a rare instance of a partial reco- very from the devastations of the earlier part of the reign ; there were, it is stated, 205 houses lying waste when the town came into the possession of Earl Hugh, and it was worth only 30/.; but it had since so far recovered as to be farmed from the earl for 70/. and one mark of gold. Both the Conqueror and his son Henry have the character of having been sti'ict administrators of the laws, and rigorously exact and severe in the punishment of oifences against the public peace. The Saxon Chronicler says that, in the time of the former, a girl loaded with gold might have passed safely through all parts of the kingdom. In like manner the same authority tells us, that, under the government of Henry, " whoso bore his burden of gold and silver, durst no man say to him nought but good." The maintenance of so effective a system of police must, no doubt, have made a great diiference between these reigns and those of Rufus and Stephen — in both of which robbery ranged the kingdom almost without restraint, and, in the latter especially, the whole land was almost given up as a prey to anarchy and the power of the strongest. But still even this supremacy of the law was in many respects an oppressive bondage to the subject. In this, as in everything else, the main object of the government was the protection and augmenta- tion of the royal revenue ; and it may be correctly enough affirmed, that private robbery and depreda- tion were prohibited and punished chiefly on the principle that no interference was to be tolerated with the rights of the great public robber, the government. Many of the laws, also, which were so sternly enforced, were in reality most unjust and grievous restrictions upon the people. Of this cha- racter, in particular, were the forest-laws, which punished a trespass upon the royal hunting-grounds, or the slaughter of a wild beast, with the same penalty that was inflicted upon the robber or the murderer. And in all cases the vengeance of the law was wreaked upon its victims in a spirit so precipitate, reckless, and merciless, that any salutary effect of the example must have been, to a great extent, neutralized by its tendency to harden and brutalize the public mind ; and the most cruel injustice must have been often perpetrated in the name and under the direct authority of the law. Henry I. was popularly called the Lion of Justice, and he well deserved the name. His mode of judicial procedure was in the highest degree sum- mary and sweeping. In the twenty-fifth year of his reign, for instance, in a fit of furious indig- nation occasioned by the continued and increasing debasement of the coin, he had all the moneyers in the kingdom, to the number of more than fifty, brought up before the Court of Exchequer, when, after a short examination by the treasurer, they were all, except four, taken one by one into an adjoining apartment, and punished by having their right hands struck off, and being otherwise mutilated. The year before he had hanged at one time, at Huncot, in Leicestershire, no fewer than forty-four persons, charged with highway robbery. Robberies, however, of the most atrocious descrip- tion were, during a great part of the reign, perpe- trated, without check, by the immediate servants, and it may be said vmder the very orders, of the crown. The insolence of the purveyors and numerous followers of the court in the royal progresses is described by contemporary writers as having reached a height under this king far transcending even what it had attained to under either of his immediate predecessors. They used not only to enter the houses of the farmers and peasantry without leave asked, to take up their lodgings and remain as long as it suited them, and to eat and drink their fill of whatever they found, but, in the wantonness of their official licence, frequently even to burn or otherwise destroy what they could not con- sume. At other times they would carry it away with them, and sell it. If the owners ventured to remonstrate, their houses would probably be set on fire about their ears, or mutilation, and some- times even death, might punish their presumption. Nor was it their goods only that were plundered or wasted ; the honour of their wives and daughters was equally a free prey to these swarms of pro- tected spoilers. The approach of the king to any 664 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. district, accordingly, spread as much dread as could have been occasioned by an announcement that a public enemy was at hand. The inhabit- ants were wont to conceal whatever they had, and to flee to the woods. It was not till the necessity of reforming these frightful abuses was at last forced upon Henry, by the solitude which he found around him wherever he appeared, — in other words, till this system of unrestrained rapacity came at last to defeat its own purpose, — that he had some of the delinquents brought before him, and punished by the ampu- tation of a hand or a foot, or the extraction of one of their eyes. Yet the most unsparing pillage of the people in other forms continued throughout the whole of this reign. Taxes were imposed with no reference to any other consideration except the wants of the crown ; and the raising of the money was managed by any measures, however violent or irregular, that would serve that end. It is an affecting trait of the sufferings of one numerous class of the people which is recorded by the his- torian Eadmer, in his statement that the peasantry on the domains of the crown would sometimes offer to give up their ploughs to the king, in their inability to pay the heavy exactions with which they were burdened. These unhappy men, it is to be remembered, were without any means of escape from the extortion which thus ground them to the earth ; even if, in some cases, they were not attached to the soil by any legal bond, they might still be considered as rooted to it nearly as much as the trees that grew on it ; for in that state of society there was, generally speaking, no resource for the great body of the community except to remain in the sphere in which they were born, and in which their fathers had moved. The same historian paints in strong colours the miseries occasioned by the oppressiveness of the general taxes. The collectors, he says, seemed to have no sense either of humanity or justice. It was equally unfortunate for a man to be possessed of money as to be without it. In the latter case, he was cast into prison, or obliged to flee from the country; or his goods were taken and sold, the very door of his house being sometimes carried away as a punishment for not satisfying the demand made upon him. But, if he had money, it was no better ; his wealth was only a provocation to the rapacity of the government, which never ceased to harass him by threats of prosecutions on un- founded charges, or by some of the other means of extortion at its command, until it drove him to comply with its most mijust requisitions. The lan- guage of the Saxon chronicler is to the same purport, and equally strong. " God knows," says that other contemporary writer, " how unjustly this miserable people is dealt with. First they are deprived of their property, and then they are put to death. If a man possesses anything, it is taken from him ; if he has nothing, he is left to perish by famine." A legend respecting Henry I., which is related by some of the old historians, forcibly depicts the deep sense that was popularly entertained of the tyranny of his government, and the fierce hatred which it engendered in the hearts of his subjects. In the year 1130, as he was passing over to Nor- mandy, he is said to have been visited one night with an extraordinary dream or vision. First, there gathered around him a multitude of country- men, bearing scythes, spades, and pitch-forks, and with anger and threatening in their countenances : they passed away, and the place they had occupied was filled by a crowd of armed soldiers with drawn swords ; the scene changed again, and crosiered bishops seemed to be leaning over his bed, ready to fall upon him, as if they meant to kill him with their holy staves. Thus the tillers of the ground, the military, and the church,' — the three most im- portant interests of the kingdom, — appeared to have each sent its representatives to reproach, and curse, and menace him. We insert copies of three ancient drawings, which are found accompanying a con- temporary manuscript version of this legend, and which, besides illustrating the story, will convey some notion of the costume and general appearance of the different ranks of men introduced in it. The dream, it may be added, is said to have made a great impression on Henry. He awoke in ex- treme perturbation, leaped out of his bed, seized his sword, and called violently for his attendants. When he became more calm he solemnly resolved upon repentance and amendment of life, and it is affirmed that, from this time, he began to be an altered man. The excess to which the tyranny of the crown was thus carried probably had the effect of bring- ing about, sooner than it might otherwise have taken place, the commencement of the intermixture of the two races inhabiting the country, and their union into one nation. It was not long after the Conquest, as we leam from William of Malmsbury, before the superior refinement of their Norman masters 1)egan to communicate itself to the English. Tliat historian, who died in the reign of Stephen, after describing the peculiarities of manners and habits which originally distinguished each people, tells us that this diversity had become in great part obliterated at the time when he wrote. Tlie English had generally accommodated themselves to the customs and the mode of living brought over by the Normans, in all points except one, their old habit of immoderate eating and drinking : this, which they themselves are said to have learned from the Danes, the Normans had now acquired from them. The two races must, therefore, have come by this time to live with each other in common and familiar association. The name of English- man, it appears, had also now ceased to be what it was esteemed in the reign of the Conqueror, — a term of degradation and reproach. It was assumed even by the barons, and others of Norman lineage, as their proper appellation, under which they were accustomed to make common cause with the great body of the population in demanding the resto- Chap, VIE.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1066—1216. 665 Vision op IlExnY I. 666 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. ration of the old Saxon laws and customs. By the time of Henry II. the English had begun to be re-admitted to offices of honour and profit in the state, and intermarriages had taken place between the two races to a great extent. The his- torian Ailred, who lived in that reign, observes that England had now, not only a king, but many bishops and abbots, many great earls and noble knights, who, being descended both from the Norman and English blood, were an honour to the one and a comfort to the other. But the most distinct statement of the general intermixture of the two races that had by this time taken place is found in a remarkable passage of the Dialogue on the Exchequer, in relation to the old legal cus- tom of what were called presentments of Englishry. A presentment of Englishry was the return of an inquisition held upon the body of a person found slain, when the author of the slaughter could not be discovered, declaring him to have been an Englishman ; in which case the vill or hundred was excused from a heavy amerciament, which it would otherwise have had to pay, by a law said to have been first introduced by Canute for the protection of his Danish countrymen, and which was afterwards continued or revived by William the Conqueror for the security of the Normans. But now, says the writer of the Dialogue, by reason of the English and Normans dwelling toge- ther, and constantly intermarrying, the two nations are so completely mixed one with the other, that, in so far as regards the portion of the community that is free, it can scarcely any longer be ascer- tained who is of English, who of Norman descent. The villains attached to the soil, however, it is added, were still an exception ; they remained of unmixed Saxon blood, — a statement, by the way, from which we may gather that it was not usual for marriages to take place between the villains and persons in a state of freedom ; — that such mar- riages sometimes happened we know, from the provisions made by law respecting their issue. The consequence of the state of things which had thus arisen, the writer of the Dialogue concludes by informing us, was, that, except it were a villain, the case of every person found secretly slain was considered to be murder, — that is to say, was punished by the imposition of the fine upon the neighbourhood, for that was then the meaning of the word which we now use for the highest degree of the illegal shedding of blood. Had it not been for the sake of the revenue which accrued to the crown from these amerciaments, the directly op- posite result would seem to be that which should have most naturally flowed from the general obli- teration of the old distinguishing characteristics of the two races; all persons found secretly slain should have been assumed to be English, and the fine upon the neighbourhood remitted. It was not, however, till nearly two centuries after this time that presentations of Englishry were formally abo- lished by statute. There can be little doubt that the national cha- racter was decidedly improved on the whole by this mixture of new blood with that of the old Saxon population of the country. The Saxon solidity was brightened, and its tendency to decline into heaviness and coarseness checked, by an infusion of the more fiery temperament and more brilliant qualities of the Norman race. The Celtic tincture which was thus introduced into the pure Teutonic blood of the Saxons was, however, but very slight; for the Normans were but half Frenchmen, and the French themselves were but half Gauls. The substance of the English cha- racter, therefore, remained thoroughly Teutonic as before, though lighted up with something of a more refined animation. But the perfect produce of this chemistry was a result not to be realized till a distant period; the consequences of the oblivion by the two races of their old animosities, and their coalescence into one nation, were evi- denced for the present chiefly in the favourable change that followed in their political and social circumstances. The government, indeed, still continued to be in many respects an oppressive tyranny: its spirit, and also to a great extent its power, was still despotic; the law was a most im- perfect protection for either the property or the liberty of the subject; witness, to mention no other instances of its scandalous insufficiency and bar- barism, the right which it appears was still left to the crown, and not unfrequently exercised by it even in the reign of Henry II., of not only punishing the individual himself who might have been found guilty of certain crimes, but also sending into banishment all his innocent relations. Henry, it may be remembered, in 1165, banished out of England, by a general sentence, all the relations, friends, and connexions of Thomas a Becket, to the number of nearly four hundred persons, without distinction of sex or age; even infants at the breast, as we learn both from Becket's own letters and from his biographer Fitz-Stephen, were not excepted. What liberty, or what law deserving the name, could there be said to exist in a country where so enormous a stretch of arbitrary power could be tolerated? Many of the other prerogatives of the crown, indeed, were utterly incompatible with a state of general security and freedom. Yet from this time the spirit of resistance to bad government, however inefficient as yet for the prevention of numerous abuses, was at least a national spirit. It was no longer the mere feeling of a part of the people either actually contending in arms with the rest, or only kept down by force and fear; it was no longer a sentiment of disaffection or open rebellion; the classes naturally most attached to the existing government, and most interested in its preservation, shared equally with their fellow- subjects in the desire for good laws and a just administration of them. The Saxons had ceased to be rebels ; the Normans had ceased to be con- querors ; both, united under the common name of Englishmen, had come to feel that they had the Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1066—1216 HeNKV II. BANISHINO IJeCKET's FAMILY. Royal MS. 2 B vii. same interests and the same rights. Their union, as has been just observed, did not at first enable them always to restrain the excesses of the crown ; that power would still, on occasion, break through all restraints ; but yet, in ordinary circumstances, a considerable degree of moderation and good govern- ment was enforced. The government of Henry II., for instance, was undoubtedly an infinite im- provement on that of his grandfather. At first this practical amelioration was nearly all that was aimed at ; but the reform of the constitution of the kingdom followed in due course : when King John attempted to renew the arbitrary rule of the Con- queror and his sons, he found that he had neither the same kind of resistance to encounter, nor the same support to lean upon ; the Norman party was not now to be wielded as an instrument for beating down the English ; his tyrannical proceedings were as little agreeable to the former as to the latter ; and tliey soon gave proof of their combined strength, and of the birth of a power which hitherto had not showed itself in the state, by not only stopping him in his course of insolent ag- gression and outrage, but by proceeding to extract some and to pare down others of the mischievous prerogatives through which he had been enabled to perpetrate the wrongs thus put an end to. For the manner in which it was gained, and its glorious memory as the first victory of the nation over the old despotism of the crown, even more than for any of the provisions contained in it. Magna Charta is worthy to stand in the front of the Statute Book, and to be regarded as having laid the foundation of the liberties of England. The precise information that has come down to us respecting the social statistics of this period, amounts only to a few scattered facts, from which scarcely any general conclusions can be drawn as to the condition of the people. We have not as yet arrived at the age of regular and oflBicial re- cords ; we have only the occasional notices inci- dentally let fall by the chroniclers while pursuing their main subject — the course of public afiairs. Most of these notices that throw any light upon the important point of the prices of commodities and of labour have been collected by Bishop Fleet- wood, in the ' Chronicon Preciosum,' by Sir Fre- derick Eden, in his ' State of the Poor,' and by Mr. Macpherson, in his ' Annals of Commerce.' Their number, as we have said, is very inconsi- derable ; and, few as they are, they are for the most part of little value. " The accounts, for in- stance," as is observed by one of the writers we have just named, " of the prices of grain, are in general only those which, from the particular cir- cumstances of the time, attracted the attention of the annalist ; they are usually the prices in dearths and famines, or in years of extraordinary cheap- ness ; and are, therefore, no very accurate criterion of the mean or ordinary price ; it is often impos- sible to ascertain the capacity of the measures that were used, or to point out the places where the prices were taken. In the distracted state of the country from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, the intercourse between the different parts of the island was interrupted ; the want of good roads, an injudicious system of agriculture, and the deso- lating incursions of rival barons, often prevented one part of the kingdom, where the crop was scanty, from being supplied with the superabundant produce of another. It is further to be remarked, that, in stating both the prices of labour and com- modities, authors have often been misled by the composition-price agreed upon between the land- lord and tenant, perhaps according to some ancient valuation. In some instances it is diflBcult to dis- tinguish whether the rent of land, as stated in ancient records, is the whole benefit the landlord received, or whether the personal services of the tenant did not constitute by far the most valuable part ; in others, whether the price of grain is the price for which it sold in the market, or the quota which in ancient times tenants paid to their land- lords in lieu of a rent in kind, and which was always much below the market price."* To these sources of fallacy may be added the chances of a corrupt text, which are very great wherever figures • Edeu's State of the Poor, vol. iii.. Appendix, p. vi. 668 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book III. are concerned, and the occasional contradictions between one authority and another, or even some- times between two statements of the same writer. The value of the money of the present period, or rather the quantity of silver contained in each denomination, has been explained in a preceding chapter.* The price which, in ordinary circumstances, chiefly regulates all other prices, or sympathizes with them where it does not regulate them, is the price of labour. But, in regard to that in the pre- sent period, our information is hardly worth any- thing. It appears, however, to have varied from about three farthings to a penny a day, with victuals. Thus, in 1126, the wages of the common servants employed at the abbey of Peterborough are stated to have been 1/. 45. 4rf. yearly, which is at the rate of about three farthings a day. The Abbey baker had the same wages, with bread and beer ; but what we are to infer from this probably is, not that the other servants had no victuals, but that bread (that is, wheaten bread) and beer were not allowed them as a part of their fare. In 1113, the subsistence of a footman for one day is set down at twopence, which makes about 31. in the year ; so that it can hardly be supposed that the ll. 4s. 4d. was the whole that domestic servants received. The entire yearly gains of persons of this class may probably be taken as amounting to about 4/. Labour of a higher kind was of course better paid. By the old Scottish burgh laws, which may be referred to about the middle of this century, it is enacted, that a butcher, for slaughter- ing an ox, or a cow, or a hog, or five sheep, should be paid a halfpenny, with victuals, while em- ployed. Supposing the work stated to be that of half a day, the butcher's annual earnings in money would amount to about 1/. lOs. 6c/. ; and, if he was allowed provisions at the same rate with a footman or common domestic servant, his entire yearly in- come would amount to about 4/. 10?., or, in quantity of silver, to about 13/. of our present money. The prices of grain were wont to vary exces- sively, not only in different years, but even at different periods of the same year Stow asserts that, in the reign of Henry II., the usual price of wheat was 1^., and of oats 4c/. the quarter; but no contemporary notice places it nearly so low. In scarce years the price of wheat is stated to have sometimes risen to a pound. If we take it as averaging 4^., the yearly gains of tlie butcher would purchase about twenty-three quarters of wheat, which, estimating the wheat at about 50^. the quarter, would now make an income of be- tween .50/. and 60/. Nothing, however, can pos- sibly be more uncertain than such a deduction as this. Every element and step of it is tainted with uncertainty. The prices of many other kinds of provisions were low in comparison with that which" we have assumed for wheat. Thus, in 1185, we find • See ante, !>. 094. hens rated at a halfpenny each; sheep at about 5ic/. ; rams at 8c/. ; hogs at 1^. ; oxen at 5s. 6d. ; cows at about 4^. 6c/. ; breeding-mares at less than 'Ss. At these rates, the expense of a day's maintenance of a man-servant at 2c/. would be equivalent to the value of four hens, and of more than a third of a sheep. It is unnecessary to remark how greatly these and the other propor- tions deducible from the account difi^'er from those that now subsist. In the year 1205, again, we find ten capital horses rated at 20/. each, or nearly 60/. of our present money. Of the prices of other commodities we have very few notices. In 1172, twenty-five ells of scarlet cloth, bought for the king, cost 5*. &d. the ell; and twenty-six ells of green, 2.y. 10c/. the ell. Ten pairs of boots for his Majesty at the same time cost \s. 6c/. each. In 1212, a pair of Cordo- van boots for the king are charged at 2s. 6d. ; and a pair of what are called single boots, at only 7c/. About the end of the twelfth century, the price of the tun of French wine appears to have varied from about 1/. to 1/. 6^. 8d. A sack of wool about the same time cost 3/. 6«. 8d. The ex- pense of the building of two arches of London Bridge in 1 140, was 25/. A few years later, a piece of ground, with a stone house on it, in the city of London, was sold for 2/., besides a rent in perpetuity of 6s. 8c/. It is evident that, by an ap- peal to these various prices, the value of money in the twelfth century might be made out to bear any proportion to its value in the present day that the fancy of the calculator might prefer, or tliat it might best suit his particular object to fix upon. The most curious illustrations we possess of the social life of this period, and the point to which civilization had attained in England, are afforded by some of the facts mentioned in Fitz-Stephen's account of London. According to this writer, for instance, the English capital had already its sewers and aqueducts in the streets {eluvies et aque- ductus in vicis). He speaks of the comfort of a residence in the place, and the beauty of the sur- rounding country, in very glowing terms. It was encompassed, he tells us, on the north side, by " corn-fields, pastures, and delightful meadows;" and these fields, he adds, " are by no means hungry gravel or barren sands, but may vie with the fertile plains of Asia, as capable of producing the most luxuriant crops, and filling the barns of the herds and farmers with Ceres' golden sheaf." " The city, on the whole," he proceeds, " is doubt- less most charming — at least when it has the hap- piness of being well governed." "The two only inconveniences of London," he afterwards informs us, " are the excessive drinking of some foolish people, and the frequent fires." " To all that has been said," he concludes, " I may add, that almost all the bishops, abbots, and great men of this kingdom, are, in a manner, citizens and inhabit- ants of London, as having their respective and not inelegant habitations there, to which they resort, and where their disbursements and expenses arc Chap. VIT.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1066—1216. 669 not sparing, whenever they are summoned thither from the country, to attend councils and solemn meetings, by the king or their metropolitan, or arc compelled to repair thither for the prose- cution of their own proper business." But the most remarkable passage in the account is the de- scription he gives of a sort of public eating-house, or cook's shop (publica coquina), which was esta- blished on the bank of the river. " Here," he says, " according to the season, you may find victuals of all kinds, roasted, baked, fried, and boiled ; fish, large and small ; and coarse viands for the poorer sort, and more delicate ones for the rich, such as venison, fowls, and small birds. In case a friend should arrive at a citizen's house much wearied with his journey, and chooses not to wait, anhungered as he is, for the buying and cooking of meats, — ' Diint famuli manibus Ivmphas panesque canistris.' — ^n. i. 705. Tlie water's served, the bread's in baskets brouglit; — and recourse is immediately had to the bank above- mentioned, where everything desirable is instantly procured. No number so great, of knights or strangers, can either enter the city at any hour of day or night, or leave it, but all may be supplied with provisions ; so that those have no occasion to fast too long, nor these to depart the city without their diimer. To this place, if they are so dis- posed, they resort, and there they regale them- selves, every man according to his abilities. Those who have a mind to indulge need not hanker after sturgeon, or a Guinea-fowl, or a gelinote da bois (a particularly delicate bird), for there are delicacies enough to gratify their palates. It is a public eating-house, and is both highly convenient and useful to the city, and is a clear proof of its civilization."* We may smile at this notion of civilization, and at the instance selected to set forth the wealth and pre-eminence of London at this early period; but, after all, the establishment here described is highly interesting, as an indica- tion of the growing importance of the more nume- rous classes, and as the commencement of that extended system of public accommodations of all kinds, which, for more than the palaces of her grandees, has since made our noble capital the Queen of Cities. • Filz-Stephen's Description of the City of London, newlv trans- lated. (Uy Tegge.) 4to. Lond. J772. BOOK IT. THE PERIOD FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF RICHARD II. 1316-1399 A.D. CONTEMPORARY PRINCES. ENGLAND. 1216 Heniy III. 1272 Edward I. 1307 Edward II. 1327 Edward III. 1377 Richard II. SCOTLAND 1249 Alexander III. 1286 Margaret. 1292 John Baliol. 1296 Interregnum. 1306 Robert I. 1329 David II. 1371 Robert II. 1390 Robert III. FRANCE. 1223 Louis VIII. ' 1226 Louis IX. 1270 Philip III. 1285 PhiUp IV, 1314 Louis X. 1316 Philip V. 1322 Charles IV. 1328 PhUip VI. 1350 John. 1364 Charles V. POPES. 1380 Charles VL 1216 Honorius III. 1227 Gregory IX. CASTILE AND LEON. 1241 Celestine IV. 1230 Ferdinand III. 1243 Innocent IV. 1252 Alphonso X. 1254 Alexander IV. 1284 Sancho IV. 1261 Urban IV. 1295 Ferdinand IV. 1265 Clement IV. 1312 Alphonso XL 1271 Gregory X. 1350 Pedro. 1276 Innocent V. 1366 Henry IL 1276 Adrian V. 1367 Pedro restored. 1276 John XXL 1369 Henry II. restored. 1277 Nicolas III. 1379 John L 1281 Martin IV. 1390 Henry III. and Catherine 1285 Honorius IV. of Lancaster. 1287 Nicolas IV. 1294 Celestine V. 1294 Boniface VIII. GERMANY. 1303 Benedict XL 1212 Frederick II. 1305 Clement V. 1251 Conrad IV. 1316 John XXII. 1254 Inten-egnum. 1334 Benedict XII. 1273 Rodolph. 1342 Clement VI. 1292 Adolphus. 1352 Innocent VI. 1298 Albert L 1362 Urban V. 1308 Henry VIL 1370 Gregory XI. 1314 Louis V. 1378 Urban VI. and Clement VII. 1347 Charles IV. 1389 Boniface IX. and Clement VII 1378 Wenceslaus. 1394 Boniface IX. and BenedictXIII Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 671 Geeat Seai, of Hemry III. CHAPTER I. NARRATIVE OF CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS. Henry III., surnamed of Winchester. S soon as they had buried John at Wor- cester, the Earl of Pembroke, the Mar- shal of England, marched with the royal army and Prince Henry, the deceased king's eldest son, to the city of Gloucester. On the day after their arrival, being the feast of St, Simon and St. Jude, October 28th, 1216, Henry was crowned in the church of St. Peter, belonging to the Abbey of Gloucester, by Gualo, the pope's legate, whose services in supporting the royal cause were of great value and efficacy. The ceremony was precipitated : no English bishops were present except those of Winchester, Bath, and Worcester ; no lay nobles save the earls of Chester, Pembroke, and Ferrers, and four barons. The scanty retinue was completed by a few abbots and priors. The prince took the usual oaths " upon the gospels and relics of saints.'' The crown had been lost, with the rest of the regalia, in the Wash, and, instead of it, Gualo put a plain ring of gold on his head. Henry was only ten years old when he went through these solem- nities, without understanding them. It required no great force or persuasion to induce him to con- sent to do homage to the pope for England and Ireland, and to swear to pay the thousand marks a-year which his father had promised. The clergy of Westminster and Canterbury, who considered thek rights invaded by this hurried and informal coronation, appealed to Rome for redress : Gualo excommunicated the appellants, who, however, persevered ; and this matter occasioned considerable trouble, which did not end till the ceremony was repeated in a more regular manner. A great council was held at Bristol on the 11th of November following; and there the Earl of Pembroke was chosen Protector, with the title of Rector Regis el Regni. His pure cha- racter and many eminent qualities, — his temper, prudence, and conciliating manners, — his expe- rience in public affairs and his military skill, all seemed to point him out as the most eligible person ; but some jealousies arose on the part of the great Earl of Chester, and Pembroke did not assume the style of " Rector " till the end of the month of November. At the same great council of Bristol Magna Charta was carefully, and, on the whole, skilfully revised, with the view of satisfying the demands of the barons who adhered to Louis, without sacrificing the royal prerogative. These 672 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. measures, however, were not considered conclusive, for Pembroke prudently left several clauses open for future discussion, when all the barons of the kingdom should be reconciled, and should meet again in one council. As yet tlie greater number of the nobles were on the side of Louis, who not only held London and the rich provinces of the south, but was powerful both in the north and the west, where the King of Scotland and the Prince of Wales supported his cause.* When Louis learned the death of John he fancied that all opposition would presently cease. To take advantage of the consternation which he fancijed must prevail among the royal party, he again pressed the siege of Dover Castle with great vigour, and, finding himself still incapable of taking it by force, he skilfully worked upon the fears and misgivings of the garrison, representing to them that they were fighting for a king who no longer existed, and whose death freed them from the obligation of their oaths of fealty. He tempted the governor, the brave Hubert de Burgh, with the most magnificent ofi'ers ; and, when these failed, he threatened to put Hubert's brother to death. But threats were as ineffectual as promises ; and, finding he was losing precious time, the French prince finally raised the siege, and returned to London, where the Tower, which had hitherto held out, was given up to him on the 6th of November. From London Louis marched to Hertford, and laid siege to the castle there, which he took on the 6th of • Rjmer.— Carte— M Paris. December. He then attacked the castle of Berk- harapstead, which he reduced on the 20th of the same month. Both these castles made a stout resistance, costing him many men ; and the taking of that of Berkhampstead was a loss rather than a gain, for it led to a quarrel with Robert Fitz- Walter, to whom he refused the custody of the castle. But his mistrust of the English was made every day more evident. From Berkhampstead liouis marched to St. Albans, where he threatened to burn the vast abbey to the ground if the abbot did not come forth and do him homage as legi- timate king of England ; but the abbot, it is said, escaped on paying a fine of eighty marks of silver. For a long period the carnage of war had been brought to a pause, by unanimous consent, on the seasons of our Saviour's birth and suffering. Christmas was now at hand, and a truce was agreed upon which was to last till a fortnight after the Epiphany. At the expiration of this truce Pembroke willingly agreed to another which did not expire till some days after the festival of Easter. Each party hoped to gain by this long armistice, and both were extremely active during its con- tinuance. Louis, in Lent, went over to France to procure supplies of men and money, and Pembroke recruited in England, and drew off" many of the nobles during the absence of the French prince. Louis left the government in the hands of Enguer- rand de Coucy, a nobleman of great quality, but of very little discretion, under whose misrule the French became more arrogant than ever, and the English barons were made to feel that, by securing IIe.nuv III.— From his Tomb in WcstJuinster .\bbcy. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 673 the throne to a foreign prince, tliey should impose upon themselves foreign nobles for masters. At the same time the death-bed story of the Viscount de Melun was artfully revived ; and the clergy, in obedience to the orders of Gualo the legate, read the sentence of excommunication in the churches every Sunday and holiday against the partisans of Louis. Hubert de Burgh, as constable of Dover Castle and warden of the Cinque Ports, was in constant communication with the best mariners in England, and he kept them true to young Henry. Philip d'Albiney put himself at the head of a popular party in Sussex, where one William de Collingham collected a thousand gallant archers, — rough English yeomen, who would allow of no truce with the French, and cared not for the armis- tice concluded by the Earl of Pembroke. On his way to the coast Louis came into collision with these sturdy patriots, who treated him very roughly, and would have made him a prisoner but for the opportune arrival of the French fleet, in which he and his attendants embarked in great disorder. On his return from France with reinforcements, the mariners of the Cinque Ports cut off several of his ships at sea, and took them by boarding. On this Louis landed at Sandwich, and burned that town to the ground in spite. He then, after making another unsuccessful attempt on Dover Castle, marched to London, where everything was falling into confusion. On the expiration of the truce the Earl of Pem- broke recommenced hostilities by laying siege to the castle of Mount Sorel, in Leicestershire. Louis sent the Count of Perche with six hundred knights and twenty thousand armed men to relieve it. On their march this mixed army of English, French, Flemings, and all kinds of mercenaries, committed great havoc, plundering the peaceful inhabitants, and wantonly burning the churches and monasteries. They succeeded, however, in their first object, Pembroke's forces raising the siege and retiring before superior numbers. Flushed with this success, the Count of Perche marched away to Lincoln : the town received him, but the castle resisted, and when he laid siege to it, he was foiled by a woman, — Nichola, the widow of Gerard de Camville, who held the custody of Lincoln Castle by hereditary right, and made a brave defence. While the confederates were wholly occupied with this siege, Pembroke suddenly collected a force of four hundred knights, two Imndred and fifty cross- bowmen, many yeomen on horseback, and a consi- derable body of foot, and appeared before Lincoln in admirable order. The count for a time would not believe that the English would venture to attack him within a walled town ; and though his supe- riority in cavalry would have given him an advan- tage in the open country, he rejected the advice of some English barons who were with him, and would not marcli out of the town. He continued to batter tlie castle until he found himself engaged in a fatal street contest. To animate Pembroke's force Gualo now excommunicated Prince Louis by VOL. 1, name, and pronounced the curse of the church against all his adherents ; dispensing at the same time full absolution, and promises of eternal life, to the other party. The regent took advantage in the most skilful manner of the count's blunder : he threw all his crossbows into the castle by means of a postern. These yeomen made great havoc on the besiegers by firing from the castle walls ; and seizing a favourable opportunity they made a sortie, drove the enemy from the inside of the northern gate »f the city, and enabled Pembroke to enter with all his liost. The French cavalry could not act in the narrow streets and lanes : they were wounded and dismounted, and at last were obliged to surrender in a mass. The victory was complete ; as usual, the foot-soldiers Avere slaugh- tered, but the " better sort" were allowed quarter ; only one knight fell, and that was the commander, the Count of Perche, who threw away his life in mere pride and petulance, swearing that he would not surrender to any English traitor. This battle, facetiously called by the English " the Fair of Lincoln," was fought on Saturday, the 20th of May, 1217. Without halting or refreshing himself, the Earl of Pembroke rode the same night to Stow, to give his royal pupil an account of his success.* It was indeed a victory worthy of such a courier, — its effect was to keep Louis cooped up within the walls of London, where plots and disturbances soon forced him to propose terms of accommodation. In the middle of June a conference was held at a place between Brentford and Hounslow, but it led to nothing. Philip of France had been so scared by the threats ef Rome that he durst not send re- inforcements in his own name : but he urged that he could not prevent Blanche of Castile, the wife of his son Louis, from aiding her own husband in his extremity ; and under this cover another fleet and army were prepared for England. It was not till the 23rd of August that this fleet could sail from Calais : it consisted of eighty great ships and many smaller vessels, having on board three hundred choice knights and a large body of infantry. On the next day, the great festival of St. Bartho- lomew, as they were attempting to make the estuary of the Thames, in order to sail up the river to London, they were met by the hero of Dover Castle, the gallant De Burgh. Hubert had only forty vessels great and small, but he gained the weather gage, and by tilting at the French with the iron beaks of his galleys, sunk several of the transports with all on board. He afterwards grap- pled with the enemy, fastening his ships to theirs by means of hooks and chains, and in the end he took or destroyed the whole fleet with the exception of fifteen vessels. Eustace le Moine, or "the Monk," who had left his monastery in Flanders to adopt the more congenial life of a sea-rover, had his head struck off on his own deck ; for he v/as not considered a true knight entitled to the honours • Mat. I'ar. — Cliroii. DiiHstnp. 674 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. of war, and he had previously given great offence to the English.* This decisive naval victory gave the death-hlow to the project of Louis. That prince, however, acted generously and nobly in the midst of his difficulties : he would not abandon his friends, but said, when pressed, that he was ready to agree to any terms not inconsistent with his honour or the safety of his English adherents. The prudent regent was glad enough to promise good terms to these barons, who, whatever might be their after errors, had been among the foremost champions of English liberty, and had assisted in obtaining the great charter, which he himself loved as much as any of them. There were also many other nobles, on the same side, equally averse to proceeding to extremities against countrymen, former friends, and relations. The final terms were easily settled in a conference held on the 11th of September on an islet of the Thames near Kingston. It was agreed that the English barons who had continued to adhere to Louis, besides having their estates restored to them, should enjoy the customs and liberties of the kingdom, and all improvements thereof, equally with others. The privileges of London, as of all other cities and boroughs, were to be confirmed, and the pri- soners on both sides taken since Louis's first land- ing were to be released without ransom, unless v.here previous arrangements had been made be- tween parties. Louis was to give up all the castles he possessed ; to order the brothers of Eustace the monk to evacuate the isles they had made them- selves masters of; and to write to Alexander, king of Scotland, and Llewellyn, prince of Wales, to induce them to restore all the fortresses and places they had taken, if they would be included in tlie treaty. He also acquitted the English nobles of their oaths and obligations to him, and promised never to enter again into any confederacy with them to Henry's prejudice ; and the barons made a like engagement on their owti behalf. The French prince and his adherents swore to observe these articles, and to stand to the judgment of the church, upon which they were all absolved by the legate. t Matthew Paris adds another article, which does not appear to have been committed to writing, though it was frequently urged by Henry in after- times as an existing and sacred engagement. This article imported that Louis would do rdl in his power to persuade his father to restore all the foreign possessions lost by John ; and, failing in this, that he should fairly restore those provinces when he himself became king of France. Such a clause was utterly useless, for it was one which could never be considered binding by the French nation, nor by any other in similar circumstances. Louis was so poor, that he was obliged to borrov/ money from the citizens of London to defray the expenses of his, journey home. On the 14th of September, a safe conduct was granted to him : • Matt. Par.— Holinshod.—Southry.Nav. Hist, ■j- Ryraer. he was honourably escorted to the sea-side by the Earl of Pembroke, and he sailed for France with his foreign associates. On the 2nd of October, a few refractory barons, the only remnant of a great party, went to court, and were exceedingly well received there. On the fourth day of the same month, a new charter for the city of London was promulgated ; and a few days later, the regent, for the general good of the nation, concluded with Haqviin, or Haco, king of Norway, a treaty of free commerce between the two countries. At the same time, this excellent regent's prudence and equity did more than a written treaty in reconciling con- flicting parties at home. He was accessible and courteous to all, taking especial care that no man should be oppressed for his past politics. His authority, however, did not extend to the church, and Gualo severely chastised many of the English abbots and monks who had ventured to disregard his excommunications. This circumstance contri- buted with others to render the new reign unpo- pular witli a large portion of the English church ; and, during the struggles between the king and the barons which ensued at a later period, the barons had generally the monks on their side. In all these transactions no mention had been made of Eleanor, the Maid of Brittany, who still occupied her dungeon or her cell at Bristol, nor was her name ever breathed during the civil wars which followed — a proof how little female right was then regarded ; for, by the rules of succession as now recognised, she was the undoubted heiress to the throne. Henry began his reign in leading- strings, and owing to his weak and defective cha- racter, he never freed himself from such absolute guidance, but passed his whole life in a state of tutelage and dependence — being now governed by one powerful noble, or by one foreign favourite, and now by another. Nothing, however, could well surpass the wise policy and moral worth of his first guardian, the great Earl of Pembroke, who continued to act as protector to the kingdom, and as a more than father to the boy-king. As for Eleanor, the selfish queen-mother, she abandoned her child in the midst of his troubles, and hurried back to Guienne in search of a new husband. It conveys a strange notion of the delicacy of those times, to find that the Count of La Marche, from Avhom John had stolen her, consented to take her back, and remarried her with great pomp. Eng- land, and probably her son, too, gained by her absence, for she had as little conscience or conduct as her husband John. Gualo, the pope's legate, continued for some time near the young king's person. Every day the peace of the country was made more secure — " the evil v/ill borne to King John seeming to die v/ith him, and to be bvnicd in the same grave."* But the determination to pre- serve the liberties which had been wrung f/om him was alive and active, and a second coirfirmation of Magna Charta was granted by the young king. Besides that the benefits of llie charter were now • Speed. Chrou. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. G75 extended to Ireland, several alterations were made in the deed, and a clause was added, ordering the demolition of every castle built or rebuilt since the beginning of the Avar between John and the barons. Other clauses were withdrawn, to form a separate charter, called the Charter of Forests. By this in- strument, which materially contributed to the com- fort and prosperity of the nation, all the forests which had been enclosed since the reign of Henry II., were thrown open; offences in the forests were declared to be no longer capital ; and men convicted of the once heinous crime of killing the king's venison, were made punishable only by fine or imprisonment. These famous charters were now brought nearly to the shape in which they have ever since stood, the repeated confirmations of them not being intended to change or modify them, but to strengthen them by fresh guarantees, and increase the reverence of the people for them. Meanwhile the spirit of insubordination which had arisen out of the civil war was gradually coerced or soothed by the valour and wisdom of the Earl of Pembroke, who was singularly averse to the cruelties and bloodshedding which had formerly disgraced all similar pacifications. But the excellent protector did not long enjoy the happy fruit of his labours ; he died in the year 1219, about the middle of May, and was buried in the church of the Knights Templars at Lon- don, where his tomb or statue is still to be seen, with an inscription which scarcely exaggerates his virtues as a warrior and statesman. His authority in the state was now shared between Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary, the gallant defender of Dover Castle, and Peter des Roches (a Poictevin by birth), bishop of Winchester. These ministers were jealous of each other : De Burgh was the more popular with the nation ; but Des Roches, who had the custody of the royal person, pos- sessed the greater influence at court, and among the many foreigners who, like himself, had ob- tained settlements and honours in the land. Dis- sensions soon broke out; but dangerous conse- quences were prevented by the skill of Pandulph, who had resumed the legateship on the departure of Gualo. On the llth of May, 1220, young Henry was crowned again by Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, whom the pope had permitted to return to the kingdom. In the following year, Joanna, the eldest sister of Henry, was married at York, to Alexander, the king of Scotland ; and nearly at the same time, one of the Scottish prin- cesses who had been delivered to John, and who had ever since remained in England, was married to Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary. Pandulph then returned to Rome, having previously demanded, in the name of the pope, that no individual should hold more than two of the royal castles. On hi§ departure, however, little respect was paid to the orders from Rome. Many of the barons— chiefly foreigners imported by John — refused to deliver up the fortresses which they pretended to liold in trust till the young king should be of age. While De Burgh insisted on their surrender, his rival, Des Roches favoured the recusant chiefs. Plots and conspiracies followed; but in 1223, the justiciary, with the assent of the pope and the great council of the nation, declared Henry of age ; and in the course of the following year he succeeded in getting pos- session of most of the disputed castles, taking some of them by siege and assault. Des Roches then gave up the struggle, under pretence of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and many of the foreign adventurers followed him out of England. Though not a cruel man, Hubert de Burgh was far more severe than the Earl of Pembroke ; for at the taking of Bedford Castle he hanged eighty of the foreign garrison, knights and others, who had been in the habit of committing frightful excesses in the country. A.D. 1225. In the following year, 1225, one of the main springs of the English constitution, which checks the abuse of power, by the mode of allot- ting money, began its salutary movements. Louis, the French prince, who had now succeeded his father, Philip, on the French throne, unmindful of his promises, not only refused to surrender Nor- mandy and the other states wrested from King John, but overran some parts of Guienne and Poictou, and took the important maritime town of Rochelle. The young king summoned a parliament (for that name was now coming into use) to meet at Westminster ; and there Hubert de Burgh, having opened the proceedings by an explanatory speech, asked for money to enable the king to recover his own. At first the assembly refused to make any grant, but it was finally agreed that a fifteenth of all move- able property should be given, on the express con- dition, however, that the king should ratify the two charters. Henry, accordingly, gave a third ratifi- cation of Magna Charta, together with a ratifica- tion of the Charter of Forests, and sent fresh orders to some of his officers, who had hitherto treated them v/ith little respect, to enforce all their provi- sions.* In the month of April, Richard, earl of Cornwall, the king's brother, was sent to Guienne, under the guidance of the Earl of Salisbury, with an English army. But the French king had taken the cross against the Albigenses, an unfortunate people in the south of France, who were called heretics, and treated more cruelly than Saracens, A i)apal legate interfered, threatened the English with excommunication if they raised obstacles to Louis in his holy war, and, at last, made both par- ties agree to a truce for one year. Before the term expired, the French king died at Paris, after a brief reign of three years, and was succeeded by his son Louis IX., who was only in his twelfth year. A stormy minority ensued ; and Henry, who was now twenty years of age, might have taken advantage of it, had his character and his own circmnstances been somewhat diff"erent from what they were. But the Englisli king had little more real manhood than the child on the French tlu'one ; his barons wTre by no means anxious for the foreign war, • iMiitt. Par,— Brady. 676 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. and the armistice was subsequently renewed year after year, the English never recovering Rochelle, and the French making no further progress of im- portance. Though he ruled with a firm hand, Hubert de Burgh was not always able to cause the govern- ment to be respected, and to maintain the tran- quillity of the country. The king's brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, who was possessed of immense estates, repeatedly defied his authority, and exacted humiliating concessions. As for the king, he continued a mere puppet, notwithstanding the flattering assiuance of the pope, that his manly virtues supplied the defects of his unripe years. A.D. 1229. It was at length, however, resolved to carry war into France. Henry was twenty-two years old, Louis only fifteen ; but Blanche, the mother of the latter prince, and regent of the king- dom, had composed all dissensions, and put the kingdom into a posture of defence. When Henry went to Portsmouth he found that the shipping provided was not sufficient to carry over his army, and after a violent altercation with Hubert de Burgh, who was accused of being the cause of this deficiency, the expedition was given up till the fol- lowing year. At length the English king, elated by the promises and invitations of the barons of Gui- enne, Poictou, and even many nobles of Normandy, set sail for the continent, and landed at St. Malo, in Brittany, where he was joined by a host of Bretons. He advanced to Nantes, where, like his fatlier be- fore him, he v.asted his time and his means in feasts and pageantries, leaving the malcontents in Normandy and Poictou to curse their folly in committing their fortunes in the cause of so unwar- like a prince. In the meantime young Louis, accompanied by his mother, who shared all the hardships of a campaign which was prolonged through the winter months, took several towns belonging to Henry. In the beginning of October the English king returned home, covered with dis- grace ; and his ally, the Duke of Brittany, was obliged to appear at the foot of the tlirone of Louis with a rope round his neck.* De Burgli had accompanied his master on this expedition ; and, in spite of his known honour, bravery, and ability, the king, and some favourites with whom he had surrounded himself, attempted to throw all the blame of the miserable failure upon Hubert. The people, however, took a different view of the case, and set Henry down as a trifler and a coward. When he applied to parliament for a further grant of money, and complained of the poverty to which his French expedition had reduced him, they refused the aid, and told him that, through his thoughtlessness and extravagance, his barons were as poor as he was. A.D. 1232. — Hubert had now been eight years at the head of affairs. He enjoyed the good opinion of the people, whom he had never wantonly oppressed ; but many of the nobles envied him his power, and hated him for his zeal in resuming the • Diini. Hist. Ue Bret. castles and other possessions of the crown. But for his tried fidelity, and his courage in the worst of times, that crown in all probability would never have been worn by the helpless Henry. But the proverbial ingratitude of princes was fostered in the present case by other circumstances, the most co- gent of all being, that the minister was rich and the king wofully in want of money. On a sudden, Hubert saw his old rival Peter des Roches, the I'oictevin bishop of Winchester, re-appear at court, and he must have felt from that moment that his ruin was concerted. In fact, very soon after Henry threw off his faithful guardian and able minister, and left him to the persecutions of his enemies. The frivolous charges brought against Hubert almost lead to a conviction that he was guilty of no breach of trust or abuse of authority, — of no real public crime whatever. Among otlier things, he was accused of winning the affections of the king by means of magic and enchantment.* The fallen minister took refuge in Merton Abbey. His flight gave unwonted courage to the king, who vapoured and stormed, and then commanded the mayor of London to force the asylum, and seize Hubert dead or alive. The mayor, who seems a strange officer to employ on such an occasion, set forth with a multitude of armed men ; but the king Ijeing reminded by the Archbishop of Dublin of the illegality and sacrilegiousness of such a pro- cedure, despatched messengers in a great hurry and recalled the mayor. In the end, the Archbishop of Dublin, the only one among the great men who did not forsake Hubert, obtained for him a delay of four months, that he might prepare for his defence, the charges against him being daily in- creased. For the interval, the king gave him a safe conduct. Relying on these letters-patent, De Burgh departed to visit his wife, the Scot- tish princess, at St. Edmunds-Bury ; but he had scarcely begun his journey when the king, not- withstanding his plighted faith, listened to his enemies and sent a knight — one Sir Godfrey de Crancumb — with 300 armed men to surprise and seize him. Hubert was in bed at the little town of Brentwood, in Essex, when this troop fell upon him. He contrived to escape, naked as he was, to a parish church, where, with a crucifix in one hand and the host in the other, he stood firmly near the altar, hoping that his attitude and the sanctity of the place would procure him respect. His furious enemies, however, were not deterred by any considerations, and, bursting into the churcli with drawn swords, they dragged him forth, and sent for a smith to make shackles for him. The poor artisan, struck with the sad state of tlie great man, and moved with generous feelings, said he would rather die the worst of deatlis tl)an forge fetters for the brave defender of Dover Castle and the conqueror of the French at sea. But Sir God- frey and his " black band " were not to be moved by any appeal : they ])laced the earl on liorseback, naked as he was, and, tying his feet under the • .\Liitt. P.ar. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 677 girths, so conveyed him to the Tower of London. As soon as this violation of sanctuary was known, an outcry was raised by the bishops ; and the king was in consequence obliged to order those who had seized him to carry the prisoner back to the parish church ; but at the same time he commanded the sheriff of Essex, on the pain of death, to prevent the earl's escape, and to compel him to an uncon- ditional surrender. The sheriff dug a deep trench round the sanctuary, — erected palisades, — and effectually prevented all ingress or egress. Thus cut off from every communication, — unprovided with fuel and proper clothing (the winter was setting in), — and at last left without provisions, Hubert de Burgh came forth, on the fortieth day of his beleaguerment, and surrendered to the black band, who again carried him to the Tower of Lon- don. A few days after, Henry ordered him to be enlarged, and to appear before the court of his peers ; but it is said that this decent measure was not adopted imtil Hubert surrendered all his ready money, which he had placed for safety in the hands of the Knights Templars. When Hubert appeared in court in the midst of his enemies, he declined pleading : some were urgent for a sentence of death, but the king, who said with perfect sin- cerity that he was not fond of blood, and would rather be reputed weak and negligent than a cruel tyrant or a bloody man towards one who had long served him and his ])redecessors, proposed an award which was finally adopted by all parties. Hubert forfeited to the crown all such lands as had been granted him in the time of King John, or been obtained by him, by purchase or otherwise, under Henry. He retained for himself and his heirs the property he had inherited from his family, together with some estates he held in fief of mesne lords. Thus dipt and shorn, the brave Hubert was committed to the castle of Devizes, there to abide, in " free prison," under the custody of four knights appointed by four great earls. Within these walls, which had been built by the famous Roger, bishop of Sarum, whose adventures in some respects resembled his own, Hubert remained for nearly a year, when he was induced to adopt a desperate mode of escape by learning that the custody of the castle had just been given to a dependent of his bitter enemy the Poictevin bishop of Winchester. In a dark night he climbed over the battlements, and dropped from the high wall into the moat, which was probably in part filled with water. From the moat he made his way to a country church; but there he was presently sur- rounded by an armed band, led on by the sheriff. Circumstances, however, were materially altered : several of the barons who had before been intent on the destruction of the minister were now at open war with the king, and anxious to secure the co- operation of so able a man as De Burgh. A strong body of horse came down, released him from the hands of his captors, and carried him off into Wales, where the insurgent nobles were then assembled. Some eighteen months later, when peace was restored, Hubert received back his estates and honours : he was even re-admitted into the king's council ; but he had the wisdom never again to aspire to the dangerous post of chief minister or favourite. At a subsequent period the king again fell upon him, but, it appears, merely to enrich himself at his expense, for the quarrel was made up on Hubert's presenting Henry with four castles.* The Poictevin bishop, who succeeded to power on the first displacement and captivity of Hubert, soon rendered himself extremely odious to all classes of the nation. He encouraged the king's growing antipathy to the English barons, and to Magna Charta; he taught him to rely on the friendship and fidelity of foreign adventurers rather than on the inconstant affection of his own subjects ; and he crowded the court, the offices of govern- ment, the royal fortresses, with hosts of hungry Poictevins, Gascons, and other Frenchmen, who exhausted the revenues of the already impoverished crown, derided the national charters, invaded the rights of the people, and provoked the nobles by their insolence and their grasping at every place or honour in the state that fell vacant. The business of politics was as yet in its infancy : the nature of an opposition, constitutional and legal in all its operations, was as yet a discovery to be made ; nor could men in their times and circumstances be expected to understand such things. The barons withdrew from parliament, where they were sur- rovuided by armed foreigners, and took up arms themselves. W hen again summoned, they answered that unless the king dismissed his Poictevins and the other foreigners, they would drive both them and him out of the kingdom. Peter des Roches averted his ruin for the present by sowing dissensions among the English nobles. Several battles or skirmishes, which defy anything like a clear narration, were fought in the heart of England and on the Welsh borders. Richard, Earl of Pembroke, the son of the virtuous Protector, to whom King Henry was so deeply indebted, was treacherously and most bar- barously murdered, and, following up his tem- porary success, the Poictevin bishop confiscated the estates of several of the English nobles without any legal trial, and bestowed them on adventurers from his own land. The last sting was given to revenge by the bishop's declaring, in his place at court, that the barons of England were inferior in rank and condition to those of France, and must not pretend to put themselves on the same footing. Edmund, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, who had succeeded Langton, and who was, like that great churchman, a patriot and a statesman, took up the national cause, and threatened the king with excommunication if he did not instantly dismiss Des Roches and his associates. Henry trembled and complied : the foreigners were banished, and the archbishop for a sliort time governed the land with great prudence, and according to the charters. But Henry's dislike both of his native nobles and * Miilt. Par.— M. West.— Wykes—Chroii. Dunst.— Holiuslieil. 078 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. of tlie cliarters increased with his years. Tlie barons evidently took little pains to remove his prejudices or conciliate his affections, and he conti- nued to repose all his confidence in foreigners. A.D. 1236. — Henry now married Eleanor, daughter of the Count of Provence, who came to England with a numerous retinue, and was soon followed by a swarm of foreigners. These were mostly persons of higher rank than their pre- cursors; they were Gascons and Provencals in- stead of Poictevins, but they were equally odious to the English nobility and people, equally insolent and quite as grasping. The Bishop of Valence, the queen's maternal uncle, Avas made chief mi- nister. Boniface, another uncle, was promoted to the see of Canterbury; and Peter, a third uncle, was invested with the earldom of Richmond, and received the profitable wardship of the Earl Wa- renne. The queen invited over damsels from Provence, and the king married them to the young nobles of England of whom he had the wardship. This was bad enough, but it was not all; the queen motlier, Isabella, whom the nation detested, had now four sons by the Count of la Marche, and she sent them over all four, Guy, William, Geof- frey, and Aymer, to be provided for in England. The king heaped honours and riches upon these half-brothers, who were soon followed by new herds of adventurers from Guienne. Henry had resumed, with the pope's permission, nearly all the grants of estates he had made to his native subjects ; but even the resources thus obtained were soon exhausted, and he found himself without money and without credit. When he asked aids from the parliament, the parliament told him that he must dismiss the foreigners who devoured the substance of the land, and they several times voted him small supplies, on the express condition that he should so do, and also redress other grievances; but he forgot his promises as soon as he got the money. The barons then bound him by oath, and Henry took the oaths, broke them, and acted just as before. The great charter had provided for the banishment of unjust favourites without any process of law, and the king was frequently reminded of the clauses relating to this subject; but the Poictevins and Gascons, who were in tlie habit of breaking every part of that charter, said with effrontery, " What signify these English laws to us ?" * A.D. 1242. — Isabella, the queen mother, added alike to the odium in which she was held by the English, and to the embarrassments and unpopu- larity of her son, by hurrying him into a war with France. Other grounds were publicly assigned; but it appears that that woman's offended vanity was the chief cause of hostilities, which ended in a manner disgraceful to the English king. Louis was now in the prime of manhood, and immeasur- ably superior in all eminent qualities to his rival. He was loved and respected by his subjects; whereas Henry was despised by his. When the English parliament was called upon for a supply * Matt. Par.— Chron. Dunst.— Ann. Waverl, of men and money, they resolutely refused both, telling the king that he ought to observe the truce which had been continually renewed with France, and never broken (so at least they asserted) by Louis. By means not recorded, but which were probably not very legal or very honourable, Henry contrived to fill thirty hogsheads with silver, and, sailing from Portsmouth with his queen, his brother Richard, and 300 knights, he made for the river Garonne. Soon after his landing, he was joined by nearly 20,000 men, some his OAvn acknowledged vassals, some the followers of nobles who had once been the vassals of his predecessors, and who were now anxious, not to re-establish the supre- macy of the English king in the south, but to render themselves independent of the crown of France by his means or at his expense.* Louis met Henry with a superior force on the banks of the river Charente, in Saintonge, and defeated him in a pitched battle near the castle of Taille- bourg. The English king, after being saved from capture by Ihe presence of mind and address of his brother Richard, retreated down the river to the town of Saintes, where he was beaten in a second battle, which was fought on the very next day. His mother's husband, the Count of La Marche, who had led him into this disastrous campaign, then abandoned him, and made his own terms with the French king. Henry fled from Saintes right across Saintonge, to Blaye, leaving his militajy chest, the sacred vessels and the ornaments of his moveable chapel royal, in the hands of the enemy. A terrible dysentery which broke out in his army, some scruples of conscience, arid the singular mo- deration of his own views, prevented Louis from fol- lowing up his successes, and induced him to agree to a truce for five years. Although their ardour for foreign wars and conquests was marvellously cooled for a season, the pride of the English was much hurt by these defeats. A.D. 1244. — When Henry met his parliament this year, he found it more refractory than it had ever been. lu reply to his demands for money, they taxed him with extravagance, — with his fre- quent breaches of the great charter : they told him, in short, that they would no longer trust him, and that they must have in their own hands the ap- pointment of the chief justiciary, the chancellor, and other great officers. The king would con- sent to nothing more than another ratification of Magna Charta, and therefore the parliament would only vote him twenty shillings on each knight's fee for tlie marriage of his eldest daughter to the Scottish king. After this he looked to a meeting of parliament as a meeting of his personal enemies, and to avoid it he raised money by stretching his prerogative in respect to fines, bene- volences, purveyances, and the other undefinable branches of the ancient revenue. He also tor- mented and ransacked the Jews, acting with regard . to that unhappy people like a very robber ; and he begged, besides, from town to town, — from castle • Mii/.eray. Ohap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 679 to castle, — ^until he obtained the reputation of being the sturdiest beggar in all England. But all this would not suffice, and, in the year 1248, he was again obliged to meet his barons in ])arliament. They now told him that he ought to blush to ask aid from his people whom he professed to hate, and whom he shunned for the society of aliens ; they reproached him with disparaging the nobles of England by forcing them into mean marriages with foreigners. They enlarged upon the abuse of the right of purveyance, telling him that the victuals and wine consumed by himself and his un-English household, — that the very clothes on their backs were all taken by force and violence from the English people, who never received any compensa- tion ; that foreign merchants, knowing the dangers to which their goods were exposed, shunned the ports of England as if they were in possession of pirates ; that the poor fishermen of the coast, find- ing they could not escape his hungry purveyors and courtiers, were frequently obliged to carry their fish to the other side of the Channel; and they added other accusations still more minute and humiliating.* It has generally been conceived that there entered no small share of spite and exagger- ation into this remarkable list of grievances ; but if we consider the small sums doled ovit by parlia- ment to Henry, who received less money in the way of grants than any of his immediate pre- decessors, — if we bear in mind that many sources of profit were narrowed or stopped altogetber l)y the provisions of the national charter, and that the revenue formerly derived from the continental dominions of the crown had in great part ceased, it will not appear improbable that this king and his rapacious ministers, who were retained by no national sympathy, — by no sense of shame, — should have tried to make up these deficiencies in mean and irregular ways ; and that the peaceful trader, the mass of the people, who had no arms where- with to defend themselves, and no towers or castles wherein to take refuge, should have been sorely harried and oppressed. Another argument in sup- port of this supposition may be derived from the well-known and lasting impopularity of the king in London and the other great trading towns. Our old historians talk vaguely about the insubordina- tion, — the mutinous spirit, — the proneness to riot- ing, — of the Londoricrs; but, judging of those citizens, not by later epochs when they were more civilized, but by their conduct in earlier and still ruder times, we cannot believe that the excesses complained of could have arisen under any other than a vile and oppressive system of government. In reply to the remonstrance of his barons, Henrj' gave nothing but fair promises which could no longer deceive, and he got nothing save the cutting reproof to which he had been obliged to listen. The king now racked his imagination in devising pretexts on which to obtain what he wanted. At one time he said he was resolved to reconquer all the continental dominions of the crown ; but, un- • Matt. Par.— Mutt. West,— Cbroii. Punsf. fortunately, all men knew that Louis had departed for the East, and that Henry, who had not shone in the field, had contracted the most solemn obli- gations not to make war upon him during his crusade. He next took the cross himself, pretend- ing to be anxious to sail for Palestine forthwith ; but here again it was well known he had no such intention, and only wanted money to pay his deljts and satisfy his foreign favourites. At a moment of urgent necessity he was advised to sell all his plate and jewels. " Who will buy them ?" said he ; his advisers answered, — " The citizens of London, of course." He rejoined bitterly, — " By my troth, if the treasures of Augustus were put up to sale, the citizens would be the purchasers I These clowns, who assume the style of barons, abound in all things, while we are wanting in common neces- saries."* This curious anecdote throws light upon more than one subject, and it is said that the king was thenceforth more inimical and rapacious towards the Londoners than he had been before. To annoy them and touch them in a sensitive part, he esta- blished a new fair at Westminster, to last fifteen days, during which all trading was prohibited in London. He went to keep his Christmas in the city, and let loose his purveyors among the inhabitants : he made them offer new-year's gifts, and shortly after, in spite of remonstrances, he compelled them to pay him the sum of 2000L by the most open vio- lation of law and right. In A.D. 1253, Henry was again obliged to meet his parliament, and this he did, averring to all men that he only wanted a proper Christian aid that he miglit go and recover the tomb of Christ. If he thought that this old pretence would gain un- limited confidence he was deceived. The barons, who had been dupeil so often, treated his applica- tion with coldness and contempt ; but they at last held out the hope of a liberal grant on condition of his consenting to a fresh and most solemn con- firmation of their liberties. On the 3rd day of May, the king went to Westminster Hall, where the barons, prelates, and abbots were assembled. The bishops and abbots were apparelled in their canonical robes, and every one of them held a burning taper in his hand. A taper was offered to the king, but he refused it, saying he was no priest. Then the Archbishop of Canterbury stood up before the people and denounced sentence of excommuni- cation against all those who should, either directly or indirectly, infringe the charters of the kingdom. Every striking, every terrific part of this ceremony was performed: the prelates and abbots dashed their tapers to the ground, and as the lights went out in smoke, they exclaimed, — " May the soul of every one who incurs this sentence so stink and be extinguished in hell!" The king subjoined, on his own behalf, — " So help me God ! I will keep these charters inviolate, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, and as I am a king crowned and anointed!" His outward be- haviour during this awful performance was exem- • Matt. Par. 680 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV plary ; he held his hand on his heart, and made his countenance express a devuut acquiescence; but the ceremony was scarcely over when, following tlie impulse given him by his foreign favourites, he returned to his old courses, and thus utterly up- rooted whatever confidence the nation yet had in him.* With the money he thus obtained, he went to Guienne, wliere Alphonso, the king of Castile, had set up a claim to the earldom, and induced many of the fickle nobles to revolt against the English crown. This expedition was less disho- nourable than the former ones ; indeed it was successful on the whole, and led to a friendly alliance between England and Castile — Prince Edward marrying Eleanor, the daughter of Al- phonso. But no cunning was too mean or low for Henry, who concealed these arrangements for some time, in order to obtain a fresh grant from the par- liament, under colour of carrying on the war. During part of this expedition, in spite of the money he had carried with him, he had not where- withal to feed his troops ; and he despatched the prior of Newburgh with others into England, to cause provisions to be sent to him into Gascony ; "and so," says an old historian, "there was a great quantity of grain and powdered flesh, taken up, and sent away, with all convenient speed." Henry returned pennyless ; for the partial re-esta- blishment of his authority in the south of France seems never to have benefited his exchequer. The expedients to which he had recourse in England, rendered him more and more odious and contempt- ible. When his fortunes were at this low ebb, lie blindly embarked in a project which immensely increased his embarrassments. This project was no other than to raise one of his sons to the throne of the Two Sicilies. Frederick II., the son of Constance of Sicily, had died in the year 1250, after a reign which had been disturbed from its commencement to its close by the inveterate hosti- lity of the court of Rome. He left a legitimate son. Prince Conrad ; but Frederick had died in a state of excommunication, aixl Pope Innocent IV. claimed the southern kingdom as forfeited to its feudal superior, the holy see. Conrad maintained his rights with an army, and as he was supported by the Neapolitan and Sicilian people, the pope had no chance of succeeding, unless he invited some new foreign host into the heart of Italy. He offered the kingdom to be held as a fief of the church to a variety of princes in succession, who all found some good reason for declining his pro- posals. After the pope hud thus hawked the Sicilian crown through the continent of Europe, he turned his eyes towards England, where Richard, earl of Cornwall, the king's brother, attracted attention by his great wealth, which (it was rea- soned at Rome), would enable him to bribe the Sicilian barons, and engage mercenaries of all nations. Accordingly, the crown was offered to • Miitt. Par.— Miitl. West.— W. Hi'mingford. i ilu'iiashcd. Richard, but he wisely saw the difficulties that stood in his way, and declined the proffered king- dom, observing, that those who made the offer of it might just as well say, " I make you a present of the moon — step up to the sky and take it down." Soon after this. Innocent oflered the crown to Henry himself, for his second son. Prince Ed- mund ; and the beggared and incapable king joy- fully closed with the proposal, agreeing to march presently with a powerful army into the south of Italy, accepting an advance of money from the pope to enable him to commence the enterprise, and proposing also to raise what more it might be necessary to borrow on the pope's security. Had the energy and the means of the English king at all cor- responded with the activity and cunning policy of the Roman priest, there is little doubt that the prince might have obtained a dependent and ])recaiious throne ; but Henry was placed in circumstances in which he could do little — and, wavering and timid, he did nothing at all, except giving his son tlie empty title of " King of Sicily." The pope ordered the English clergy to lend money for the expedition, and even to pawn the propeity of their church to obtain it. The clergy of England were not very obedient; but whatevtr sums were raised were dissipated by the king or the Roman legate, and, in the end, the pope brought a claim of debt against Henry, to the amount of more than 100,000/., which, it was alleged, had been bor- rowed on the continent, chiefly from the rich mer- chants of Venice and Florence. Henry, it appears, had never been consulted about the borrowing or spending of this money ; but the pope was an im- perative accountant— a creditor that could enforce payment by excommunication, interdict, and de- thronement; and Henry was obliged to promise that he would pay, and to rack his weak wits in devising the means. Backed by the jope, he levied enormous contributions on the churches of England and Ireland. The native clergy were already disaffected, but these proceedings made them as openly hostile to the king as were the lay barons. The wholesale spoliation of the church had also the effect of lessening the clergy's reverence for the pope, and of shaking that power which had already attained its highest pitch, and which was thenceforward gradually to decline. Wlien called upon to take up some of the pope's bills, the bishop of Worcester told Rustan, the legate, that he would ratlier die tlian comply ; and the Bishop of London said, that the pope and king were, indeed, more powerful than he, but if they took his mitre from his head, he would clap on a warrior's lielmet. The legate moderated his demands, and withdrew, fully con- vinced that a storm was approaching, and that the Sicilian speculation had completed the ruin of the bankrupt king.* As long as liis brother Richard, the great Earl of Cornwall, remained in England, and in possession of the treasures he had hoarded, there was a powerful check upon insurrection ; foi • .Matt. Par. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 681 though the earl's abilities in public affairs seem hardly to have been equal to his wealth, still the influence he possessed in the nation was most ex- tensive. He had repeatedly opposed the illegal courses of the king, and had even been out in arms with the barons more than once ; but he was averse to extreme measures, and, from his posi- tion, not likely to permit any invasion of the just prerogative of the crown. He had rejected one dazzling temptation, yet was he not proof against a second. The Germans were setting up their em- pire for sale, and Richard's vanity and ambition induced him to become a purchaser. Having spent immense sums, he was elected in the begin- ning of 1256 as " king of the Romans," which was considered the sure step to the dignity of em- peror. But there was a schism among the elec- tors, part of whom a few weeks later gave their suffrages to Alphonso, king of Castile. Richard, however, went over to the continent, was crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, and left the crown of England to be dragged through the mire. A.D. 12.58. A scarcity of provisions disposed the people to desperate measures. On the 2nd of May, Henry called a parliament at Westminster. The barons, wlio had formed a new confederacy, went to the hall in complete armour. As the king entered, there was a rattling of swords : his eye glanced timidly along the mailed ranks; and he said, with a faltering voice, " What means this? am I a pri- soner?" " Not so," replied Roger Bi god, "but your foreign favourites and your own extravagance have involved this realm in great wretchedness ; wherefore we demand that the powers of govern- ment be entrusted and made over to a committee of bishops and barons, that the same may root up abuses and enact good laws." One of the king's foreign half-brothers vapoured and talked loudly, but as for himself, lie could do nothing else than give an unconditional assent to the demands of the barons, who thereupon promised, that if he proved sincere, they would help him to pay his debts, and prosecute the claims of his son in Italy. The par- liament then dissolved, appointing an early day to meet again at Oxford, where the committee of government should be appointed, and the affairs of the state finally adjusted.* The present leader of the barons, and in all respects the most remarkable man among them, was the Earl of Leicester. It is evident that the monkish chroniclers were incapable of understand- ing or properly appreciating the extraordinary character of this foreign champion for English liberties ; and those writers have scarcely left ma- terials to enable us to form an accurate judgment. Simon de Montfort was the youngest son of the Count de Montfort in France, who had gained an unhappy celebrity in the barbarous crusades against the Albigenses. In right of his mother, Amicia, he had succeeded to the earldom of Lei- cester ; but he appears to have been little known in England until the year 12.38, when he came • Matt. Par. — Wykcs.— Rjxaer over from his native country, and married Eleanor, the countess dowager of Pembroke, a sister of king Henry. This match was carried by the royal favour and authority ; for Richard, earl of Corn- wall, the king's brother, and many of the English barons, tried to prevent it, on the ground that it was not fitting a princess should be married to a foreign subject. But the earl had no sooner secured his marriage, and made himself known in the country, than he set himself forward as the de- cided opponent of foreign encroachment and foreign favourites of all kinds ; and such was his ability, that he caused people to overlook the anomaly of his position, and to forget that he himself was a foreigner. He not only captivated the good-will of the English nobles, but endeared himself in an extraordinary degree to the English people, whose worth and importance in the state he certainly seems to have been one of the first to discover and count upon. His devotional feelings — which upon no ground, that we can discover, have been re- garded as hypocritical — gained him the favour of the clergy ; his literary acquirements, so unusual in those times, increased his influence and reputa- tion. There seems to be no good reason for re- fusing him the merits of a skilful politician ; and he was a master of the art of war as it was then understood and practised. The favour of the king was soon turned into a hatred as bitter as Henry's supine and not cruel nature was capable of: it seemed monstrous that a foreigner should be, not a courtier, but the popvdar idol — and Leicester was banished the court. He was afterwards entrusted with the government of Guienne, where, if he did not achieve the impossi- bility of giving entire satisfaction to the turbulent and intriguing nobles, he did good service to the king, his master, and acquitted himself with ability and honour. Henry, however, was weak enough to listen to the complaints of some of his southern vassals, who did not relish the firm rule of the earl. Leicester was hastily recalled, and his master called him traitor to his face. Thus insulted by a man he despised, the earl gave the lie to his sove- reign, and told him, that, but for his kingly rank, he would make him repent the wrong he had done him.* This happened in 1252. Leicester with- drew for a season into France, but Henry was soon reconciled, in appearance, and the earl returned to England, where his popularity increased in pro- portion to the growing weakness and misgovern- ment of the king. He was one of the armed barons that m.et in Westminster-hall, and now lie was ready to follow up those demonstrations at Oxford. It cannot be denied that measures be- yond the ordinary course of the constitution were necessary to control so prodigal and injudicious a sovereign. The legal course of the constitution, moreover, was not yet ascertained and defined — all was experiment — a groping in the dark, and men, for the present, saw no impropriety in abridging the prerogative of a king who had constantly • Matt. Par. 682 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. abused it, and who had so repeatedly broken his | looked like fatuity to place the smallest trust it promises, his most solemn vows, that it would have | him. OxFOKD Castle, as it appeared In the Fifteenth Century, On the 11 th of June the parliament, which the Royalists called the "Mad Parliament," met at Oxford. Having no reliance on the king, the great barons summoned all who owed them military service to attend in arms on the occasion. Thus secured from the attack of the foreigners in the king's pay, they proceeded to their object with great vigour and determination. The committee of government was appointed without a murmur on the part of the timid Henry : it consisted of twenty-four members, twelve of whom were chosen by the barons and twelve by the king. The king's choice fell upon his nephew Henry, the son of Richard, the titular king of the Romans, npon Guy and William, his own half-brothers, the bishops of London and Winchester, the earls -of Warwick and Warenne, the abbots of Westminster and St. Martin's, London, on John Mansel, a friar, and Peter of Savoy, a relation of the queen's. The members appointed by the barons w^ere the bishop of Worcester, the earls Simon of Leicester, Richard of Gloucester, Humphrey of Hereford, Roger of Norfolk, earl marshal ; the lords Roger Mortimer, John Fitz - Geoffrey, Hugh Bigod, Richard de Gray, William Bardolf, Peter de Montfort, and Hugh Despencer. The Earl of Leicester was at the head of this siipreme council, to the maintenance of whose ordinances the king, and afterwards his son Edward, took a solemn oath. The parliament then proceeded to enact that four knights should be chosen by the votes of the freeholders in each county, to lay before the parliament all breaches of law and justice that might occur ; that a new sheriff should be annually chosen by the freeholders in each coimty ; and that three sessions of parliament should be held regu- larly every year ; the first, eight days after Michael- mas; the second, the morrow after Candlemass- day ; and the third, on the first day of June. The benefits derived from the acts of tliis par- liament were prospective rather than immediate, for the first consequences were seven or eight years of anarchy and confusion, the fruits of insin- cerity and discontent on the part of the court, and of ambition and intrigue on the part of the great barons. Prince Edward, the heir to the throne, the Earl of Warenne, and others, took the oaths to the statutes or provisions of Oxford with uncon- cealed reluctance and ill-humour. Prince Henry openly protested that they were of no force till his absent father, the king of tlie Romans, should consent to them. " Let your father look to him- self," cried Leicester; "if he refuse to join the barons of the kingdom in these provisions he shall not enjoy a foot of ground in England." Thougli their leaders were liberally included among the twenty-four guardians of the kingdom, the foreign faction was excessively dissatisfied with the recent changes, and said openly, and where- ever they went, that the Acts of Oxford ought to be set aside as illegal and degrading to the king's majesty ; which indeed they would have been had Henry had any character to degrade, and had it not been indispensable to adopt extreme pre- cautions against the sovereign's well-know"n faith- lessness and perfidy, or fatal facility of disposition. Irritated by tlieir opposition and their secret intrigues, Leicester and his party scared the four half-brothers of the king and a herd of their rela- tions and retainers out of the kingdom. The Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 683 departure of these foreigners increased the popn- Uirity of the barons with the English people; but they were seduced by the temptations of ambition and an easy triumph over all opposition ; they filled up the posts vacated in the committee of government with their own adherents, leaving scarcely a member in it to represent the king; and they finally lodged the whole authority of government in the hands of their council of state and a standing committee of twelve persons. This great power was abused, as all unlimited power, whether held by a king or an oligarchy, ever will be, and the barons soon disagreed among themselves.* A.D. 1259. — About six months after the meeting at Oxford, Richard, king of the Romans, having spent all his money among the Germans, was anxious to return to England that he might get more. At St. Omer he was met by a messenger from Leicester, who told him that he must not set foot in the kingdom unless he swore before- hand to observe the provisions of Oxford. Richard finally gave an ungracious and most unwilling assent : he took the oath, joined his brother, and immediately commenced organizing an opposition to the committee of government.t Soon after his arrival it was seen that the barons disagreed more than ever. The Earl of Gloucester started vip as a rival to Leicester, and a violent quarrel — the first of many — broke out between these two powerful lords. Then there was presented a petition from the knights of shires or counties, complaining that the barons had held possession of the sovereign authority for eighteen months, and had done no good in the way of reform. A few improvements, chiefly regarding the administration of justice, were then enacted ; but their slender amount did not satisfy the nation, and most of the barons were more anxious for the prolongation of their own powers and profits than for anything else. By degrees two factions were formed in the commit- tee : when that of Gloucester obtained the ascen- dancy, Leicester withdrew into France. Then Gloucester would have reconciled himself with the king ; but as soon as Prince Edward saw this he declared for Leicester, who returned. The manoeuvres and intrigues of party now become almost as unintelligible as they are uninteresting — reconciliations and breaches between the Leicester and Gloucester factions, and then between the barons generally and the court — a changing and a changing again of sides and principles, perplex and disgrace a scene where nothing seems iixed except Leicester's dislike and distrust of the king, and a general but somewhat vague affection among the barons of both parties for the provisions of Magna Charta. A.D. 1261. — Henry, who had long rejoiced at the division among the barons, now thought the moment was come for escaping from their autho- rity. He had a papal dispensation in his pocket for the oaths he had taken at Oxford, and this set • Uymer.— Annal. Burt.— Malt. West. f llymer. his conscience quite at ease. On the 2nd of February he ventured to tell the committee of government that, seeing the abuse they had made of their authority, he should henceforward govern without them. He then hastened to the Tower, which had recently been repaired and strengthened, and seized all the money in the Mint. From behind those strong walls he ordered that the gates of London should be closed, and that nil the citizens should swear fresh fealty to him. At these unexpected proceedings the barons called out their vassals and marched upon the capital. Prince Edward was amusing himself in France at a tour- nament, and it was agreed by both parties to await his arrival. He came in haste, and, instead of joining his father in the Tower, joined the barons. In spite of this junction, or perhaps we ought rather to say, in consequence of it, many of the nobles went over and joined the king, who pub- lished the pope's bull of dispensation, together with a manifesto in which he set forth that he had reigned forty-five years in peace and according to justice, never committing such deeds of wrong and violence as the barons had recently committed. For a time he met with success, and Leicester returned once more to France, vowing that he would never trust the faith of a perjured king.* A.D. 1263. — Another change and shifting of parts now took place in this troubled drama : the Earl of Gloucester was dead, and his son, a very young man, instead of being the rival, became for a while the bosom friend of Leicester. Prince Edward, on the other hand, veered round to the court, and had made himself unpopular by calling in a foreign guard. In the month of March young Gloucester called his retainers and confederates together at Oxford, and the Earl of Leicester returned to England in tlie month of April, and put himself at their head. The great earl at once raised the banner of war, and after taking several royal castles and towns, marched rapidly upon London, where the mayor and the common people declared for him. The king was safe in the Tower; Prince Edward fled to Windsor Castle, and the queen, his mother, attempted to escape by water in the same direction ; but, when she ap- proached London -bridge, a cry ran among the populace, who hated her, of " Drown the witch !" and filth and -stones were thrown at the barge. The mayor took pity on her, and carried her for safety to St. Paul's. f The king of the Romans, who, though his hoarded treasures were exhausted, still possessed considerable influence, contrived to effect a hollow reconciliation between the barons and his un- warlike brother, who yielded everything, — ;only reserving to himself the usual resource of breaking his compact as soon as circumstances should seem favourable. It is true his subjects had repeatedly exacted too much ; but it is equally certain that he never made the smallest concession to them • M. West.— Wykes.— Carte. + Wykes,— West.— Trivet.— Chron. Dunst. GS-l HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. in good faith, and with a determination of re- specting it. Foreigners were once more banished the kingdom, and the custody of the royal castles was again entrusted to Leicester and his asso- ciates. This was done, and peace and amity were sworn in July, but by the month of October the king was in arms against the barons, and nearly succeeded in taking Leicester a prisoner. This new crisis was mainly attributable to a con- dition exacted by that great earl, that the autho- rity of the committee of government should not only last for the lifetime of the king, but be pro- longed during the reign of his successor. Up to this point Prince Edward had pretended a great respect for his oath, professing to doubt whether an absolution from Rome could excuse perjury ; and he had frequently protested that, having sworn to the provisions of Oxford, he would religiously keep that vow ; but this last measure removed all his scruples, and denouncing the barons as rebels, traitors, and usurpers, he openly declared against them and all their statutes. A.D. 1264. — To stop the horrors of a civil war some of the bishops induced both parties to refer their differences to the arbitration of the French king. The conscientious and justice-loving Louis IX. pronovmced his award in the beginning of February : he insisted on the observance of the great charter ; but otherwise his decision was in favour of the king, as he set aside the provisions of Oxford, ordered that the royal castles should be restored, and that the sovereign should have full power of choosing his own ministers and officers, whether from among foreigners or natives. Tlie barons, who were better acquainted than Louis with the character of their king, \\ell knew that if the securities they had exacted (with too grasping a hand, perhaps) were all given up, the provisions of the national charters would be despised, as they were previously to the parlia- ment of Oxford, and they therefore resolved not to be bound by the award, which they insisted had been obtained through the unfair influence of the wife of Louis, who was sister-in-law to King Henry. The civil war was therefore renewed with more fury than ever. The strength, of the royalists lay in the counties of the north and the extreme west, — that of the barons in the midland counties, the south- east, the Cinque Ports, and, above all, in the city of London and its neighbourhood. At the tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's, the citizens of Lon- don assembled as an armed host, animated by one daring spirit. In the midst of this excitement they fell upon the unfortunate Jews, and, after plundering tliem, massacred above 500, men, wo- men, and children, in cold blood. In other parts of the kingdom the royalists robbed and murdered the Jews under pretext of their being friends to the barons, and the barons' party did the like, alleging that they were allied with the king, and that they kept Greek fire hid in their houses in order to destroy the friends of liberty.* The opening of the campaign was in favour of the royalists, but their fortunes changed when they advanced to the southern coast and endeavoured to win over the powerful Cinque Ports. Leicester, who had remained quietly in London organising his forces, at length marched from the capital with the resolution of fighting a decisive battle. He found the king at Lewes, in Sussex, — a bad posi- tion, in a hollow, — which Henry, relying on his • Wylces — West. — Dunst. Lkwes Pkioky. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 685 superiority of numbers, did not quit on the earl's approach. Leicester encamped on the downs about two miles from Lewes. Whether in war or peace, he had always been an exact observer of the rites of religion : he now endeavoured (and, it should appear, with full success) to impress his followers with the belief that the cause in which they were engaged was the cause of Heaven, as well as that of liberty : the king, he said, was obnoxious to God by reason of his many perjuries : he ordered his men to wear a white cross on the breast as if they were crusaders engaged in a holy war; and his friend, the Bishop of Chichester, gave a general absolution to the army, together with assurances that all those who fell in battle would be welcomed in Heaven as martyrs. On the following morning, the 14th of May, leaving a strong reserve on the downs, he descended into the hollow. The two armies soon joined battle : on the king's side were the great houses of Bigod and Bohun, all the foreigners in the kingdom, the Percys witli their warlike bor- derers, and from beyond the border?, John Comyn, John Baliol, and Robert Bruce, — names that were soon to appear in a very different drama. On the Earl's side were Gloucester, Derby, Warenne, the Despencers, Robert de Roos, William Marmion, Richard Grey, John Fitz-John, Nicholas Seagrave, Godfrey de Lucy, John de Vescy, and others of noble lineage and great estates. Prince Edward, who was destined to acquire the rudiments of war in the Slaughter of his own subjects, began the battle by falling desperately upon a body of Londoners, who had gladly followed Leicester to the field. This burgher militia could not stand against the trained cavalry of the prince, who chased and slew them by lieaps. Eager to take a bloody vengeance for the in- sults the Londoners had oflered his mother, Edward spurred forward, regardless of the manoeuvres of the other divisions of the royalist army. He was as yet a young soldier, and the experienced and skilful leader of the barons made him pay dearly for his mistake. Leicester made a concentrated attack on the king, beat him most completely, and took him prisoner, with his brother the king of the Romans, John Comyn, and Robert Bruce, before the prince returned from his headlong pursuit. When Edward arrived at the field of battle, he saw it covered with the slain of his own party, and learned that his father, with many nobles besides those just men- tioned, were in Leicester's hands, and shut up in the priory of Lewes. Before he could recover him- self, he was charged by a body of horse, and made prisoner. The Earl Warenne, with the king's half-brothers who were again in England, fled to Pevensey, whence they escaped to the continent.* The victory of the barons does not seem to have been disgraced by cruelty, but it is said to have cost the lives of more than 5000 Englishmen, who fell on the field. On the following morning, a treaty, or the '■'' Mise of Lewes," as it was called, was concluded. It was agreed that Edward and his cousin Henry, the son of the king of the Romans, ♦ MiUt. Par.— Wykes.— West.— Cliron. Dunst. should remain as hostages for their fathers, and that the whole quarrel should be again submitted to a peaceful arbitration. But Leicester, who had now the right of the strongest, kept both the king and his brother prisoners as well as their sons, and, feeling his own greatness, began to be less tractable. Although the pope excommunicated him and his party, the people regarded the sen- tence with indifference; and many of the native clergy, who had long been disgusted both with pope and king, praised him in their sermons as the reformer of abuses, the protector of the oppressed, the father of the poor, the saviour of his country, the avenger of the church. Thus supported, and indeed carried forward by a boundless popularity, he soon forced all such barons as held out for the king to surrender their castles and submit to the judgment of their peers. These men were con- demned merely to short periods of exile in Ireland : not one suffered death, or chains, or forfeiture, and the age was not so generally improved in humanity as to have enforced tliis mildness, had the earl himself not been averse to cruelty. Every act of government was still performed in the name of the king, whose captivity was made so light as to be scarcely apparent, and who was treated with every outward demonstration of respect. The queen had retired to the continent before the battle of LewM^s, and having busied herself in collecting a host of foreign mercenaries, in which she was greatly assisted by the active sympathies of Ibreign princes, who saw in the proceedings of the English barons nothing but the degradation of a crowned head, she now lay at Damme, in Flanders, almost ready to cross over and renew the civil war. The steps taken by Leicester show at once his entire con- fidence in the good-will of the nation, and his personal bravery and activity: he summoned the whole force of the country, from castles and towns, cities, and boroughs, to meet in arms on Barham Downs, and, having encamped them there, he threw himself among the mariners of England, and, taking the command of a fleet, cruised between the English and Flemish coasts to meet the invaders at sea. But the queen's fleet never ventured out of port; her land forces disbanded, and that enter- prise fell to the ground. The ruin of Leicester was effected by very different means : confident in his talents and popularity, he ventured to display too marked a superiority above his fellows in the same cause : this excited hostile feelings in several of the barons, whose jealousies and pretensions were skilfully worked upon by Prince Edward, who had by this time been removed from Dover Castle, into which he had been thrown after the battle of Lewes, and placed with his father, in the enjoyment of considerable personal liberty, by the order of a parliament which Lei- cester had summoned expressly to consider his case in the beginning of the present year (1265), and which is memorable in the history of tlie con- stitution as the first in which we have certain evi- dence of the appearance of representatives from 686 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. the cities and boroughs. The Earl of Derby opened a correspondence with the prince, and the Earl of Gloucester set himself up as a rival to Montfort, and then, by means of his brother, Thomas de Clare, who had been placed about the prince's person, concerted a plan for releasing Edward. This plan was successfvd; and on Thursday in Whitsun week the prince escaped on a fleet horse which had been conveyed to him, and joined the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow, where the royal banner was raised. The prince was made to swear that he would respect the charters, govern according to law, and expel foreigners ; and it was upon these express conditions that Gloucester surrendered to him the command of the troops. This earl was a A^ain, weak, young man, but his jealous fury against Leicester could not blind him to the obvious fact that but few of the nobility would make any sacrifices for the royal cause urdess their attachment to constitutional liberty were gratified by such pledges. About the same time Earl Warenne, who had escaped from the battle of Lewes, landed in South Wales with one hundred and twenty knights and a troop of archers ; and other royalist chiefs rose in difterent parts of the country, according to a plan which seems to have been suggested by the military sagacity of Prince Edward. The Earl of Leicester, keeping good liold of the king, remained at Hereford, while his eldest son, Simon de Mont- fort, with a part of his army, was in Sussex. The object of the prince was to prevent the junc- tion of these separated forces, and to keep the earl on the right bank of the Severn. Edward destroyed all the bridges and boats on that river, and secured the fords; but, after some skilful manceuvres, the earl crossed the Severn, and en- camped near Worcester, where he expected his son would join him. But Simon's conduct in war was not equal to his father's, for he allowed himself to be surprised by night near Kenilworth, where Edward took his horses and treasure, and most of his knights, and forced him to take refuge, almost naked, in the castle there, tlje principal residence of the De Montfort family. The earl, still hoping to meet his son's forces, advanced to Evesham, on the river Avon : on the morning of the 4di of August, as he looked towards the hills in the direction of Kenilworth, he saw his own standards advancing : — his joy, however, was but momentary, for he discovered, when too late to retreat, that they were his son's banners in the hands of his enemies, and nearly at the same time he saw the heads of columns showing themselves on either flank and in his rear. These well-conceived com- bined movements had been executed with unusual precision, — the earl was surrounded, — every road was blocked up. As he observed the skilful Avay in which the hostile forces were disposed, lie uttered the complaint so often used by old generals, — " They have learned from me the art of war," he exclaimed ; and then, it is said, he added, " The Lord have mercy on our so\ils, for I see our bodies are Prince Edward's." He did not, however, neglect the duties of the commander, but marshalled his men in the best manner. He then spent a Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—13.99. 687 short time in prayer, and took the sacrament, as was his wont, before going into battle. Having failed in an attempt to force the road to Kenil- worth, he formed in a solid circle on the summit of a hill, and several times repulsed the charges of his foes, who gradually closed round him, attacking at all points. The king being in the earl's camp when the royalists appeared, was encased in armour which concealed his features, and was put upon a war-horse. In one of the charges the imbecile old man was dismounted and in danger of being slain, but he cried out, " Hold your hand, I am Harry of Winchester;" and the prince, who hap- pened to be near, ran to his rescue, and carried him out of the melee. Leicester's horse was killed under him, but the earl rose unhurt from his fall, and fought bravely on foot : a body of Welsh were broken and fled, and the number of his enemies still seemed to increase on all sides. He then asked the royalists if they gave quarter? and was told that there was no quarter for traitors : his gallant son Henry was killed before his eyes, the bravest and best of his friends fell in heaps around him, and at last the great earl himself died with his sword in his hand.* The hatred of the royalists was too much inflamed to admit of the humanities and usages of chivalry : no prisoners were taken ; the slaughter, usually confined to the " meaner sort," who could not pay ransom, was extended to the noblest and wealthiest ; and all the barons and knights of Leicester's party, to the number of one hundred and eighty, were despatched, f The historianE who praise the clemency of the royal party, by whom " no blood was shed on the scaffold," seem to overlook the fact that all their dangerous ene- mies were butchered at Evesham, and that little blood was left to be shed by the executioner. Not even death could save Leicester from their barba- rous vengeance : tliey mutilated his body in a manner too brutal and disgusting to be described, and so presented it, as an acceptable spectacle, to a nohle lady, the v.-ife of the Lord Roger Mor- timer, one of the earl's deadly enemies. " The people of England," says Holinshed cautiously, " conceived an opinion that the earl being thus slain fighting in defence of the liberties of the realm and performance of his oath, as they took it, died a martyr; which, by the bruited holiness of his past life, and the miracles ascribed to him after his death, was greatly confirmed in the next age : but the fear of the king's displeasure stayed the people from hastily honouring him as a saint at this time, where otherwise they were inclined greatly thereto, reputing him for no less in their con- science, as in secret talk they did not hesitate to say." This popular reverence was not evanescent ; for many years after, when men could speak out without danger, they called the earl " Sir Simon • Cocliu. Matt. Par. — M. West. — Cliron. Mailros, — Cliion. Dunst. + Some ten or a dozen knights who were found breatliing, after the Ciirnagc, were permitted to live, or, at least, to have that chance of living which tlieir wounds allowed. the Righteous," and complained of the church because it would not canonise him. After the decisive victory of Evesham, the king, resuming the sceptre, went to Warwick, where he was joined by his brother the king of the Romans, who, with many other prisoners taken by Leicester at Lewes, now first recovered his liberty. Early in the next month, on the " Feast of the Translation of St. Edward," a parliament assembled at Win- chester. Here it was seen that, even in the moment of success, the king could not venture to revoke any part of the great charter. His victory had been achieved by the arms of English barons, who, generally speaking, had concurred in the former measures against his faithless government, and whose opposition to the Earl of Leicester's too great power, had in no sense weakened their love of constitutional safeguards, or their hatred of an absolute king. Led away, however, by per- sonal animosities, the parliament of Winchester passed some severe sentences against the family and partisans of the late earl, and deprived the citizens of London of their charter. A desperate resistance was thus provoked, and successive insurrections broke out in different parts of the kingdom. Simon de Montfort and his associates maintained themselves for a long time in the isles of Ely and Axholm ; the Cinque Ports refused to submit ; the castle of Kenilworth defied several royal armies ; and Adam Gourdon, a most warlike baron, maintained himself in the forests of Hampshire. Prince Edward's valour and ability had full occupation for nearly two years, and at last it was found necessary to relax the severity of goveroment, and grant easier terms to the van- quished, in order to obtain the restoration of in- ternal tranquillity. With this view, a committee was appointed of twelve bishops and barons, and their award, called the " Dictum de Kenilworth," was confirmed by the king and parliament. The Earl of Gloucester, whose personal quarrel with Leicester had been the chief cause of the overthrow of the baronial oligarchy, and the restoration of Henry, quarrelled Avith the king, Mid once more took up arms, alleging, that even the Dictum de Kenilworth was too harsh, and that the court was seeking to infringe the provisions of Oxford, and breaking the promises given on the field of Eves- ham. The dissatisfied Londoners made common cause with him, and received him within their walls, but losing heart at the approach of the king's army, Gloucester opened negotiations, and submitted, on condition of receiving a full pardon for himself. At the same time, the Londoners compounded for a fine of 25,000 marks. The pope most laudably endeavoured to diffuse the spirit of mercy and moderation : he told the king, who was not naturally inclined to that, or to any other strong passions, that revenge was unworthy of a Christian, and that clemency was the best support of a throne. All this, with the determined aspect of the people, whenever harsh measures were threatened, produced a salutary effect; and 688 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the gallantry and generosity shown by Prince Ed- ward, on one occasion, did more in subduing opposition than a hundred executions on the scaf- fold could have done. In a battle fought in a wood near Alton, the prince engaged Adam Gour- don hand to hand, and vanquished that redoubtaljle knight in fair single combat. When Adam was brought to the ground instead of despatching him, he generously gave him his life : on that very night he introduced him to the queen at Guilford, procured him his pardon, received him into his own especial favour, and was from that time for- ward most faithfully served by Sir Adam.* A.D. 1267. On the 18th of November, two years and three months after the battle of Eves- ham, the king, in parliament at Marlborough, adopted some of the most valuable of the provi- sions of the Earl of Leicester, and enacted other good laws. Thus all resistance was disarmed, and the patriots or the outlaws in the Isle of Ely, who were the last to submit, threw down their arms, and accepted the conditions of the Dictum of Kenilworth, which they saw had been faithfully observed with respect to others. As soon as the country was thoroughly tranquillised, Prince Ed- ward and his cousin Henry, the son of the king of the Romans, took the cross ; in which they were followed by nearly one hundred and fifty Eng- lish lords and knights. Exhortation and example urged them to this step. Ottoboni, the pope's legate, who had been very instrumental in restormg peace in the land, had earnestly and eloquently recommended the crusade ; and Louis IX., who was soon to be called " Saint Louis," had departed a second time for the East. Having taken many precautionary measures in case his father should die during his absence, and having most wisely obtained the grant of a new charter, with the restoration of their liljcrties, to the citizens of London, and a free pardon to a few nobles who still lay under the king's ban, Edward departed with his wife Eleanor, his cousin Henry, and his knights, in the month of July, 1270. Many of the choicest chivalry of England left their bones to bleach on the Syrian shore ; but the fate of Henry d'Almaine, as they called the son of tlie king of the Romans, was more tragical as well as much more unusual. Being despatched back to England on a secret mission by his cousin Edward, he took the road through Italy, and loitered in the city of Viterbo, to witness the election of a new pope. One morning, at an early hour, as he was at his prayers in a church, he heard a well-known voice exclaiming, " Thou traitor, Henry ! — thou shalt not escape 1" Turning round, he saw his two cousins, Simon and Guy de Montfort, who, with their mother, the Countess of Leicester, King Henry's own sister, had been driven out of Eng- land, and who considered the king of the Romans as the bitterest enemy of their house. They were in complete armour, and waved their naked swords over their defenceless victim. He clung to the • Cont-ii. Matt. Par. [Book IV. holy altar before which he was kneeling, and two priests threw themselves between him and them. But nothing could save him from the fury of his cousins ; the two priests lost their lives in their generous endeavours to protect him; and, pierced with many wounds, he was dragged out of the church, when the murderers mutilated his body in horrid revenge for the treatment of their father's corpse at Evesham. They then mounted their horses and rode away, being protected, it is said, by Count Aldobrandini, whose daughter had been married to Guy, one of the assassins.* Tliat vain old man, the king of the Romans, was re- joicing in the possession or display of a young German bride he had just married, and was still flattering himself with the hopes of the imperial crown, which had now deluded his imagination for fifteen long years, when the melancholy catas- trophe of his son reminded him of the vanity of human wishes. He did not long survive the shock : he died in the month of December, 1271; and in the folkiwing winter his brother, the king of Eng- land, followed him to the grave, expiring at West- minster, after a long illness and great demonstra- tions of piety, on the feast of St. Edmund, the 16th of November, 1272 He had rebuilt the abbey church of St. Peter's from the foundation, and he had removed the bones of Edward the Confessor into a golden shrine. According to his wish, they therefore carried his body to that stately church, and laid it in the very grave which the remains of his saintly predecessor had once occupied. Before his body was lowered to its last resting-place, the Earl of Gloucester, putting his bare hand upon it, swore fealty to the absent Edward ; and the rest of the barons present followed his example. Henry had lived sixty-eight years, and had been fifty-six years a king — at least in name. Edward I. surnamed Longshanks. From the Abbey Church of Westminster the barons, who had attended his father's funeral, went to the new Temple and proclaimed the absent Edward by the style of " King of England, Lord of Ireland, and Duke of Aquitaine." This was on Sunday, the 20th of November, four days after the demise of Henry. A new great seal was made ; Walter de Merton was appointed chan- cellor; Walter Gifford, archbishop of York, the Earl of Cornwall, a surviving son of Richard, king of the Romans, and the Earl of Gloucester, assumed conjointly the office of guardians or regents of the kingdom, and such wise measures were taken that the public peace was in no way disturbed ; and the accession of Edward, though he was far away, and exposed to the chances of war and shipwreck, was more tranquil than that of anv preceding king since the Conquest, When Edward departed on the crusade he found that the French khig, instead of sailing for • R\mfV.— Wykfs. — Muiatori, Aiitiali, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 689 Geeat Seal op Edv/aud I. Syria or Palestine, had turned aside to attack the Mussulman king or bey of Tunis. The kings of Sicily had some old claims to tribute from this African state, and the Italian crown, after hovering over the heads of so many princes, had at last settled on that of Charles of Anjou, who, with the assistance of the pope, won it from Manfred, the illegitimate Suabian, at the battle of the Grandella, fought near Benevento, in the year 1266. This Charles was the ferocious, unworthy brother of the amiable Louis IX.; and it is generally supposed that, for his own selfish ambition and interests, he craftily induced the French king to turn his arms against Tunis ; though it is also probable that the exaggerated accounts of the wealth of that city acted as a strong temptation with the cnisaders in general. Louis landed on the African shore in the midst of summer, and took the camp and town of Carthage ; but the excessive heat of the climate, the want of From a Statue in tho Choir of York Minster. 2 R 690 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. provisions, and even of wholesome water, and pestilential miasmata from bogs and swamps, soon caused dreadful maladies among his host. The king himself was att&cked by a fatal dysentery, and he laid himself down to die among the ruins and fragments of ancient Carthage. The super- stition of this excellent man was the fault of the age in which he lived ; but the better part of his devotion, his resignation, and magnanimity, will have a claim to reverence in all ages. As long as he could act he submitted to every privation, en- countered every risk, in order to alleviate the sufferings of his poorest followers, who died round him by hundreds. When he could no longer move, and when he was himself suffering agonies, he incessantly occupied his still unclouded intellect in devising means for mitigating the pains of others : with his dying breath he endeavoured to reanimate the courage of his family and of his officers, who were weeping about his bed. " My friends," said he, " I have finished my course, — grieve not for me. It is natural that I, as your chief, should march off first. You must all follow me in time, — keep yourselves ready for the journey." * When Prince Edward arrived he found that Louis was dead, and that more than half of his army had perished by disease. The survivors had, however, made advantageous terms with the Bey of Tunis, and showed little inclination to leave that country and encounter fresh dangers in Pales- tine. The English then re-crossed the Mediter- ranean to Sicily (a short voyage of 150 miles) ; but Edward would not renounce his project, or return home. He passed the winter at Trapani, vowing that, though all his soldiers should desert him, he would go to Acre attended only by Fowen, his groom. Early in the following spring he set sail from Sicily, and he landed at Acre, which was now almost the only residue of the crusaders' conquests in the East, with a force which did not exceed a thousand men. But the fame of Richard was still bright on those shores ; and, while the Mahomedans trembled, the Christians gathered round the standard of the successor of Lion-heart, to whom Edward was scarcely inferior in physical strength and courage, while he was his superior in coolness and policy, and probably also in military science. Bondocar, the sultan of Babylon, who had prepared to take that city by assault, immediately retreated from the vicinity of Acre, and, crossing the Desert, went into Egypt. Edward advanced, and obtained temporary possession of Nazareth, which was taken by storm. Eighty years had elapsed since Richard's massacres of Acre, and nearly two hundred since the first capture of Jerusalem by the Christians of the West ; but the crusaders had made little progress in humanity, and the slaughter committed on the Moslems, vinder the eye of Edward at Nazareth, was only less atrocious than the butchery at Jerusalem, because the scene was more confined, and the * Le Sire de Joinville. place had fewer Turkish inhabitants. The prince, and many of the English with him, were soon after attacked with sickness, and returned to Acre, where they lingered some fifteen months, doing little or nothing ; for the first enthusiasm among the Latin Christians had subsided upon seeing that Edward had scarcely any money, and received no reinforcements. He had never been able to collect more than seven thousand armed men, and this mixed force could not be kept together for any length of time. The English chivalry distinguished itself by many feats of arms, and revived the glory of the national name ; but, after all, the only other solid advantages gained were the capture of two castles and the surprise and partial plunder of a caravan. The Mahom- medans were not strong enough to attack Acre, which, chiefly by Edward's means, was so strength- ened as to be enabled to defy them for twenty years longer, when the Mamelukes of Egypt took it and drove the crusaders and their descendants from every part of the Holy Land. Edward on his side was always too weak to attempt any extensive operations. His presence, however, both annoyed and distressed the Turks, and an attempt was made to get rid of him by assassination. The emir of Jaft'a, under pretence of embracing the Christian religion, opened a correspondence with the English prince, and gradually gained his confidence. The emir sent letters and presents, till his messengers were allowed to pass and repass without examina- tion or suspicion. On the Friday of Whitsun week, about the hour of vespers, as Edward was reclining on a couch with nothing on him but a loose robe, the emir's messenger made his usual salam at the door of his apartment : he was ad- mitted ; and as he knelt and presented a letter with one hand, he drew a concealed dagger with the other, and aimed a blow at the prince's heart. Edward, though wounded, caught the murderer in his iron grasp, threw him to the ground, and de- spatched him with his own weapon. The prince's wound was not deep, but the dagger had been smeared with poison ; when he learned this fact, he made his will, and gave himself up as lost. The English soldiers would have taken a horrid vengeance upon the poor Turks in their power, but he restrained their fviry, and made them reflect on what might befal the helpless Christian pil- grims then at Jerusalem. Fortunately there was at Acre an English surgeon with skill and nerve enough to pare away the sides of the wound ; and the grand master of the Templars sent some pre- cious drugs to stop the progress of the venom. The piety, the affectionate attentions of his loving wife Eleanor may have contributed very effectually to his cure, but there is no good ground for believ- ing that she sucked the poison from her husband's wound.* Henry had already implored his son to return * Hemingford. — Chron. Pepini inMuratori. — Matt. West. — Wykes. The story of Eleanor sucking the ■wound is not mentioned by any chronicler living near the time. It seems to be of Spanish origin, and to have been first mentioned a century or two after the time. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 691 to England, and now Edward gladly listened to proposals of peace made by the sultan, who was so much engaged with other wars in the interior as to have little time to spare for the prosecution of hostilities on the coast. A truce was therefore con- cluded for ten years, and then Edward sailed again for Sicily. Theobald, Archdeacon of Liege, who had accompanied the prince to Palestine, had been recalled some months before from Acre to fill the vacant chair of St. Peter. At Trapani, Edward received an earnest invitation from his old com- panion and steadfast friend, now Gregory X., to visit him at Rome. The prince crossed the Faro of Messina to travel by land through the Italian peninsula. At a mountain village in Calabriahe met messengers, by whom he was informed, for the first time, of the death of his father. He had recently lost an infant son whom Eleanor had borne him in Syria; and Charles of Anjou, who had now returned from Tunis, and had little tenderness for any one, expressed his surprise that he should grieve more for the death of his old father than for that of his own offspring. " The loss of my child," said Edward, " is a loss which I may hope to repair, but the death of a father is a loss irrepar- able !"* By the month of February, 1273, he was at Rome, but his friend the pope being absent, he staid only two days in the Eternal City, and then turned aside to Civita Vecchia, where the pope received him with honour and affection. Edward demanded justice on the assassins of Henry d'Al - maine ; but Simon de Montfort, one of them, had gone to account for his crimes before a higher tribunal; Aldobrandini was too powerful to be rigorously examined, and was not a principal in the murder ; and as Guy de Montfort had absconded, the king of England was obliged to be satisfied with a very imperfect vengeance. Leaving the pontifi',he continued his journey through Italy, and he was received in triumph at every town. The admiring Milanese presented him with some fine horses and purple mantles. His exploits in Pa- lestine, limited as they had been, had gained him the reputation of being the Champion of the Cross ; the dangerous wound he had received (if he had died of it he would have been enrolled among saints and martyrs) created an additional sympathy in his favour, and, as if people knew he would be the last king to embark in the crusades, he was hailed with extraordinary enthusiasm. It was the bright, broad flash of the flame about to sink into the socket. In a few years the passion for the crusades, which had animated all Europe for more than two centuries, was utterly extinct. On crossing the Alps, Edward was met by a deputation from England. He travelled on to Paris, where he was courteously received by his cousin, Phihp le Hardi, and did homage to that king for the lands which he held of him in France. Notwithstanding the tranquil state of the coun- trv, and the loyal disposition of his subjects, it must excite some surprise to see, that after so * Walsingham.— Trivet. long an absence, Edward had no anxiety to reach England.* Instead of crossing the Channel, he turned back from Paris, where he had staid a fortnight, and went to Guienne. The mo- tives generally assigned for his protracted stay on the continent are, his wish to await the deci- sions of a general council of the church, which the pope had summoned to meet at Lyons, and the distracted state of Guienne, which province seems never to have been tranquil for a year at a time. But it is pretty evident that the English king entertained suspicions of Philip, who was a far less conscientious sovereign than his father, Louis IX., who had been severely blamed by the French, for not taking advantage of the weakness of Henry to drive the English out of all their con- tinental possessions. The dark shadows of some deep and disgraceful intrigues are visible ; and it seems to us, that when the pope warned Edward against the swords of assassins, he did not appre- hend danger from the ruined and fugitive Guy de Montfort, so much as from more prosperous and more powerful agents. In the month of May, 1274, while the Enghsh king was in Guienne, he received a challenge, couched in all the nice terms and circumlocutions of chivalry, from the Count of Chalons, to meet him lance to lance in a tourna- ment. This fashion was then at its height, and knights and nobles of high renown and princes royal were accustomed to defy each other in the name of God, of the blessed Virgin Mary, and of their respective saints and mistresses, and to invite one another out of love and reverence, to joustings and tiltings, which often terminated in blood and death or fractured limbs. Edward con- sidered himself bound in honour as a true knight to accept the count's challenge, and, on the ap- pointed day he entered the lists, as stalwart and fearless a combatant as ever sat in saddle. He was attended by a thousand champions ; but the Count of Chalons rode to the spot with nearly two thousand. Whispers of bad faith on the part of the count had already been heard, and the sight of this unfair advantage probably confirmed the worst suspicions of the English. The image of war was converted into its stern reality — a sanguinary battle ensued, in which the foot-soldiers took part as well as the knights. The English crossbow- men drove the French infantry from the field, and then mixing with the English horse, who were far outnumbered by their opponents, they overthrew many of the count's knights by stabbing their horses or cutting their saddle-girths — two opera- tions against all rule, and deemed infamous in the code of chivalry. The count himself, a man re- nowned for his physical strength, after charging Edward several times with his lance, rode in, and grasping the king round the neck, endeavoured to • He had written letters expressinsjsome fear of the Londoners, and liad several times commanded tlie " mayor, sheriffs, and com- mons" most carefully to keep tlie peace of the city. The measures adopted in consequence were more vigorous than legal. All persons suspected of having been partisans of the Earl of Leicester were hunted down in every ward, and, without form of trial or examina- tion, tlirown into prison till Edward's retnrn. 692 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. unseat him. Edward sate like a rock, and gave the proper touch with the spur ; — his war-horse sprang forward, the count was pulled out of his saddle, and hurled to the ground with a dreadful shock. He was remounted by some of his knights ; but, sorely bruised and stupified by his fall, he cried out for quarter. Edward was so enraged, that he kept hammering on the iron armour of his suppliant foe for some time, and at last rejected his sword, and made him surrender to a common foot-soldier — an extremity of disgrace which the count, had he been a true knight, would have avoided at the cost of life. The English had the best of the affray, taking many knights, who were obliged to ransom their persons, their arms, and their horses (where any were left alive), and slaying many of the French footmen — " because they were but rascals, and no great account was made of them." The whole atfair was so fierce and sanguinary, that it afterwards went by the name of the little war of Chalons. * A.D. 1274. Edward now turned his thoughts towards England, and sent orders to prepare for his coronation. If theee orders were obeyed, the coronation-feast miist have been a sublime speci- men of a well-loaded table ; for 380 head of cattle, 430 sheep, 450 pigs, 18 wild boars, 278 flitches of bacon, and 1 9,660 capons and fowls were ordered by the king for this solemn occasion. f As he tra- velled through France, Edward stopped at the pleasant town of Montreuil, to settle some differ- ences which had long existed between the English • Hemings. — West. — Trivet. — Holinshed. f Rymer. and Flemings, and which had curiously committed the commercial interests of both countries. For several reigns the counts of Flanders had been accustomed to let upon hire certain bands or troops of foot-soldiers to the kings of England. These contracts ceased altogether during the reign of Henry III. ; but, some time before the death of that sovereign, Margaret, the reigning countess claimed payment of a large sum as arrears, and' pressed her claim so rudely, that she seized all the English wool — then our great article of export that could be found in her dominions. Henry retaliated, by seizing all the manufactured Flemish cloths in England, and strictly forbade all trade between the two countries. He enticed over some Flemish clothiers, but their number was insuffi- cient; and it is said, that as the English were unskilled in the arts of dyeing cloths, they for some time wore their coats of the natural colour of the fleece. The Flemings stood in still greater need of our wool, wanting which their looms remained idle, and their artisans were beggared. The countess, who lost immensely by this stoppage of trade, now off'ered a public apology to Edward and entreated that the commercial relations of t!ie country might be renewed. The king, who, much to his credit, took the advice of some London merchants of goad repute, immediately made up the quarrel ; the countess agreed to certain repara- tions, and the trade was renewed. On the 2nd of August, 1274, after an absence of more than four years, Edward landed at Dover, and on the 19th of the same month, "after the QuKiiN Jii.KANou.— I'lvini licr Tomb in Wc:;tininster .\bbey. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 69'c feast of the Assumption," he was crowned, together with liis high-minded wife, in Westminster Abbey. On their entrance into London they were " received with all joy that might be devised : the streets were hung with rich cloths of silk, arras, and tapestry ; the aldermen and burgesses of the city threw out of their windows handfulls of gold and silver, to signify the great gladness which they had con- ceived of his safe return ; the conduits ran plenti- fully with white wine and red, that each creature might drink his fill."* The nation was proud of the valour and fame of their king, who was now in the prime of mature manhood, being in his thirty-sixth year; and the king had good reason to be proud of the affection, loyalty, and prosperity of the nation. The government, however, was poor and embar- rassed, and, in spite of all pretexts, this circum- stance seems to have been the real whetstone of the animosity which Edward showed immediately after his accession to one class of his subjects, — the unhappy Jews. The rest of the nation were now tolerably well protected from arbitrary spo- liation by the great charter and the power of par- liaments; but the miserable Israelites, considered unworthy of a participation in the laws and rights of a Christian people, were left naked to oppres- sion, no hand or tongue being raised in their defence, and the mass of the people rejoicing in their ruin. As a zealous crusader, Edward detested all unbelievers, and his religious anti- pathies went hand-in-hand with his rapacity, and probably justified its excesses in his own eyes. The coin had been clipped and adulterated for many years, and the king chose to consider the Jews as the sole or chief authors of this crime. f To bring a Jew before a Christian tribunal was almost the same tiling as to sign his death-warrant. Two hundred and eighty of both sexes were hanged in London alone, smd many victims also suflered in every other town where they resided. As it was so com- mon, clipped money might be found upon every person in the kingdom ; but once discovered in the possession of an Israelite, it was taken as an irre- fragable proof of guilt. The houses and the whole property of every Jew that suft'ered went to the crown, which thus had an interest in multiplying the number of convictions. Even before these judicial proceedings, the king prohibited the Jews from taking interest for money lent, from building synagogues, and buying lands or any free tene- ments. He put a capitation or poll-tax upon them, similar to the kharatch which the grand-signior exacts from his Christian subjects : he set a dis- tinctive and odious badge upon their dress, that they might be known from all others, — another Turkish custom, which in its time has been the cause of infinite suffering. Thirteen years later, when Edward was engaged in expensive foreign wars, and the parliament, in ill humour thereat, stinted his supplies, he ordered the seizure of every * llolinshed. + A few Christians Ti'ei-c afterwards punished for the same offence. Jew in England ; and on an appointed day, men, women, and children, — every living creature in whose veins the ancient blood of the tribes was known or supposed to flow, — were brutally arrested and cast into loathsome dungeons. There seems to have been no parity of justice on this occa- sion, and the Jews purchased their enlargement by a direct payment of the sum of 12,000/. to the king. Edward might have continued to make good use of them from time to time in this manner, as most of his predecessors had done, but his fanaticism overcame his avidity for money, or, pro- bably, he wanted a large sum at once, for he was now in the midst of his scheme for the subjugation of Scotland, and had just married two of his daughters. It was in the year 1290, soon after the sitting of a parliament at Westminster, that his proclamation went forth commanding all the Jews, under the penalty of death, to quit the kingdom for ever, within the space of two months. Their total number was considerable, for though long robbed and persecuted in England, they had, notwithstand- ing, increased and multiplied, and their condition in the other countries of Christendom being still worse than here, the stream of emigration had set pretty constantly from the opposite side of the Channel. Sixteen thousand five hundred and eleven individuals received the king's pass, with the gracious permission to carry with them as much of their ready money as would pay the immediate expenses of their voyage. Houses, lands, mer- chandise, treasures, debts owing to them, with their bonds, their tallies and obligations, were all seized by the king. The mariners of London, and the inhabitants of the Cinque Ports generally, who were as bigoted as the king, and thought it no sin to be as rapacious towards the accursed Jews, robbed many of them of the small pittance left them, and drowned not a few during their passage. To help to keep alive a wholesome abhorrence of these detestable cruelties, we will mention one particular case, as recorded by Holinshed on the credit of a contemporary chronicle : — " Some of the richest of the Jews being shipped in a mighty tall ship which they had hired, when the same was under sail, and had got down the Thames towards the mouth of the river, the master mariner bethought him of a wile, and caused his men to cast anchor, and so rode at the same, till the ship, by ebbing of the stream, remained on the dry sands. The master then enticed the Jews to walk out with him for recreation. And at length, when the Jews' were on the sands, and he understood the tide to be coming in, he gat him back to the ship, whither he was drawn by a rope. The Jews made not so much haste, because they were not aware of the danger ; but when they perceived how the matter stood, they cried to the master for help. He, how- ever, told them that they ought to cry rather upon Moses, by whose guidance their fathers had passed through the Red Sea. They cried, indeed, but no succour appeared, and so they were swallowed up by the water." Some few mariners were convicted 694 HISTORY Of ENGLAND. [Book IV. and suffered capital punishment ; for the king, to use the keen sarcasm of Hume, was determined to be the sole plunderer in his dominions. Contemporaneously with these shameful proceed- ings against the Jews, Edward enacted many just and wise laws for his Christian subjects ; and the additions and improvements which he made in the laws and the practices of the courts will be noticed in their proper place. The nature of his reforms shows the extent of the evil that had existed : in 1299, all the judges of the land were indicted for bribery, and only two of the number were ac- quitted ; the chief justice of the Court of King's Bench was convicted of instigating his servants to commit murder, and of protecting them against the law after the offence ; the chief baron of the Ex- chequer was imprisoned and heavily fined, and so was Sir Ralph de Hengham, the grand justiciary. But perhaps in some of these cases we shall not greatly err if we deduct from the delinquency of the accused, and allow something for the arbitrary will of the accuser. It is known that the king, who had just returned from a costly sojourn of nearly three years in-France, was in great want of money, when, as the consequence of their condem- nation, he exacted about 80,000 marks from the judges. In recovering, or attempting to recover, such parts of the royal domain as had been en- croached upon, and in examining the titles by which some of the great barons held their estates, he roused a spirit which might have proved fatal to him had he not prudently stopped in time. When his commissioners asked Earl Warenne to show his titles, the Earl drew his sword and said, — " By this instrument do I hold my lands, and by the same I intend to defend them! Our ancestors, coming into this realm with William the Bastard, acquired their possessions by their good swords. William did not make a conquest alone, or for himself solely; our ancestors were helpers and participants with him!" Such title-deeds were not to be disputed; but there were other cases Kauf. WAiiEXN-E Justifying his Titj.k to his Estati> Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121"6— 1399. 695 where men wore less powerful swords, and where written deeds and grants from the crown had been lost or destroyed during the convulsions of the country ; and Edward seized some manors and estates, and made their owners redeem them by large sums of money. There was much bad faith in these proceedings, but as the king chose his victims with much prudence, no insurrection was excited. We must now retrace our steps, to take a regu- lar view of this king's great operations in war. Edv/ard was to the full as ambitious and fond of conquest as any prince of the Norman or Plan- tagenet line ; but, instead of expending his power in foreign wars, he husbanded it for the grand plan of reducing the whole of the island of Great Britain under his immediate and undivided sway. He employed the claim of feudal superiority — a right most difficult to define, even if its existence had been admitted — with final success against Wales ; and though, with regard to Scotland, it eventually failed, the ruin of his scheme there did not happen until after his death, and he felt for a time the proud certainty of having defeated every opponent. If the acknowledgment of the paramount authority of the English kings, ex- tracted from unsuccessful princes, justified a forcible seizure of territory against the wishes of the people, Edward may be acknowledged to have had that right over Wales. Setting aside the some- what doubtful vassalage of the Welsh princi- palities to our Saxon kings, on which the Norman conquerors impudently founded a pretension, as being the lawful heirs to those kings, we have re- peated instances of a seeming submission, when the princes purchased peace by engaging to pay certain tributes, and to recognise the suzerainty of the English throne. This feudal superiority, however, was liable to all sorts of variation, and was never really fixed by the written or understood laAv of the feudal system, though, in certain cases, the forms of that law could be applied in regard to it with an appearance of regularity and justice. When a weak state stood in this relation with a strong one, the feudal supremacy implied an almost unlimited right of interference and con- trol ; but when the relation existed between two states of equal power, it meant little or nothing be- yond a mere ceremony. Thus the kings of Eng- land, as vassals to the sovereigns of France for their territories on the continent, had for a long time defied the authority of their liege lords, after making them tremble in Paris, their own capital. Tliose other nominal vassals, the great dukes of Burgundy, although they had no separate sove- reignty like the Normans and Plantagenets, re- peatedly followed the same course. The forfeiture pronounced against John was generally consi- dered as an unjustifiable stretch of the rights of supremacy, but it was well timed — it was directed against one who had made himself uni- versally odious, and whose continental subjects, for the most part, at this crisis, preferred a union with France to their old connexion with England. The nature of Edward's right is scarcely deserving of a further examination — had no such claims existed he would have invented others — for he was determined on the conquest of the country, and internal dissensions and other circumstances favoured the enterprise. The expediency of the measure, and the advantages that have resulted from it, ought not to make us indifferent to the fate of a brave people who were fighting for their independence. The Anglo-Normans, who had been gradually encroaching on their territory for two hundred years, accused the poor Welsh of cruelty and perfidy — forgetting that tljpy were themselves the aggressors, and had been guilty of treachery the most manifold, and of cruelties the most atrocious. Since the beginning of the reign of Henry II. civilization had advanced in the rich champaign of England, and had, from the circum- stances in which the country was placed, retro- graded in Wales ; but there are writers of the time who trace in that land the most interest- ing picture of an hospitable and generous race of men, full of the elements of poetry, and passion- ately fond of their wild native music. According to their countryman, Giraldus Cambrensis, no people could well be more gentle and courteous in times of peace : notwithstanding the injuries con- stantly inflicted upon them by their neighbours, whenever an Anglo-Norman or Englishman visited them in their mountains without arms, and as a quiet guest, he was received with the greatest kindness, and feasted at every house where he chose to stop. Such as arrived in the morning hours were entertained till the evening by the young women with the harp and songs. In every house there was a harp ; and the company, seated in a circle round the harper, sang verses alter- nately — the verses being sometimes improvised. At times, a challenge to improvisation was sent from man to man, or from a whole village to ano- ther village. Though chiefly a pastoral people, they were not rude or clownish. " All the Welsh," says Giraldus, " without any exception, from the highest to the lowest, are ready and free in speech, and have great confidence in replying even to princes and magnates." The mass of the nation, however, notwithstanding this partial refine- ment, was poor, and but rudely clad, as compared with their English contemporaries. One day, as Henry II. rode through part of their country attended by his splendid chivalry, he looked with a contemptuous eye on the Welsh gentlemen riding on their rough ponies, and on the poorer sort who were clad in sheep or goats' skins. A mountaineer approached the great king, and said, with a noble pride, " Thou seest this poor people — but such as they are thou never shalt subdue them — that is reserved alone for God in his wrath." And though this wrath may have been manifested, and their country reduced by Henry's great grand- son, seldom has even a race of mountaineers made a longer or more gallant stand for liberty. When G96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV the sword of slaughter had passed over them to smite no more, — when better times and better feel- ings came, though, as less numerous and far more exposed, they had been less fortunate than the Scots, their valour entitled them to the same admi- ration and sympathy; and perhaps the high national character of the united kingdom of Great Britain may be in part owing to the fact, that no one portion of it fell an easy or degraded conquest to the other. At the time of Edward's aggi-ession, the prin- cipality of North Wales, called by the Welsh the principality of Aberfraw, or Snauden, was still almost untouched by English arms ; but the con- querors had established themselves in Monmouth- shire, and held a somewhat uncertain and fre- quently disturbed possession of a good part of South Wales. This occupation had been effected very gradually by the great barons who had made incursions at their own expense, and with their own retainers. These lords were rewarded with the lands they gained from the Welsh, and which they defended by erecting strong castles. As they advanced, they raised chains of fortifications, building their castles sufficiently near to commimi- cate with, and support each other. Thus, in Monmouthshire, a regular chain of fortresses was occupied on the banks of the Monnow, the Wye, and the Severn : these were Scenfreth, Grosmont, Monmouth, Trelech, perhaps Tintern, Chepstow, and Caldecot. A second line stretched diagonally from Grosmont on the Monnow to the banks of the Rumney ; these were Whitecastle, Tregaer, Usk, Langibby, Caerleon, and Newport; this diagonal line, with the strong castle of Abergavenny to the north of it, was intended to curb the mountaineers, who made perpetual incursions on their invaders.* In addition to these strong fortresses, many smaller castles were constructed for the purpose of keeping the natives in awe. The more advanced posts were often re-taken, and the day when one of these castles was destroyed was held by the Welsh, who foresaw the consequences of this gradual advance, as a day of universal joy, on which the father, who had just lost his only son, should forget his mis- fortune. But still the chains were drawn more and more closely around them by the persevering- invaders ; and, since the conquest of Ireland, extra- ordinary pains had been taken to secure the whole of the line through South Wales to Milford Haven, the usual place of embarkation for the sister island. In the wilderness of the Tivy, and in many of the more inaccessible moors, marshes, and mountains, tlie invaders were still defied ; and, except in Pembrokeshire, where the Flemish colony had been settled by Henry I., and in the lower part of Monmouthshire, the English were scarcely safe beyond the walls of their castles, so fierce was the recollection of past wrongs, and so enduring the hope of the southern Welsh to recover all that they had lost. But the jealousies of their petty princes, and the rancorous feuds of the clans, defeated all • Coxe's Monmouthshire. their greater projects ; and, at the critical moment which was to seal the fate of the whole country, Rees-ap-Meredith, the prince of South Wales, was induced to join Edward and fight against Llewellvn, the ruler of the northern principality, and the representative of a rival family. Llewellyn, more- over, was opposed by his own brother David, who also rallied, with his vassals, round the standard of the English king. In the wars between Henry III. and the barons, the prince of North Wales had taken part with the latter, and had shown himself the steady friend of De Montfort. A body of northern Welsh had fought for that great earl against Edward at the battle of Evesham ; and when De Montfort was dead, and his family ruined and scattered, Llewellyn still retained his old affection for the house, and agreed upon a marriage with Elinor de Montfort, daughter to the deceased earl. As that young lady was on her voyage from France to Wales, with Emeric her youngest brother, she was taken by four ships of Bristol, and was sent to King Edward's court, where both brother and sister were detained as prisoners. Angry feelings had existed before, but this seizure of his bride transported Llewellyn with wrath, and, bitterly complaining of the wrong and insult which had been done to him in a time of peace, he prepared for war. According to some accounts, he began hostilities by falling upon the English on his borders, killing the people, and burning their towns ; but this is not quite certain, and, at all events, Edward had long been employed in making preparations for conquest, and, what was equally notorious, and still more irritating to the unfortunate prince, he had been intriguing with Llewellyn's subjects and corrupting the Welsh chiefs with bribes and promises. As to the ground of quarrel chosen by Edward, it was quite true that Llewellyn had not obeyed the summons to do homage as one of the great vassals of the crown ; but he had acknowledged the duties of his vassal- age, and excused his non-attendance, which he said had solely arisen out of Edward's violation of a solemn treaty which had been concluded by the mediation of the pope. One of the clauses of this recent treaty had . provided that neither party should harbour the enemies or revolted subjects of the other ; and Edward, it was well known, had given shelter and encouragement to all the enemies of Llewellyn, and continued to receive the rebellious Welsh as personal friends. Llewellyn said, that under these circumstances, his life would be in danger if he ventured to the king of England's court, and he demanded a safe conduct, which was refused. After the seizure of his bride his de- mands naturally rose : he asked for hostages and for the previous liberation of Elinor de Montfort, and then, he said, he would go to court. But Edward did not want him there : that resolute king had now matured his measures for the subjugation of Wales. He had levied a fine army, — his parliament had pronounced the sentence Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216— 139P. 697 of forfeiture against Llewellyn as a rebel, — it had also voted a large supply, — and the church had ex- communicated the "Welsh prince.* In A.D. 1277, after the feast of Easter, Edward departed from Westminster, and with a mighty force, which increased as he advanced, marched towards Chester. At Midsummer he crossed the Dee, and, keeping between the mountains and the sea, took the two castles of Flint and Rhuddlan. Cautious in the extreme, he made no further pro- gress until he had repaired these fortresses and strengthened their defences. At the same time his fleet, which was skilfully managed by the mariners of the Cinque Ports, co-operated along the devoted coast, blockading every port, and cutting off the supplies which Llewellyn had counted upon receiving from the Isle of Anglesey. On the land side every outlet was strongly guarded, and the Welsh prince, driven to the mountains, was soon in want of provisions. Edw^ard pru- dently avoided a battle with desperate men, and, girding in the barren mountains, waited the effects of a surer and more dreadful destroyer than the sword. When winter made its approach the con- dition of Llewellyn was horrible, and it finally obliged him to throw himself on the generosity of his enemy. On the 10th of November Edward dictated his harsh terms at Rhuddlan Castle. The treaty stipulated that Llewellyn should pay fifty thousand pounds, — that he should cede the whole of his j)rincipality as far as the river Conway, — that he should do homage, and deliver hostages. He was to retain the Isle of Anglesey ; but even that remnant was to revert to the English crown in case of his dying without issue male ; and during his possession he was to pay for it an annual tribute or rent of one thousand marks.f The English king afterwards remitted the tremendous fine, which so poor a country could never have paid, and resigned his claim to the rent of Anglesey ; but he showed no great alacrity in makmg these concessions, and he let nearly a year elapse before he performed his promise of releasing Llewellyn's bride. Such treaties as that imposed on this occasion upon the Welsh are never kept, and all Edward's art could not reconcile either the prince or people to the sense of degradation. He gratified Llewel- lyn's brother David, who had fought for him, by marrying him to the daughter of an English earl, and "making him an English baron ; but, when David stood among his native mountains, he forgot this and other honours ; he cursed his own folly, which had brought ruin upon his country, and had excluded him from the hope of succeeding, either in his own person or in that of his children, to the principality. J The English conquerors were not sufficiently' refined to exercise their power with moderation ; they derided the national usages, and insulted the prejudices of a susceptible and brave people. The invasion of tlieir own demesnes, and the cutting down of the wood on the lands reserved * Ryiiier.— Wykes.— Chron. Dunst.— Trivet. + Kymer. — Hemingf. — Trivet. X Llewellyn, it appears, had no children. to them by treaty, exasperated both Llewellyn and David; but it is perfectly clear that had these princes been converted into subservient vassals, or won by the kindest treatment to be solicitous for the preservation of the peace, they would still have been forced into war by the unanimous feeling of the Welsh people. Superstition allied itself with patriotism, and, in order to increase the popular confidence, certain old prophecies of bards and seers were revived under a happy coincidence of circumstances which seemed to denote a speedy accomplishment. One of these mystic predic- tions imported nothing less than that the ancient race should recover its traditional supremacy in the island, and that the Prince of Wales should be crowned king in London. On the night of Palm Sunday, March the 22nd, of the year 1282, David surprised and took the strong castle of Hawardine, belonging to Roger Clifford, the justiciary, "a right worthy and famous knight," according to the English ; — a cruel tyrant, according to the Welsh. Several men who made resistance were killed, but the lord, who was caught in his bed, was only wounded, and then carried off as a prisoner. A general insurrection ensued : the Welsh rushed in arms from their mountains, and Llewellyn, joining his brother, laid siege to the castles of Flint and Rhuddlan. These strong places held out, but many of the new castles were taken and destroyed, and the English intruders w^re in some places driven across the marches. Forgetting their own cruelties and oppressions of all kinds, the English accused the Welsh of great barbarity in this brief moment of success. When the news was carried to Edward, he affected surprise ; but it has been suspected that he w^as not displeased with the opportunity, afforded by what had taken place, of making his conquest final and absolute. He was in want of money, and had no time to assemble a parliament ; he therefore had recourse to the very unconstitutional means of a forced loan, which was levied, not only on towns and religious establish- ments, but also on private individuals who were known to possess money. He then sent out com- missioners to raise an army, and despatched such troops as he had in readiness to the relief of Flint and Rhuddlan. He soon followed in person, and having assembled nearly all his military tenants and 1000 pioneers, he advanced into North Wales, leaving his fleet, which was still more formidable than in the preceding war, to act upon the coast, and reduce the Isle of Anglesey. His pioneers cut down woods, and opened roads into the very fast- nesses of Snowdon, whither the natives were again forced to retire. Some entrenched positions were carried, but not without a great loss ; and in one affair, which appears to have been a regular battle, Edward was completely checked, if not defeated. But the means at his disposal made the struggle too unequal ; reinforcements continually crossed the Dee, or came up from the coast, and he pro- cured the services of foreign mercenaries, who were particularly well suited for mountain warfare. 698 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. These were bands of Basques from the Pyrenees, whose method of fighting, and whose general habits and manners differed little from those of the Welsh people, whom they were employed to hunt down like blood-hounds. These foreign hordes acted where the regular ti'oops of the English king could not ; — accustomed in their own country to moun- tains far more rugged, they penetrated into every SCMMII OF SN0W1>0N. part of Snow don, and the last bulwark of Welsh independence was forced. Edward, chiefly by means of his fleet (the Welsh seem to have had no ships to oppose it), occupied Anglesey; but, in passing from that island to the main, a detachment of his forces sustahied a severe loss. They had laid down a bridge of boats across the Menai Strait, at or near to the place where Telford's suspension-bridge, hanging in air, now afi"ords a commodious communication between the opposite shores ; and in the absence of Edward, who was at Aberconway, a party of English, with some Gascon lords and a body of Basques, crossed over before it was finished, making part of their way by wading through the water when the tide was out. The Welsh, who had tlirown up some intrench- ments near the spot, permitted them to land, and even to reconnoitre their works; but when the tide rolled in, and made deep water between them and the unfinished bridge of boats, they rushed down upon them, and drove them into the sea, where, loaded as they were with armour, many of them were drowned. Between the sword and the waves there perished thirteen knights, seventeen esquires, and several hundred foot-soldiers. When Edward learned this sad disaster, he vowed he would build a stone bridge at the place ; but such an undertaking was soon found to be impracti- cable. This reverse at the Menai Strait hap- pened on St. Leonard's day, the 6th of Novem- ber. In another battle, Edward himself was worsted, being obliged to fly for protection to one of his castles, leaving the Lords Audley and Clif- ford dead on the field. Llewellyn was elated by these successes, and he fondly hoped that the severity of winter would force the English to re- tire ; but Edward had collected a strong force in Pembroke'shire and Carmarthen, and he now sent it orders to advance through South Wales, and attack his enemy in the rear. Leaving his bro- ther David to carry on the war in North Wales, his own principality, Llewellyn boldly turned his steps to the south, to meet the new invaders. This movement may possibly have been recom- mended by false friends ; and there certainly is an appearance of treachery in what followed. He had reached Bualth, in the valley of the Wye, when the English, under the savage Earl of Mor- timer, appeared suddenly on the opposite side of the river. A Welsh force was on the neighbour- ing heights; but the prince had been left with only a few followers. The English crossed the river and surprised him before he had time to put on his armour; he was murdered, rather than slain in battle. They cut ofi^ his head and sent it to Edward, who forwarded it to London, there to be placed on the Tower, with a crown of willow, in mockery of the prophecy of liis coronation. The struggle for liberty did not, however, end with this unfortunate prince. In spite of the sub- Chap. 1.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.t). 1216— 1S99. G99 mission of most of the Welsh chiefs, his brother David still kept his sword in his hand, and for six months he wandered a free man over his native wilds. At last he was betrayed by some unpa- triotic Welshmen, and with his wife and children carried in chains to the castle of Rhuddlan. In the month of September following, an English parliament assembled by Edward at Shrewsbury, pronounced the doom — not of the last champion of Welsh independence (for Madoc and others soon followed) — but of the last sovereign prince of one of the most ancient ruling families of Europe. He was sentenced — 1st. To be dragged by a horse to the place of execution, because he was a traitor to the king, who had made him a knight. 2ndly. To be hanged, because he had iriurdered the knights in Hawardine castle. 3rdly. To have his bowels burned, because he had done the deed on Palm Sunday, the season of Christ's passion. 4thly. To be quartered, and have his limbs hung up in dif- ferent places, because he had conspired the death of his lord the king in various parts. The sen- tence was executed to the letter, and it remained for many ages a revolting precedent in cases of high treason.* • Hemingf. — Chrou. Dunst. — Rymer, — Carte. Edward had far more patience and prudence than was common to the warriors and conquerors of his time ; and he devised wise means for re- taining possession of what he had gained by force. He did not move from Wales mitil more than a year after the death of Llewellyn, and he spent the greater part of that time in dividing the country into shires and hundreds, after the manner of England, and restoring order and tranquillity. Immediately after the affair of Bualth, he pub- lished a proclamation, offering peace to all the inhabitants, giving them at the same time assu- rances that they should continue to enjoy all their, lands, liberties, and properties as they had done before. He seems even to have lightened the taxes they paid to their native princes. Some of the ancient usages of the country were respected, but, generally speaking, the laws of England were introduced and enforced. He gave charters with great privileges to various trading companies in Rhuddlan, Caernarvon, Aberystwith, and other towns, with the view of encouraging trade and tempting the Welsh from their mountains, and their wild, free way of living, to a more social and submissive state. When his wife Eleanor bore him a son in the castle of Caernarvon, C'AEUi^AHVOJi CASIXli. he adroitly availed himself of that circum- stance, by presenting the infant Edward to the people as their countryman, and telling them that he who was bom among them should be their prince. Tlie Welsh chiefs expected that this " Prince of Wales" would have the separate government of their country, for Alphonso, an elder brother of the infant Edward, was then alive, and the acknowledged heir to the English crown. For some time they indulged in this dream of a restored independence, and professed, and pro- bably felt, a great attachment to the young Edward ; but Prince Alphonso died; the illusion was also dissipated by other circumstances, and, in the 700 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. sequel, the Welsh-born prince came to be regarded by his countrymen witli very different feelings from either pride or affection. King Edward strongly fortified the two castles of Caernarvon and Conway, and built some other fortresses, all which places he supplied with good garrisons and stores of provisions. To secure his conquest from the incursions of the people of Snowdon, he divided most of the lands at the foot of that mountain among his great English barons, and they again subdivided them among their officers and vassals, who held them in fief, and built other castles and towers for their defence. But these tyrannical lords and greedy retainers could not follow the example of the king's modera- tion ; and their cruel excesses and their insulting demeanour towards the Welsh, continually pro- voked hostilities, and kept alive feelings whicli frequently vented themselves in deeds of a savage enough character, though scarcely more lawless than the oppressions out of which they arose. After the subjugation of Wales, Edward's ambi- tion rested for about four years — three of which he passed almost wholly on the continent, where he was honourably engaged as umpire to settle a fresh dispute which had arisen between the kings of France, Arragon, and the house of Anjou, respect- ing the island of Sicily. His ability and conduct in this matter gained him a great increase of repu- tation among foreign princes ;* but the affairs of his own kingdom fell into disorder ; the English people complained that he neglected their in- terests to take charge of what did not concern them ; and the parliament at last refused him a supply which he had asked. The king then returned in haste, and, almost immediately after, he involved himself in the affairs of Scotland, which, with a few short intervals, entirely occupied him all the rest of his reign. Before proceeding, however, to this part of the story of the English king, it will be most conve- nient to resume our Scottish narrative from the point t:j which we brought it down in the last Book, t The reign of Alexander II., who succeeded to the throne in 1214, will not detain us long. After the death of John, the king of Scots continued to co-operate with Prince Louis of France and the confederated English barons ; and he himself, his whole army, and kingdom were, in consequence, excommunicated by the legate Gualo ; but the sen- tence seems to have been very little minded either by the people or their clergy. It was not even published by the latter till almost a twelvemonth had passed. In the mean time Louis made peace with Henry, without giving himself any concern about his ally. On this, Alexander, who was on his march into England, returned home. He soon after, however, effected his reconciliation both with the pope and the new king of England. On the * Uymer.— Mezeray, Hist. Franc— Giannone, Storin del Regno di Nnpoli. f See ante, p. 546. 1st of December, 1217, he received absolution from the delegates of Gualo at Tweedmouth ; and at the same time he surrendered to Henry the town of Carlisle, of which, although not of the castle, he had made himself master, and did homage for the earldom of Huntingdon and his other honours and possessions in England. On the 25th of June. 1221, Alexander married the Prin- cess Joan, Henry's eldest sister. A long period of uninterrupted peace and amity between the two countries was the consequence of these arrange- ments. Some insurrections or disturbances in the as yet only half-subdued provinces of Argyle, Caithness, Moray, and Galloway, all of which were successively suppressed, are almost the only events that mark the history of the northern kingdom for the next twelve or thirteen years. The most serious of these provincial commotions was th^ last, which broke out in Galloway in 1233, upon the death of Alan, constable of Scotland, the lord of that district, leaving three daughters, but no male heir. This Alan of Galloway occupies an important place in Scottish history, in consequence of his marriage with Margaret, the eldest of tlie three daughters, and eventual heiresses, of David, Earl of Huntingdon, the brother of William the Lion ; a connexion through which Dervorguil, his eldest daughter by that marriage, transmitted, as we shall presently find, to her descendants th6 lineal right of succession to the throne. On the death of their lord, the Gallowegians rose in re- sistance to the partition of their country among his legitimate heirs ; and, placing at their head Tho- mas, a bastard son of Alan, who was aided by an Irish chief named Gilrodh (or Gilderoy), they did not even wait to be attacked by the Scottish king, who was marching against them, but rushed forth from their moiuitains with Celtic fury, and pro- ceeded to ravage the adjacent country. They even contrived to surround Alexander, when he had got entangled among morasses, and he was in immiijent danger till the Earl of Ross came to his assistance, and, assaulting the rebels in the rear, discomfited them with great slaughter. This victory put an end to the insurrection for the pre- sent. The following year, however, Thomas and Gilrodh, who had both escaped to Ireland, re- turned with a fresh force, and renewed the war. But this second attempt was soon checked : the two leaders were pardoned on their surrender ; their Irish followers, crowding towards the Clyde, in the hope of being able to find a passage to their own country, fell into the hands of a band of the citizens of Glasgow, who are said to have beheaded them all, with the exception only of two, whom they sent to Edinburgh to be hanged and quartered there. Notwithstanding the alliance that connected Alexander and Henry, and the friendship and fre- quent intercourse in which they lived, — for the King of Scots made repeated visits to the English coast, — no final settlement of their claims upon each other had yet taken place. It was not till Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 701 September, 1237, that at a conference, held at York, it was agreed that Alexander, who, among other things, laid claim, by right of inheritance, to the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, should receive lands in the two former of the yearly value of two hundred pounds in full satisfaction of all his demands. The following year (4th March, 1238) Queen Joan, who had been long in a declining state, died at Canterbury. She had left no issue, and within little more than a year (15tli May, 1239) Alexander married again : his new queen was Mary, daughter of Ingelram de Couci, a great lord of Picardy. The chief bond that had attached the two kings was thus snapped ; and Mary de Couci, whose family had been distinguished for its opposition to tlie English interests, is, besides, supposed to have exercised an unfavourable influence over the mind of her husband. It was some years, however, be- fore the old friendship that had subsisted between him and Henry wholly gave way; even in 1242 we find Henry, when about to set out on his expe- dition to France, confiding to Alexander the care of the northern borders. But in this same year an event occurred which is especially memorable for the consequences attributed to it. An old feud had existed between the Bissets, a powerful family in the north of Scotland, and the House of Athole. At a tournament held at Haddington, Patrick, Earl of Athole, a youth distinguished for his knightly accomplishments, chanced to over- throw Walter Bisset. Within a day or two after the Earl of Athole was found murdered in the house where be lodged, which Avas also set on fire. Suspicion immediately fell upon the Bissets : the nobility, headed by the Earl of March, immediately raised an armed force, and demanded the life both of Walter and of his uncle William Bisset, the chief of the family. It appears pretty certain that the latter at least was innocent of any partici- pation in the murder : he urged, what seems to have been the fact, that he was not within fifty miles of Haddington when it was committed : he offered to maintain his innocence by the wager of battle ; and, still further to clear himself, he had sentence of excommunication against the murderers published both in his own chapel and in all the churches of the kingdom. It seems to have been against him, nevertheless, that the rage both of the connexions of Athole and of the people generally was chiefly turned ; the savage notions of the period could not view what had taken place in any other light than as a ground for hunting to death the whole kindred of the supposed criminal ; and the head of his family, as higher game, Avas naturally, in the spirit of this mode of considering the matter, pursued even with more eagerness than himself. The king, however, seems to have felt the injustice of the popular clamour ; he interposed for Bisset's protection ; and even the queen, ac- cording to Fordun, offered to make oath that he had no part in devising the crime ; that is to say, she Wus so convinced of his innocence that she was willing to come forward as one of his compur- gators, if the case should be submitted to thai mode of trial. The opposite party, however, seem to have declined submitting the question to decision either by compurgation or by combat : they insisted that it should be brought before a jury ; so that this affair is remarkable, in addition to its other points of interest, as a memorial of all the three great forms of judicial procedure in criminal cases which were then in use. Bisset refused the trial by jury, " on account of the malevolence of the people, and the implacable resentment of his ene- mies." At last, by the exertions of the king, it was agreed that he should be allowed to escape with his life on condition of forfeiting his estates and leaving the country. But he was still, not- withstanding, in the greatest danger from the secret determination of his enemies to have his blood ; and it was only by remaining in conceal- ment under the royal protection for about three months that lie was at last enabled to make his escape to England. Whatever may have been his injuries, he now certainly showed little noble- ness of character. Stung, possibly, with an indignant sense of the injustice lie had ex- perienced, he sought to avenge himself on his enemies at the expense not only of his coun- try but of its king, to whose zealous and ener- getic interposition in his favour he owed his life. It is said that he made his appeal to the king of England against the judgment that had been passed on him, on the plea that " Alexander, being the vassal of Henry, had no right to inflict such punish- ment on his nobles without the permission of his liege lord ;" and that, at the same time, he further endeavoured to excite Henry against the Scottish king by describing the latter as devoted to the interests of France, and quoting instances in which, as he affirmed, English traitors who had escaped from prison were received and harboured at the northern court.* These insidious representations may not im- probably have had some part, along v/ith other causes, in fomenting the hostile disposition which Henry not long after openly showed. At length, having fully arranged his plans, he proclaimed war against Alexander in 1244, and assembling a numerous army at Newcastle, prepared to invade Scotland. Some troops, which had been sent to the assistance of Alexander by his brother-in-law, John de Couci, had been intercepted by Henry, who had also organised a confederacy of Irish chiefs to aid him in his enterprise, by making a descent upon the Scottish coast ; but the country, nevertheless, prepared to make a vigorous resist- ance. The contemporary English historian, Mat- thew Paris, has given us a description of the force with which Alexander marched to oppose the invasion. " His army," he says, " was numerous and brave ; he had 1000 horsemen, tolerably mounted, though not, indeed, on Spanish or Italian horses; his infantry approaclied to 100,000, all • Hailcs,Ann. of Scot. i. 188— 190.— Tytler, Hist, of Scot. i. 4—6. 702 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. unanimous, all animated, by the exhortations of their clergy, and by confession, courageously to fight and resolutely to die in the just defence of their native land." The sword, however, was not drawn, after all ; a negotiation took place between the two kings, and a peace was concluded at New- castle (I3th August), by which Alexander agreed always to bear good faith and love to his dear and liege lord, Henry King of England, and never to enter into alliance with the enemies of Hem:y or of his heirs, unless they should unjustly aggrieve him.* The only event of the reign of Alexander which remains to be noticed, is a contest into which he entered, in 1248, with Angus, Lord of Argyle, with the view of compelling that chief to transfer to the Scottish crown the homage which he had been wont to render for certain of the western islands to the king of Norway. The position of Angus was a very difficult one; he was the vassal of both sovereigns, for different parts of his possessions ; and if he consented to the demand of Alexander, he was as sure to draw down upon himself the vengeance of the Norwegian king as he was to incur Alexander's hostility if he refused. In these circumstances he seems to have considered it the most expedient, perhaps also the fairest and most reasonable course, to decline moving from his existing engagements. Alexander's first expedition against him seems to have proved unsuccessful ; but he renewed the attempt the following year. He was engaged in this war when he was taken ill, and died in the island of Kerarry, near the Sound of Mull, on the 8th of July, 1249, in the fifty-first year of his age and thirty-fiifth of his reign. " Alex- ander," says Matthew Paris, " was a devout, up- right, and courteous person, justly beloved by all the English nation, no less than by his own sub- jects." It seems to have been to this general regard entertained for him by the English nobility and people that Henry's abandonment of his scheme of invading Scotland a few years before was in part owing ; for it is said that the peace of Newcastle was brought about by the mediation of the Earl of Cornwall and other noblemen. Henry's barons could feel little pride or interest in support- ing the projects of their own imbecile sovereign against the Scottish king ; and some of them also, no doubt, still remembered their old association of arms with Alexander against Henry and the tyrant, his father. Alexander, like most of the other Scottish kings of those times, stood up throughout his reign for the independence of the national church with great spirit. Although a favourer of the clergy, however, he does not appear to have gone into any extravagant expenditure for the aggrandizement of their order. He founded, in- * Nisi DOS iojuste gravent. Dr. Lingard describes this treaty as " an arrangement by which, though he eluded the express recogni- tion of feuciiil dependence, he (Alexander) seems to have conceded to Henry the substance of his demand." In fact, " the express recognition of feudal dependence" was not at all eluded by Alex- ander ; it was made in the most distinct terms, but it was not made for the kiufidom of Scotland, and therefore it was Henry, not Alex- ander, who conceded the point in dispute. deed, no fewer than eight monasteries for the Dominicant or Black Friars ; and Boece supposes that his partiality to these mendicants may have been occasioned by his having seen their founder, St. Dominic, in France, about the year 1211. " The sight of a living saint," observes Lord Hailes, "may have made an impression on his young mind ; but perhaps he considered the men- dicant friars as the cheapest ecclesiastics: his revenues could not supply the costly institution of Cistertians and canons regular, in which his great- grandfather, David I., took delight." Alexander was succeeded on the throne by his only son, Alexander III., who was born at Roxburgh on the 4th of September, 1241, and was now con- sequently only in his ninth year. There was reason to apprehend that the King of England might en- deavour to take advantage of this occasion to renew his attempt against the independence of the king- dom ; and, therefore, by the patriotic advice of William Comyn, Earl of Menteith, no time was lost in proceeding to the coronation of the young king. The ceremony took place at Scone on the 13th of July, the Bishop of St. Andrew's knighting the king as well as placing the crown on his head. Some of the other forms that were observed are curiously illustrative of the chequered intermixture of the two opposite colours of nationality now con- tending with one another in Scotland — the old Celtic spirit and usages, and the recently imported Anglo-Norman civilization. After the coronation oath, for instance, had been administered to the Iting both in Latin and in French, the language of the nobility, he was placed upon the sacred stone of destiny, which stood before the cross in the eastern end of the church, and while he there sate, with the crown on his head and the sceptre in his hand, a grey-headed Highland bard, stepping forth from the crowd, addressed to him a long genea- logical recitation in the Gaelic tongue, in which, beginning, " Hail Alexander, king of Albion, son of Alexander, son of William, son of David," &c., he carried up the royal pedigree through all its generations to the legendary Gathelus, who married Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh, and was the con- temporary of Moses. It may be doubted if Alex- ander understood a word of this savage psean, but he is recorded to have expressed his gratification by liberally rewarding the venerable rhapsodist. It would serve no useful end to load our pages with any detail of the intricate, and in great part very imperfectly intelligible struggles of adverse factions that make up the history of the kingdom during this as during every other minority in those times. It is sufficient to state that at the head of one of the two great contending parties was the powerful family of the Comyns, of which name it is said there were at this time in Scotland no fewer than thirty-two knights, several of whom were barons ; the Baliols, among others, were adherents of this party : among their most distinguished opponents were the Earl of March and Dunbar, the Earl of Strathern, the Earl of Carrick, tJie Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 703 Bruces, the Steward of Scotland, and Alan Dur- ward, who held the office of Great Justiciary, and was also one of the most distinguished soldiers of the age. But many of the nohility were con- stantly changing sides, according to the course and apparent chances of the contest. The king of Eng- land also soon found a fair pretence for interfering in Scottish affairs by giving his daughter Margaret in marriage to Alexander, according to an agree- ment which had been entered into soon after the births of the prince and the princess. Although neither party was yet quite eleven years old, the nuptials were celebrated at York with great mag- nificence on the 26th of December, 1251. Mat- thew Paris assures us that six hundred oxen, given by the Archbishop of York to furnish part of the marriage feast, were all consumed upon the first course! Men were heroic eaters in those days, certainly; but it will probably be admitted that the historian has judged prudently in not entering into further particulars, lest, as he says, his nar- rative "might become hyperbolical, and produce irony in the hearts of the absent." On this occasion Alexander, according to cus- tom, did homage to Henry for his English posses- sions ; but when the latter demanded homage also for the kingdom of Scotland, the young Scottish sovereign, with a spirit and firmness remarkable for his years, said, " that he had been in- vited to York to marry the princess of England, not to treat of affairs of state ; and that he could not take a step so important without the knowledge and approbation of his parliament." It was agreed, however, that Henry, in consideration apparently of his natural interest in the welfare of his son-in- law, should send a person in whom he placed con- fidence to Scotland, who might act in concert "with the Scottish guardians of the young king. He sent, accordingly, Geoffrey of Langley, keeper of the royal forests, a man who had already acquired the worst reputation in England by the severity with which he exercised the powers of his odious office ; but the Scottish barons, finding his inso- lence intolerable, soon compelled him to leave the country. In 1255, we find the English king despatching a new mission to Scotland, under pretence of in- quiring into certain grievances complained of by the queen, his daughter. At this time Robert de Ros and John de Baliol, two noblemen of the Comyn party, appear to have been at the head of the government under the name of Regents. Queen Margaret complained that she was confined in the castle of Edinburgh, — a sad and solitary place, — without verdure, and, by reason of its vicinity to the sea, unwholesome ; that she was not permitted to make excursions through the kingdom, nor to choose her female attendants ; and that, although both she and her husband had by this time com- pleted their fourteenth year, they were still excluded from each other's society. By a scheme concerted between Henry and the party opposed to the Comyns, the Earl of March, Dursvard, and other leaders of that party soon after this contrived to surprise the castle of Edinburgh, and to get pos- session of the king and queen. They were im- mediately conveyed to the north of England, where Henry was with an army ; and at last, in a meet- ing of the two kings at Roxburgh (20th Septem- ber, 1255), a new plan of government was settled, to subsist for seven years, that is, till Alexander should have attained the age of twenty-one, by which all the Comyns were deprived of office, and the Earls of Fife, Dunbar, Strathern, and Carrick, Alexander the Steward of Scotland, Robert de Bruce, Alan Durward, and other principal persons of the same faction, were appointed regents of the kingdom and guardians of the king and queen. This settlement appears to have been maintained for about two years; but, in 1257, a counter revo- lution was efiected through the junction with the Comyns of Mary de Couci, Alexander's mother, who had married John de Brienne, son of the titular king of Jerusalem, and had lately returned from abroad, animated with all her old hereditary hatred of the English influence, and strengthened both by her new alliance and by the favour and countenance of the pope. The lately expelled faction now suddenly rose in arms, seized the king and queen at Kinross, and so completely carried every thing before them that the principal adherents of the English interest all found it necessary to save themselves by instant flight. There can be no doubt that, with whatever justice or by whatever means, the Comyns contrived to make theirs appear to be the patriotic cause, and to gain, at least for the moment, the popular voice. They probably made use of the old cry of independence, and worked upon the sensitive national jealousy of England with good effect. Even the king, now that he was in their hands, was of course com- pelled to act along with them, and to submit to be their instrument. They put him at the head of their forces, and marched towards the English border, where it would appear that the adherents of the late government had rallied and collected their strength. No contest of arms, however, took place ; the dispute was eventually settled by nego- ciation ; and it was agreed that while the chief power should remain in the hands of the Comyns and the queen -dowager, to six regents of this party should be added four of the members of the late government. Mary de Couci and her husband were placed at the head of this new regency. The coalition thus formed seems to have sub- stantially subsisted till the king came of age, and took the management of affairs into his own hands, although, shortly after the new government was esta- blished, the Comyns lost their great leader, Walter, Earl of Menteith, poisoned, as was suspected, by his countess : the unhappy woman was believed to have been instigated to the commission of this crime by a passion she had formed for one John Russell, an Englishman of obscure birth according to Boece, whom she soon afterwards married. In 1260, on the Queen of Scots becoming pregnant, she and her 704 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV, husband were permitted to go to her father in Lon- don, Henry engaging that neither the king nor his attendants should be required to treat of state affairs during their visit, and also making oath that he would not detain either the queen or her child if her delivery should take place in England. In the event of the death of Alexander, certain of the Scottish bishops and nobles were appointed to receive the child from the hands of Henry, and to convey it to Scotland ; and in the list of these appear the names of the principal persons of both the great national parties. In February, 1261, the Queen of Scots was delivered at Windsor of a daughter, who was named Margaret, and through whom, as she was her father's first-born, his short line was destined to have its latest prolon- gation. The year 1263 is the most memorable in the reign of Alexander. The Earl of Ross and other northern chiefs had, at the instigation of the Scottish king, invaded the Hebrides, or Western Islands, which were under the dominion of Norway, and had signalised their descent, according to the Norwegian chroniclers, by the most frightful ex- cesses of savage warfare. Haco, the Norwegian king, immediately prepared for vengeance. Having collected a great fleet, he sailed from Herlover in the beginning of July. The Orkney Islands, which although formerly belonging to Norway, had been lately compelled to acknowledge the sove- reignty of Scotland, were his first destination. Anchoring in the bay of Ronaldsvoe (now Ronald- say), the formidable armament remained there for some weeks, during which the inhabitants both of the islands and of the opposite main-land were compelled to supply it with provisions and to pay tribute. It is recoi'ded in the Norse chronicle of the expe- dition, that while the fleet lay at Ronaldsvoe " a great darkness drew over the sun, so that only a little ring was bright round his orb;" and it is found that the remarkable phenomenon of an annular eclipse must have been seen at Ronaldsvoe this year on the 5th of August. Such confirma- tions seem to revivify the long-buried past, and make its history read like a narrative of events of our own day. Haco now sailed for the south, and being joined as he proceeded by his allies, Magnus, the Lord of Man, and various Hebridean chiefs, he found himself at the head of a fleet of above a hundred sail, most of them vessels of consider- able size. Dividing his force, he sent one power- ful squadron to ravage the Mull of Cantyre ; another, to make a descent on the Isle of Bute. The latter soon compelled the Scottish garrison of the castle of Rothsay, in that island, to surrender. In the mean time Haco himself entered the Frith of Clyde, and anchored in the Sound of Kilbran- nan, between the main-land and the Isle of Arran, Additional accessions had by this time increased his fleet to a hundred and sixty sail. The Scottish government now attempted to avert the danger by negotiation : the abandonment of all claim to the Hebrides was ofl'ered by Alexander ; but to these terms Haco would not listen. Some time however was thus gained, which was in various ways advan - tageous to the Scots and detrimental to their inva- ders. It allowed the former to improve their pre- parations for defence ; it embarrassed the latter by a growing difficulty in obtaining provisions, and it exposed their fleet, upon a strange coast, to the hazards of the stormy season of the year that was fast approaching. Many of the inhabitants of the neighbouring country meanwhile had retreated for safety to the islets in Ijoch-Lomond. There, how- ever, they were soon attacked by a division of the invading force under the command of the King of Man, who, first sailing to the head of Loch-Long, and plundering the shores as they passed, then dragged their boats across the neck of land that divides the two lakes. " The persevering shielded warriors of the thrower of the whizzing spear," sings a Norwegian celebrator of the exploit, " drew their boats across the broad isthmus. Our fearless troops, the exactors of contribution, with flaming brands, wasted the populous islands in the lake and the mansions around its winding bays." A devastating expedition into Stirlingshire followed under another chief. But now the heavens began to fight against them. One gale destroyed ten of their ships that lay in Loch -Long; and soon after, on Monday, the 1st of October, a tempest of tremen- dous violence from the south-west attacked the main squadron lying under the command of Haco in the Clyde, and tearing nearly every ship from its moorings, after casting several of them on shore, drove the rest, mostly dismasted or otherwise disabled, up the channel. The Scottish forces collected in the neighbourhood immediately fell upon the crews of the vessels that were stranded ; but the Norwegians defended themselves with great valour ; and assistance having been sent to them by Haco, when the wind had somewhat abated, they succeeded in driving off their assail- ants. As soon as daylight appeared, Haco, who had collected his shattered ships off the village of Largs, landed at the head of a strong force for the protection of two transports that had been among the vessels cast ashore the preceding afternoon, and which the Scots had attempted to plunder during the night. Tliis movement may be said to have commenced what is called the battle of Largs. The Scottish army, led by Alexander, tiie Steward of Scotland, now came down from the surrounding high grounds ; it consisted of a numerous body of foot, together with a troop of 1500 cavalry, who are described as being armed from head to heel, and as mounted on Spanish horses, Avhich were also clothed in complete armour. The handful of Norwegians, drawn up in three divisions, one of which occupied a small hill, while the other tW'O were stationed on the shore, were greatly out- numbered by this force ; and Haco, as the engage- ment was about to commence, was, although with much difficulty, prevailed upon by his officers to row back to the ships for further aid. But he had scarcely got on board when another furious storm Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. '05 came on, and rendered the landing of more men for the present impossible. In the mean time, the Scots had attacked the most advanced body of the Norwegians, who were soon obliged to fly in con- fnsion. The rout immediately became general; numbers of the Norwegians threw themselves into their boats and attempted to regain their ships ; the rest were driven along the shore amid showers of arrows from their pursuing enemy. Still they repeatedly rallied, and, turning round upon their pursuers, made an obstinate stand at every point where the ground favoured them. In this way, although still galled by the Scots hovering on their rear, they seem to have at length converted their flight into a slow and comparatively orderly retreat. Towards night, a re-enforcement from the ships liaving, notwithstanding the storm, wliich still con- tinued, effected a landing by extraordinary efforts, the foreigners, if we may trust to their own ac- count, even made a general attack upon the Scot- tish army, and, after a short resistance, succeeded in driving them back. They then re- embarked in their boats and regained the ships. But on the water the elements had been doing their destructive work even with more effect than human rage on land. Haco's magnificent navy was now reduced to a few shattered vessels ; most of tliose which the wrath of the former tempests had spared, that of this disastrous day had dashed to pieces, and their fragments covered the beach. The Nor- wegian king sailed away to the island of Arran, and from thence through a course of stormy wea- ther to Orkney, which he did not reach till the 29th of October. He proceeded no farther on his homeward voyage. An illness seized upon him, brought on probal)ly by mental agony as much as by bodily exposure and fatigue, vuidor which he lingered for some weeks, and at last expired on the 1 5th of December.* The battle of Lnrgs is the great event of the reign of Alexander. The Scottish historians make 24,000 Norwegians to have fiillen in the slaughter of that day ; and although there can be no doubt that this is an enormous exaggeration, still the overthrow sustained by the foreigners was complete, and the victory was among the most important the Scots ever won. It was their last conflict with the pirate kings. After negotiations which lasted for nearly three years, a peace was concluded with Norway, by which both the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, and all other islands in the western and southern seas of which that power might have hitherto held or claimed the dominion, were made over in full sovereignty to Scotland. Tlie Western Islands were never afterwards withdrawn from the Scottish rule. There is little more to relate under the reign of Alexander. In some transactions relating to eccle- • Sou " The Nonvegian Accmnt of H.ico's Expeilition ai-ainst Scotland," in IsUimiic and Kn^'lisli, with notes; by the Uev. .Tames Jolinstone, A.M.; 12mo., 1782; and "Observations on the Nor- wifjian Kxiiedilion a^'ainst Scotland, in the year 12(53, and on some previous events which gave occasion to that War," by John Dillon, l-",s<i , in " Transactions of the Societvofthc Antiijuarics of Scotland," vol. ii., 4to. Kdin. 1823, pp.350— 407". VOL. I. siastical affairs in his later years, he maintained the independence of the national church with great firmness, and at the same time, with equal spirit and prudence, kept in check the encroaching ambition of the clergy. He was present with his queen and many of his nobility at the coronation of Edward I., in 1274, and on that occasion did homage, according to custom, for his English pos- sessions. In 1278, he performed this ceremony a second time, declaring, according to the record preserved in the Close Rolls, that he became the liegeman of his lord, King Edward of England, against all peoi)le. This was substantially the same acknowledgment that Alexander II. had made to Henry III. in 1244. It was no admis- sion of Edward's claim of feudal superiority over Scotland, as is conclusively proved, if there could be any doubt on the subject, by the sequel of the record, which expressly states that Edward " re- ceived it, saving his right and claim to homage for the kingdom of Scotland, when it shall please him to bring it forward." The slight notice taken by history of the course of events in Scotland for twenty years after the battle of Largs, is the best evidence of the tran- quillity and happiness of the country. We can collect little more than the general fact that the government of Alexander, after he took the ma- nagement of affairs into his own hands, made him universally beloved by his people, and that peace and plenty blessed the land in his time. No foreign enemy assailed or threatened it ; and the turbulence of its domestic factions seems also to have given way under the firm and judicious rule of the king. The friendly relations, too, that were maintained with England, and the intercourse that subsisted between the two countries, must have been highly favourable botli to the increase of wealth and the general improvement of the useful arts and the habits of social life in Scotland. But clouds and storms were soon to succeed this sunshine. Alexander had lost his queen, Margaret of Eng- land, in 1275; but, besides the daughter already mentioned, she had left him a son, named Alex- ander, born at Jedburgh on the 21st of January, 1264 : David, a younger son, had died in his boyhood. In 1281 the Prhicess Margaret was married to Eric, king of Norway ; and the follow- ing year the Prince of Scotland, now a youth of eighteen, was united to Margaret, daughter of Guy, Earl of Flanders. At this time the king himself, as yet only in his forty-first year, might reasonably have counted on a much longer reign ; the alliances which he had formed for his children prumiscd to enable him to transmit his sceptre to a line of descendants ; and the people seemed entitled to look forward to the continuance of the present peace and prosperity of the country for many years. By a singular succession of cala- mities all these fair hopes were, one after the other, rapidly extinguished. First, in the latter part of the year 1283, died the Queen of Norway, leaving only an infant daughter. The death of Queen 2 a 706 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Margaret was followed by that of her brother the Prince of Scotland, on the 28th of January, 1284. No time was lost by Alexander in taking the measures for the settlement of the succession which these events rendered necessary. On the 5th of February the parliament was assembled at Scone, when the estates of the kingdom solemnly bound themselves, failing Alexander and any children he might yet have, to acknowledge for their sovereign the Norwegian princess, — "the Maiden of Nor- way," as she is called by the old writers. The following year (1 5th April, 1285) Alexander mar- ried Joleta, the young and beautiful daughter of the Count de Dreux. The nuptials were cele- brated at Jedburgh with great magnificence and much popular rejoicing, the nation anticipating from this new union the speedy restoration of all those prospects which the two recent deaths had overclouded. But death had not yet done all his work. Within a year after his marriage, on the 16th of March, 1286, as Alexander was riding in a dark night between Kinghorn and Burnt Island, on the northern shore of the Frith of Forth, his horse, on which he had galloped forward from his attendants, stumbled with him over a high clifl', at a place now known by the name of King's Wood End, when he was killed on the spot. The loss of this excellent king would in any circumstances have been a heavy calamity to his country ; but the blow could not have been received at a more unfortunate moment than the present. A long minority was now the least evil the king- dom had to dread, and that evil was certain if a worse should not take its place. The life of an infant, in a foreign country, alone stood between the nation and all the sure confusion and miseries of a disputed succession. The first proceeding of the Estates w^as to appoint a regency, at a meeting held at Scone on the 11th of April. But scarcely, it would appear, had the throne of Queen Margaret been thus set up, when it began to be undermined by plots and secret treason. The rule of a female sovereign was new. to the country ; the attempt to transmit his crown to a daughter had already failed in England, even when made in the most favour- able circumstances, by Henry I.; there was every- thing in the situation of the infant Maiden of Norway to call forth, in its utmost strength, all both of prejudice and of reason that opposed itself to so rigid and extreme an application of the prin- ciple of legitimacy. Indeed, it must be confessed that the refined view of the rule of succession upon which Margaret's title rested was much better suited to times in which men have been long and thoroughly habituated to the advantages of regular government, than to the circumstances of that rude age and turbulent people ; and it was therefore not to be expected that it should have been at once generally and unresistingly acqui- esced in. Surprise has sometimes been expressed that when the Scottish parliament, in 1284, settled the crown upon Margaret in failure of other children that might be born to Alexander, it did not go farther, and appoint who was to succeed in default of Margaret and her issue ; but in truth it was the undetermined state in which this last point was left, that was likely most effectually to contribute to secure Margaret's succession. The main strength of her cause lay in there being no other certain heir to the throne if she was set aside. The choice was between her and a disputed suc- cession. Had it not been for this, it is more than probable that the settlement in her favour would have been wholly disregarded after Alexander's death, -with whatever solemnity it might have been made. The next heir, if a male of mature age, and a native of the coimtry, would at once have been preferred to the foreign female infant. Even as matters stood, there was, it would seem, one party which had already formed the design of displacing Queen Margaret in favour of its own chief. Robert de Brus, or Bruce, lord of Annandale and Cleve- land, was the son of Isabella, one of the three daughters of David, earl of Huntingdon, the brother of William the Lion. He and a number of his adherents, including some of the principal of the Scottish nobility, held a meeting on the 20th of September, 1286, at Turnberry Castle, in Ayrshire, the seat of Bruce's son, Robert Bruce, called Earl of Carrick in right of his wife, and there entered into an agreement, by which they bound themselves to adhere to one another on all occasions, and against all persons, saving their allegiance to the king of England, and to him who should gain the kingdom of Scotland as the right- ful heir of the late king.* The intention of the parties to this bond would appear to have been to obtain the crown for Bruce, by the aid of the king of England, whom, with that view, they were pre- pared to acknowledge as Lord Paramount of Scot- laud. Edward however had, for the present, ano- ther scheme of his own, with which this of theirs could not be suffered to interfere. It is doubtful in what manner, or on what pre- text, Edward first found an opportunity of inter- posing in the affairs of the northern kingdom. It is known that two of the chief members of the regency, the Earl of Buchan and the Earl of Fife, died towards the close of the year J 288 (the Earl of Fife was murdered) ; and that from this time violent divisions arose in the government, and all things began to tend to confusion and anarchy. One account is, that the Estates of Scotland now made a formal application to the English king for his advice and mediation towards composing the troubles of the kingdom. But this statement does not rest upon any certain authority. In the end of the year 1289, however, Eric, king of Norway, opened a negotiation with Edward on the affairs of his infant daughter and her kingdom ; and at Edward's request the Scottish regency sent three of its members to take part in a solemn deliberation which was appointed to be held at Salisbury. It was here agreed that the young queen should be • Tytler, Hist, of Scot. i. 6.5. Chap. L] CIVIL AJ^D MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—13.99. 707 immediately conveyed either to her own dominions or to England, Edward engaging in the latter case to deliver her, on demand, to the Scottish nation, provided that good order should be previously esta- blished in Scotland, so that she might reside there with safety to her person. No mention was made in this convention of an English match for Mar- garet ; but it appears that Edward had already obtained a dispensation from Rome for her marriage to her cousin, his eldest son. A report to that effect was very soon after spread in Scotland ; whereupon the Estates immediately assembled at Bridgeham, a village on the Tweed, and from thence addressed a letter to the English king, ex- pressing in warm terms their gratification at the rumour that had reached them, and beseeching him to inform them if it was true. "If it is," they concluded, "we on our part heartily consent to the alliance, not doubting that you will agree to such reasonable conditions as we shall propose to your council." They wrote at the same time to the King of Norway, pressing him to send his daughter instantly to England. Some months after this (on the 18th of July, 1290,) a treaty was concluded at the same place, by which everything in regard to the proposed marriage was finally arranged. Many stipulations were made for securing the integrity and inde- pendence of the Scottish kingdotn ; and all points, both of substance and of form, relating to that matter, were regulated with elaborate scrupulosity. But the event of a few weeks rendered all the painstaking and oathtaking of no effect. The Maiden of Norway having at length set sail for Britain, fell sick on her passage, and landing on one of the Orkney islands, died there, about the end of September : she was in her eighth year. The fatality which seemed to have pursued the royal family of Scotland for about a century past was certainly very remarkable. Within that period it will be found that William the Lion and his pos- terity had made no fewer than ten marriages, and yet there was not now a descendant of that king in existence. Of these ten marriages so many as six produced no issue ; the remaining four pro- duced only four males and five females ; and all these nine persons were now dead. It probably would not be possible to find in history another case of ten related households, as we may call them, and these forming the entire branch to which they belonged, being thus swept away, in so short a space of time, without leaving a vestige behind them, unless by the sudden ravages of war, or pestilence, or some similar widely destructive casualty.* • As tliis is a curious fiict in statistics, as well as in history, wo subjoin a list of the ten marriages, with the issue of eacli : — A.D. 1186.. William the Lion (a son and three daughters). 1221.. Alexander II. (none). 1221. .Margaret, daughter of William the Lion, (none). 1225. .Isabella, ditto fnonel. 1235. .Marjory, ditto (none). 1239. .Alexander 11., second time (a son). 1242. .Alexander III. (two sons and a daughter). 1281. .Margaret, daughter of Alexander III. (a daughter). 1282.. Alexander, sou of Alexander III. (none). 1285..Ale.iander III., second time (none). In this failure of the line of William the lion, the heir to the crown was to be sought for among the descendants of his younger brother, David, Earl of Huntingdon. David, besides a son, who died without issue, left three daughters ; the eldest, Margaret, married to Alan of Galloway; tlie second, Isabella, married to Robert Bruce ; the third, Ada, married to Henry Hastings. Marga- ret's eldest daughter, Dervorgoil (she had no son), married John de Baliol, Lord of Bernard Castle, by whom she had a son, John Baliol ; Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick in right of his wife, was the son of Isabella ; John Hastings was the son of Ada. Baliol, therefore, was the grandson of the eldest daughter of David, Earl of Huntingdon ; Bruce and Hastings were the sons of his two younger daughters. According to the rule of descent as now established, no question about who had the right of succession could be raised in such a case ; the descendant of the elder daughter, how- ever remote, would be prefenred to the descendant of the younger daughter, however near ; and, in- deed, even in that age this rule, which flows directly and necessarily from the admission of the principle of primogeniture, seems to liave been all but universally recognised by the authorities on this part of the law. Still the point was not so distinctly settled that a debate might not be raised on it, or that, supported by popular or party zeal, the one claim might not be put forward, and asserted to be that of law and right, with as much plausibility to the general understanding, and as fair a chance of success, as the other. When the death of the queen first became known, it was probably doubtful how many com- petitors might start up for the vacant throne, or to what extent the controversy might be entangled by their conflicting claims. It was certain, how- ever, that a controversy there would be, and in all likelihood a long and fierce one ; and, also, that a state of circumstances had arisen in which every- thing was to be feared for the national independ- ence from the ambition of the English king, and the ascendancy in Scottish affairs his artful ma- nagement and the course of events had already given him. The news, therefore, spread universal grief and consternation throughout Scotland. It seemed the heaviest as it was the last of the suc- cession of sudden strokes of misfortune that had fallen upon the country, and the consummation of the public calamities. According to one account, it was now that the embassy to Edward, soliciting his advice and media- tion, was sent by the estates of Scotland. Erom what immediately followed, it does appear probable that some such application may have been now made by the Scots. Upon this supposition we can most easily account for the invitation which Edward addressed to their nobility and clergy to meet him at Norham, a town on the English side of the Tweed, and the readiness with which they obeyed his summons. The conference took place on the 10th of May, 1291. Here Edward dis- 708 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. tinctly announced llial he proposed to regulate the succession to the throne of Scotland as superior and L)rd paramount of that kingdom, and insisted upon their recognition of his title as such before any other business should be proceeded with. Little doubt can be entertained that many of the persons present were perfectly prepared for all this ; but it took a part of the assembly l)y surprise; and at length one voice ventured to respond, that no answer could be made to the demand that had been addressed to them while the throne was vacant. " By holy Edward !" cried the English king, " By holy Edward ! whose crown I wear, I will vin- dicate my just rights or perish in the attempt!" At last the meeting was adjourned till the morrow, and from that day, on the Scots requesting a longer delay, it was further adjourned to the 2nd of June. Edward had already issued writs to his barons and other military tenants in the northern counties, commanding them to assemble at Norham on the 3id of the same month with horses, arms, and all their powers. The meeting of the 2nd of June took place on a green plain called Holywell Haugh, near Upsett- lington, on the north bank of the Tweed, opposite to Norham Castle, and within the territory of Scot- land. Among those present were no fewer than eight persons who, under various titles, laid claim to the crown. One of these was Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale. Turning first to him, Robert Burnel, Bishop of Bath andChancellor of England, demanded " Whether he acknowledged Edward as Lord Paramount of Scotland ? and whether he was willing to ask and receive judgment from him in that character?" Bruce, says the official record of the proceedings, definitively, expressly, publicly, and openly, declared his assent. The other seven competitors afterwards did the same. Next day, John Baliol and another competitor, making ten in all, appeared, and followed their example. " The whole form of this business," as Lord Hailes re- marks, " appears to have been preconcerted." There were probably few of the assembled nobility and clergy that were not the sworn adherents of one or other of the competitors ; they were divided into the Bruce party and the Baliol party; and they were of course severally ready to follow in whatever direction tlieir chiefs might lead them. With regard, again, to the two great claimants of the crown themselves, if either consented to sub- mit to the arbitration of Edward, it is obvious that his rival had no alternative but to acquiesce in the same mode of deciding the question, unless he w^ere prepared to resign all hope and chance of success. The true exidanation, however, of Baliol's absence on the first day of the meeting probably is, that he sought by this piece of management, perhaps in concert with Edward, to throw upon his opponent the odium of taking the first step ia the unpopular course of thus surrendering the national indepen- dence. There is reason to believe that, whether swayed by bis view of the justice of the case or by other considerations, Edward had, from the first, determined that Baliol should have the crown, and that all the anxious and protracted deliberation he afi'ected to give to the subject was merely so much hollow and hypocritical formality. Of the other claimants who presented tliemselves along with Baliol and Bruce, most seem to have been brouglit forward only to tlirow a greater air of perplexity over the case, and to give some chance of dividing any opposition that might eventually be made to the successful candidate, or even, it may be, with the object of leaving the question of the succession to the Scottish crown still open, if any casualty should remove either of the two principal com- petitors before Edward's designs for the complete subjection of the country should be matured ; for Edward's ultimate aim certainly went far beyond the assertion and maintenance of a mere feudal superiority over Scotland. The whole course of his conduct leaves no room to doubt that he in- tended to treat Scotland as he had treated Wales, that is to say, to make it, to all intents and purposes, a part of the dominions of the English crown. This union of the whole island under one sceptre was evidently the grand scheme upon w hich he had set his heart, and which inspired and directed his whole policy. At first he hoped to accomplish his object, in so far as Scotland was concerned, by the marriage of his eldest son with the queen of that country; when the death of Margaret de- feated tliis arrangement, he could not for the present proceed to the attaimiient of his end by so direct a path ; but that end was still the same, and was never lost sight of for a moment. At this very meeting at Norham, the English chancellor pro- tested, in the name and in the presence of the king his master, " that, although he now asserted his right of superiority with the view of giving judgment to the competitors, yet that he meant not to relinquish his right of property in the kingdom of Scotland, acclaimable hereafter in fit manner and time convenient."* And the manner in whicli he treated Baliol after he had set him upon the throne as clearly indicates the same purpose, and indeed is only intelligible on that supposition. All this has been very strangely overlooked by some of the writei's of this part of our history. The proceedings at Norham, on the 3rd of June, were terminated by an unanimous agreement that a body of 104 commissioners should be appointed to examine the cause and report to Edward ; forty being named by Baliol, the same number by Bruce, and the remainder by Edward himself, who was, moreover, empowered to add to the commission as many more persons as he chose. On the 11 th of the same month, the regents of Scotland made a solemn surrender of the kingdom into the hands of the English king, and the keepers of castles made a like surrender of their trusts ; in both cases, however, on the condition that Edward should, make full restitution in two months from the datej of his award in the cause of the succession. Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus, alone * Fjeik'ia ii. 551. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS : A.D. 1216—1399. 709 BALIOL Sl'KRENUEKING THE CeOWN TO EdWAKD. — OpiC. refused to deliver the castles of Dundee and Forfar, which he held, ^vithout an obligation to indemnify him from Edward and all the competitors. It was found expedient to comply with the terms thus insisted upon by " the only Scotsman," observes Lord Hailes, " who acted with integrity and spirit on this trial of national integrity and spirit." Ou the 15th of the same month Biuce and his son, Baliol, and many of the principal Scottish barons, swore fealty to Edward. One churchman only, the Bishop of Sodor, presented himself to perform the disgraceful ceremony. The peace of the King of England, as Lord Paramount of Scotland, was then proclaimed, and the assembly finally adjourned to the 2nd of August.* Edward himself, in the mean time, made a progress through Scotland, in the course of which he visited Edinburgh, Dun- fermline, St. Andrew's, Kinghorn, Linlithgow, and Stirling ; wherever he appeared, calling upon per- sons of all ranks, from bishops and earls to bur- • Hailes. i. 242—252. gesses, to sign the rolls of homage as his vassals. Elsewhere officers were appointed to receive the oaths ; whoever refused to take them being ordered to be seized and imprisoned. When the commissioners met at Berwick, and proceeded to business in the presence of Edward, on the 3rd of August, twelve claimants of the crown in all presented themselves. Soon after- wards a thirteenth was added, in the person of King Eric of Norway. All of them, how- ever, with the exception of Baliol, Bruce, and Hastings, withdrew their pretensions before any decision was pronounced. The rest, in fact, — some of them descendants from illegitimate daughters of William the Lion, others alleging a descent from some earlier king, — had none of them any ground whatever on which to come in before the posterity of David, Earl of Huntingdon. The final decision of the cause did not take place till the following year. On the 2nd of June, 1292, the Commissioners reported that there ap- 710 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. peared to be a diversity of opinion among the fourscore Scottish members of their body, by whose advice, if unanimous, it would have been the duty of the king to have regulated his conduct ; and they therefore declined to give any advice without hearing the better judgment of the prelates, nobility, and other wise men of England. On this, the further consideration of the question was ap- pointed by Edward to take place in a parliament which he summoned to meet at Berwick on the 15th of October. Here Baliol and Bruce were fully heard in defence of their respective claims ; upon which the assembly came unanimously to the conclusion " that by the laws and usages of both kingdoms, in every heritable succession, the more remote in one degree lineally descended from the eldest sister, was preferable to the nearer in degree issuing from the second sister ;" — thus declaring, by implication, against the claim of Bruce as opposed to that of Baliol. In another meeting, on the 6th of November, Edward formally pro- nounced his decision "that Bruce should take nothing in the competition with Baliol." Bruce and Hastings now demanded each a third of the kingdom, on the ground that it was a divisable inheritance ; but this doctrine the assembly unani- mously rejected. Finally, on the I7th of the eame month, in the great hall of the castle of Berwick, Edward gave judgment, " that John Baliol should have seisine of the kingdom of Scotland." But, again, at this, the termination, as a year and a half before, at the commencement of these proceedings, the English king solemnly protested "that tlie judgment he had thus given should not impair his claim to the -property of Scotlapd." On the 19th the regents of Scotland and the governors of castles were ordered to surrender their respective trusts to the new king ; and the same day the great seal that had been used by the regency was broken into four parts, and the pieces deposited in the Treasury of England, "in testimony, to future ages, of England's right of superiority over Scot- land. " The next day Baliol swore fealty to Edward at Norham. On the 30Lh (St. Andrew's day) he was solemnly crowned at Scone. Soon after he passed into England, and on the 26th of December did homage to Edward for his kingdom at Newcastle : and thus finished the first act of this extraordinary drama. Events that vuiexpectedly arose now called away the English king to another scene. Edward's progress at home had not been viewed without serious alarm abroad. The subjugation of Wales and Scotland, by leaving him master of the whole island of Great Britain, rendered him most for- midable to all his continental neighbours, and to none so dangerous as to France, where there was a source of dissension ever open, and where the English had a footing that enabled them at all times to carry the war into the heart of the country. On former occasions, several of the French kings had given countenance and encouragement, — if little or nothing more, — to both Scots and Welsh when up in arms against the Anglo-Norman sove- reigns ; but now Philip le Bel thought that the best thing to do was to exert all his strength and drive the English from what was left of their continental dominion. The moment seemed favourable ; Ed- ward was absorbed by his great project ; and as for the justice of the undertaking, had not Philip as good a right to gather up the scattered fragments of France, and to make of them a respectable whole,' — a united and powerful kingdom, — as Edward had to seize and consolidate the ancient independent states of Great Britain in the same view? The English sovereign, however, was too politic not to see and provide for these schemes : he had long watched Philip with a jealous eye, and wlule he wisely kept his own armies at home, he had courted alliances abroad, and laboured to raise barriers against Philip's ambition. In the south, by means of presents and flattering assurances, he had won over the powerful Count of Savoy ; in the north, he had a good understanding with the Emperor, whom he afterwards subsidized ; he had married his daughter Margaret to Henry Count of Bar, whose territories gave an easy access into France on the east ; and, at a later period, he made an alliance with Guy Earl of Flanders. The French, moreover, accuse him of opening and maintaining a correspondence in the interior of France with the disatfected subjects of Pliilip, an accusation which Edward retorted. Matters were in this state when a paltry broil gave rise to san- guinary hostilities. Some English and some Nor- man sailors met at a watering-place, in or near to the Port of Bayonne, and quarrelled about which party should fill their casks first. An English mariner struck a Norman with his fist ; the Nor- man drew his knife; his adversary closed with him, and, after a scuffle, threw him : in the fall the Norman, it was said, fell upon his own knife and was killed. The English sailor's comrades saved him from the fury of the opposite party, and, according to the French account, the authorities of Bayonne, which city belonged to the English, refused the Normans proper satisiaction. Burning with revenge, for they maintained that their com- panion had been foully murdered, the Normans put to sea, and, lying in wait, they seized the first English ship of inferior force they encountered, and taking from it a merchant of Bayonne, they hanged him at the yard- arm, with a dog hung to his feet. Reprisals soon followed, and the mariners of the Cinque Ports pursvied their vengeance with relentless fury, hanging nearly every Norman they could take upon the seas. The Normans called in the af^sistance of the Genoese and the French, for France was now beginning to have a considerable mercantile navy, and even a royal fleet, one of the immense advantages derived from expelling the English and clearing her sea-board. Our mariners at the same time procured the aid of those of Ireland, and Gascony, and Holland. Wherever tliese opposite parties met, they fought with deadly Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 711 rancour, carrying on a war on their own account, without any commission from their respective governments ; for though it was , known or sus- pected that Philip encouraged the French, he, as well as Edward, seemed for a time to remain in- different spectators. A Norman fleet of 200 or more vessels, of all sizes, swept the English Chan- nel, plundered the sea-coast of Gascony, hanging many mariners, and then returned with their booty and the cargoes of wine they had been to purchase to the port of St. Mahe, in Brittany. They had scarcely cast anchor when an English fleet ap- peared. The mariners of the Cinque Ports, still acting under their own commission, had got ready some stout ships : they were only eighty in num- ber, but they were of superior size, and manned with picked seamen. In an evil hour for them- selves, the Normans accepted the challenge to a pitched battle, which was fought round a ship ancliored near the coast, on a spot agreed upon by both parties. After a desperate conflict, where every man fought as in a personal quarrel, the English gained a complete victory, taking every one of the Norman ships, and killing or drowning nearly every mariner on board, for no quarter was given in this savage war. Thus the most vindictive feelings were excited between the two nations before the kings took any open part in the hosti- lities that were carried on.* But now Philip, enraged himself and borne for- ward to the accomplishment of his favourite pro- ject by the universal wrath of the nation, declared his determined enmity. By certainly a strained and exaggerated interpretation of his feudal rights and jurisdiction, he pretended that he could punish Edward as Duke of Aquitaine, in which character he v.as a vassal of the French crown. He sent officers to seize some of Edward's estates, but these were driven back by John St. John, an English officer : he then caused a summons to be issued by his judges ordering the " Duke of Aquitaine" to appear at Paris after the feast of Christmas, and answer for his off"ences against his suzerain. Ed- ward sent a bishop, and then his own brother Edmund, to negotiate. This Edmund appears to have been a very believing, simple personage; for, crediting Philip's assertion that he wanted no ac- quisition of territory, but merely a striking show of satisfaction to his own injured honour, he con- sented to surrender Gascony for forty days, at the end of which it was to be faithfully restored to the English king. Upon this surrender, which in some cases gave Philip a military possession of the province, the summons against Edward was withdrawn, and the French king declared himself satisfied. When the forty days had elapsed, Edward demanded repossession, which, as a matter of course, was refused to him. Philip pleaded very triumphantly, in his own court, against some English advocates, and, with a bold contempt of appearances and of the recent agreement, pro- nounced a judgment of forfeiture because Edward • Walsing.— lleming.— Holinsh. had not presented himself as a vassal ought. De Nesle, the Constable of France, was sent to seize some of Edward's cities and towns, and he suc- ceeded in several instances because the nobles declared against the English. Soon after the feast of Easter, Philip again summoned Edward to plead as Duke of Aquitaine before his peers of France, and, upon his non-attendance, he declared him contumacious and dis-seised of all his lands in France.* Edward now prepared to plead, but it was with the sword. Having formally renounced the homage of the French king, he got ready a power- ful fleet and army ; but he was detained for several weeks by contrary winds, and, while he lay at Portsmouth, the Welsh, who thought he was gone, broke out in a general insurrection, to which it seems probable that Philip was no stranger. De- tained at home by this circumstance, Edward dispatched a small force to Gascony, and gave commission to his ships to plunder the French coast, upon which a number of fierce sea-battles were fought, the victory falling almost invariably to the English, who were principally commanded by the lord Jolm Botetourt, Sir William de Leyborne, and a " valiant knight of Ireland," whose name is not mentioned. As for Edward himself, he turned with his usual rapidity and vigour against the Welsh, who had taken many castles and towns, and driven the English across the marshes with dreadful loss. It took him some months to sup- press this bold struggle for independence : he carried on the war through all the severities of winter, suffering great hardships, and encountering many personal dangers ; but in the following spring the Welsh once more fell beneath the mighty weight of his arms and policy : Madoc, their brave leader, surrendered to the conqueror; the most dangerous of the chieftains were thrown into dun- geons for life; and after the sacred summits of Snowdon had been again invaded, and the country again wasted with fire and sword, a mournful peace was restored. In none of the old accounts either of this or of the preceding conquest do we find any mention of Edward's hanging the Welsh bards; the circumstance seems to have been first mentioned by a writer who lived some three cen- turies after.f The "ruthless king," however, though not wantonly cruel, was still not a man to hesitate at such an execution if he deemed it useful to his state views ; and it is at least proba- ble that many of the bards, who must have been hateful to him, as they cherished and gave enthu- siasm to the people's love of independence, may have felt his rigour, and that popular tradition has only exaggerated and generalized a real fact.J When Edward rode a conqueror from the moun- tains of Wales, he thought that he should at last • Rymer. ■f Sir John Wynne, Hist, of the Gwydir family. X We find the Welsh minstrels in very bad odour with the English government about a century later. A statute of Henry IV. provides that "no waster, rhymer, minstrel, or vagabond shall be eulTeced in Wales." 712 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV be allowed to proceed to France, and punish what he considered the execrable perfidy of Philip ; but the spirit of liberty was again awake in the moun- tains of Scotland, and he was once more compelled to forego his continental expedition. He, however, sent his brother Edmund with a small force to Guienne, where the barons, who couUl never remain satisfied for a year with either the English or the French, were already tired of Philip. Edmund died soon after landing ; but the Earl of Lincohi, who succeeded to his command, drove the French from most of the towns they had occu- pied. These successes, however, were not lasting : Charles de Valois, Philip's brother, recovered those places ; and the Count d'Artois, the king uncle, taking the command of a numerous and excellent army, beat the English in several encounters, and finally expelled them from nearly all the country, with the exception of a few maritime towns. Edward's continental allies did nothing at the time in his defence. A little later the Duke of Brittany raised an insignificant force, and joined a body of English that landed in his country ; but this prince was as volatile as the Gascons, and changed sides three or four times in the course of as many years. His people paid dearly for his vacillating policy, being harried at each change either by the soldiers of Philip or the sailors of Edward. On one occa- sion an English fleet ravaged the whole coast of Brittany from Vannes to St. Malo, inflicting great mischief on the defenceless inhabitants, but in no way contributing to the recovery of Edward's lost dominions. Several attempts were made by Nor- mans, Bretons, and French, to avenge these inju- ries by attacks and surprises on the English coast, and on one occasion tlie town and priory of Dover were sacked and partially burnt. As the men were absent, only the women and children were butch- ered ; but, before the invaders could get back to their ships wdth their plunder, the men of Dover returned, and slew some hundreds of them. But we must turn from this most savage yet desultory warfare on the English coast, to the interior of Scotland. Scarcely had Baliol been fairly seated on his vassal throne when he was made to feel all the dependence and degradation of his position. Even before the year had expired, on one of the last days of which, as related above, he had done homage for his kingdom to his English lord para- mount, Edward, in an angry altercation that arose out of an appeal brought by a citizen of Berwick against a judgment of the Scottish courts, to defend which he had compelled Baliol to appear with his principal prelates and nobles in the royal chamber at Newcastle, frankly informed him that lie should persist in hearing in England every cause regularly brought before him from Scotland, and that he would summon the king of Scotland to appear per- sonally at the hearing of every such cause in which he should think his presence necessary. Nor did this prove an empty threat. In the course of the following year Baliol was repeatedly called upon to submit to the annoyance and intolerable indig- nity of thus appearing in the English courts to answer as a defendant in all sorts of causes. Such treatment could only have had one object, and, if it had been tamely acquiesced in, one effect, — to make the menial king utterly contemptible in the eyes of his subjects. A generous reluctance to join with the crowd in bearing hard upon one otherwise unfortunate, has prompted some modern writers to dispute the justice of the popular odium that rests on the memory of John Baliol, and to contend that he was by no means deficient in emineni and esti- mable qualities. Lord Hailes attributes to him a high spirit, and speaks of him as having erred only in enterprising beyond his strength. After all, however, the estimate that seems to have been formed of him in his own day is perhaps most consonant with the entire course of his life, botli while he sat on a throne, and after he descended from that elevation ; on the whole, the name of Toom (that is, empty) Tahard, which he used to receive among his countrymen, seems to have aptly enough expressed his unmagnanimous, inefficient character. At the commencement of Edward's rough usage he bore it with all submission. Im- mediately after the declaration of the English king that has just been mentioned, he gave Edward a solemn discharge from all the obligations he had contracted by the treaty of Bridgeham in 1290, whicli treaty was now the sole remaining security to his country for the possession of any national rights, and by which, in particular, provision was made against the very grievance, the galling humi- liation, under which he was now made to smart, by one of the clauses which declared that no native of Scotland should be compelled to answer out of the kingdom in any legal cause, either civil or criminal. But the tyranny was so unrelentingly persisted in, and carried so far, that if he had the spirit of a worm it must have roused him at last. An appeal respecting the succession to some lands in Fife was the case in which his patience gave way. In the first instance he ventured to take no notice of the usual order to present himself at the hearing of the cause. But he did not persist in this bold course. On receiving a second summons, he yielded obedience so far as to make his appearance in the English parliament on the day named, the 15th of October, 1293. When asked what defence he had to make to the appeal, lie said, — " I am king of Scotland. To the complaint of the appellant, or to aught else respecting my kingdom, I dare not make answer without the advice of my jieople." — " What means this?" cried Edward : " You are my liege- man ; you have done homage to me ; you are here in consequence of my summons." Baliol, however, would only repeat his first answer. He declined even to ask an adjournment of the cause. Tiie parliament then resolved that the king of Scots had offered no defence; that in his answer he had been guilty of a manifest contempt of the court, and of open disobedience ; that the appellant should have damages of the king of Scots ; and, Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 713 finally, " because it is consonant to law that every one be punished in that which emboldens him to offend, that the three principal castles of Scotland, with the towns wherein they are situated, and the royal jurisdiction thereof, be taken immediately into the custody of the king, and there remain until the king of Scots shall make satisfaction for his contempt and disobedience." On the prayer of Baliol, however, Edward, before this sentence was publicly intimated, consented to stay all proceedings till the day after the Feast of the Trinity in the following year. Before that day arrived, war between England and France broke out on the seizure of Guienne by Philip ; and in the new position of his affairs, Edward had his hands for the present too full of work in defending himself against his own liege lord to have leisure for the further humiliation and oppression of the king of Scots. The opportunity, however, was too tempting a one not to be seized by the latter for a strenuous effort to cast off the yoke. Hitherto the nation, struck down by the irresistible course of events, and deserted by its natural leaders, had lain, as it were, stunned and in despair. Its old spirit now began to awaken as a new dawn of hope appeared. Tlie nobles themselves, — they whose selfish or factious ambition had laid their country at the feet of the English king, — had many of them by this time been roused to a sense of the bondage into which they had fallen. Their first measures, how- ever, were cautiously taken. A parliament, which met at Scone in the latter part of the year 1294, on pretence of lightening the public burdens, directed that all the Englishmen maintained at the court should be dismissed ; and then appointed a council of four bishops, four earls, and four barons, without v/hose advice the king was restricted from per- forming any public act. These arrangements may have been made with Baliol's full concurrence ; but it is more probable that they were dictated by a distrust of him. It is asserted indeed by English writers that Baliol was at this time kept by his subjects in a state very closely resembling cap- tivity. The suspicions of Edward were naturally enough excited by these proceedings. He required that Berwick, Roxburgh, and Jedburgh should be deli- vered to the Bishop of Carlisle, to remain in his liands during the war ])etween England and France. With this demand the Scottish government deemed it prudent to comply, although they were at the moment negotiating an alliance with the French king. This treaty, — " the groundwork," observes Lord Hailes, " of many more, equally honour- able and ruinous to Scotland," was signed at Paris on the 23rd of October, 1295. By it the King of Scots, " giievously offended at the undutiful behaviour of Edward to the King of France, liis liege lord," engaged to assist Philip in his wars with his whole power, and at his own charges. Towards the end of March, 1296, accordingly, a Scottish army, consisting of 40,000 foot soldiers and 500 cavalry, invaded Cumberland, and, laying waste the country as they proceeded, marched to Carlisle, and attacked that place. Here, however, they were repulsed, and that with circumstances of unusual disgrace, if we may credit the English historians, who assert that the town having been set on fire, and the citizens having left their posts to extinguish the flames, the women flew to the walls and compelled the besiegers to retire. Another inroad, which they made a few days after into Nortliumberland, was not more successful. Meanwhile Edward himself, at the head of a great army, was already at the borders. A pardon had been proclaimed for all outlaws and malefactors who should join the expedition ; and the force which now rolled on to pour upon the Scottish rebels the vengeance of their English master, con- sisted of 30,000 foot and 4000 horse. Its numbers were farther swelled on its arrival in the north by a body of 1000 foot and 700 horse, brought by Anthony Beck, the warlike Bishoj) of Durham. Crossing the Tweed, the royal army marched direct upon the town of Berwick, which either had never been delivered by the Scots to the Bishop of Car- lisle, according to their late promise, or had fieed itself again from his authority. A strong garrison, composed of the men of Fife, now defended the town, besides a smaller force that held the castle. The English king commenced the attack at once by sea and land ; of his ships, three were burnt, and the rest compelled to retire ; but all resistance soon gave way before the impetuous onset of the soldiery; Edward himself, mounted on his horse Bayard, was the first who leaped over the dike that defended the town. In the devastation and carnage that followed no quarter was given ; no pity, no human feeling, turned aside the sword from in- fancy, or womanhood, or grey hairs ; the inhabitants, with the garrison, were indiscriminately butchered. The numbers that perished are variously stated, but they undoubtedly amounted to many thou- sands : the massacre was continued for two days, during which no one escaped whom the infuriated victors could reach. A party of thirty Flemings had posted themselves in a building called the Red Hall, which the resident merchants of their nation held by the tenure of defending it at all times against the English. They stood out gallantly till the evening of the first day ; the building, wJiich they would not surrender, was then set fire to, and they perished, every man of them, in the flames. Berwick was taken on the 30tli of March. On the 5th of April, a bold ecclesiastic, Henry, Abbot of Abcrbrotliock (otherwise Arbroatli), arrived in the town a messenger from the Scottish king, and de- livered to Edward Baliol's solemn renunciation of his allegiance and fealty. " What a piece of madness in the foolish traitor !" exclaimed Edward, when the message had been delivered ; " since he will not come to us, we will go to him."* A pause of a few weeks, to make the blow the surer, did not prevent •Ha, ce fill felon tel folie faict! s'il iie voult veil ir a nous, nous vieiuh'uns a lui. 714 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book IV. this threat from being both speedily and effectually executed. Earl Waremie was first sent forward with a chosen body of troops to recover the castle of Dunbar, which the Countess of March had delivered to the Scots, while her husband, by whom it was held, served in the army of Edward. The Scottish army, in full strength, advanced to its relief, when they were engaged by Warenne, and completely routed, with the loss of 10,000 men. This action was fought on the 28th of April. The castle then surrendered at discretion. On the 18th of May that of Roxburgh was given up by James EciNS OF THE Castle op Dunbar. the Stewart of Scotland, who at the same time swore fealty to Edward and abjured the French alliance. The castles of Dunbarton and Jedburgh soon after surrendered. That of Edinburgh stood a short siege, but it also soon capitulated : no attempt was made to defend that of Stirling. Thus, in the space of about two months, all the principal strongholds of the kingdom were in Edward's baud, and the conquest of the country was complete. A message (very different from his last) now arrived from Baliol, offering sub- mission and imploring peace. Edward, in reply, desired him to repair to the castle of Brechin, where the Bishop of Durham would announce to him the terms on which his surrender would be accepted. Soon after, Baliol laid down his kingly state in a ceremonial of the last degree of baseness and humiliation. Divested of every ensign of royalty, he presented himself before the Bishop of Durham and an assembly of English barons, and standing with a white rod in his hand, went through a detailed confession of all the offences whicli, misled by evil and false counsel, as he affirmed, and through his own simplicity, he had committed against his liege lord — concluding the recital by an acknow- ledgment of the justice of the English invasion and conquest, and by therefore freely resigning to the English king his kingdom, its people, and their homage. The old accounts differ as to the exact date, and also as to the scene of this penance ; but it was most probably performed on the Ith of July, and, as the tradition of the neighbourhood still reports, in the churchyard of Strathkathro, in Angus.* Edward was at this time at Montrose. t He proceeded northward as far as Elgin — the nobility, wherever he passed, crowding in to swear fealty, and to abjure the French alliance. It was on his return from this triumphant progress that he ordered the famous stone on which the Scottish kings had been wont to be crowned, to be removed from the abbey of Scone, and conveyed to Westminster, in testimony, says an English contemporary chronicler, of the conquest and sur- render of the kingdom. J He appears to have been at St. Johnstone's, or Perth, on Wednesday, the 8th of August. By the 22nd, he was once more at Berwick ; and on the 28th he held a par- liament in that town, at which great numbers both of the Scottish laity and clergy presented them- selves to take the oaths of fealty. He then pro- • See Hiiiles. i. 293 ; Tytler i. 429, 430 ; and Chambers's Picture of Scotland, ii. 255. t See a envious Diary of Edward's progress, published with ex- planatory remarks: by Sir N. H. Nicolas, from a MS. in the Utitish Museum, in the 21st vol. of the Archaeologia, pp. 4/3 — 493. X Ilemingford. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 715 ceeded to finisli his work, by settling the govern- ment of the conquered country. Here his measures were characterized by great prudence and modera- tion. He ordered the forfeited estates of the clergy to be restored. He even allowed most of the subordinate civil functionaries who had held office under Baliol, to retain possession of their places. He left the various jurisdictions of the country in general in the same liands as before. The chief castles in the southern part of the king- dom, however, he intrusted to English captains ; and he also placed some of his English subjects in command over certain of the more important dis- tricts. Finally, he appointed John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, under tlae name of governor, Hugh de Cressingham as treasurer, and William Ormesby as justiciary, to exercise the supreme authority. A royal exchequer, on the model of the English, was established at Berwick. Thus ended in the utter extinction, for the present, of the national independence of Scotland, the most miserably abortive attempt ever made by any people for the preservation or recovery of that first and most indispensable of national blessings. But although Edward had put down the rebel- lion of the Scots, he had not subdued their spirit of resistance. Within a few months after this set- tlement of the coimtry it was again in insurrection. The last and all preceding attempts to throw off the foreign yoke under which the kingdom groaned had been made under the direction of tlie govern- ment; there was no longer any native government ; but a gTcat leader of the people had now stepped forth from their own ranks. This was the renowned William Wallace, the second son of a knight of ancient family, Sir Malcolm Wallace, of EUerslie, in Renfrewshire. Wallace had all the qualities of a popular hero — a strengdi and stature correspond- ing to his daring courage, and also, it cannot be doubted from the known history of his career, as well as from liis traditionary fame, many intellec- tual endowments of a high order, — decision, military genius, the talent of command, a stirring though rude eloquence, and in every way a wonderful power of reaching the hearts of men, and drawing them along -with him. Above all, an enthusiastic patriotism, and a fierce and unextinguishable hatred of the English dominion, were passions so strong in Wallace, that while he lived, be the hour as dark as it might, all felt that the cause of the national independence never could be wholly lost. It is his glorious distinction that, while all others despaired of that cause, he did not despair — that when all others submitted to the conqueror, he betook himself to the woods, and remained a free- man — that when there was no other to renew the struggle, he started up in that time of universal dismay and prostration, and showed, by an example precious to all time, that even in the worst circum- stances nothing is really gone for ever where the spirit of hope and effort is not gone. Wallace is first mentioned in the month of May, 1297. At this time he was merely the captain of a small band of marauders, most of them probably outlaws like himself, who were accustomed to infest the English quarters by predatory attacks. Their numbers, however, rapidly grew as reports of their successful exploits were spread abroad. Suddenly we find the robber-chief transformed into the na- tional champion, joinedby some of the chief persons in the land, and heading an armed revolt against the government. The first person of note who joined Wallace was Sir William Douglas. He liad com- manded in the castle of Berwick when it was taken the preceding year by Edward; and after his surrender had been liberated upon swearing fealty to the English king. Disregarding this oath, he now armed his vassals, and openly went over to Wallace. The united chiefs immediately marched upon Scone, the seat of the government. Earl Warenne was at this time absent in England, and Ormesby, the justiciary, was acting as his lieu- tenant. That functionary, with difficulty, saved his life by flight ; but much booty and many pri- soners fell into the hands of the insurgents, and the English government was, in fact, by this bold and brilliant exploit, for the moment overthrown. For some time the neighbouring country was wholly at the mercy of the insurgents, who roved over it, assaulting every place of strength that refused them admission, and massacring every Englishman who fell into their hands. Many persons of note and distinguished rank now crowded to the once more uplifted standard of freedom and independence ; the Stewart of Scot- land and his brother, Robert W^ishcart, Bishop of Glasgow, Alexander de Lindesay, Sir Richard Lundin, and Sir Andrew Moray of Bothwell, are especially mentioned. But no accession was more important, or more gladly welcomed, than that of the young Robert Bruce, the son of Robert Bruce who had married the countess of Carrick, and the grandson of him who had been a competitor with Baliol for the crown. A few years before this, Bruce's father had resigned the earldom of Car- rick, which he held in right of his wife, to his son ; and the latter, by the possession of this lord- ship, now commanded a territory reaching from the Frith of Clyde to the Solway. The course taken by Baliol had hitherto naturally determined the conduct and position of the rival family. So long as Baliol stood even nominally at the head of the patriotic cause, the Bruces were almost neces- sarily on the other side. In the last days of Baliol's reign the Scottish government issued an order confiscating the estates of all partisans of Englaird and of all neutrals, which was principally aimed at the house of Bruce ; and a grant of their estate of Annandale was made to Comyn, Earl of Buchan, who actually took possession, in conse- quence, of the family castle of Lochmaben. This of course he did not long retain ; but the wrong was not the less one which in that fierce age never could be forgiven. Allowance must be made for these personal resentments and rivalries, and the opposition into which men were thereby 716 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. tliiown, in passing judgment upon the conduct of many of the actors in this turbulent and bewilder- ing drama. Bruce, eventually the great liberator of his country and restorer of the Scottish mo- narchy, makes his first appearance on the scene, soon after the fatal fight of Dunbar, in the unpa- triotic part of a commissioner empowered by the conqueror to receive into favour the people of Carrick.* He was at this time only in his twenty- second year. His heart, however, was probably already drawing him, through doubts and mis- givings, to the cause which he was at a future day so gloriously to illustrate. Now that Baliol was removed, the time for Bruce to show himself seemed to have come. Edward, it would appear, was not without some suspicion of what his incli- nations were. He, therefore, had summoned him to Carlisle, and made him renew, on the sword of Becket, his oaths of allegiance and fidelity. In the national enthusiasm, however, excited by the first success of Wallace, he could restrain himself no longer. " I trust," he said, " that_ the pope will absolve me from oaths extorted by force;" and so, breaking from his bonds, he joined the army of the patriots. But, in that camp, jealousies and dissensions were already actively at work, and disorganizing everything. Edward was embarking for Flanders when he received intelligence of the new Scottish revolt. The military force of the kingdom to the north of the Trent was instantly called into array by the Earl of Surrey ; and as soon as the men could be collected, Sir Henry Percy and Sir Robert Clifford were sent forward to meet the in- surgents at the head of an army of forty thousand foot and three hundred horse.' They found the Scots, in nearly equal numbers, posted in a strong position in the neighbourliood of the town of Irvine, in Ayrshire. But no acknowledged leader controlled tlie irregular congregation of chiefs who had crowded with their retainers to the standard that Wallace had raised; his authority was dis- owned, or but reluctantly submitted to, by many of the proud knights and barons, who never before had obeyed a plebeian general ; and there were probably as many conflicting plans of operation as there were competitors for the supreme command. In this miserable stsiteof affairs, it appeared to all who had anything to lose, that the wisest plan was to make their peace with the government before it should be too late. All the chief associates of Wallace accordingly, including Bruce, the Stewart of Scotland, the Bishop of Glasgow, Sir Alexander Lindesay, Sir Richard Lundin, and even Sir Wil- liam Douglas, the first who had joined him, laid down their arms after a short negotiation, and, for themselves and their adherents, made submission to Edward, llie instrument in which they ac- knowledged their offences, and agreed to make every reparation and atonement that should be required by their sovereign lord, is dated at Irvine, the 9th of July.f Only one baron, Sir Andrew * Ilailes, i. 292. f Rymer, ii. 774. Moray of Bothwell, continued to adhere to Wal- lace. Many of the vassals, however, even of the lords and knights that had deserted him remained among his followers ; and he withdrew to tlie north at the head of a force that was still numerous and formidable. . No farther effort seems to have been made by the government to put down the insurrection for several months. In the meanwhile, the army of Wallace was continually receiving accessions of numbers. The English historian, Knighton, affirms that the whole of the lower orders had at- tached themselves to him, and that, although their persons were with the king of England, the hearts of many of the nobility also were with Wallace, whose army, it is added, now grew to so immense a multitude that the community of the land obeyed him as their leader and prince. By the beginning of September, it appears that he had driven the English from the castles of Brechin, Forfar, Mon- trose, and most of the other strongholds to the north of the Forth, and was now engaged in be- sieging the castle of Dundee. While there, he re- ceived information that an English army was marching upon Stirling. I..eaving the siege to be continued by the citizens of Dundee, he led his whole force, amounting to forty thousand foot and a hundred and eighty horse, towards Stirling, and succeeded, by rapid marches, in reaching the banks of the Forth opposite to that town before the English had arrived. He immediately drew up his army so as to be partly concealed be- hind the neighbouring high grounds. Brian Fitzalan had by this time been appointed by Ed- ward chief governor of Scotland ; but the Earl of Surrey still commanded the forces. The English army soon appeared on the other side of the river ; it is said by Ilemingford to have consisted of one thousand horsemen and fifty thousand foot. On its being perceived how Wallace was posted, it was resolved to offer him terms before risking an engagement ; but he refused to enter into any negotiation. " Return," he said to those who came to him, " and tell your masters that we come not here to treat, but to assert our rights, and to set Scotland free; let them advance; they will find us prepared." That night, how- ever, no movement was made. But Surrey's men impatiently called upon him to accept of Wallace's defiance; Cressingham, the treasurer, protested against the waste of the king's money in keeping up an army if it was not to fight; and to this passionate importunity the Eng- lish commander weakly yielded his own better judgment, and suffered his army to throw itself, not into a snare, for, if the common accounts of the affair may be relied upon, no stratagem or deception of any kind was employed by Wallace, but into obvious and certain destruction. Early the following morning (the 11th of September) the English began to pass over by the bridge, — a narrow wooden structure, along which, even with no impcdimetit or chance of interruption of any kind to Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 717 retard them, so numerous a force could not have been led in many hours. The issue was what it is unaccountable should not have been foreseen. Wal- lace waited till about half the English were passed over ; then, detaching a part of his forces to take possession of the extremity of the bridge, as soon as he perceived the communication by this means effectually cut off, he rushed down upon the portion of the enemy who had thus put themselves in his power, as they were still forming, and in a moment threw them into inextricable confusion. Many thousands of the English were slain or driven into the water ; Cressingham himself, who had led the van, was one of those who fell ; he had, by the severity of his administration, made himself par- ticularly hateful to the Scots, who now stripping the skin from his dead body, cut it into small pieces to be preserved, not as relics, says Hemingford, but for spite.* Wallace himself, it is affirmed, had a sword-belt made of part of it. No pri- soners, indeed, seem to have been taken ; and nearly all the English that had crossed the river must therefore have been destroyed. One knight, however, Sir Marmaduke Tweiige, putting spurs to his horse, gallantly cut his way back through the force that guarded the bridge, and regained the opposite side in safety. Surrey himself had not passed over; but, alter the fortune of the day became clearly irrecoverable, charging Twenge to occupy the castle of Stirling with what remains of • Non quidem ad reliquias, sed in contumelias. SxiiiLING CASTLJi. the army he could collect, he mounted his horse, and rode, without stopping, to Berwick. Even the portion of the army that had remained on the south side of the river seems to have been in great part dispersed. The loss of the Scots was trifling; the only man of note that fell was Sir Andrew Moray. A large quantity of spoil was taken. But the great result of the victory was nothing less than the almost complete liberation of the country once more from the English dominion. The castles of Edinburgh, Dundee, Roxburgh, and Berwick, all immediately surrendered ; and in a short time there was not a fortress, from one end of Scotland to the other, in the possession of the English king. Wallace soon after even invaded England, and for isome time maintained his army in Cumberland, — • a m^ovement to which he was partly induced by a severe famine that now arose in Scotland, where unfavourable seasons had conspired with the waste of war to afflict the soil. He returned from this expedition about the end of the year ; and it is said to have been then that, in an assembly of the principal nobility, held at the Forest Kirk in Sel- kirkshire, he was invested with the title of Guar- dian or Governor of the kingdom, and com- mander-in-chief of the armies of Scotland (Gustos regni Scotise, et ductor exercituum ejusdem), in the name of King John. The Scottish patriots, it is to be observed, had all along professed to act in the name ofBalio], — so general, notwithstanding all that had taken place, was the conviction that his was the legitimate right to the crown, or so strong the aversion to re-open the question of the suc- cession, from which all the calamities of the count rv had sprung. Thus was Scotland again lost by Edward even 718 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. more suddenly than it had been won. He was still detained in Flanders by the war in which he had engaged with the French king for the recovery of Guienne, while his conquest nearer home was thus wrested out of his hands. It appears that stre- nuous efforts were made by Philip to have the Scots included in the benefit of the treaty of peace, the truce preliminary to which was agreed vxpon in October of this year.* But Edward would hear of no terms for those whom he called revolted subjects and traitors. By letters addressed to all the earls and barons of England, he commanded that a general muster of the military force of the kingdom should take place at York on the 14th of January. A week after that day a mighty army, of a hundred thousand foot and four thousand cavalry, was on its march, under the command of Surrey, across the Scottish border. After this force, however, had proceeded as far as Berwick, of which they took possession, letters arrived from the king ordering them not to continue their ad- vance till he should himself join them. On this Surrey sent home the greater part of the immense multitude, retaining only a body of twenty thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse. Edward returned to England about the middle of March, 1 298, and instantly summoned the barons and other military tenants to reassemble with their powers at York on the Feast of Pentecost. A still more numerous army than the last gathered at this new call, at the head of which Edward proceeded in the first instance to Roxburgh. From this point he advanced, in the beginning of June, along the east coast, a fleet with supplies for the army having been sent forward to the Frith of Forth ; but for several weeks no enemy, scarcely even any inhabi- tants, were to be seen, and the invaders could only take a useless revenge in wasting an already de- serted country. The Scots meanwhile, under the direction of Wallace, had been collecting their strength in the interior; and many of the chief nobility, including Bruce, were now assembled again around the great national leader. The plan of Wallace, however, was to avoid for the present a general engagement, and only to watch, out of sight, the movements of the enemy, and hang upon his line of march, in readiness to take advantage of such favourable circumstances as might arise. Edward soon became involved in very serious dif- ficulties : his ships Avcre detained by contrary winds ; and while he was waiting at Templeliston (now Kirkliston), a small town between Edinburgh and Linlithgow, till he should receive some intelligence of them before proceeding upon his design of petie- trating into the west, an alarming mutiny broke out in the camp, originating in a quarrel between the English and the Welsh soldiers, the latter of whom, amounting in number to 40,000, v.ere at one time on the point of withdrawing and join- ing the Scots. " I care not," said Edward, with his usual lofty spirit, when their intention was reported to him ; "let my enemies go and * See Rymer, new edit., i. 8C1 ; and Tytler, i. 173 and 435. join my enemies ; I trust that in one day I shall chastise them all." No news of the ships arriv- ing, however, the scarcity of provisions soon became so distressing that a retreat to Edinburgh was resolved upon, when information was received that the Scottish army was encamped not far off in the wood of Falkirk. It is said that two noblemen serving in the Scottish camp, the Earls of Dunbar and Angus, came privately at day-break to the quarters of the Bishop of Durham, and communi- cated this intelligence. "Thanks be to Godl" exclaimed Edward, " who hitherto hath delivered me from every danger; they shall not need to follow me ; I will forthwith go and meet them !" That night the army lay in the fields, the king himself sleeping on the ground. A kick from his horse, v.-hich stood beside him in the night, broke two of his ribs, and in the first confusion occasioned by the accident, a cry arose that the king was seriously wounded or killed, — that there was trea- son in the camp. Edward immediately, disregard- ing the pain he suffered, mounted his horse, and, as it was now dawn, gave orders to continue the march. The advanced guard of the enemy was first seen on the ridge of a hill in front, after tliey had passed Linlithgow. Soon after, tlie whole army was descried, forming, on a stony field, at the side of a small eminence in the neighbourhood of Falldrk.* Wallace divided the infantry of his army, which was greatly inferior in numbers to that of the English, into four circular bodies, armed with lances, which the men protruded obliquely, as they knelt with their backs agahist each other; tlie archers were placed in the intermediate spaces : the horse, of which there were only 1000, were drawn up at some distance in the rear. Edward's cavalrv were ranged in the front of his battle, in three lines. The attack was made at the same time by the first of these, led by Bigot, Earl Marshal, and the Earls of Hereford and Lincoln ; and by the second, under the leading of the bold Bishop of Durham. The shock was gallantly met by the Scottish infantry, and for some time thev stood their ground firmly. The cavalry, however, whether dismayed by the immense disparity between the numbers of the enemy and their own, or, as has been conjectured, from treason on the part of their commanders, fled without striking a blow ; and, thus left without support against the repeated charges of the English horse, the lancers and archers also at length gave way, and the rout became complete. The battle of Falkirk was fought on the 22nd of Julj% 1298. It is said that ] 5,000 of the Scots fell on this fatal day. On tiie English side the loss was inconsiderable. Wallace retreated with the remains of his army to Stirling, whither he was pursued by the English ; but when they arrived, he was gone, and the town was found reduced to ashes. The victorious invaders now carried fire and sword through the country in all directions. The whole of Fifeshire was laid waste and given up to military execution. The city of • Ilailce, i. 3U. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 719 St. Andrews, which was found deserted, was set on fire and burnt to the ground. Perth was burnt by the inhabitants themselves on the approach of the English. Edward, however, was speedily obliged to leave the country from the impossibility of finding the means of subsisting his troops. He appears to have returned to England about the middle of September, — ^having, indeed, regained possession of the principal places of strength in the south of Scotland, but leaving the whole of the country to the north of the Forth still unsubdued. The expensive wars of Wales, Scotland, and Guienne, had caused Edward to oppress the English people with levies and taxes, in the raising of which he had not always respected the constitutional charter ; wMe on some occa- sions he had recourse to artifices similar to those which had succeeded so badly with his father, Henry III. At one time, he pretended that he had again taken the cross, and thus obtained the tenth of all church benefices for six years. A few years after this, he seized the monies deposited in the churches and monasteries, and kept the greater part for his own uses, pro- mising, however, to pay it back some time or other. His financial proceedings with the church show that times were materially altered — for the main weight of taxation was thrown upon that body. After obtaining a reluctant grant from the lords and Icnights of the shire of a tenth on lay property, he demanded from the clergy a half on their entire incomes. Here, for the first time, he encountered a stern opposition on the part of the bishops, abbots, and common clergy ; but they were bullied into compliance, being told, among other harsh things, that every " reverend father" who dared to oppose the king would be noticed as one who had broken the peace. This was in 1294. In the following year, having obtained a very liberal grant from Parliament, he exacted a fourth from the churchmen, who again were obsti- nate, and obliged him, in the end, to be satisfied with a tenth. Besides these heavy burdens, the church Avas sorely racked by the king's purveyors and commissaries, who, particularly during the more active parts of the Scotch war, continually emptied the store-houses, granaries, farm-yards, and larders, and carried off all the vehicles, horses, , and other animals for the transport of army stores, in so much that the poor abbots and priors com- plained that they had scarcely a mule left in their stables upon which to go their spiritual rounds. At last they applied to the pope for protection, and Boniface VIII. granted them a bull, ordaining that the clergy should not vote away their reve- nues without the express permission of the holy see. But the pope was engaged in many troubles ; the bull, which applied equally to all Christian Countries, was strenuously opposed in France by Philip Ic Bel ; and in the following year, 1297, he found himself obliged to publish a second bull, which explained away and stultified the first ; for it provided, that whenever the safety of the king- dom required it, churchmen must pay their aids ; and it left to the king and his coimcil the right of deciding on the necessity. Before this second bull arrived, the English clergy, fancying that they were well supported by the previous docu- ment, met, and boldly refused some of Edward's demands; upon which he outlawed the whole body, both regular and secular, and seized their goods and chattels, not leaving bishop, parish priest, abbotj^or monk, so much as bread to eat, or a bed to lie upon. As there were no Beckets in the land, these measures produced a general sub- mission to the king's arbitrary will, even before the arrival of the explanatory bull. A few recu- sants were supported for a season by the charity of their relatives and of the common people, but no popular movement took place in their favour, nor does their hard treatment appear to have created any great excitement.* It was far otherwise when the king laid his greedy hand on the trading classes : they had borne a great deal in the way of tallages and in- creased export duties ; but when he seized all the wool and hides that were ready for shipping, and sold them for his own profit, a universal and loud outcry was raised, notwithstanding his assurances that he would faithfully pay back the amount. The merchants assembled, the rich burghers, the landed proprietors of all classes consulted together ; and their consultations were encouraged l>y some of the greatest of the nobles, who were not so blinded by the career of conquest and glory in wliich the king was leading them, as to be neglectful of their more immediate interests, or indifferent to those violent inroads on the national rights. Towards the end of February, 1297, Edward felt the eflfect of these deliberations. He had collected two armies, one of which was to go to Guienne, the other into Flanders ; when the Earl of Hereford, the constable, and the Earl of Norfolk, the marshal of England, both refused to quit the country. Turning to the marshal, the king exclaimed, " By the everlasting God, Sir Earl, you shall go or hang." " By the everlasting God, Sir King, I will neither go nor hang;" and, so saying, Nor- folk withdrew with Hereford. Thirty bannerets and 1500 knights immediately followed the marshal and the constable, and the king was left almost alone. t An incautious step at this moment might have cost him his crown or his life, but Edward was a w^onderful master of his passions when ne- cessary, and his craft and policy were fully equal to his merits as a warrior. He knew that the Archbishop of Canterbury and the clergy gave great weight to the present opposition, and these he detached by blandishments and promises. He knew that his brilliant exploits in war had endeared him to the unthinking multitude, and he also knew how to touch their hearts. The measure he adopted was singularly dramatic ; he stood forth before the people of London, mounted on a platform in front • Rymer. — Brady. — Wykps.— Knight. — Ileming, t Heming. 720 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. of Westminster Hall, nobody being near him save his son Edward, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Warwick : he told them that nobody grieved more than he did for the burden- some taxes laid upon his dear subjects, but this burden was one of absolute necessity to preserve, not only his crown, but their blood from the Welsh, the Scots, and the French* Then, in the proper place falling into the pathetic, he said, " I am going to expose myself to all the dangers of war for your sakes. If I return alive I will make you amends for the past ; but if I fall, here is my dear son, place him on my throne, his gratitude will be the rewarder of your fidelity !" Here he stopped, and let a few tears roll down his iron cheek. Tbe archbishop wept; the spectators were tenderly affected ; and, after a brief pause, the air was rent with shouts of applause and loyalty. t This display of enthusiasm gave the king great encouragement, and having issued writs for the protection of church ])ropevty, and appointed bis former opponent, the Archbishop of Canterbury, chief of the council of regency under Prince Edward, he went to embark for Flanders with such troops as he had kept together. But a few days after, on August 12th, he was brought to a halt at Winchester, by reports of the hostile spirit of the nobles ; and while in that city, a remonstrance, in the name of the arch- bishops, bishops, abbots, and priors, the earls, barons, and commoi;s of England, was presented to him. After stating in broad terms that they were not bound to accompany the king to Flanders, — a country where neither they nor any of their ances- tors had ever done service for the kings of Eng- land ; and that even if they were inclined to take part in that expedition, the poverty to which he had reduced them rendered them unable to do so : they went onto tell him, in tiieir bold remonstrance, that he had repeatedly violated their charters and liberties ; that his " evil toll " (so they called the export duty on wool) was excessive and intolerable, and that his present expedition to the continent was ill-advised, seeing that his absence would leave the country open to the incursions of the Scots and Welsh. The king evaded any very direct answer, and relying on the favourable disposition of the common people, and the vigilance of bis officers, he had the courage to depart in the very midst of these discontents. t He landed near Sluys in the end of August : his plans were concerted with his usual sagacity ; but coalitions are faithless and uncertain things, and he had in Philip le Bel an opponent as crafty and, at the least, as unscrupulous as himself. These great kings had long struggled for possession of a young lady, — Philippa, daughter of Guy Count of Flanders. As early as the year 1294, Edward had concluded a treaty of marriage, which was to unite the fair Fleming to the Prince of Wales ; but it was Philip's interest to prevent • The descotit at Dover had greatly iiiflamod the people afjainst the Fmicli ; and in the iioi>tUar accounts of the savage warfare by pea, tlic atrocities of the cuemy alone were dwelt uj)on. + lleniins:.— Kuy;,'hton. — U'ymer. t Heniing.— Wals— Knyght.— Uymcr. any close union between England and Flanders, and he resolved that the marriage should not take place. After many secret intrigues, — which failed, as both the young lady and her father were bent on the English union, — the French king invited Count Guy to meet him at Coibeil that he might consult him on matters of great importance. The Count, who was a frank, honest old man, went, and took his countess with him : he was no sooner in his power than Philip harshly reproached him with the English treaty, — told him that no vassal of the French crown, however great, could marry any of his children without the king's license, — and then sent him and his wife prisoners to the tower in the Louvre. This arbitrary and treacherous measure excited great disgust, and the better feeling of the French peers, and the remonstrances of a papal legate, forced Philip to liberate the old count and his countess. Before letting go his hold, however, he made Guy swear he would think no more of his English alliance. The count contracted the forced obligation ; but this was not enough for the Frencli king, who had broken too many oaths himself to have much reliance on those of other people : he demanded that Philippa should be placed in his hands as a hostage ; and when that young lady was brought to Paris — and not before — her parents were liberated. Their parting was sad and tender. As soon as the count reached his own dominions, he made an affecting appeal to the pope; the church entered with some zeal into the case ; but notwithstanding repeated threats of excommunica- tion, Philip le Bel persisted in keeping his inno- cent hostage, who was not more than twelve years of age. At last, the old count formally renounced his allegiance, defied his suzerain, and entered heart and soul into a league with the English king, whose notion was, that France would be found more vulnerable on the side of Flanders than on that of Guicnne. It was in consequence of tliis treaty, which was twom to in the most solemn manner, that Edward went to Flanders, after pre- paring a formidable alliance. The other chief members of the coalition were, the emperor, the Duke of Austria — who had both been subsidized by Edwanl — and the Duke of Brabant and Count of Bar, who were his own sons-in-law by their marriage with the princesses Margaret and Eleanor of England. When the liircd allies got Edward's money, they seem to have considered their part of the business as done; and no member of the coali- tion was very faithful or strenuous, except the un- happy Count Guy, whose cruel wrongs bound him firmly to Edward. But the whole expedition be- came a series of misadventures, some of Avhich were sufficiently disgraceful to the English con- queror. He had scarcely landed at Sluys, when the mariners of the Cinque Ports, and those of Yar- mouth and other ports — between wliom there were many rancorous old jealousies — quarrelled, and then fought, as if they had been national enemies ranged under two opposite flags. On the Yar- Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 721 mouth side, nve-and-twenty ships were burnt and destroyed in this wild conflict. One fact which the chroniclers mention looks almost as if the fight had been for the money on board, and most of the mariners little better than pirates ; " and also three of their greatest ships — ^part of the king's treasure being in one of them — were tolled forth into the high sea, and quite conveyed away."* The king's land-forces were scarcely in a better state of discipline, owing probably to the absence of most of the great officers whom they had been accustomed to obey. The disorders they com- mitted did not tend to produce unanimity in the country, which was already in " evil state, by reason that the good towns were not all of one mind." The rich and populous cities of Flanders were, in fact, as jealous of each other, and split into almost as many factions as the little Italian republics of the middle ages. Philip had a strong party among them, and that active sovereign had greatly increased it, and weakened his enemies, by marching into the Low Countries at the head o"f 60,000 men, and gaining a great victory at Furnes, before Edward could arrive. The French occu- pied many of the towns; and Lille, Courtrai, Ypres, Bruges, and Damme were either taken or given up to them soon after the landing of the English. Edward drove them with great loss out of Damme, and might have done the same at Bruges, had it not been that his English and the Flemings, who were serving with them, fell into strife, and fought about the division of the spoils of the town, which they had not yet taken. Soon after this, he went into winter-quarters at Ghent, and there deadly feuds broke out between the townspeople and liis troops : seven hundred of the latter were killed in a tumult, in which Edward's own life was endangered. The English foot- soldiers, on their side, sacked the town of Damme, and killed some two hundred Flemings. It was not likely that such tender allies should do much against the common enemy ; and all the efforts made by the king and Count Guy failed to recon- cile these animosities. A.D. 1298. Spring approached, but it brought no news of the inactive members of the coalition ; and as Edward's presence was much wanted at home, he eagerly listened to overtures from Philip, concluded a truce for two years, and, leaving Count Guy to shift for himself, sailed for England. It could not be denied that, after throwing away immense sums of money, he rettmied humbled and disgraced. But his English subjects had not waited for this moment of humiliation to curb his arbitrary power. As soon as he set sail for Flanders the preceding year, the Constable and Earl Marshal, with many other nobles, in presence of the Lord Treasurer and of the judges, forbade the officers of the E.xchequer, in the name of the whole baron- age of England, to exact payment of certain taxes which had been laid on without proper consent of parliament. The citizens of London and of the •Holinshed. other great trading towns made common cause with the barons; and, after issuing some ordws which the Exchequer durst not obey, and making some fruitless attempts at deception and evasion, Edward was obliged to send over from Ghent in- structions to his son and the council of regency* to bend before a storm which there was no opposing ; and, in the month of December, from the same city of Ghent, he was fain to grant, under the great seal, another confirmation of the two charters, together with a full confirmation of the important statute called " De Tallagio non Concedendo," de- claring that henceforth no tallage or aid should be levied without assent of the peers spiritual and temporal, the knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the realm, which had been passed in a parlia- ment held by Prince Edward in the preceding Sep- tember. For many years parliament had exercised a salutary control in such matters, but this statute, for the first time, formally invested the represen- tatives of the nation with the sole right of raising the supplies. Edward felt this as a j^ainful state of dependence; he knew it would check his am- bition, and probably prevent his foreign wars ; and he had scarcely set foot in England when he betrayed his irritation and disgust. It is said that, among his confidential friends, he laughed at the restrictions attempted to be imposed upon him; but his subjects were resolute, and soon made him feel that the matter was neither to be treated as of light consequence nor set aside by subterfuges. f In full parliament, which met at York in the month of May, some six weeks after his return, the Earl of Hereford, the Constable, and the Earl of Nor- folk, the Marshal, demanded of him that he would ratify in person, and with proper solemnities, his recent confirmation of the charters. Edward, as if the ceremony could not have been performed in a few hours, or even then, at the moment, said, that it could not be now, as he must hasten to chastise the Scottish rebels ; but he promised to do what was asked of him on his return from the North, and he pledged solemn oaths, vicariously, the Bishop of Durham and three lay lords swearing, by the soul of the king, that he should keep his promise.+ It will prevent confusion to bring these transac- tions to one point, without regard to the strict chro- nological order in which they occurred. In March, 1299, about ten months after the meeting at York, Edward met his parliament again at Westminster. The bloody laurels of Falkirk were fresh on his brow : he had all the prestige of recent success ; but, undaunted by his glory and might, the barons required the fulfilment of his promises. He was " nothing contented that this matter should be so earnestly pressed, for loth he was to grant their full request." He therefore endeavoured to gain time, putting off the question, and giving no direct answer one way or the other. When the lords • Several members of this council, with tlio Arclibisbop of Can- terbury at their head, were known to be favourable to the cau?c of reform. t He pretended that the confirmation was not bindiiitr as he had put his seal toil in a foreign country. X Homing. — Walsing. 722 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV.- urged him, he withdrew from parUament and got out of London, secretly, and as if by stealth ; but these earnest men would not be evaded : they followed him ; and then the jiroud conqueror was compelled to make mean and debasing excuses, throwing llie blame of his departure on the air of London, which, he said, did not agree with his constitution. At last he granted the ratification so firmly demanded ; but, with singular bad faith, he took parliament by surprise, and added a clause at the end of the document, — a saving of the right of the crown, — which utterly destroyed the value of the concession, and went to shake the very found- ations of the Great Charter itself. Upon this the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, with the mass of the barons, returned sullenly to their homes. Ed- ward was alarmed at their hostile countenance, but fancying he could delude the plain citizens, he ordered the sheriffs of London to call a public meeting, and to read the new confirmation of the charters. The citizens met in St. Paul's Church- yard, and listened with anxious ears : at every clause, except the last, they gave many blessings to the king for his noble grants, but when that last clause was read, the London burghers under- stood its eflPect as well as the noble lords had done, and they cursed as loud and as fast as they had blessed before. Edward took warning : he sum- moned the parliament to meet again shortly after Easter, and then he struck out the detested clause, and granted all that was asked of him in the forms prescribed.* One of the immediate benefits of these enactments was a proper definition of the limits of the royal forests, which, it was decreed, should never again be enlarged by encroachments on the subjects' lands. t But still Edward only considered these concessions as temporary 'sacrifices of his high prerogative, and, from the moment of granting them, he occupied the leisure which the Scottish Avar and his intrigues on the continent allowed him, in devising means to overthrow the power of parliament. Hereford, the Constable, died shortly after the ratification, but his principles had taken too deep and wide a root to be much injured by the death of any one man, however great. In the course of three years, the king artfully contrived to punish, on other charges, and impoverish many of the i)arons who had most firmly opposed him ; but this measure only con- vinced men more than ever of the vital necessity of restricting his power. In 1304, when he had triumphed, for the moment, over all opposition in Scotland, Edward arbitrarily sent to raise a tallage on all the cities and boroughs of his demesne ; and in the following year he despatched secret envoys to the pope, to represent that the conces- sions he had made had been forced from him by a traitorous conspiracy of his barons, and to ask an absolution from his oaths and the engagements he had so repeatedly and solemnly contracted with his subjects. Notwithstanding Edward's instanc- ing the case of his father, Henry III., who was ♦ ncmingford.— Knygliton. t Brady. absolved of his oaths to the Earl of Leicester, the answer of "Clement V. was rather an evasive one. Thus, but slightly encouraged to perjury on the one hand, — awed by the unanimity of the barons on the other, — and then, once more embarrassed by a rising of the patriots in Scotland, who never left him long in tranquil enjoyment of his usurpation, the mighty Edward was compelled to respect his engagements and the will of the nation, and to leave, as a part of the law of the land, those limitations on the power of future rulers which had been wrung from him, one of the most powerful, war- like, and skilful of kings. It reqviired, indeed, an " intrepid patriotism " to contend* with and finally control such a sovereign, and England never has produced any patriots to whom she owes more gra- titude than to Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk. But English historians have not borne sufficiently in mind the indirect obligation to the hardy patriots of Scotland who divided and weakened the strength of the tyrant, and, on more than one occasion, served the cause of liberty in England by distracting his atten- tion at a critical moment, and giving full employ- ment to his arms and resources in the North. If the Scots had been mean-spirited and submissive, the " Confirmation of the Charters " might have been annulled; and if the English had succeeded in enslaving the Scots, they might have found that they had been forging fetters for themselves. The vision of the splendid inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine still haunted Edward's imagination. With such an opponent as Philip le Bel he could scarcely hope to recover all those states which the divorced Avife of Louis VII. conveyed to Henry II. of England ; but he was resolved to get back at least the country of Guienne, the loss of which preyed on his mind and irritated his self-esteem, for Edward prided himself as much on his policy as on his military prowess, and in that particular Philip had fairly, or rather foully, outwitted him. In the transactions which now took place, the two sovereigns ran a pretty equal career of baseness. Having experienced the expensiveness and un- certainty of foreign coalitions, and having no great army of his own to spare for continental warfare, Edward determined to obtain his end by treating diplomatically with the French king, and sacrific- ing his faithful ally, the Count of Flanders. In this he had more in view than the recovery of Guienne, for, as a price of his own treachery to Count Guy, he expected that Philip would be equally false to his treaty with the Scots, whom he had hurried into hostilities for his own purposes, swearing, however, that he would never abandon them. Since Edward's unfortunate campaign in Flanders, the arrogance and exactions of the French had almost destroyed their party in that country ; and though they made a temporary conquest of it, the burghers of Ghent, Lille, Bruges, and the 6thcr free cities, gave them a signal defeat in the battle of Courtrai, which Avas fought in the year 1302, * Ilallam, Midd, Ages, Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1899. 723 Philip*s cousin, the Count of Artois, commanded the French on this occasion; and after his dis- graceful defeat, all the Flemish towns threw off the French yoke, and elected John of Namur to be their governor- general, for Count Guy had been once more entrapped by Philip, who kept him a close prisoner. The French king was as anxious to recover Flanders as Edward was to keep Scot- land, and to get back Guienne; and all the chivalry of France longed to wipe out the disgrace their arms had sustained at Courtrai from the " canaille of Flemings."* It appears that the pope, who had been ap- pealed to as mediator, first suggested, as a jiroper means of reconciling the two kings, that Edward, who had been for some years a widower, should marry Margaret the sister of Philip; and that his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, should be affianced to Isabeau, or Isabella, the daughter of that sovereign. This double marriage had been for some time under discussion, and had given scope to much mutual deception. Each of the kings impudently affected a delicacy of conscience about abandoning his allies, and Edward stated (what was perfectly true) that he had pledged his soul and honour to the marriage between the Prince of Wales aiul Philippa, the daughter of the unfortunate Earl of Flanders, and had stipulated that in case of that union being frustrated by the young lady's continued detention, or by her death, then the young prince should marry her sister ; — that he, King Edward, had sworn upon the Gospels to make neither peace nor truce with France unless it were conjointly with his ally the Earl of Flanders, not even though the pope should demand it. Philip le Bel, on his side, spoke of his allies, the brave, the unfortunate Scots, and of the solemn obligations he had contracted with them ; but each gracious king must have laughed at the other, and probably at himself, too, in making this inter- change of scruples of conscience. Edward married Margaret of France, in September, 1299; and at the same time his son, who was thirteen years old, was privately contracted by proxy to Isabella, who was about six years old. A sort of congress, held at Montreuil, which preceded this marriage, had fettled that there should be peace between the French and English crowns, that the King of Eng- land should make satisfaction for the many French ships which his mariners had illegally taken at the beginning of the 'svar, and that the King of France should place sundry towns in Gascony in the custody of the pope, to be l)y him held till the Guienne question should be adjusted by peaceful negotiation. This treaty, however, had not been properly ratified ; Philip le Bel quarrelled with the arbiter, and even instigated Sciarra Colonna to arrest and ill-treat Pope Boniface. Other cir- cumstances, besides the national antipathies of the English and French people, which were already very strong, had prevented the accommodation; * The nobles of Fnince seldom condescendctl to give tlic industrious burghers of Flanders a better title. but at last, on the 20th of May, 1303, the treaty of Montreuil was ratified, a treaty of commerce was concluded between the two countries, and Edward recovered Guienne, for which the Earl of Lincoln swore fealty and did homage in his name. In this treaty the Scots were not even mentioned : their envoys at the French court complained of this dishonourable abandonment, and Philip so- lemnly promised to plead their cause like a warm and sincere friend in an interview which he was shortly to have with the English king. This personal application, he said, would have more effect than the discussing of clauses and provisos with ambassadors ; and so it might ; but Philip never made it, having, indeed, bargained with Edward to abandon Scotland if he would abandon Flanders. In part through inability to prevent it, Edward had permitted Philip to have his way with the Flemings ever since his unfortunate campaign and the truce of 1297, and now he wholly gave them up, by treaty, to their enraged enemies the French, who, a few months after, avenged their defeat at Courtrai by a frightful massacre of the burghers and peasants of Flanders in the battle of Monts-en-Puelle, which was fought at a place so named, between Lille and Douai. The fate of Count Guy and of his innocent daugh- ter was sad in the extreme. After keeping him four years in close prison, Philip le Bel liberated the count in a moment of great difficulty, and sent him into Flanders to induce his own subjects to convert a truce they then had with the French into a lasting peace. The count went, and not succeed- ing in his mission, — for the Flemish citizens hoped to be able to cope with the French single-handed, — he honourably returned, as he had promised to do in that case, to Philip, who again committed him to prison, and caused him to be treated with infamous severity. The poor old man died soon after at Compeigne, in the eighty- first year of his age. But neither the battle of Monts-en-Puelle, nor a series of bloody engage- ments which followed it, could break tlie spirit of the free citizens of Flanders, whose wealth, the fruit of commerce, gave them many advantages over the miserably poor aristocracy of France, and whose numbers, considering the limited extent of the country they occupied, were truly prodigious. After each reverse they rallied again, and the carnage of many battles left no perceptible dimi- nution in their ranks. " By St. Denis," cried Philip, " I believe it rains Flemings ! " At last he condescended to treat on moderate terms with the trading and manufacturing citizens whom he had once despised as incapable of " high deeds of arms ;" and, about a year after the ratification of the treaty with Edward, he agreed to a truce for ten years, on condition that the Flemings, while they preserved all their ancient liberties, should acknowledge his feudal suzerainty, pay him one hundred thousand francs for the expenses of the war, and leave him in undisturbed possession of the cities of Lille, Douai, Orchies, and Bethune. '24 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Robert, the eldest son of Count Guy, was then liberated, and entered on possession of Flanders ; the body of the octogenarian state-prisoner, -which had been embalmed, was delivered up ; and his younger son and many Flemish gentlemen reco- vered their liberty. But in this general enlarge- ment the fair Philippa, — the, at one time, affianced bride of Prince Edward of England, — was excepted ; and she died of grief and captivity not long after, about two years before Edward of Caernarvon com- pleted his marriage with Isabella of France. The events which rose out of this ill-fated marriage might have satisfied the manes of the most revenge- ful ; and it could hardly happen otherwise than that they should be interj)reted into a direct judg- ment of Heaven provoked by political perfidy. If she did not positively command the atrocious deed herself, Isabella was at least a main cause of the murder of her husband, and from her union with the Plantagenet were derived those English claims to the French crown, in the prosecuting of which her native land was repeatedly wasted with fire and sword from one extremity to the other, and the spirit of enmity and hatred between the two countries — already a prevalent feeling — became so envenomed and deep-rooted that five hxmdred years hav6 scarcely sufficed to remove it.* All this while Edward had never ceased to be occupied with his design of completing the sub- jugation of Scotland ; but so long as he was em- barrassed by having the French war on his hands at the same time, his operations in the north of Britain had been comparatively cramped and in- efficient. Accordingly, the four years that followed the battle of Falkirk were productive of no im- portant results, although during the whole time the hostilities between the two countries never were suspended except occasionally by a truce for a few months. Wallace disappears from the scene after his great defeat. In his room, the barons appointed William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, John de Soulis, John Comyn the younger, and Robert Bruce Earl of Carrick, Guardians of the kingdom in the name of Baliol. This was indeed a strange union of all the great factions, Bruce acting in the name of Baliol, and associated in the same com- mission with Comyn, the only person who stood between him and the throne if Baliol should be set aside ; for Comyn was the son of Baliol's sister Marjory, and, failing King John and his issue, the heir of right to the crown. John Baliol, who had remained a prisoner in the Tower since his abdica- tion in 1296, was liberated by Edward on the intercession of Pope Boniface, in July, 1299, and conveyed to his ancestral estate of Bailleul in Nor- mandy, where, forgetting that he had ever been a king, he lived in quiet till his death in 1314. Edward Baliol, who had been his father's fellow- prisoner, accompanied him to France ; but of him we shall hear more in the sequel. It was not till November, 1299, that the English king found * Kytncr — Pueyro and Bzovius, as quoted in Soullioy's Naval JJist — Mezeray. ' leisure from his other affiiirs to set about pre- parations for the prosecution of the Scottish war, and the effort he then made ended in nothing ; for after an army had been assembled at Berwick in November, his barons, alleging his continued evasion of the charters, peremptorily refused to advance, and he was obliged to return home. The consequence was the capitulation of the castle of Stirling to a Scottish force that had been for some time bes^ieging it. In the summer of 1300, Ed- ward made an incursion into Annandale and Gallo- way ; but it Avas attended with no result except the devastation of the former of these districts, and the formal and useless submission of the latter. On the 30th of October, a truce with the Scots was concluded at Dumfries, to last till Whitsunday in the following year. It was during this interval that Pope Boniface VIII., in a letter to Edward, advanced the singular claim that the kingdom of Scotland belonged of right to the holy see. " But," added his holiness, " should you have any pre- tensions to the whole or any part of Scotland, send your proctors to me within six months : I will hear and determine according to justice. I take the cause under my own peculiar cogniznnce." To this impudent demand, a parliament, which met at Lincoln in February, 1301, returned a short and spirited answer. " At no time," said the English barons, " has the kingdom of Scotland belonged to the church. In temporal affairs, the kings of England are not amenable to the see of Rome. We have with one voice resolved that, as to temporal affairs, the king of England is independent of Rome ; that he shall not suffer his independency to be questioned ; and therefore that he shall not send commissioners to Rome. Such is, and such, we trust in God, will ever be our opinion!" A longer and more deferential epistle from Edward himself, a few months afterwards, entered into an elaborate examination of the question ; and, in the end, Boniface found it expedient to profess himself convinced, or at least to act as if he had no longer any doubt of the English supremacy. He soon after addressed the Scottish clergy in terms of violent reproof for their opposition to Edward his " dearly-beloved son in Christ," and enjoined them to strive, by repentance and by most earnestly pressing the submission of their countrymen, to obtain forgiveness of God and man. Meanwhile, the truce having expired, Edw ard, in the summer of 1301, again marched into Scotland. This cam- ])aign, however, was still more unproductive than the last ; the Scots, adhering to the course that had hitherto proved most effective in ridding them of their invaders, as the English king advanced, laid the country waste before him, till at last, an early and severe winter coming on, he was compelled to retire into the town of Linlithgow. Here he built a castle, and kept his Christmas. In January, 1302, by the mediation of France, he was induced to conclude another truce with the Scots, to endure till the 30th of November (St. Andrew's Day). It is observable that the Scottish commissioners ou Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 725 this occasion still professed to act in the name of Baliol, against whose title to be called a king, how- ever, Edward protested. As soon as the truce had expired, he prepared to renew the war. This time, however, instead of proceeding to Scotland in person, he sent thither John de Segrave, upon whom he had lately bestowed the appointment of governor, at the head of an army of 20,000 men, mostly cavalry. The issue of this expedition was eminently disastrous. Segrave, advancing towards Edinburgh, was suddenly attacked early in the morning of the 24th of February, 1303, in the neighbourhood of Roslin, by the Scottish forces under the command of Comyn, the guardian, and Sir Simon Eraser, and sustained a total defeat. He had arranged his forces in three divisions, which appear to have been successively fallen upon by the Scots, and one after the other completely put to the rout. In the first fight, Segrave himself, after being dangerously wounded, was made pri- soner, along with sixteen knights and thirty esquires : his brother and son were afterwards taken ; and it is said that the victors, on coming up with the second and third divisions of the English, were each time compelled to disencumber themselves for the fresh encounter by the slaughter of all their prisoners. Much spoil was also taken ; and the affair once more for the moment cleared the country of its invaders. But the termination of the dispute with France novv left Edward free to turn with his whole power to the Scottish war. The treaty of Montreuil was ratified at Paris, as above related, on the 20th of May ; on the 21st of that month, the English king was with his army at Roxburgh, and, on the 4th of June, he had reached Edinburgh, his pro- gress, in which he had encountered no opposition, having been marked at every step by fields laid waste and towns and villages set on fire. From Edinburgh he appears to have pursued his un- resisted and destructive course by Linlithgow and Clackmannan to Perth, and thence to Aberdeen and Kinloss in Moray. At the strong and ex- tensive fortress of Lochendorb, built on an islet in the midst of a lake in the heart of Morayshire, he established his quarters for some time, while he received the homage and oaths of fealty of the northern barons. The tradition of the neighbour- hood, after the lapse of more than 500 years, still connects the ruins of Lochendorb with the name of the great English king.* From this remote point he returned southwards in the latter part of Octo- ber. Of all the places of strength to which he came, the castle of Brechin alone shut its gates against him. It was commanded by Sir Thomas Maule, who, while the English were battering the fortresses with their engines, is said to have ex- hibited himself in defiance on the ramparts, with a towel in his hand, with Avhich he contemptuously wiped off the dust and rubbish that fell upon him. The valiant knight, however, was at last struck by a missile ; but even while expiring of his mortal • See Tjtler, i. 200 and 438. wound, he inveighed against his men as cowards when they asked him if they might now surrender the castle. The garrison, however, capitulated the day after their commander ceased to breathe. Ed- ward took up his winter-quarters in Dunfermline in the beginning of December. Here, according to the History attributed to Matthew of Westminster, the English soldiers levelled with the ground the magnificent abbey of the Benedictines, a building so spacious, says this writer, that three kings with all their attendants might have been lodged con- veniently within its w'alls ; but " the Scots," he adds, by way of apology, " had converted the house of the Lord into a den of thieves, by holding their rebellious parliaments there." The last rem- nant of the Scottish forces that kept the field now assembled in the neighboxirhood of Stirling, with the view of protecting that fortress, the only place in the covmtry that still held out. But the ad- vance of Edward and his cavalry at once dispersed this little army. Shortly after, on the 9th of Feb- ruary, 1304, Comyn, by whom it had been com- manded, and some other noblemen, made their submission to the commissioners of the English king at Strathorde,* in Fifeshire. It was agreed that they should retain their lives, liberties, and lands, subject only to such fines as Edward might impose. The capitulation was to include all other persons who might choose to take advantage of it, with the exception only of Wisheart, Bishop of Glasgow, the Steward, and Sir John Soulis, who were to remain in exile for two years, and not to pass to the north of the Trent ; of David de Gra- ham and Alexander de Lindesay, who were to be banished from Scotland for six months ; of Simon Eraser and Thomas Bois, who were to be banished for three years from all the dominions of Edward, and also to be prohibited from passing into France ; and, closing the honourable list, the illustrious Wallace, to whom it was significantly accorded that, if he chose, he might render himself up to the will and mercy of Edward. Not long after, about the middle of Lent, a parliament was assembled at St. Andrew's, in which sentence of outlawry was pronounced against Wallace, Eraser, and the gar- rison of Stirling, on their being summoned and failing to appear. All the persons above named eventually surrendered themselves on the terms ofFered to them ; even Eraser at length gave him- self up : Wallace alone stood out. The rhyming chronicler, Langtoft, relates that, from his hiding place in the forest of Dunfermline, the outlaw sent some of his friends to Edward, with a proposal to surrender himself on a written and sealed assurance of his life and heritage. But " full grim" was Ed- ward, it is added, when this was reported to him : he cursed Wallace and all who supported him as traitors, and set a reward of 300 marks upon his head. On hearing tliis, Wallace, flying again to the moors and marshes, betook himself for sub- sistence to his old occupation of plunder, — " in mores and mareis with robberie him fedis." * Tliis place, we believe, is not now known. 726 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Scotland, however, was not yet completely sub- dued so long as its chief place of strength, the castle of Stirling, remained unreduced. To the siege of this fortress, therefore, Edward now ad- dressed himself. The operations commenced on the 22nd of April. Sir William Oliphant, the governor, had offered, if a cessation of hostilities were granted, to repair to France and tliere take the commands of Sir John Soulis, from whom he had received his charge. "Am I to wait for his orders ?" exclaimed Edward ; " defend the castle if you will !" Thirteen warlike engines, according to Langtoft, the best in the kingdom, were brought to be used against the devoted walls ; and the ample leaden roof of the cathedral of St. Andrew's, Fordun tells us, was torn off to assist in the con- struction of these formidable machines. Some of them, Hemingford says, threw stones of two and three hundred weight. Another species of engine that was used was the espringal, or springal, by which darts were projected, sometimes winged with brass instead of feathers. Edward him- self directed every thing that was done, and "though far advanced in years," to borrow the expression of Lord Hailes, " exposed his person with the fire and temerity of a j'oung soldier." He was several times struck by stones and javelins thrown from the castle, and once an arrow shot at him from a sort of cross-bow stuck in his armour. After the siege had continued nearly a month, without much progress having been made, the sheriffs of York, Lincoln, and London were com- manded to purchase all the bows, quarrels, and other warlike weapons that could be procured within their districts, and to send them to Stirling ; and the governor of the Tower was also desired to send down immediately a supply from those under his charge. All the efforts of these assailants, however, were repelled for two months longer by Sir William Oliphant and his handful of gallant associates. They held out till their provisions were exhausted and the castle was reduced almost to a heap of ruins. Then, on the 20th of July, when Edward would listen to no other terms, they surrendered at discretion. Tlie governor and twenty- four of his companions of rank, all, except two of them who were ecclesiastics, stripped to their shirts and under garments, were led fortli from the castle, and presenting themselves before Edward on their bent knees, with their hair dis- hevelled and their hands joined in supplication, acknowledged their guilt with trembling and the semblance of shedding tears,* and gave themselves up to his mercy. Such was the ungenerous price exacted from them for a chance of life. Their lives were spared, and they were sent to the Tower of London and other English prisons. Besides the twenty-five gentlemen, thirteen ladies, their wives, and sisters, had shared along with them the dangers and privations of their obstinate defence. The garrison, which had so long defied the whole power of the English army, was found to have • Quasi cum lacrimis. — Rym. U. 951. consisted of no more than a hundred and forty soldiers. A few months after the fall of Stirling, the: last enemy that Edward had to dread, and the last hope of Scottish independence, seemed to be cut off by the capture of Wallace. It appears that Edward had anxiously sought to discover his retreat, and that, tempted by the prospect of the rewards his baseness might earn for him, Ralph de Halibiirton, one of the prisoners lately taken at Stirling, had proffered his services for that purpose. It is not clear, however, that it was by Haliburton's ex- ertions that Wallace was actually taken ; all that is certainly known is, that, upon being seized, he was conveyed to the castle of Dunbarton, then held under a commission from the English king, by Sir John Menteith. Menteith has been represented as the betrayer of Wallace, whose friend or inti- mate associate, moreover, to make his treachery the blacker, he is said to have been ; but his part in the transaction seems to have gone no farther than the performance of the duty to which his trust bound him — of receiving the prisoner, and having him conveyed to England.* He was brought to London, " with great numbers of men and women," says Stow, "wondering upon him. He was lodged in the house of William Delect, a citizen of London, in Fenchurch-street. On the morrow, being the eve of St. Bartholomew, he was brought on horseback to Westminster, John Se- grave and Geoffrey, knights, the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen, of London, and many others, both on horseback and on foot, accompanying him ; and in the great hall at Westminster, he being placed on the south bench, crowned with laurel — for that he had said in times past that he ought to bear a crown in that hall, as it was commonly re- ported — and being appeached for a traitor by Sir Peter Malorie, the king's justice, he answered, that he was never traitor to the king of England ; but for other things whereof he was accused, lie confessed them." These circumstantial and mi- nute details, inartificially as they are put together, and homely or trivial as some of them may be thought, are yet full of interest for all who would call up a living picture of the scene. Wallace was put to death as a traitor, on the 23rd of August, 1305, at the usual place of execution — the Elms in West Smithfield. He was dragged thither at the tails of horses, and there hanged on a high gallows, after which, while he yet breathed, his bowels were taken out and burnt before his face. The barbarous butchery was then completed by the head being struck off, and the body being divided into quarters. The head was afterwards placed on a pole on London Bridge ; the right arm was sent to be set up at Newcastle, the left arm to Berwick, the right foot and limb to Perth, and the left to Aberdeen. * There is a very able and spirited vinilication of Sir John Men- teith in Mr. Mark Napier's late " Memoirs of John Napier of Mer- chiston," 4to. Edin. 1834, pp. 527. &c. See also "Tracts Legal and Historical," by J. Riddell, Esq.,8vo. Kdiu. 1835. pp. 145— 149. The admirable Hailes first pointed out the improbabilities !ind unfounded assumptions of the vulgar account, Annals, i. 343, 344. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. '27 A few weeks after the execution of Wallace, ten commissioners, elected by a council of the Scottish nation, which Edward had summoned to meet at Perth — namely, two bishops, two abbots, two earls, two barons, and two representatives of the bo- roughs, assembled in London, and there, in con- cert with twenty commissioners from the English parliament, proceeded to settle a plan of govern- ment for the conquered country. The alterations made were not greater than might seem to be called for to secure the dependence of Scotland upon the English crown ; but as was to be ex- pected, a controlling power over all offices and appointments was left in the hands of the king. The whole arrangement, however, was suddenly overthrown ere it had been well established. Within six months from the death of Wallace, the Scots were again up in arms, around a new cham- pion. This was Robert Bruce. Bruce had ao-ain made his peace with England some time before the capi- tulation of Comyn and his friends at Strathorde, which he was enabled the more easily to effect, inasmuch as he had not been present at the battle of Falkirk, having previously shut himself up in the castle of Ayr, and refused to join the Scottish army. Edward had since sought to secure his ad- herence, by treating him with especial favour and confidence. When his father, who had all along continued attached to the English interests, died, in the latter part of the year 1304, young Bruce was immediately permitted to take possession of the whole of his estates both in England and Scot- land. At the settlement of the latter kingdom, in the following year, while his great rival, Comyn, was fined in three years' rent of his lands, Bruce was entrusted with the charge of the important fortress of Kildrummie, in Aberdeenshire, by com- mission from the English king. It is never to be forgotten that, up to this time, whatever his aver- Ruixs OF Kildrummie Castle. sion to the English domination may have been, there had been repelling circumstances of the strongest nature to prevent Bruce from taking part cordially and steadily with the patriotic party in his native land, who, although they were contend- ing against England, acted in the name and chiefly under the conduct of the enemies of his house and person — of the family which he looked upon as having come between him and his splendid birth- right, and by which also he must have been re- garded as a natural rival and object of suspicion. Wallace might fight for Baliol ; Bruce scarcely could. And as little, after Baliol might be consi- dered to be set aside, could he ally himself with Comyn, the near connexion of Baliol and the in- heritor of his pretensions. Bruce, indeed, if he still retained a hope of seating himself on the dis- puted throne, must now have looked upon Comyn as the man of all others of whom it was most neces- sary for him to clear his path ; and the same also no doubt were the feelings of Comyn in regard to Bruce. If either, by whatever means, could put down the other, the strong necessity of self-preser- vation would banish many scruples — for the one was scarcely safe while the other lived. It is probable enough that the favour of Edward was courted by each with the object of depressing or destroying his rival. The circumstances, how- 728 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [^BOOK IV. ^ ever, that led to the fatal explosion of the inflam- mable elements which only required to be brought together to produce such a catastrophe, are involved in much uncertainty ; the real facts were probably never very generally known, and tradition naturally busied itself in embellishing so remarkable an event. It appears, that in June, 1305, after his last submission to Edward, Bruce had entered into a secret league with William de Lamberton, bishop of St. Andrew's, by which the parties mutually bound themselves to stand by each other against all persons whatsoever. This curious instrument is still preserved.* There can be no doubt that what it chiefly contemplated was the assertion, at some future day, of Bruce's claim to the crown. It is supposed that Comyn had obtained a know- ledge of this agreement, and that thereupon a con- ference on tlie subject of their pretensions took place between him and Bruce, when Bruce is said to have proposed either that he should have the crown and Comyn his estates, or that he should have Comyn's estates and Comyn the crown. It was agreed that Bruce's title to the crown should be supported by both. With whatever views Comyn may have entered into this negotiation, he eventually (so proceeds the story) communicated all that had taken place to Edward. Bruce re- ceived the first intimation of his danger from Ed- ward's son-in-law, the Earl of Gloucester, who, by way of warning him to take instant flight, sent a messenger to him with twelve pence and a pair of spurs, under the show of restoring what he had borrowed. Early the next morning, Bruce set out for Scotland, taking the precaution to make his horse's shoes be reversed, that he might not be tracked in the snow, which had fallen heavily during the night. On his way he met a person on foot, whom he found to be the bearer of letters from Comyn to Edward, urging his death or imme- diate imprisonment. He slew this man, and, with the letters in his possession, pressed forward to his castle of Lochmaben, where he arrived on the seventh day after his departure from London. The most of this, it must be confessed, is more like fiction than fact. It is certain, however, that ou the 10th of February, 1306, Bruce and Comyn met alone in the convent of the Minorites at Dura- fries, and that there a passionate altercation having arisen between them, Bruce drew his dagger, and stabbed Comyn as they stood together beside the high altar. Hurrying from the sanctuary, he called "to horse!" and when his attendants, Alexander Lindesay of Crawfurd, and Roger Kirk- patrick of Closeburn, seeing him pale and violently agitated, inquired the cause, " I doubt," he re- plied, "I have slain Comyn." "You doubt?" exclaimed Kirkpatrick ; " I'll make sure." And, with these words, he rushed into the church, and gave the wounded man his death-stroke, despatch- ing also his kinsman, Sir Robert Comyn, who tried to defend him. In memory of this deed, the descendants of Kirkpatrick still bear as their crest • See it printed in Hailes, 1. 342. a hand grasping a dagger distilling drops of blood, with the words " I make sicker,'' (that is, sure), as a motto. Whatever might have been Bruce's previous plans, there was no room for doubt or hesitation now. The boldest course afforded the only chance of safety. He immediately called his friends around I him — they were few in number ; but, desperate as ; the hazard looked, there were some gallant spirits that did not shrink from setting their lives (which many of them lost) upon another cast for the free- dom of their country. The Bishops of St. An- drew's and Glasgow, the Abbot of Scone, Bruce's four brothers, Edward, Nigel, Thomas, and Alex- ander, his nephew, Thomas Randolph, his brother- in-law, Christopher Seton, and some ten or twelve others, mostly young men, gathered at the sum- mons. They met at Glasgow, and from thence rode to Scone, where Bruce was solemnly crowned on the 27th of Marcli. Edward was at Winchester when the news of this revolution was brought to him. He imme- diately sent forward the Earl of Pembroke, with the title of Guardian of Scotland, at the head of a small army to check the insurgents; and, ad- vanced in years as he now was, proceeded to make ready, if it should become necessary, to follow in person. In preparation for the expedition, pro- clamation was made that tlie Prince of Wales would be knighted on the feast of Pentecost ; and all the young nobility of the kingdom were sum- moned to appear at Westminster to receive that honour along with him. On the eve of the ap- pointed day (the 22nd of May) two hundred and seventy noble youths, with their pages and re- tinues, assembled in the gardens of the Temple, in which the trees were cut down that they might pitch their tents; they watched their arms all night, according to the usage of chivalry, the prince and some of those of highest rank in the abbey of Westminster, the others in the Temple church. On the morrow Prince Edward was knighted by his father in the hall of the palace, and then proceeding to the abbey, conferred that honour on his companions. A magnificent feast followed, at wliich two swans covered with nets of gold being set on the table by the minstrels, the king rose and made a solemn vow to God and to the swans, that he would avenge the death of Comyn, and punish the perfidy of the Scottish rebels ; and then addressing his son and the rest of the company, he conjured them, in the event of his death, to keep his body luiburied until his successor should have accomplished this vow. The next morning the prince with his companions departed for the borders; Edward himself fol- lowed by slow journeys, being only able to travel in a litter. Meanwhile Bruce's adherents had been in- creasing in number, and he had already acquired such strength, that in several parts of the countrv the officers of Edward and the other English had fled in terror. He now marched upon Perth, Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 729 where the Earl of Pembroke lay. It is affirmed, that when the Scots challenged the English com- mander to come forth and give them battle, Pem- broke answered that he would fight them on the morrow; on which Bruce retired to the neigh- bouring wood of Methven ; but that same evening (19th of June) the English fell upon them : it was rather a rout than a battle ; Bruce himself was in the greatest danger, having been three times unhorsed ; Randolph and others of his friends were taken ; and he with difficulty made good his retreat into the fastnesses of Atholl, with about five hundred followers, the broken and dis- pirited remnant of his force. Per many months after this, he and his friends were houseless fugi- tives ; a price was set upon their heads : to make their difficulties and sufferings the greater, they were joined after some time by a party of their wives and daughters; and as they penetrated far- ther and farther into the depths of the Highlands, to avoid the English troops that scoured the coun- try in search of them, their miseries, both from want of shelter and frequent want of food, as well as from the increasing danger, became daily more pressing. On reaching the borders of Argyle, Bruce and his little band were set upon in a nar- row defile by the Lord of Lorn, who had married an aunt of Comyn, at the head of a thousand fol- lowers, and after a sharp but unequal encounter, with difficulty escaped with their lives. At last Bruce's queen and the other ladies were conducted by his brother Nigel to the castle of Kildrummie ; and Bruce himself soon after found means to pass over to the little isle of Rachrin on the northern coast of Ireland. While the Scottish king lay concealed here, ruin fell upon almost all the connexions and adhe- rents he had left behind. The Bishops of St. An- drews and Glasgow, and the Abbot of Scone, had fallen into the hands of the English soon after the battle of Methven : they were taken clad in armour, and were immediately sent, so attired and in fetters, to England, and there consigned to dif- ferent prisons. Their sacred character alone saved their lives. Bruce's queen and his daughter Mar- jory having left Kildrummie, and taken refuge in the sanctuary of St. Duthac, at Tain, in Ross- shire, were seized there by the Earl of Ross. The knights who were with them weie put to death ; and they themselves were sent to England, where they endured an imprisonment of eight years. The youthful Nigel Bruce, much beloved by the people for his gallantry and the graces of his person, was compelled to surrender the castle of Kildrummie, and, being sent in irons to Ber- wick, was there hanged, and afterwards beheaded, along with divers other knights and gallant men. Christopher Seton suffered a similar death at Dumfries, the Earl of Atholl and Sir Simon Fraser in London, and many others there and else- where. Thus did Edward make the best blood of Scotland flow in torrents in expiation of what he called the rebellion and breach of faith of the people of that country. " It is remarkable," as is well observed by Hailes, " that in the preceding year he himself procured a papal bull, absolving him from the oath which he had taken for main- taining the privileges of his people. But the Scots, without papal authority, violated their oaths, and were punished as perjured men. It is a truth not to be disguised, that in those times the com- mon notions of right and wrong were, in some sort, obliterated. Conscience, intoxicated with indulgences, or stupified by frequent absolution, was no longer a faithful monitor, amidst the temptations of interest, ambition, and national ani- mosities." Bruce, however, had not been idle in his winter retreat; and early in the spring of 1307 he passed over from Rachrin to the isle of Arran, with a company of about three hundred men, embarked in thirty-three galleys, which, according to Fordun, he had been enabled to raise by the aid of a chief- tainess, called Christiana of the Isles. Before venturing to the opposite coast, he despatched one of his followers to ascertain what were the disposi- tions of the people, with instructions, if he found appearances favourable, to light a fire on a cer- tain day, on an eminence near the castle of Turn- berry. This had been one of the chief seats of his own family, and the surrounding district was his ancestral territory of Carrick. When the appointed day arrived, Bruce looked anxiously for the expected signal : at length, when it was already past noon, he saw the fire ; on which he quickly embarked with his associates, and they steered their course during the darkness by its light. W^hen they approached the landing-place, Bruce's emissary stood on the shore. He told them that the English were in complete possession of Car- rick ; that Lord Percy, with a numerous garrison, held the castle of Turnberry ; and that there was no hope of a rising in favour of Bruce. " Traitor !" cried Bruce; "why did you make the signal?" " I made no signal," replied the man ; " but, ob- serving a fire on the hill, I feared that it might deceive you, and I hasted hither to warn you from the coast." Bruce hesitated what to do ; but his brother Edward boldly declared for pursuing their enterprise at all hazards. They immediately attacked a body of the English that lay close at hand, and succeeded in putting most of them to the sword. Percy, who heard the tumult, did not dare, in his ignorance of the numbers of the enemy, to come forth from the castle. After this exploit, Bruce sought shelter, in the first instance, in the mountainous parts of the surrounding country. But the bold blow he had struck sufficed to re- kindle the war, and it soon raged in different quarters. In the beginning of February, Bruce's brothers, Thomas and Alexander, as they were bringing over a band of eleven hundred adventurers to his assistance from Ireland, were routed at Loch- rian, in Galloway, by Duncan Mac Dowal, a chief of that region, who immediately carried the two brothers, who had fallen into his hands severely 730 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. wounded, to the English king at Carlisle. Edward ordered both to instant execution. Some weeks after this, Douglas Castle, which was held by Lord Clifford, was gallantly surprised by its former owner. Sir James Douglas, one of Bruce's most distinguished followers. On this occasion he be- haved with distinguished ferocity; for, not con- tented with the numbers of the garrison that had fallen in the encounter, he piled together the malt and corn and wine-casks, and whatever else he found in the castle that he could not carry away, and then setting fire to the heap, slew his pri- soners, and threw their dead bodies among the flames, which soon enveloped the whole build- ing, and reduced it to a blackened ruin. The tra- dition of the neighbourhood still remembers this horrible revenge under the name of the Douglas Larder.* It was some time, however, before Bruce was strong enough to show himself, openly in the field ; and he was frequently again in great personal danger as he skulked from one hiding- place to another in the wilds of Galloway, while his enemies in all directions were hunting him for his life. But at length he ventured to encounter the Earl of Pembroke at Loudon Hill; when, through the skilful disposition of his force, not- withstanding a great inferiority of numbers, he ob- tained a complete victory. This action was fought on the 10th of May. Three days after, he attacked another English force under the command of the Earl of Gloucester; and this, too, he succeeded in routing with great slaughter. Pembroke and Gloucester having both thrown themselves into the castle of Ayr, Bruce immediately laid siege to that fortress. But here we must break off our accoimt of events in Scotland for the present. King J^dward all this while had advanced no farther than to Carlisle, having been detained all the winter at Lanercost, by a serious attack of illness. He had directed all the late operations of the war from his sick-bed; but now, incensed at the continued pro- gress of the insurrection, he offered up the litter on which he had thus far been carried in the cathedral church of Carlisle, and again mounting on horseback, gave orders to proceed towards the borders. It was the effort of a dying man. In four days he advanced about six miles, when, having reached the village of Burgh-upon-Sands, he there stopped once more for the night ; and on the morn- ing of the next day, the Ith of July, expired, in the sixty-ninth year of his age, and "thirty-fifth of his reign. His last breath was spent in enjoining upon those who should succeed him the prosecu- tion of the great design of his life — the complete subjugation of that country, the hated sight of which, again, after all his efforts, in revolt against him, was thus fated to be the last on which his eyes should rest. Prince Edward was not present when his father died, having returned to London a short time be- fore. Froissart relates that the old king, before his • Tyller, i. 256. death, made his son be called, and, in the presence of his barons, made him swear upon the saints, that as soon as he should have expired, he would cause him to be boiled in a cauldron, till the flesh should fall from his bones, and afterwards bury the flesh, and keep the bones, and that every time the Scots rebelled, he would lead an army against them, and carry along wdth him these dead relics of his father. If this singular oath ever was exacted, it must have been not when Edward was at the point of death, but before he set out from Carlisle ; and as at this time he imagined himself to he. recovering, it is most probable that the inci- dent never took place at all. Edward II. — Surnamed Of Caeknarvon. A.D. 1307. — The death of Edward I. was cau- tiously concealed in the capital for many days, and Ralph de Baldoc, bishop of London and chancellor of the kingdom, continued to put his great seal to writs till the 25th of July. Edward II., however, had been peacefully recognised at Carlisle by the unanimous consent of the peers and magnates pre- sent with the army there, on Saturday, the 8th of July, the day after his father's death.* This prince had the outward appearance of many advantages : he was young, of an agreeable person, and cheerful disposition ; and the fame and greatness of his father endeared him to the English people, and caused him to be respected abroad ; but he had already betrayed weaknesses that would overthrow the strongest throne, and had incurred the suspicion of vices which, when once proclaimed, were sure singularly to irritate a manly nation. On his death-bed his father had implored him to eschew the company of favourites and parasites, and had forbidden him, under pain of his curse, to recal his chief minion, Gaveston, to England. Piers Gaveston was a remarkably handsome youth of Gascony, who had been brought up with the prince, over whose heart he obtained a disgraceful ascendancy. The stern old king had driven him from England ; but, forgetful of his dying injunc- tions, and his own solemn oaths, Edward's first thoughts on his accession w'ere to recal this fa- vourite, and confer upon him the earldom of Corn- wall, with other honours and immense estates. He was obliged, however, to make a semblance of prosecuting the war in Scotland : he hastened from London ; he marched as far north as Cumnock, on the borders of Ayrshire ; but at tliis point he turned roand, and made his way back to England, without having performed anything. Meanwhile, Gaveston, who had hastily arrived from the con- tinent, joined him in Scotland, and had scarcely made his appearance when the whole body of the government was changed. The chancellor, the trea- surer, the barons of the Exchequer, the judges, — all the officers who had been appointed by the deceased king, were at once deprived of their » W.iUinghnm sayshe succeeded to the crowu," iioii tamjureluTio ilitario, quiim unanimi asseusu piocerum et m.-igiiatiim." Chap. L] ClVlL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 731 Edwvtid II —Drawn fiom the lomb it Gloucester. Gbeat Seal op Edward II. places, and in some instances stripped of their property and thrown into prison. This fate parti- cularly befel the lord treasurer, Walter de Langton, bishop of Lichfield, and it was said for no other reason than his having reproved the prince, and refused him money for his extravagance during his father's life-time. In no case does any legal procedure appear to have been resorted to. Instead of fulfilling his father's solemn behest, Edward buried his bones in Westminster Abbey, at the head of Henry III., on the 27th day of October; and soon after he gave the money which the old king had set apart for the Holy War to his insa- tiable favourite. Indeed, the whole of Edward's care seems to have been to disgust every feeling and prejudice of his barons, and to enrich and aggran- dise Gaveston with a rapidity and to an amount unprecedented even in the shameful annals of favouritism. The great earldom of Cornwall, which had been appanage enough for princes of the blood, was not deemed sufficient for this Gas- con knight. Edward married him to his own niece, Margaret de Clare, made him lord cham- berlain, and gave him an extensive grant of lands 732 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. in Guienne. In ti-avelling through England nothing was so frequently seen as the manors, the retinues, and houses of this overgrown minion. Nothing was granted without his consent; and it was reported, among many other things, that the king had said that he would leave him his kingdom if he could.* When the infatuated Edward sailed for France, in January, 1308, to marry the Princess Isabella, to whom he had long been contracted, he left Gaveston regent of the kingdom during his absence, and intrusted him with more absolute powers than had ever been conferred in such cases. The Princess Isabella, daughter to Philip le Bel, was reputed the most beautiful woman in Europe, — une des plus belles dames du monde, accord- ing to Froissart. But Edward from the first was rather indifferent to her person. They were married with great pomp in " our Lady Church of Boulogne," on the 25th of January ; no fewer than four kings and three queens being present at the ceremony. Edward showed the greatest im- patience to return to England : the usual rejoicings were cut short, and he embarked with his bride and a numerous company of French nobles whom he had invited to the coronation. Soon after their landing they were met by Gaveston and by the flower of the English nobility, who came to salute their young and beautiful queen. At this moment, paying no attention to his wife, or his guests, or to the rest of his subjects, Edward threw himself into the arras of his favourite, hugged and kissed him, and called him brother. The whole court was disgusted at this exhibition, and two of the queen's uncles, who had accompanied her into England, could not conceal their displeasure. At the coronation, which was celebrated with great magnificence at Westminster on the 24th of Feb- ruary, nearly all the honours were allotted to the favourite, without any regard to the hereditary offices of the great barons. " None," says an old writer, " came near to Piers in bravery of apparel or delicacy of fashion." He carried the crown, and walked in procession before the king and queen ; which things greatly increased the anger of the lords against him. Four days after the coronation the barons petitioned the king, and, without any ceremonious phrases, requested him to banish Sir Piers Gaveston immediately. Edward promised to give them an answer in parliament, which was to meet after the festival of Easter, and in the mean while he did all he could to disarm their resent- ment. But the favourite himself had no discre- tion ; he continued to outshine all the nobles of the land, and being w'ell skilled in those martial sports, he frequented all tournaments, and carried away many prizes. He unhorsed at different times the earls of Lancaster, Hereford, Pembroke, and Warenne; and these triumphs are supposed to have given a fresh edge to their hatred. When the parliament met Edward was obliged to part with his minion. Gaveston took an oath that he • De la More. — W'alsing. — Trivet. would never return to England, and the bishops bound him to his oath by threats of excommuni- cation. The king accompanied him to Bristol, where he embarked ; but a few weeks after it was ascertained that the exile had been appointed governor of all Ireland, and that he had established himself in that island with almost royal magni- ficence. From the time of his departure till that of his return, — a space of thirteen months, — the whole soul of the king seems to have been ab- sorbed by this one subject: he employed every expedient to mitigate the animosity of his barons ; he granted offices to his cousin the Earl of Lancaster ; he made great concessions to Earl Warenne and others ; he wrote to Rome for a dis- pensation for Gaveston from his oath ; and having, as he fancieil, removed all dangerous opposition to the measure, he sent to recal the favourite from Ireland. They met at Chester, with a wonderful display of tenderness on the part of the king. The parliament assembled at Stamford, and the promises of the king, and the affected humility of Gaveston, obtained a formal consent to his re-establishment in England. The king was now happy ; his court was filled with buflFoons, parasites, and such like pernicious instruments ; and nothing was seen there but feast- ing and revelry. At the same time the upstart favourite became much more arrogant and insolent than he had ever been before. The English people, who despised him, would call him nothing but Piers Gaveston; upon which he caused the king to put forth a ridiculous proclamation ordering all men to give him the title of the Earl of Cornwall whenever they mentioned him. He indulged in rude witticisms and sarcasms at the expense of the English nobles, and he presumed to give contemp- tuous nicknames to some of the greatest barons of the kingdom. Thus, he called the Earl of Lan- caster the " old hog," or the " stage-player :" the Earl of Pembroke, because he was pale and tall, " Joseph the Jew :" the Earl of Gloucester "the cuckold's bird :" and the Earl of Warwick " the black dog of Ardenne."* The silly king laughed at this wretched wit, which was sure to travel beyond the applauding walls of the court. When the stern Earl of Warwick heard it, he vowed a terrible vow that he would make the minion feel "the black dog's teeth." Even the queen was so disgusted with this man's predominancy, that she sent complaints to the king her father, and con- ceived an aversion to her husband, which, though sometimes suppressed or concealed, was never afterwards removed. The grants voted by parlia- ment were dissipated, and Edward was continually in great straits for money. The barons, before voting supplies, had several times made him pro- mise a redress of grievances ; but when he sum- moned a parliament to meet at York, in October, 1309, three months after the favourite's return from Ireland, most of the barons refused to attend, alleging that they stood in fear of the power and • Paekin"toii, in I.eland's Collect. — Walsii'.g. Chap, I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 733 malice of Gaveston. The urgency of the king's wants obliged him to repeat his summons, but still they came not. The favourite then withdrew for a time ; and at last the barons announced that they would assemble at Westminster. They met ac- cordingly in the month of March, 1310 ; but every baron came in arms, and Edward was completely in their power. As they would no longer be amused by promises, he was obliged to consent to the immediate appointment of a committee of peers, who should have power to reform not only the state, but also the king's household. The committee was appointed by the primate, seven bishops, eight earls, and thirteen barons, who ac- knowledged under their signatures that this grant proceeded from the king's free will ; that it was not to be considered as a precedent for trenching on the royal prerogative ; and that the functions of the committee should cease at the feast of St. Michael in the following year. The committee, called "ordainers," sate in London. The king, who considered them in the light of censors and harsh schoolmasters, hurried away to the north, ])referring even the toils of a campaign to a resi- dence under their shadow. He was scarcely out of their sight when he was once more joined by Gaveston, upon whom he heaped fresh gifts, honours, and employments. The two passed the winter and the following summer at Berwick and the country about the Scotch borders, doing little or nothing, while the cautious Bruce was pre- paring his measures for a final expulsion of the English. In the month of August, 1311, Edward was obliged to meet his parliament at Westminster. The barons were in a worse humour than ever : they recalled all grants made by the king to his favourite ; they decreed that all made thereafter, without consent of parliament, should be invalid ; that Gaveston should be banished, on pain of death in case of return ; that the king should not leave the kingdom or make war withovit the consent of the baronage; that the baronage, in parliament assembled, should appoint a guardian or regent during the royal absence ; and that all the great officers of the crown, and the governors of foreign possessions, sbould at all times be chosen by the baronage, or with their advice and assent in par- liament. In later times these conditions were softened into the important principle that the con- fidence of parliament is required to render the choice of public officers agreeable to the consti- tution.* The king had once more confirmed the great charter, the preceding year, before going to the north, but now a new and important provi- sion was introduced respecting the meeting of parliament : — " Forasmuch as many people be aggrieved by the king's ministers against right, in respect to which grievances no one can recover without a common parliament, we do ordain that the king shall hold a parliament once a year, or twice if need be." More for the sake of his • Sir J aJ3\es Mackintosh. favourite, than from any other motive, Edward made a show of resistance to several of these ordinances, but he was compelled to yield, and he affixed his signature to them all in the beginning of October. On the 1st of November following, after many tears, he took leave of Gaveston, w-ho retired to Flanders, with royal letters warmly recommending him to the duke and duchess. The king, who was not incapable of a certain cunning, then dissolved the parliament, and, without betraying his intentions, cautiously retired to the north, where he hoped to collect an army that would stand for him. At York, in lees than two months from his last departure, Gaveston was again with his royal master, who made him a new- grant of all his estates and honours. But the career of the favourite was now drawing to its close. The barons, headed by the great Earl of Lancaster, the king's cousin, fell suddenly upon the royal party at Newcastle. Edward had time to escape, and he sailed away on board a vessel with Gaveston, leaving his beautiful wife behind him with the greatest indifference. Lancaster caused the queen to be treated with all respect, and then marched to lay siege to Scarborough Castle, into which the favourite had thrown him- self, trusting to be able to hold out until the king, who had gone from thence to York, should return to his relief with an army. The castle was not tenable, and the favourite surrendered on capitu- lation on the 19tli of May, 1312, to "Joseph the Jew," the Earl of Pembroke, who, with Lord Henry Percy, pledged his faith that no harm should happen to him, and that he should be con- fined in his own castle of W^allingford, From Scarborough he travelled, under the escort of Pembroke, as far as Dedington, near Banbury, and here the earl left him for a night to pay a visit to his countess, who was in that neighbourhood, Gaveston appears to have had no foreboding of his fate : on the following morning he was ordered to dress speedily : he obeyed, and descended to the court-yard, where, to his confusion, he found him- self in the presence of the " black dog of Ardenne," — the grim Earl of Warwick, — who was attended by a large force. They put him on a mule, and carried him, with shouts of triumph, to Warwick Castle, where his entrance was announced by a crash of martial music. In the castle-hall a hurried council, composed of the earls of Lancaster, Here- ford, and Arundel, and other chiefs, sate upon the prisoner. A proposal was made, or a hint was offered, that no blood should be shed ; but a voice rung through the hall, — " You have caught the fox ; if you let him go you will have to hunt him again." This death-note had its effect; the capitulation of Scarborough was foully disre- garded, and it was resolved to put an end to the unhappy man in conformity with the ordinance passed by parliament for his last exile. He threw himself at the feet of the " old hog,"— the Earl of Lancaster, — whom he now called " gentle lord ;" but there was no mercy there. They hurried him 734 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Warwick Castle; Guy's Tower.* at once to Blacklow-hill, a gentle knoll a mile or two from the castle, on the edge of the road that leads from Warwick to Coventry, and there, in view of the beautiful windings of the placid river Avon, they struck off his head.t This tragedy, unusual in England even in those turbulent times, threw the king into an agony of grief; but when he dried his tears he thought of revenge. For six months Edward and his barons were in arms against each other, but no battle took place, and a temporary reconciliation was effected at the end of the year, the king postponing the gratification of his vengeance to a more suitable opportunity. Two meetings of parliament (a.d. 1313) confirmed and completed this treaty. The barons knelt before the king in Westminster Hall, amnesties were published, and the plate and jewels of the deceased favorite were surrendered to Edward. But when tliey asked him to declare Gaveston a traitor, he resolutely refused. J This year Edward took the field in something like earnest, but he only marched to Scotland to add the disgrace of a defeat in regular war to the other reverses of his inglorious reign. While he had been occupied in England with a vain struggle to maintain his obnoxious favourite, the Scottish patriots had en- tirely undermined the fabric of his able father's ambition. Ever since the death of Edward I., the English dominion in the greater part of Scotland had been little more than nominal. The progress of Bruce in liberating the country had been continued and steady ; and, although something had on dif- ihl h1'*,"""l,''"","'f "'""' eail. " The Black Dog of Ardenne,"of of inmh^^V.,^'?"*''-' ^l^'l ""^^ ''?'" "■ '■"'"""^ ^"'y ^avl of Warwick, oi .itKitUer lamily, lu the Saxon times. + Rymer.— Walsing.- t Rymer —Walsing, -Knvghton. -Statutes 7lh Ed. II. ferent occasions been attempted, little or nothing had been done by the indolent and incapable prince who now occupied the English throne to counteract his able and persevering efforts for the establish- ment and consolidation of his authority. We must content ourselves with noticing briefly the principal events that had marked the contest up to the time at which we are now arrived. Edward, on return- ing home, in the autumn of 1307, had left the war to be conducted by the Earl of Richmond, upon whom he conferred the office of Guardian of Scot- land, and who was supported by that part of the nation which was opposed to Bruce's assumption of the crown. The latter, therefore, had both an English and a Scottish, both a foreign and a do- mestic enemy, to contend with. The great body of his countrymen soon became warmly attached to his cause ; but in some districts even the popular feeling was hostile, and a powerful faction of the nobility was arrayed in determined resistance tu his pretensions. For the present at least, anil until they should have attained their immediate object of putting him down, this party professed to be in the English interest, and acted in concert with Edward's officers. Most of the places of strength throughout the kingdom were also in the hands of the English. In these circumstances the course which Bruce appears to have laid down for himself was to avoid a general action as long as possible, to keep his enemies divided by constantly occupying their attention at various points at the same moment, and so to give himself the chance of cutting them off in detail, while in the mean time he overran and ravaged in succession those parts of the country that refused to submit to his autho- rity, and seized every favourable opportunity of reducing the castles and other strongholds. Most Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1309. 735 of these that he recovered he immediately dis- mantled : they were of no use, and would only have been an incumbrance to him, with the national feeling in his favour, and it was by their occu- pation chiefly that the English had ever been enabled to maintain their power for any length of time in the country. The severe bodily exertion and fatigue, and the still more trying accumulation of mental distresses to which he had been subjected since the com- mencement of his great enterprise, had been too much even for his heroic heart and iron frame, and had reduced Bruce by the spring of 1308 to a state of debility from which it had begun to be feared that he would not recover. On the 22nd of May the royal force was encountered near Inverury, in Aberdeenshire, by a numerous force under the command of Mowbray, an Englishman, and John Comyn, the Earl of Buchan. At this time Bruce, it is affirmed, was not able to rise without assist- ance from his couch, but he nevertheless desired to be set on horseback, though he was only enabled to keep his seat by being supported on each side. In this state he led his men to the charge ; the enemy was put to flight, and pursued with great slaughter for many miles ; and if we may believe Bruce's poetical historian, Barbour, the king was restored to health by the excitement of this day. There is nothing in the story to entitle us to reject it as incredible. Soon after this the people of Aberdeen rose and stonned the castle there, put the English garrison to the sword, and razed the fortress to the ground. An English force immediately marched against the town, but the citizens finished their exploit by likewise encountering and defeating this new enemy. With the savage spirit which the cha- racter of the war had engendered, the victors gave no quarter, but slew every man who fell into their hands. .Edward I., indeed, had already set the example of executing his prisoners, and it was not to be expected that the other side would fail to follow the same course. The capture of the castle of Aberdeen was speedily followed by that of the castle of Forfar ; it was surprised by escalade during the night ; and here also the English by whom it was garrisoned, and of whom the number was considerable, were all massacred, and the for- tifications destroyed. There were two districts of the kingdom where the opposition to Bruce was especially strong — that of Galloway, the turbulent inhabitants of which had never yet been thoroughly reconciled to the dominion of the Scottish kings, and were besides attached by a sort of national connexion to the Baliol family through their ancient lords ; and the country of Lorn in Argyleshire, the chief of which, AUaster (or Alexander) Mac Dougal (often called AUaster of Argyle) had, as mentioned above, mar- ried an aunt of Comyn, whom Bruce had slain, and was consequently one of the fiercest enemies of the latter. In the course of this summer both these districts were overrun, and for the present reduced to subjection, the former by Bruce's brother Edward, the latter by the king himself. Meanwhile the measures of the English govern- ment were characterised by all the evidences of distracted councils, and of the decay of the national spirit and power vmder the inefficient rule of the new king. Almost every quarter of a year saw the substitution of a new guardian or chief governor for Scotland ; but none of these changes brought any change of fortune to the English arms. The country generally was under subjection to Bruce ; and whenever he encountered any military force, whether composed of Scots or of English, he was sure to put them to flight. At last, in the spring of 1309, a truce was arranged by the mediation of the king of France. Hostilities, however, were not long suspended. The English charged the Scots with having violated the truce ; but it is pro- bable that, in the embittered state of feeling be- tween the two parties, irregular aggressions were soon made by individuals on both sides. In the end of the year, by a second intervention of the French king, the negotiations were renewed, and another ti-uce appears to have been concluded in the year 1310. But this also was soon broken by one party or by both. In the state to which affairs were reduced, which threatened to sweep away the last vestiges of the English authority if some great effort were not made, Edward II. at last prepared to proceed to Scotland, and take the field in person against the insurgents. Probably, however, his principal motive, as has been hinted above, for this apparent exertion of vigour was, that he might escape along with his favourite out of the observa- tion of the Committee of Ordainers, which the pai-liament had recently set over him. He entered Scotland about the end of September, but, after leading his army about from place to place over the border counties for some weeks withovit achiev- ing anything, he returned to Berwick, and, taking up his quarters there, remained inactive for nearly nine months. Bruce and his adherents, he after- wards boasted in a letter to the pope, lay lurking in their coverts, all the time he was in the country, after the manner of foxes.* He certainly, at any rate, did not set about imkennelling them with much ardour. Edward returned to England in the end of July, 1311 ; and, as soon as he was gone, Bruce made an irruption into Durham, and suffered his soldiers to wreak their vengeance on that unfortunate district by a week of unrestrained plunder and the most merciless devastation. Bringing them back loaded with spoil, he next led them to attack the castle of Perth, one of the most important of the fortresses which the English still held. After a siege of six weeks, it was taken in the beginning of January, 1312, by an assault during the night, gallantly led by the king himself. He was, Barbour says, the second person that mounted the wall. Edward now attempted, but without success, to negotiate another truce, and even solicited the intervention of the pope, Bui, • Ad instar vulpium. 736 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. instead of listening to these overtures, Bruce again invaded England, burned the towns of Hexham and Corbridge, and a great part of the city of Durham, afterwards penetrated to Chester, and, although he was repulsed in an assault upon Car- lisle, only consented to return across the border upon the four northern counties purchasing a truce from him by a payment of two thousand pounds each. Not long after he succeeded in making himself master of the castle of Dumfries, and of those of Butel and Dalswinton in Galloway, — the former a seat of the Baliols, the latter of the Comyns. On the 7th of March, 1313, the im- portant castle of Roxburgh was sviddenly taken by assault; a party under the command of Bruce's friend Douglas having scaled the wall while the English garrison were enjoying the revelry of the carnival. On the 14th of the same month that of Edinburgh, which had for some time been block- aded by Bruce's nephew Randolph, now created earl of Moray, was taken in a similar manner by a party of thirty men, whom Randolph headed, and who made their way at midnight up the precipitous rock, on which the castle stands, by a secret path, along which tliey were guided by a man who had resided in the fortress in his youth, and had been wont to descend by that intricate and perilous access to visit a girl with whom he was in love. "When the assailants had by this means reached the foot of the castle wall, and had sat down to take breath, a soldier on the ramparts, calling out * " Away ! I see you well !" threw down a stone to the spot when; they were; but they remained motionless ; and the man walked away. In a few minutes Randolph and his men, having fixed their ladder of rope, were on the top of the wall. A desperate conflict ensued ; but the superior num- bers of the garrison did not compensate for the confusion into which they were thrown by so sudden a surprise, and, after the governor himself had fallen in the melee, they surrendered at dis- cretion. The castle was afterwards demolished. It appears to have been likewise about this time, although the event is placed earlier in the common accounts, that the castle of Linlithgow was sur- prised by a stratagem, which might almost be sup- posed to have been suggested by the classic tale of the Trojan horse, but of which the contrivance as well as the conduct is attributed to a poor country- man named William Binnock or Binny. A party of Scottish soldiers having been previously placed in ambush near the gate, Binny introduced eight men into the fort by concealing them in a \\ aggon- load of hay which he had been employed to bring in : as soon as the waggon had reached the middle of the gateway he cut the traces by which the oxen were fastened to it, when the men imme- diately leaped out ; in an instant, while the position of the*waggon prevented the portcullis from being let down, the guard was overpowered, and the drawbridge, which had been raised, was again lowered; the party of soldiers then rushing in, easily mastered the garrison, and put them to the sword. This same year Cumberland was again ravaged by Bruce, who then crossing over to Man, defeated a force which the governor brought out to oppose him, took the castle of Russin by storm, and effected the complete reduction of the island. While the king was absent on this expedition, Edward Bruce had made himself master of the castles of Dundee and Rutherglen, and he had been for some weeks engaged in besieging that of Stir- ling, always of chief importance as the key to the whole northern part of the kingdom, and now almost the only considerable place of strength which the English still held in Scotland. After o gallant defence the governor, Philip de ^lowbray, offered to surrender if not relieved by the Feast of St. John the Baptist (the 24th of June) in the following year ; and this proposal Edward Bruce, Avithout consulting his brother, accepted. It was an agreement, all the advantages of which seem to have been on one side ; for it imposed an inaction of many months upon the Scots, during the whole of which time the castle would be in security, and the king of England would have abundant lei- sure to make the most efficient arrangements for its relief. l^ruce expressed the highest displeasure when the treaty was made known to him ; but he resolved, nevertheless, to abide by it. Every effort was now made on both sides in pre- paration for a crisis which it was felt would be decisive. King Edward, besides ordering a fleet to be fitted out to act in concert with the land forces, summoned all the military power of Eng- land to meet him at Berwick on the 1 1th of Jime, and also called to his aid both his English subjects in Ireland and many of the native Irish chiefs. That day, accordingly, saw assembled at the place of rendezvous perhaps the most magnificent army that our warlike land had ever yet sent forth ; its numbers are asserted by the best authorities to have exceeded a hundred thousand men, including a body of forty thousand cavalry, of whom three thousand were clad in complete armour, both man and horse. At the head of this mighty array Edward took his course into Scotland, advancing by the east coast to Edinburgh, from which, turning his face westward, he proceeded along the right bank of the Forth towards Stirling. Bruce, meanwhile, had collected his forces in the forest called the Torwood, midway between that place and Falkirk ; they amounted to scarce forty thousand fighting men, nearly all of whom were on foot. When the English a])proached, the king of Scots drew up his little army immediately to the south of Stirling, in a field then known by the name of the New Park, wliicli, partly broken with wood, was in some parts encompassed by a marsh, and had running along one side of it the rivulet of Bannockburn, between woody banks of considerable dejjth and steepness. He arranged his men in four divisions, three of which formed a front line facing tlie soutli-east, from wJiich direc- tion the enemy was approaching, so that the right wing rested on the brook of Bannock, and tlic left Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 737 extended towards the town of Stirling. It was a position chosen with consummate skill ; for while obstacles, partly natural, partly artificial, secured either flank from being turned, the space in front was at the same time so naiTOw and impeded as to be calculated in a great measure to deprive a very numerous hostile force of the advantage of its numerical superiority. On' his most assailable quarter, his left wing, or the north-eastern extre- mity of his line of battle, Bruce had caused a great many pits to be dug, about three feet in depth, and then to be covered over with brushwood and sod, so as not to be easily perceptible ; they might, says Barbour, be likened to a honeycomb ; according to another account, sharp stakes were also fixed in the pits. Of the three divisions thus drawn up, Bruce gave the command of that forming the right wing to his brother Edward ; of that forming the left to Randolph, Earl of Moray ; of the centre to Sir James Douglas and Walter the Steward ; the fourth division, composed of the men of Argyle, the islanders, and his own vassals of Carrick, formed a reserve, which was stationed in the rear, and of which he himself took charge. On Sunday, the 23rd of June, intelligence was received that the English were at hand. Barbour has painted the day as one bright with sunshine, which, falling upon the burnished armour of King Edward's troops, made the land seem all in a glow, while banners right fairly floating, and pennons waving in the wind, added to the splendour of the scene. When he came within sight of the Scots, and perceived how they were planted, Edward, detaching eight hvmdred horse, sent them forward under the command of Sir Robert Clifford to endeavour to gain the castle by making a circuit on the other side of some rising grounds to the north-east of Bruce's left wing. Thus sheltered from observation, they had already passed the Scottish line, when Bruce himself was the first to perceive them. "Randolph!" he cried, riding up to his nephew, " a rose has fallen from your chaplet,— you have suffered the enemy to pass !" It was still possible to intercept Clifford and his horse. Randolph instantly set out to throw himself at every hazard between them and the castle : to prevent this the English wheeled round and charged him; but he had drawn up his men in a circle, with their backs to each other, and their long spears protruded all round, and they not only stood the onset firmly, but repelled it with the slaughter of many of' their assailants. Still they contended against fearful odds, for the English were not only mounted, but greatly superior to them in number ; and, seeing the jeopardy of his friend, Douglas requested to be allowed to go and succour him. "You shall not move from your ground," replied Bruce; " let Randolph ex- tricate himself as he best may." But at length Douglas could no longer restrain himself: "In truth, my liege," he cried, " I cannot stand by and see Randolph perish ; with your leave, I must aid him ;" and so, extorting from the king a re- luctant consent, he hastened forward. But, as he drew near, he perceived that the English were already giving way : " Halt !" he cried to his fol- lowers ; "let us not diminish the glory of these brave men !" — and he did not go up to his friend till the latter had, alone and unaided, compelled the English captain to retire in confusion with his shattered force, and relinquish his attempt. Mean- while, before this affair had yet been decided, a brilliant achievement of Bruce himself, performed in full view of both armies, had raised the hopes of his countrymen with another good omen. He was riding in front of his troops on a little palfrey, but with his battle-axe in his hand and a crown of gold over his steel helmet, when an English knight, Henry de Bohun, or Boone, movmted on a heavy war-horse, and armed at all points, recognising the Scottish king, galloped forward to attack him. Instead of retiring from the unequal encounter, Bruce turned to meet his assailant, and, dexter- ously parrying his spear, in the next instant, with one blow of his battle-axe, cleft his skull and laid him dead at his feet. Although the two armies were so near, the English did not venture upon the attack that night. But next morning, soon after break of day, their van, led by the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, advanced at full gallop upon the right wing of the Scots, while the main body of the army, which had been drawn up in nine divisions, followed in a long close column under the conduct of Edward himself. The shock did not break the Scottish line ; and successive repetitions of the charge were more dis- astrous to the assailants than to the firm phalanx against which their impetuous squadron was broken at every collision. From the advantages of their posi- tion, also, the other divisions of the Scots were soon enabled to take part in the contest. Randolph pushed forward with his men, till, as Barbour expresses it, their comparatively small body was surrounded and lost amidst the English, as if it had plunged into the sea ; Douglas and the Steward also came up ; and thus the battle became general along the whole length of the Scottish front line. Of the English army, on the other hand, the greater part appears never to have been engaged, A strong body of archers, however, by whom the attack of the cavalry was supported, did great execution, till Bruce directed Sir Robert Keith, the marshal, at the head of a small detachment of horse, to make a circuit by the right, and come vipon them in flank. The bowmen, who had no weapons by which they could maintain a fight at close quarters, gave way before this sudden assault like an im- armed rabble, and spread confusion in all direc- tions. Bruce now advanced with his reserve, and all the four divisions of the Scots pressed upon the confused and already wavering multitude of the English. The latter, however, still stood their ground ; and the fortune of the day yet hung in a doubtful balance, when suddenly, on a hill behind the Scottish battle, appeared what seemed to be u new army. It was merely the crowd of sutlers 2u 738 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. and unarmed attendants on the camp; but it is probable that their sudden apparition was not made without the design of producing some such effect as it did, since they are said to have advanced with banners waving and all the show of military array. The sight spread instant alarm among the English : at the same moment Bruce, raising his war-cry, pressed with new fury upon their failing ranks : his onset, vigorously supported by the other divi- sions of the Scottish army, was scarcely resisted by the unwieldy and now completely panic-struck mass against which it was directed : horse and foot, in spite of the most energetic exertions of their leaders to rally them, alike gave way, and fled in the wildest disorder. Many, trying to escape across the river, were driven into its waters and drowned ; many more fell under the battle-axes of their pursuers. Among the slain were twenty- seven of the rank of barons and bannerets, in- cluding the king's nephew, the Earl of Glou- cester, and others of the chief nobility of England. Of knights there fell two hundred, of esquires seven hundred, and of persons of inferior rank, according to some accounts, not fewer than thirty thousand. The slaughter in the fight and the pur- suit together was undoubtedly very great. A vast amount of booty and many prisoners also fell into the hands of the victors. Edward himself with difficulty escaped, having been hotly pursued as far as Dunbar, a place sixty miles from the field of battle, where he found refuge in the castle. But twenty-two barons and bannerets and sixty knights were taken ; and according to one English historian, the chariots, waggons, and other carriages, loaded with baggage and military stores, that were obtained by the Scots would, if drawn up in a line, have extended for sixty leagues. On their side the loss of life, which was the only loss, was comparatively inconsiderable, and included only one or two names of any note. This great victory, in effect, liberated Scotland. The castle of Stirling immediately surrendered ac- cording to agreement. Bothwell Castle, in which the Earl of Hereford had shut himself up, capi- tulated soon after to Edward Bruce, when the Earl was exchanged for the wife, sister, and daughter of the king of Scots, who had been detained in England for the last seven years, and also for the Bishop of Glasgow and the Earl of Mar. Edward Bruce and Douglas, then entering England, ra- vaged Northumberland, exacted tribute from Dur- ham, and, after penetrating as far as Appleby, returned home laden with plunder. " At this time," says Walsingham, " the English were so bereaved of their wonted intrepidity, that a hun- dred of that nation would have fled from two or three Scotsmen." Two other destructive incursions by the Scots into the northern covuities of England followed in the autumn of 1314 and the summer of 1315. On the latter occasion, they assaulted both Carlisle and Berwick, but were defeated in both attempts. Meanwhile, however, a still bolder enterprise had been undertaken and entered upon by the ardent and ambitious brother of the Scottish king. On the 25th of May, 1315, Edward Bruce landed at Carrickfergus with no less a design than that of winning himself a crown by the conquest of Ire- land. The force which he brought with him con- sisted of only six thousand men ; but he was joined, on landing, by a number of the native chiefs of Ulster, with whom he had had a previous under- standing. The invaders and their allies im- mediately began to ravage the possessions of the English settlers ; and no attempt to oppose them seems to have been made for nearly two months, in the course of which time they plundered and burnt Dundalk and other towns, and wasted the surrounding country with merciless barbarity. At length, about the end of July, Richard de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, assisted by some of the Connaught chiefs, marched against them. The Scots at first retreated, but suddenly halting near Coyners, (on the 10th of September,) they turned round upon their pursuers and put them completely to the rout, taking Lord William Burk, and many other persons of distinction, prisoners. Soon after this, a small reinforcement of five hundred men arrived from Scotland ; and the invaders now ^Koceeded to penetrate into the heart of the country. They advanced through Meath into Kildare, and there (on the 26th of January, 1316), encountering the English army commanded by Edmund Butler, the Justiciary of Ireland, gained another brilliant victory over an enemy greatly superior to them in numerical strength. A severe famine, however, now compelled them to return to the North. On their way they were met at Kenlis, in Meath, by Roger Lord Mortimer, who thought to cut off their retreat ; but this numerous force also was defeated and dispersed, and Mortimer himself, with a few attendants, was glad to take refuge in Dublin. The Scottish prince now assumed the government of Ulster. On the 2nd of May, 1316, at Carrick- fergus, he was solemnly crowned King of Ireland ; and from this time he actually reigned in full and undisputed sovereignty over the greater portion of the northern province. The castle of Carrickfer- gus, after a long siege, at last capitulated iu the beginning of winter. By this time the King of Scots himself had come over to take part in the war : the force which he brought with him is said to have raised the entire numbers of the Scottish army to twenty thousand men. Thus strengthened, the invaders again set out for the South, advancing right upon the capital. They failed, however, in their attempt to reduce Dublin : the citizens, after setting fire to the subiu'bs, which might have sheltered their assailants, set about their defence with such determination, that after some weeks the Scots raised the siege. It is probable that the want of provisions compelled them to remove. As they had already, however, wasted the country behind them, they proceeded in their course south- wards, till at length, plundering and destroying as they proceeded, they had penetrated as far as the Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A. D. 1216—1399. 739 town of Limerick. Perhaps they hoped that they might here be joined by some of the chiefs of Munster and Connaught; but if they entertained any such expectation, it does not appear to have been gratified. The difficulties of their position must now have been very serious : they were a handful of foreigners, with many miles of a hostile country between them and the nearest spot on which they could take up a secure station : famine was staring them in the face ; indeed they were reduced to feed upon their horses, and want and disease were already beginning to thin their ranks. Notwithstanding, however, that an English army of thirty thousand men was assembled at Kilkenny to oppose their passage, they contrived to extricate themselves from all these perils and emban'assments, and, by the beginning of May, 1317, the two brothers had made their May back to Ulster, after having thus overrun the country from nearly one extremity to the other, without encountering any effective opposition either from the native Irish or their English masters. The English, however, had taken advantage of the absence of the King of Scots from his own dominions to make several attempts to renew the war there. In the South, the Earl of Arundel, a Gascon knight, named Edmond de Cailand, who was governor of Berwick, and Sir Ralph Neville, were successively defeated by Sir James Douglas. Soon after, a force, which had made a descent at Inverkeithing, on the coast of Fife, was driven back by the gallantry of Sinclair, Bishop of*Dun- keld, " the King's Bishop," as he used afterwards to be called, in memory of Bruce's expression when he was told of the exploit, " Sinclair shall be my bishop." The pope now interfered, and attempted to compel a truce between the two countries ; but as he evaded giving Bruce the title of king, the latter would enter into no negotiation; and when the papal truce was proclaimed, he declined paying any regard to it. On the 28th of March, 1318, the important town df Berwick fell into the hands of the Scots: they were admitted into the place by the treachery of one of the English guards. The castle, also, soon after surrendered to Bruce, who followed up these successes by two invasions of England, in the first of which his army took the castles of Werk, Harbottle and Mitford, in North- umberland ; and, in the second penetrated into Yorkshire, burnt Northallerton, Boroughbridge, Scarborough, and Skipton, and forced the people of Rippon to buy them off by a payment of a thou- sand marks. They then returned home laden with booty, and, as the chronicle of Lanercost expresses it, " driving their prisoners before them like flocks of sheep." In the latter part of this year, however, the career of Edward Bruce in Ireland was suddenly brought to a close. Scarcely anything is known of the course of events for a period of about a year and a half; but on the 5th of October, 1318, the Scottish prince engaged the English at Fagher, near Dundalk, and sustained a complete defeat. He himself was one of two thousand Scots that were left dead upon the field. Only a small rem- nant, consisting principally of the men of Carrick, made good their escape to Scotland. This is said to have been the nineteenth battle which Edward Bruce fought in the country, and till now, accord- ing to Barbour, he had been always victorious ; but one hour sufficed to destroy all that three years had set up : the fabric of the Scottish dominion in Ireland passed away wholly and for ever, leaving scarce a trace that it had ever been. In the summer of 1319, Edward determined to make another effort on a great scale for the reduc- tion of Scotland. Having assembled a numerous army at Newcastle, he marched thence upon Ber- wick, and, after much preparation, made his first attack upon that town at once by land and sea on the 1th of September. He was, how'ever, gallantly withstood by the garrison and the inhabitants, under the command of the Steward of Scotland, and, after a long and fierce contest, repulsed at all points. The attempt was afterwards repeatedly renewed, and always with the same result. Barbour has given a minute and highly curious account of this siege, in which all the resources of the engineering science of the age were called into requisition on both sides. Meanwhile, Randolph and Douglas, at the head of a force of fifteen thousand men, passing into England by the West Marches, made a dash at the town of York, with the hope of car- rying off Edward's Queen ; but a prisoner, whom the English took, betrayed their scheme just in time to prevent its success. The Scots then ravaged Yorkshire with a fury as unresisted as it was unsparing, till, on the 28th of September, they were encountered by a very numerous, but in all other respects very inefficient, force, mostly com- posed of peasantry and ecclesiastics, under the command of the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Ely, at Mitton on the Swale. This almost undisciplined rabble was routed at once, about four thousand of them being slain, including three hundred churchmen, wearing their surplices over their armour. In allusion to the presence of so many shaved crowns, this battle used to be termed the Chapter of Mitton. The Scots then continued their devastation of the country unop- posed. It appears, from a record in the Foedera, that no fewer than eighty-four towns and villages in Yorkshire were the next year excused from the usual taxes, in consequence of having been burnt and pillaged by Douglas and Randolph in this destructive expedition. At length, Edward, raising the siege of Berwick, marched to intercept them ; but they succeeded in eluding him, and got back to Scotland in safety. On the 21st of December, a truce for two years was concluded betweep the two nations, which it was hoped might lead to a permanent peace. We now return to the course of domestic affairs. Edward could not live without a favourite ; and almost the whole of the remainder of his reign is occupied by another long struggle for the support '40 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. of a minion. Soon after the death of Gaveston, he conceived the same unbounded affection for Hugh Despenser, a young man who was first placed about the court by the Earl of Lancaster. Hugh was an Englishman born, and the son of an Eng- lishman of ancient descent; he was accomplished, brave, and amiable ; but all these circumstances, which, except that of his birth, Gaveston had held in common with him, did not rescue him from the deadly hatred of the barons when they saw him suddenly raised above them all. Edward married him to the daughter of the late Earl of Gloucester, and put him in possession of immense estates, in- cluding the county of Glamorgan and part of the Welsh Marches. Through the favour of the son, the elder Despenser obtained as much or more, and all the avenues to favour and promotion were stopped by this one family. Lr 1321, after long heart-burnings, an imprudent exercise or abuse of authority, armed all the lords of the marches against the two Despensers, whose castles were taken and burnt, and their movable property car- ried off. Soon after this outbreak, the Earl of Lancaster, who, as a prince of the blood, had con- sidered himself dishonoured by the promotion of Hugh, his poor dependent, marched from the north, and joined the Welsh insurgents with thirty- four barons and knights, and a host of retainers. Having bound them by an oatli not to lay down their arms till ttiey had driven the two Des})ensers beyond sea, the great earl led them to St. Alban's, whence he despatched a peremptory message to his cousin, the king. Edward again made a sliow of resistance ; and he took up legal ground when he asserted that it would not be proper to punish the Despensers without form of trial. Lancaster marched upon London, and occupied the suburbs of Holborn and Clerkenwell. A few days after, a parliament having assembled at Westminster, the barons, with arms in their hands, accused the De- spensers of usurping the royal power, of estranging the king from his nobles, of appointing ignorant judges, of exacting fines ; and they pronounced a sentence of perpetual banishment against both father and son. The bishops protested against the irregularity of this sentence, but the timid king confirmed it. As an instance of the contempt iri which the royal authority was at this time held, it is related that, when Queen Isabella, passing on a journey by the Lord Badlesmere's castle of Leeds, in Kent, desired a night's lodging, she was not only refused admittance, but some of lier attendants were fallen upon and killed. Suddenly, however, the position of the two con- tending parties was reversed. The Despensers had been banished in the month of August. Leeds Castle. In October they returned to England, encou- raged by a bold move of the king, who took and hanged twelve knights of the opposite party. The Earl of Lancaster retired to the north, and opened a correspondence with the Scots, who pro- mised to send an army across the borders to his assistance. This force, however, did not appear in time ; but meanwhile the secret of the applica- tion for it transpired, and inflamed the hearts of the English against the earl — for the national ani- mosity was at its highest — and they were deemed traitors who could think of calling in the Scots to interfere in an English quarrel. In 1322, Lancaster and his confederates were Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 741 suddenly met at Boroughbridge, by Sir Simon Ward and Sir Andrew Hard ay, who defended the bridge, and occupied the opposite bank of the river with a superior force. The Earl of Hereford charged on foot to clear the pas- sage; but a Welshman, who was concealed under the bridge, put his lance through a hole in the flooring, and thrust it into the bowels of the earl, who fell dead. Lancaster then at- tempted a ford, but his men were driven back by the enemy's archers, who gathered like clouds in all directions. Night interrupted the unequal combat, but in the morning the Earl of Lancaster was compelled to surrender. He retired into a chapel, and looking on the holy cross, exclaimed, " Good Lord, I render myself to thee, and put me into thy mercy." ]\Iany knights were taken with him; and besides the Earl of Hereford, five knights and three esquires were killed. The " common sort" are neither named nor enumerated. But the more fearful part of the battle of Boroughbridge was not yet over. Edward's opportunity for re- venge had arrived, and he determined that many others, besides his cousin Lancaster, whom he always suspected of being a principal mover in Gaveston's death, should perish by the hands of the executioner. A court was convoked at Ponte- fract, in the earl's own castle, about a month after the battle. It consisted of six earls and a number of barons of the royal party : the king presided. Lancaster was accused of many treasonable prac- tices, and especially of calling in the Scots. He was told that his guilt was so well proved to all men, that he must not speak in his defence, and the court condemned him, as a felon traitor, to be drawn, hanged, and quartered. Froissart says, that the accusation had no other foundation than the malice of Hugh Despenser; but the existence of original documents fully proves the earl's intelli- gence with the Scots. Out of respect to his royal blood, Edward remitted the ignominious parts of the sentence ; but his ministers heaped every pos- sible insult on the earl, and the mob were allowed to pelt him with mud and taunt him as he was led to execution, mounted on a wretched puny without saddle or bridle. " He was," says Froissart, " a wise man, and a holy, and he did afterwards many fine miracles on the spot where he was beheaded." This reputation for sanctity is mentioned by seve- ral contemporary English writers ; and it is easier for a modern historian to call the earl's devotion hj'pocrisy than to prove it such. In his character, adventures, and fate, Lancaster bore a striking re- semblance to the Earl of Leicester, the leader of the barons in the time of Henry III. Fourteen bannerets and fourteen knights-bachelors were drawn, hanged, and quartered ; one knight was beheaded. " Never did English earth, at one time, drink so much blood of her nobles, in so vile manner shed as at this ;" and their enemies, not contented with their blood, procured also the con- fiscation of their estates and inheritances. In a parliament held at York, the attainders of the Despenser family were reversed : the father was created Earl of Winchester, and the estates of the attainted nobles were lavished on him and on his son, who became dearer to his royal master, and more prevalent in all things than he had been before his expulsion. Many of the partisans of Lancaster were thrown into prison ; others escaped to France, where they laid the groundwork of a plan which soon involved the king, his favourite, and adherents in one com- mon ruin.* The arrogance of the younger De- spenser, upon whom the lesson of Gaveston was thrown away, the ill success of an expedition into Scotland, and then the inroads of the Scots, who nearly took the king prisoner, and who swept the whole country as far as the walls of York, kept up a continual irritation, and prepared men's minds for the worst. On the 30th of May, 1323, Ed- ward wisely put an end to a ruinous war which had lasted for twenty-three years. He agreed with Bruce for a suspension of arms, which was to last thirteen years, and which was not to be interrupted by the death of either or of both of the contracting parties ; but the inestimable blessing of peace was not unaccompanied by a sense of national disgrace, for, ever since the successes of Edward I., the hopes of the English had been high and absolute, and after such immense sacrifices, they now saw them- selves obliged to recognise, in fact, if not in ex- press terms, tlie independence of the Scots. Soon after the conclusion of this treaty, the king was alarmed by a conspiracy to cut off the elder Despenser, and then by a bold attempt to liberate some of the captives made at Boroughbridge from their dungeons. This attempt failed; but the most important of those prisoners effected his escape by other means. This was Roger Mor- timer, who had twice been condemned for treason, and who was then lying vmder sentence of death in the Tower of London. His adventure resembled that of Ralf Flambard, in the time of Henry I. He made his guards drink deeply of wine, into which he had thrown some narcotic drug : while they slept a sound sleep, he broke through the wall of his dungeon, and got into the kitchen, where he found or made a ladder of ropes : he climbed up the chimney, lowered himself, and contrived to pass the sentries without being ob- served. Under the Tower walls he found a wherry, and this enabled him to cross to the opposite side of the Thames, where some faithful servants were in attendance with good horses. He rode with all speed to the coast of Hampshire, and there he em- barked for France. Charles le Bel, a brother to Isabella, queen of England, was now seated on the French throne. t Differences had existed for some time between him and his brother-in-law, Edward ; and the intrigues of the suffering Lancaster party contributed to drive • Rymer.— Knyghton.— Walaing. — Froissart. — Speed,— Palgrave, Chroii. Abstract. t In thirteen years, three brothers of Isabella occupied, in suc- cession, the French throne— LouisX., Philip V., and Cliarles IV., or Le Bel, who succeeded in 1322. 742 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV matters to extremities. The manifestos of Charles scarcely merit attention — as far as the two kings were concerned, it was the quarrel of the wolf and the lamb ; and after Edward had made apologies, and offered to refer matters to the arbitration of the pope, Charles overran a good part of the terri- tories on the continent that still belonged to the English, and took many of Edward's castles and towns. Isabella, who had long been anxious to quit the kingdom, persuaded her husband that she was the proper person to be deputed to France, as her brother would yield to fraternal affection, what ambassadors and statesmen could not procure from him. The simple king fell into the snare ; and in the month of March, 1325, Isabella, accompa- nied by a splendid retinue, landed at Boulogne, whence she repaired to Paris, being most honour- ably entertained on her journey.* The treaty she concluded was most dishonourable to her husband ; but the weak Edward found himself obliged to ratify it, and to promise an immediate attendance in France, to do homage for the dominions he was allowed to retain on the continent. A sickness, real or feigned, stopped him at Dover. At the suggestion of Isabella, the French court intimated that if he would cede Guienne and Ponthieu to his son, then that boy might do homage instead of his father, and everything would be arranged in the most peaceful and liberal manner. Edward again fell into tbe snare, or, what is more pro- bable, was driven into it with his eyes open by the Despencers, who dreaded, above all things, the being separated from the king, and who durst not venture with him into France, where their enemies were now so numerous and powerful. Edward, therefore, resigned Guienne and Ponthieu, and the Prince of Wales went and joined his mother. The game on that side was now made up. When Ed- ward pressed for the return of his wife and son, he received evasive answers, and these were soon fol- lowed by horrible accusations and an open defiance of him and his authority, Isabella reported that " Messire Hugh" had sown such discord between her and her husband, that the king " would no longer see her, nor come to the place where she was;"t that the Despensers, between them, had seized her dower, and kept her in a state of abject poverty and dependence. The modern historian can scaniely innt at certain parts of Isabella's com- plaints ; but, to finish the climax, she accused the odious favourite of a plot against her life and the life of her son Edward. The king's reply was mild and circumstantial ; but it did not suit the views of a harshly-treated and vindictive party to admit of any part of his exculpation ; and,' making every rational abatement, we believe that it must remain undisputed, that the king had most justly earned the contempt and hatred of his wife; nor will the derelictions of Isabella at all plead in his excuse. This scandalous quarrel occupied the attention of all Europe. During the lifetime of the Earl of Lancaster, the queen seems to have leant on that • Froipsftrt, | id. prince for protection : the Lord Mortimer was now the head of the Lancastrian party ; and when he repaired to Paris — which he did immediately on learning her arrival — the circumstances and neces- sities of her position threw Isabella continually in his society. Mortimer was gallant, handsome, in- triguing, and not more moral than the generality of knights. Isabella was still beautiful and young — she was not yet twenty-eight years of age — and it was soon whispered tlaat the intimacy of these parties went far beyond the limits of a political friendship. When Isabella first arrived in France, her brother promised, by " the faith he owed to God and his lord St. Denis," that he would re- dress her wrongs ; and he continued to protect his sister even after her connexion with Mortimer was notorious. Hugh Despenser, however, sent over rich presents to the ministers of the French king, and even to the king him.self, and thus prevented the assembling of an army on the French coast. He made his master, Edward, write to the pope, imploring the holy father to interfere, and induce Charles le Bel to restore to him his wife and son ; and he sent, by *' subtle ways," much gold and silver to several cardinals and prelates who were " nearest to the pope ;" and so, by gifts and false representations, the pontiff was led to write to the King of France, that unless he sent his sister, the Queen Isabella, back to England and to her hus- band, he would excommunicate him.* These letters were presented to the King of France by the Bishop of Saintes, whom the pope sent in legation. When the king had seen them, he caused it to be intimated to his sister, whom he had not spoken to for a long time, that she must hastily depart his kingdom, or he would drive her out with shame.f This anger of Charles le Bel was only feigned — it appears to have been a mere sacrifice for the sake of appearances ; and when his vassal, the Count of Hainault, gave shelter to Isabella and the Lancastrian party, the count probably knew very well that he was doing what was perfectly agreeable to his liege lord. The more to bind this powerful vassal to her interests, the queen afiianced the young Prince of Wales to Philippa, the second daughter of the count. The countess treated the fugitive queen with the greatest respect, considering everything that was said against her as a calumny ; but no one embraced Isabella's cause with such enthusiasm as John of Hainault, a young brother of the count, who would not listen to those who warned him of the dangers of the enterprise, and told him how jealous the English were of all kinds of foreigners. The gentle knight constantly replied, that there was only one death to die, and that it was the especial duty of all knights to aid with their loyal power all • FroiBsart ^ f Id. Charles le Bel was awkwardly situated. He and his two brollieis, Louis and Philip, had, a few years before, shut their wives up in dungeons on suspicion of irregularity of conduct. Louis, on ascending the throne, caused his wile to be strangled privately in Ch.iteau-Gaillard ; Pliilip was reconciled to liis ; but the wife of Charles was still piuing in prison. It was held monstrous thiA so rigid a moralist with rospect to liis wife should be so tolerant with regard to bis sister. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 743 dames and damsels in distress.* In a short time, a little army of 2000 men gathered round the banner of Messire John. The English exiles were both numerous and of high rank, scarcely one of them being less than a knight. The active find enterprising lioger Mortimer took the lead ; but the L!arl of Kent, King Edward's own brother, the Earl of Richmond, his cousin, the Lord Beaumont, and the Bishop of Norwich, all joined the queen in the Low Countries, though they had beeji sent by Edward as his trusty ambassadors into France. Nor had Isabella any want of partisans in Eng- land to make her way easy and straight. The leader of these was another bishop — Adam Orleton — who had been deprived by the king, or by Hugh Despenser, of the temporalities of his see of Here- ford for his devotion to the Earl of Lancaster. By Orleton's means, a general outcry was raised against the personal vices of Edward — every tale of the court was divulged to the people— the fleet was won over, and a reconciliation effected between tlie Lancastrian party and the barons, who of late had supported the royal cause, but who were equally convinced of the king's demerits, or easily led to join in the enterprise by a common hatred of the favourite. After a stormy passage, Isabella, with her little army and her son Prince Edward, to whom all men already looked up, landed on the 24th of September at Orewell, in Sufiblk, and was immediately received as the deliverer of the king- dom. The fleet had purposely kept out of her way ; and a land force detached to oppose her landing joined her banner, and hailed the young prince with rapturous joy. The queen and the prince stayed three days in the abbey of the Black Monks at St. Edmunds Bury, where they were joined by many barons and knights. The Arch- bishop of Canterbury sent her money, and three bishops off'ered their services in person, being ac- companied by the Earl of Norfolk, the other bro- ther of the king.f Thus wife, son, brothers, cousin, were all in hostile array against Edward, W'ho soon found that he had not a party of any kind in his favour. Never was king so thoroughly abandoned and despised : his weak father had always a strong party in the worst of times — even the miscreant John, his grandfather, could always count on a certain number of knights, English or foreign ; but round the banner of Edward of Caer- narvon there rallied not one. When he appealed to the loyalty of the citizens of London, they told him that their privileges would not permit them to follow him into the field ; and they added that they would honour with all duty the king, the queen, and prince, and shut their gates against the foreigners. Upon this, Edward fled, and there were none to accompany him save the two De- spensers, the Chancellor Baldock, and a few of their retainers. He had scarcely ridden out of London, when the populace rose and tore to pieces in the • Froissart. + Knyghton. — Walsing. — Heming. — De la More. — Bymer. — Froissart. street the Bishop of Exeter, whom he had appointed governor. They afterwards murdered a wealthy citizen, one John le Marshal, because he had been a friend of the king's favourite ; and, falling upon the Tower, they got possession of it, and liberated all the state prisoners, who appear to have been very numerous. Before Edward fled, he had issued a proclamation, offering the reward of a thousand pounds to any one that would bring him the head of Mortimer; but he was soon reduced to such straits, that he knew not where to put his own head for safetjr. Even the Welsh, among whom he w'as born, rejected the hapless fugi- tive, who was at last compelled to take shipping with his favourite.* For a time, the views commonly expressed among the nobles and pre- lates, who had all, with very few exceptions, - joined the queen, were, that the wife ought to be reconciled to the husband, — that the king should be compelled to govern according to the will of his parliament, — and that measures of ex- treme rigour should be adopted only against the Despensers; but Adam Orleton, the Bishop of Hereford, seems to have had no difficulty in con- vincing them that the king was not entitled to the society of his wife, and that it was impossible that the queen could ever again trust herself in the power of so faithless and vindictive a man. The bishop produced instances of former brutality; and, false or true, exaggerated or not, no one, at the time, seems to have doubted his solemn asser- tions; and Edward was never again seriously spoken of as king. The elder Despenser had thrown himself into Bristol ; but the citizens rose against him as soon as the queen approached their walls ; and in three days he was obliged to surrender at discretion. The earl was brought to a trial before Sir William Trussel, one of the Lancastrian exiles ; and, as was usual in those times, and as had been the course taken with the Earl of Lancaster, he was condemned to die the death of a traitor, without being heard in his defence — the triumphant party, in their savage fury, brooking no delay. Old age had not moderated his eager grasping after the honours and estates of others, which seems to have been his capital ofl'ence ; and his venerable grey hairs inspired neither pity nor respect. They dragged him to the place of execution a little be- yond the walls of Bristol : they tore out his bowels, then hanged him on a gibbet for four days, and then cut his body to pieces and threw it to the dogs. As he had been created Earl of Winchester, they sent his head to that city, where it was set on a pole. From Bristol, the barons issued a pro- clamation, summoning Edward to return to his proper post. This document was merely intended to cover and justify a measure upon which they had now unanimously determined. On the 26th day of September, the prelates and « According to some accounts, he meant to escape to Ireland ; according to others, merely to the Isle of Lundy, in the Bristol Chamiel. 744 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. l)arons, assuming to themselves the full power of a parliament, declared that the king, by his flight, had left the realm without a ruler, and that they therefore appointed the Prince of Wales Guardian of the kingdom in the name and by the hereditary right of his father. In the mean time the unhappy fugitive found the winds and w aves as adverse as his family and his subjects. After tossing about for many days in a tempestuous sea, he was driven on the coast of South Wales, where he was forced to land. He concealed himself for some weeks in the mountains, near Neath Abbey in Glamorgan- shire; but an active and a deadly enemy was in pursuit of him ; and the country people, if they did not betray hivi, betrayed his favourite and his chan- cellor, for gold. Despenser and Baldock were seized in the woods of Lantressan, and immediately after their arrest, Edward, helpless and hopeless, came forth and surrendered to his pursuer, who was his own cousin, but also brother to the Earl of Lancaster, whom he had put to death at Pontefract. The wretched king, for whom not a banner was raised, not a sword drawn, not a bow bent in any part of his kingdom, was sent by way of Ledbury to Kenilworth, where he was put in sure keeping in the castle. Despenser found his doom at Here- ford, where the queen was keeping the festival of All Saints " most royally." He had the same judge as his father, and his trial was scarcely more rational or legal; for in those times, even when men had good groimds upon which to prosecute to conviction, their blind passions almost invariably hurried them into irregular courses. William Trussel jpronounced his sentence in a rage, ordering that, as a robber, traitor and outlaw, he should be drawn, hanged, embowelled, beheaded and quar- tered. The sentence was executed with a minute observance of its revolting details ; and the gallows upon which the favourite was hung was made fifty feet high. His confidential servant, one Simon de Reding, was hanged some yards below his master. The Earl of Arundel, who was closely connected with the Despensers by marriage, and who had been forward in voting the death of the Earl of Lancaster, was beheaded : two ether noblemen shared the same fate; but here the task of the executioners ceased. Baldock, the chancellor, was a priest, and as such secured from the scaffbld and the gallows; but a ready death would perhaps have been more merciful than the fate he under- went, and he died not long after a prisoner in Newgate.* On the 7th day of January, 1327, a parliament, summoned in the king's name, met at Westminster, Adam Orleton, the Bishop of Hereford, after an able speech, proposed this question, — whether, under circumstances, the father should be restored to the throne, or that the son should at once occupy that throne ? The critical answer was deferred till the morrow, but no one could doubt what that answer would be. The citizens of London crowded • Knyght.— More.— Walsing.—Leland, Collect.— Rvmer.—Tyrrel, Hist. to hear it, and they hailed the decision with shouts of joy. The king had now been a prisoner for nearly two months, but not the slightest reaction had taken place in his favour ; and when parlia- ment declared that he had ceased to reign, not a single voice spoke in his behalf. His son was pro- claimed king by universal acclamation, and pre- sented to the rejoicing people. The earls and barons, with most of the prelates, took the oath of fealty ; but the Archbishop of York and three bishops refused. The proceedings were followed bv an act of accusation, which surely ought to have pre- ceded them. Five days after declaring the accession of the young king, Stratford, the Bishop of Winches- ter, produced a bill, charging the elder Edward with shameful indolence, incapacity, cowardice, cruelty and oppression, by which he had " done his best to disgrace and ruin his country." Out of delicacy to his son, probably, certain specific charges were suppressed, and the young Edward was present in parliament, and seated on the throne, when the articles were read and admitted as suf- ficient grounds for a sentence of deposition. \i this was a plot or conspiracy, as some writers have laboured to prove, it was certainly a conspiracy in which the whole nation took a part. Again not a voice was raised for Edward of Caernarvon, and again all classes hailed with joy the annunciation that he had ceased to reign. The queen alone thought fit to feign some sorrow at this sentence of the nation, though she soon afterwards took pains to confirm it, and to prevent a possibility of her being ever restored to her husband. On the 20th of January, a deputation, consisting of bishops, earls, and barons, with two knights from each county, and two representatives from every borough in the kingdom, waited upon the royal prisoner at Kenilworth, to state to him that the people of England were no longer bound by their oath of allegiance to him, and to receive his resignation of the crown. The unfortunate king appeared in the great hall of the castle, wrapped in a common black gown. At the sight of Bishop Orleton, he fell to the ground. There are two accounts of a part of this remarkable interview, biit that which seems most consistent with the weak character of the king is, that he, without opposition or protest, — which would have been of no avail, — formally renounced the royal dignity, and thanked the parliament for not having overlooked the rights of his son. Then Sir William Trussel, as Speaker of the whole parliament, addressed him in the name of the parliament, and on behalf of the whole people of England, and told him that he was no longer a king ; that all fealty and allegiance were withdrawn from him, and that he must hence- forward be considered as a private man without any manner of royal dignity. As Trussel ceased speaking, Sir Thomas Blount, the steward of the household, stepped forward and broke liis white wand or staff of office, and declared that all persons engaged in Edward's service were discharged and freed by that act. This ceremony, which was one Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 7U usually performed at a king's death, was held as an entire completion of the process of dethrone- ment. The deputation returned to London, leaving the captive king in Kenilworth Castle ; and three or four days after, being Saturday the 24th of January, Edward III.'s peace was proclaimed, the proclamation bearing, that Edward II. was, by the common assent of the peers and commons,''' ousted" from the throne; that he had agreed that his eldest son and heir should be crowned king, and that, as all the magnates had done homage to him, his peace, which nobody was to infringe under the penalty of forfeiting life and limb, was now cried and published. The young Edward, who was only in his fourteenth year, received the great seal from the chancellor, and re-delivered it to him on the 28th of January, and he was crov^^ned on the next day, the 29th, at Westminster, the Archbishop of Canterbury performing the ceremony in the most regvdar manner.* As the new king was too young to take the government upon himself, nearly the entire au- thority of the crown was vested in the qvieen mother, who herself was wholly ruled by the Lord Mortimer, a man whose questionable position made him unpopular from the first, and whose power and ambition could not fail of exciting jealousy and • More.— Walsing.— Kny<,'ht.— Rvmer.- of Hist. -Sir H. Nicholas, Chron, rendering him odious to many. Some monks had the boldness to denounce from the pulpit the con- nexion existing between the queen and that lord, and even to speak of forcing Isabella to cohabit with her imprisoned husband, regardless of the decision which parliament had given on that head. The indiscreet zeal of these preachers, and some plots which were at last formed, not so much in favour of Edward as against Mortimer, seem to have hurried on a fearful tragedy. The Earl of Lan- caster, though he had the death of a brother to avenge, was less cruel than his colleagues ; the spectacle of his cousin's miseries touched his heart, and he treated the king with mildness and ge- nerosity. It was soon whispered to Isabella that he favoured her husband too much, and more than consisted with the safety of herself and her son. The deposed king was therefore taken out of Lan- caster's hands and given to the keeping of Sir John Maltravers, a man of a fiercer disposition, who had suffered cruel wrongs from Edward and his favourites. Maltravers removed the captive from Kenilworth Castle, and his object seems to have been to conceal or render uncertain the place of his residence, for he made him travel by night and carried him to three or four difierent castles in the space of a few months. At last he was lodged in Berkeley Castle, near the river Severn ; and the Lord Berkeley, the owner of the castle, was joined with Maltravers in the commission of guarding him. The Lord Berkeley also had some bowels, and he treated the captive more courteously than was desired ; but, falling sick, he was detained away from the castle at his manor of Bradley, and durina; his absence the care of Edward was in- trusted, by command of Mortimer, to Thomas Gourney and William Ogle, — " two hell-hounds, that were capable of more villanous despite than became either knights or the lewdest varlets in the world." One dark night, towards the end of September, horrible screams and shrieks of anguish 746 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. rang and echoed through the walls of Berkeley Castle, and were he^rd even in the town, " so that many being awakened therewith from their sleep, as they themselves confessed, prayed heartily to God to receive his soul, for they understood by those cries what the matter meant."* On the following morning the gates of Berkeley Castle were thrown open, and people were freely admitted to behold the body of Edward of Caernarvon, who was said to have expired during the night of a sudden disorder. Most of the knights and gentlemen living in the neighbourhood, and many of the citizens of Bristol and Gloucester, went to see the body, which bore no outward marks of violence, though the countenance was distorted and horrible to look upon. The corpse was then carried to Gloucester, and privately buried in the Abbey church, without any tumult or any investigation whatsoever. It was soon rumoured that he had been most cruelly murdered by Gourney and Ogle, who had thrust a red-hot iron into his bowels through a tin pipe ; and there were many who had heard with their own ears his " wailful noise " at the dead of night; but still the nation continued in its un- relenting itidifFerence to all that concerned this most wretched king.f Edward was forty-three years old : counting from the date of his recognition to that of his deposition, he had worn a degraded crown nineteen years and six months, wanting some days. It was during this unhappy reign that the great Order of the Knights Templars was abolished. These knights, from a very humble beginning in 1118, when nine poor crusaders took upon them- selves the obligation of protecting the faithful at Jerusalem, had attained immense wealth and power. Their association included men of the noblest birth, — natives of every Christian country. Their valour in battle, — their wisdom in council, — had long been the admiration of the world ; but, after the loss of the Holy Land, they forfeited much of this consideration, for they did not, like the Hospitallers or Knights of St. John, secure an esta- blishment in the East,J — a real or fanciful liulwark to Christendom against the Mohammedans. Their luxury and pride increased, or became more obvious, in their state of inactivity at home ; and in most of the countries where they had houses and com- manderies an outcry was gradually raised against them. It was in France that the first blow was struck at their existence : Philip le Bel, of whose resolute and unscrupulous character we have given several examples, was involved in great pecuniary difficulties by his wars with the English and his other neighbours ; and when he and Enguerrand de Marigni, a minister as unscrupulous as himself, had exhausted all other sources of "revenue, they cast their eyes on the houses and lands and tempt- ing wealth of the Red-cross Knights. Forthwith * Holinsh. + More.— Knyght.— Eymer.— Holinsh. t The Knights of St. John, it will be leniembered, got possession of the island of KhoUes, and when they lost lUiodes in the filtocnth century, of Malta and Gozo. they proceeded to form a conspiracy, — for such it really was, — and in a short time the knights were accused of monstrous and contradictory crimes by a host of witnesses, whose depositions were either bought or forced from them by threats, or imprison- ment, or the actual application of the rack. As soon as the French Templars were aware of these accusations they applied to the pope, begging him to investigate the matter : this petition was repeated several times ; but Clement V., who had been raised by French interest, and who had transferred the seat of the popedom from Rome to Avignon, in France, was a subservient ally to Philip le Bel, and had consented to leave the trial and fate of the knights in his hands. On the 13th of October, 1307, Philip took possession of the Palace of the Temple in his capital, and threw the grand master and all the knights that were with him into prison. At the same time, — at the very same hour, — so nicely was the plot regulated, the Templars were seized in all parts of France. Every captive was loaded with chains, and otherwise treated with great barbarity. An. atrocious inquisition forged letters of the grand master to criminate the order, and applied the most horrible tortures to the knights : in Paris alone thirty-six knights died on the rack, maintaining their iimocence to the last ; others, with less capability of enduring exquisite anguish, confessed to the charges of crimes which were in some cases impossible; at least, at the present day few persons will believe that the Tem- plars invited the devil to their secret orgies, and that he frequently attended in the form of a tom- cat. But even the knights, whose firmness gave way on the rack, recanted their confessions in their dungeons, and nothing remained uncontradicted except the revelations of two members of the com- munity, — men of infamous character, who had both been previously Condemned to perpetual im- prisonment by the grand-master, and who both came to a shameful end subsequently, though they were now liberated and rewarded. Two years of a dreadful captivity, with infernal interludes of tor- ture, and the conviction forced on their minds that Philip le Bel was fully resolved to annihilate their order and seize their property, and that there was 110 hope of succour from the pope or from any other power upon eartli, broke the brave spirit of the Red-cross Knights. Even Jacques de Molai, the grand-nia<ter, an heroic old man, was made to confess to crimes of which he never could have been guilty. He afterwards, however, retracted his confession, and, in the end, perished heroically at the stake. The particulars of the long history would fill many pages, but the whole of the pro- ceedings may be briefly characterised as a brutal mockery of the forms of justice. The grand exe- cution took place on the 12th of May, 1310 — when fifty-four of the knights who had confessed on the rack, and then retracted all they had said in their . dungeons, were burnt alive as *' relapsed heretics," ill a field behind the abbey of St. Antoine at Paris. In sight of the flames that were to consume them, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 747 they were offered the king's pardon if they would again confess that they were guilty ; but there was not one of them who would thus purchase life, and they all died singing a hymn of triumph and pro- testing their innocence. Penal fires were lit in other parts of France, and all the surviving knights who did not retract their ])lea of not guilty were condemned to perpetual imprisonment. After a show of dissatisfaction at Philip le Bel's precipitancy, the pope had joined in the death-cry ; and, in the course of the years 1308 and 1309, he addressed bulls to all the sovereigns of Christen- dom, commanding them to inquire into the conduct of the knights. He afterwards declared that seventy- two members of the order had been examined by his cardinals and other officers, and had all been found guilty, hut in various degrees, of irreligion and immorality, and he threatened to excommuni- cate every person that should harbour, or give counsel and show favour to any Templar. Without waiting for these papal bulls, Philip, as soon as he had matured his plans, had endeavoured to sti- mulate his son-in-law, Edward of England, to similar measures; but the English court and council, while they engaged to investigate the charges, expressed the greatest astonishment at them ; and two months later Edward wrote to the kings of Portugal, Castile, and Arragon, imploring them not to credit the accusations which had most maliciously been heaped upon the Red-cross Knights. He also addressed the pope in their favour, representing them as an injured and ca- lumniated body of men. Our weak king, however, was never firm to any purpose except where his favourite was concerned : he forgot the old friend- ship which had existed between the English kings and the Knights Templars ; and the barons, on their side, forgot the day when Almeric, the master of the English Templars, stood with their ancestors on the field of Runnymead, an advocate for the nation's liberties. TJie ruin of the order was therefore resolved upon ; but, thank God ! their suppression in England was unaccompanied by atrocious cruelties. In 1308, the second year of Edward's reign, after the feast of the Epiphany, one of the royal clerks was sent round with writs to all the sheriffs of counties, ordering each and all of them to sum- mon a certain number of freeholders in the several counties, — " good and lawful men," — to meet on an appointed day, to treat of matters touching the king's peace. The sheriffs and freeholders met on the day fixed, and then they were all made to swear that they would execute certain sealed orders which were delivered to the sheriffs by king's messengers. These orders, when opened, were to be executed suddenly. The same conspiracy-like measures were adopted in Ireland, and in both countries, on the same day, — nearly at the same hour — all their lands, tenements, goods, and all kinds of property, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, were attached, and the knights themselves arrested.* • The number of Templars seized was about 250. Of these about The Templars were to be kept in safe custody, bur not "in vile and hard prison." They were con- fined more than eighteen months in different towers and castles. In the month of October, 1309, courts were constituted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, at London, York, and Lincoln. Forty seven of the knights, the noblest of the order in England, who were brought from the Tower before the Bishop of London and the envoys of the pope, boldly pleaded their innocence : the evidence at first produced against them amounted to less than nothing; but the courts were appointed to convict, not to absolve, and, in spite of all law, they sent them back to their prisons to wait for timid minds and fresh evidence. The witnesses, even in France, where they liad been well drilled, went through their duties in a most awkward manner ; but in Eng- land, those first summoned became altogether restive; and the majority of them, both lay and clergy, candidly confessed their ignorance of the secret principles and practices of the order, and bore strong testimony to the general good con- duct and character of the knights. The pope" then censured the king for not making use of torture. "Thus," he wrote, "the knights have refused to declare the truth. Oh! m^ dear son, consider whether this be consistent with your honour and the safety of your kingdom." The Archbishop of York inquired of his clergy whether torture, which had hitherto been unheard of in England, might be employed on the Templars : he added that there was no machine for torture in the land, and asked whether he should send abroad for one, in order that the prelates might not be charge- able with negligence.* From the putting of such questions we may suppose that this archbishop was one who would not hesitate at cruelty ; but it appears pretty evident, whether his queries were negatived or not by his sufiragans, that the torture was not used on this occasion in England. The Templars were worn down by poverty and long imprisonment, and then the threat of puiushing as heretics all those who did not plead guilty to the charges brought against them produced its effect. The timid yielded first : some of the corrupt were bought over by the court, and, finally (more than three years after their arrest) the English Templars, with the exception of William de la More, their grand prior, whom no threats, no sufferings could move, and two or three others who shared his heroic firmness, made a vague confession and most ge- neral renunciation of heresy and erroneous opinions, upon which they were sent into confinement in various monasteries, the king allowing them a pittance for their support out of their immense revenues. In the 1 7th year of Edward's reign it was ordained by the king and parliament that the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, should have all the lands of the late Templars, to hold them as the Templars had held them.f 30 were arrested in Ireland. It appears that only two knights were seized in Scotland. • Hemingford, f Kaynouard, Hist, de la Condamnation des Temjiliers.— Wilkins, Concilia,— Rymer. — Stowe.— Hemingford. 748 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. EiAVARB 111.— iTom the lomb in Westminster Abbey. GaEAT Si;ai. of Edward III. Edward III. A.D. 132T. — When Edward was proclaimed king, about eight months before his father's murder, as he was but fourteen years of age, parliament decreed that a regency should be appointed, " to have the rule and goverliment;" and to this end twelve of the greatest lords of the realm, lay and ecclesiastic, were named. These noblemen were the archbishops of Canterbury and York ; ' the bishops of Winchester, Worcester, and Hereford ; the earls of Kent, Norfolk, and Surrey ; and the lords Thomas Wake, Henry Percy, Oliver Ingham, and John de Roos. The Earl of Lancaster was appointed guardian and protector of the young king's person. The same parliament reversed the attainders which had been passed in 1322 against the great Earl of Lancaster and his adherents; confiscated the immense estates of the Despen- sers ; granted a large sum of money to Isabella, the queen-motlier, to pay her debts ; and voted her a jointure of twenty thousand pounds a year, — o ClIAP. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 749 most liberal allowance for those times, and which materially contributed to secure her ascendancy. Nearly the whole power of government was indeed monopolised by her and Mortimer, who now assumed the state and magnificence of a king. Although Edward was excluded from political duties, he was not considered too young for those of war. It is said that his martial spirit had already declared itself; but it is probable that Mortimer at least would be glad to see him thus occupied at a distance from the court, where the death of his unhappy father was already be- ginning to be agitated. The Scots had suffered too cruelly not to be anxious for revenge ; and the existing truce was not sufficient to make them resist the temptation of what they considered a favourable opportunity, — the true king of England, as they deemed, being shut up in prison, and a boy intruded on the throne. Nor were there want- ing plausible reasons to cover a breach of the treaty ; for if the truce had been concluded for thirteen years, and to last even in case of the death of one or both kings, the Scots, on the other hand, could argue that Edward II., who made the treaty, was not dead ; that Edward III. was no legitimate king; and that, in making war, they attacked a country that had no lawful government wliich could claim the benefit of former treaties. In whatever way they might reason, the Scots acted with great vigour; and all nations in their circumstances would have been equally regardless of the truce. About St. Margaret's tide, February 3, they began to make inroads into England, and these border forays were soon succeeded by the march of regular armies. Age and declining health had no effect on the valour and activity of Robert Bruce, who seems to have hoped that he should be able, under circumstances, to convert the truce into an honour- able peace, if not to recover the northern provinces of England which the Scottish kings had pos- sessed at no very remote date. He summoned his vassals from all parts — from the Lowlands, the Highlands, and the Isles ; and twenty-five thou- sand men assembled on the banks of the Tweed, all animated with the remembrance of recent wrongs and cruel suflferings. Of this host about four thousand were well armed and well mounted ; the rest rode upon mountain ponies and galloways, which could subsist upon anything, and support every fatigue. Froissart, who has left us a most gra])hic description of young Edward's " first ride against the Scots,"* gives some curious details respecting the nimble activity and hardihood of these children of the mist and the mountain. A force better suited for sudden attack and rapid retreat could scarcely be conceived. " They carry with them," says the Chronicler of chivalry, " no })rovision of bread or of wine, for their uisage is such in time of war, and such their sobriety, that they will do for a long time with a little meat half raw, without bread, drinking the water of the rivers, without wine. And they have no need • Sa premiere clievauchee sur k's Esco^ois. whatever of pots and caldrons, for they cook the beasts when they have skinned them in a simpler manner ; and as they know they will find beeves in lots in England they carry nothing with them. Only every man carries between his saddle and his pennon a ilat plate of iron, and tucks up behind him a bag of meal, in order that, when they have eaten so much flesh as to feel uncomfortable, they may put this plate upon the fire, and, heating it, bake thereon oatmeal cakes wherewith to comfort their stomachs." " And therefore," continues the chronicler, rather oddly, " it is no wonder that they make so much longer marches than other people." Bruce intrusted the command of this army of invasion to Randolph Earl of Moray and the Lord James Douglas. Crossing the Tweed, these chiefs marched through Northumberland and Dur- ham, and penetrated into the richer country of York, without meeting any valid resistance. The mountaineers plundered and burnt all the villages and open towns that lay on the road, and seized so many fat beeves that they hardly knew what to do with them. At the first breath of this invasion, a powerful army, said to have amounted to sixty thousand horse and foot, had gathered round the standard of young Edward; but his movements were retarded by a furious quarrel which broke out between the native English archers and the foreign troops of Isabella's knight errant, John of Hainault. These allies fought in the streets and suburbs' of York, where many lives were lost on both sides. The fiercest combatants among the English were the bowmen of Lincolnshire, whose determined animosity sorely disquieted the knights and men of Hainault, who otherwise were well content with their service in a land of such plenty, that the passage of a large army raised neither the price of wine nor that of meat.* When these differences were composed, Edward marched to the north, and soon came in sight of the smoke of the fires which the Scots had lit. Instantly the cry to arms ran through the English force, and horse and foot, knights and squires, with a tre- mendous body of archers, formed in order of battle, and so marched on, " even till the vesper hour," in search of the Scots. But the unequal force of Bruce retired, and not a Scot was to be seen any- where, though the flames of burning villages, far and then farther off, marked the line of their retreat. From Froissart's account, it appears that the Scots did not move directly towards the Tweed, but withdrew towards the west, among the moun- tains and moors of Westmoreland and Cumberland, " savage deserts, and bad mountains and valleys," as he calls them. The English, fatigued by the pursuit, and in order to wait for their supplies of provisions, which were not so portable as those of the enemy, encamped for the night, and so lost all chance of ever coming up with the fleet Scots. After much useless labour, it was determined, in a council of war, that Edward should move north- ward in a straight line, and, crossing the Tjne, or T«s 750 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. occupy the roads between that river and the Tweed, by which, it was calculated, the enemy must return to their own country. This manoeuvre was executed with rapidity, the troops making at least one night march ; but when the English got to the north of the Tyne, they found the country so entirely wasted that they could procure neither forage nor provisions, and, after staying there several days in vain expectation of intercepting the enemy with their booty, they recrossed the Tyne and retraced their steps towards the south, in a perplexing state of ignorance as to the movements of the Scots. Edward ordered it to be cried through camp and country that he would give a heritage worth a hundred pounds a-year, together with the honours of knighthood, to any man that would bring him certain information of the place where he might find the enemy. The prize was won by one Thomas of Rokeby, who came riding very hard to the king, and brought intelligence that the Scots, who, he said, were equally ignorant of the where- about of the English, were encamped on a hill not more than three leagues off. Edward confessed, ordered a number of masses, and then marching, soon came in sight of the enemy, who were ad- vantageously posted on the right bank of the Wear. The river was rapid and dangerous to pass, and there was no other way of getting at the Scots. As the latter showed themselves in order of battle, tlie young king sent a herald to challenge them to meet him like soldiers, on a fair and open field, offering them the undisturbed passage of the river if they would go over to fight him on his side. The Scots were not so chivalrously inclined : the fiery Dou- glas, indeed, Avas nettled at the defiance, and would fain have accepted the challenge, but he was over- ruled by the better prudence of Moray. That night the English lay on the bare ground on the left bank of the river, facing the Scots, who lit a prodigious number of fires along their strong posi- tion, and, from dark till dawn, kept " horning with their horns, and making such a noise that it seemed as if all the great devils fiom hell had come thither.'' Thus passed the night, which was the night of St. Peter ad Vincula, in the beginning of August, and in the morning the English lords heard mass. In the course of the next day, a few knights and men-at-arms, who had strong horses, swam the river and skirmished with the enemy ; but these were idle bravadoes that cost many lives and pro- duced no effect. For three days and nights the English lay on the river-side : it is said that the Scots were suffering from want of provisions and of salt, and that Edward expected that their necessities would force them to abandon their position ; but, from Froissart's account, it should appear that the English, less accustomed to privations, were suffer- ing from severe want, and that their army was dwindling away. On the morning of the fourth day, when the English looked towards the hill on the right bank, they saw no army, for the Scots had secretly decamped in the middle of the night. It was presently ascertained that they had only moved to a short distance farther up the rivei', where they had taken up a position still stronger than the one they had left. Edward made a cor- responding movement on the other bank, and en- camped on another hill, immediately opposite, — the river between them as before. The young king, whose patience was exhausted, would have forced the passage and marched to the attack of the Scottish position, but he was restrained by Morti- mer, who was afterwards accused of treachery for this step, though it seems to have been dictated only by proper military prudence. For eighteen days and nights the two hosts thus lay facing each other and doing nothing but only suffering great discomfort. One night, however, Douglas made a sudden onslaught, which had well-nigh proved fatal to young Edward, Towards midnight, he took about two hundred of his best men, and, marching silently up the river, crossed it at a con- siderable distance above the English position, and then turning with equal caution, entered the Eng- lish camp without being discovered. Then he made a desperate rush towards the spot where the king lay, shouting as he went, " A Douglas ! you shall die, ye English thieves !" and he and his com- panions killed more than three hundred before they left off. He came before the royal tent, still shout- ing, " A Douglas ; a Douglas !" and he cut in twain several of the cords of the tent ; but Edward's at- tendants, roused from their sleep, made a gallant stand, and, his chaplain and his chamberlain having sacrificed their lives for his safety, he escaped in the dark. Missing the king, Douglas fought his way back, and contrived to return to his friends on the opposite hill with but little loss. At last the Scots abandoned this second position, taking the Eng- lish, it is said, again by surprise, and marching away unheard and unseen at the dead of night. If this account be true, the English were sadly want- ing in proper military vigilance ; but it appears more than probable that they were as anxious to be rid of the Scots as the Scots were to be quit of them, and that Edward's officers were glad to be able to cross the Wear without fighting at disadvantage for the passage. At all events it was determined that, as the enemy had got the start of them, it M'ould be useless to follow them any farther ; and soon after, fording the river, Edward marched straight to York, where the army was disbanded.* The Scots, after their extraordinary campaign, got back to their own country with much booty. The young king, " right pensive," returned to London, breathing nothing but fresh wars and vengeance : as yet, however, he had no power, and both Mor- timer and his mother, who controlled his destiny, were, for their own private interests, desirous of peace, and, soon after, they opened negotiations with Robert Bruce, who, on his side, labouring imder his " heavy malady," and seeing that his son who was to succeed him was still an infant, was anxious to terminate the war by a definitive and honourable treaty, which he fondly hoped * Froissart. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 751 Queen PaiuppA.— From the Toinb in Westminster Abbey, would secure peace to his country when he should be no longer alive to protect it with his consum- mate ability. Before this treaty was concluded, young Edward was married to Philippa of Hainault, to whom his mother had contracted him during her scapade on the continent. This young lady, who proved an excellent and loving wife, was brought over to England by her uncle, John of Hainault, a little before Christmas. She was received at London with great pomp, — " with jousts, tournaments, dances, carols, and great and beautiful repasts," — and, on the 24th of January following, (a. d. 1328), the marriage ceremonies were completed at York. A few months after, about the Feast of Whitsuntide, the parliament met at Northampton, and there, " by the evil and naughty counsel of the Lord Mortimer and the queen-mother," as it was afterwards main- tained, they put the last hand to the peace with Bruce, concluding what the English called both an unprofitable and dishonourable treaty. The basis of this treaty was the recognition of the complete independence of Scotland. One of its leading articles was, that a marriage should take place between Prince David, the only son of Robert Bruce, and the Princess Joanna, a sister of King Edward. In spite of the tender age of the parties (for the bride was in her seventh and the bride- groom only in his fifth year), this part of the treaty was carried into alrnost immediate effect : the queen-mother Isabella carried her daughter to Berwick, where the marriage was solemnised, on the day of Mary Magdalen, the 22nd of July. With the princess, whom the Scots surnamed " Joan Makepeace," were delivered up many of the jewels, charters, and other things which had been taken out of Scotland by Edward I. In return for these and the other advantages of the compact, Bruce agreed to pay to the king of Eng- land the sum of thirty thousand marks in com- pensation for the damages done by the Scots in their recent invasion. The great Bruce, who had raised his country from the depth of despair and servitude to this glorious enfranchisement, did not long survive the peace, dying at his little castle of Cardross on the. 7th of June in the following year. He was buried under the pavement of the choir in the abbey church of Dunfermline. The position occupied by Mortimer inevitably exposed him to envy, yet he continued to grasp at fresh power and honours, and to show that he would hesitate at no crime to preserve what he got. In the month of October, parliament met again at Salisbury, and then Mortimer was created Earl ot March, or Lord of the Marches of Wales. The council of regency was in a manner displaced, and the whole government seemed more than ever to be shared between him and the queen-mother. His expenses knew no bounds, and he caused an immoderate qviantity of provisions to be taken up ii\ the name of the queen, " at the king's price, to the sore oppression of the people." This abuse of the right of purveyance caused great discontents, and popular odium, arising from other causes, was added to the grudge of the nobles. The Earl of Lancaster was the first to attempt to make head 752 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. against this new favourite ; but, though he was guardian of the young king, Edward remained with Mortimer and his mother, and after a show of force at Winchester, the earl was obliged to retreat. Mortimer fell upon his estates and plundered them, as if he had been fighting in a foreign country. The young king's uncles, the Earls of Kent and Norfolk, who were equally disgusted with the favourite's arbitrary ascendancy, joined Lancaster ; but, from some cause or other, they abandoned him almost immediately after, upon which the earl was compelled to submit to ask pardon in a hu- miliating manner, and to pay an immense fine. Blind to the fact that young Edward was every day approaching that age when he would act for himself, Mortimer still pursued his wild career of ambition. It was said at the time that he enter- tained a design of destroying the king and placing himself on the throne, but there is no proof of this improbable story.* A.D. 1330. — The Earl of Kent was now made to pay an awful price for his levity in joining and then deserting Lancaster. He was surrounded by the artful agents of Mortimer and the queen, and led to believe a story which was then widely cir- culated, that his brother Edward II., in whose deposition he had taken so active a part, was not dead but living. The body exhibited at IBerkeley Castle and afterwards buried at Gloucester (so went the legend) was not that of the deposed king, who was actually shut up in Corfe Castle. Some monks urged the Earl of Kent to release his captive brother, and restore him to the throne, assuring him that several bishops and nobles, whose mes- * Ilcniing.— Kiiyght.— Wals.— Rymcr.— Ilolinsh. sengers they were or pretended to be, would aid him in this meritorious enterprise. The earl even received letters from the pope, exhorting him to pursue the same course. These letters appear to have been forgeries, but they imposed upon the credulous earl, who even went the length of writing to his dead brother, which letters were delivered to Sir John Maltravers, one of the suspected assassins of the late king. These strange epistles were put into the hands of Isabella and Mortimer, who, consider- ing them proofs sufficient of treasonable practices, immediately summoned a parliament to try the traitor. The Earl of Kent was inveigled to Winchester, and there a parliament, consist- ing solely of the partisans of Isabella and Mor- timer, met on the 11th of March. The Earl of Kent, who had been seized as soon as he was in their power, was produced as a prisoner ; and, on the 16th, he was convicted of high treason, for having designed to raise a dead man to the throne ; at least nothing else was proved or attempted to be proved against him ; and thus this trial is entitled to a place among the curiosities of jurisprudence. The earl's accomplices were all liberated, with the exception of one Robert de Touton, and a poor London friar who had told the Earl of Kent that he had raised a spirit in order to be more fully assured that Edward II. was really living. This monk was kept in prison till he died. On account of his royal birth it was not expected that the sentence against the earl would be carried into execution; but people had not taken the proper measure of Mortimer's audacity : — on the 19th, the son of the great Edward was canied to the place of execution outside the town of Winchester; but when he reached the spot, nobody could be found DuNFEUjiuNK Albky, Fife. Tho Burial-place of Bruce. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—139.9. 753 that would perform the office of headsman, l-'or four hours the life of the earl was painfully pro- longed by this popular scruple : at last a convicted felon took up the axe, on cor.dition of a free par- don, and the head was struck oft'. His death was the less lamented, " because of the insolence and rapaciousness of his servants and retinue, who, riding abroad, would take up things at their plea- sure, neither paying nor agreeing with the parties to whom such things belonged." From which statement it should appear, as also from complaints in parliament, that all the princes of the blood, and occasionally other great lords, were accustomed to consider the oppressive privileges of purveyance as part of their ways and means, or, in other words, to plunder the defenceless portion of the people of such stock and provisions as they wanted. But the iniquity of the senterice was apparent, and attri- buted by all to the malice and jealousy of Mor- timer and Isabella. The young king, it is true, had confirmed the sentence and sent his own uncle to the block ; but Edward was not consi- dered a free or competent agent.* About three months after the execution of the Earl of Kent, Philippa, the young queen, was deli- vered, at Woodstock, of her first child, — the Prince Edward, afterwards so celebrated under the title of the Black Prince. A father, and eighteen years of age, the king now thought it time to assert his authority ; and, though their party was strong, the nation was most willing to assist him in overthrowing the usurpation of his mother and her daring lover. Ilie immorality of the connexion had long been a • Ilemiii''. — Knv"ht, — Muiim. — HoliusUed, theme of popular outcry : some had believed, or affected to believe, that scandal had exaggerated indiscretions, but now it was generally reported and credited that Isabella was with child by Mor- timer. At first, however, no person about the court was bold enough to declare himself; and when Edward opened his mind to the Lord Mon- tacute, it was with the most circumspect secrecy, and the first steps taken in conjunction with this prudent nobleman were cautious in the extreme. Probably to make it be thought that his mind was still occupied by the trivial pleasures with wliich Mortimer had long contrived to amuse him, Edward held a joust in Cheapside, when he, with twelve others as challengers, answered to all knights that appeared in the lists. This " solemn joust and tourney" was held in the month of Sep- tember, and lasted three days. The young queen presided ; and the interest felt in her favour, already high, was heightened among the people by a perilous accident. A stage or ])latform, on which she was seated with many other beautiful dames, broke down ; " but yet, as good hap would, they had no hurt by that fall, to the rejoicing of many that saw them in such danger."* In the month of October following the parliament met at Not- tingham: Edward with his mother and Mortimer were lodged in the castle : the bishops and barons who attended took up their quarters in the town and the neighbuurhocxl. Mortimer never moved without a strong body-guard ; and the knights in his splendid retinue were known to be devoted to his interests. On the morning of the 19Lh Edward * Holinshed. VOlv. I. Ancient Caves nlar Nottingham Castle. Supposed to communkalc with the Castle. 3v 754 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. had a private conference with the Lord Montacute, who immediately after was seen to ride away into the country with many friends and attendants. In the afternoon Mortimer appeared before the council with a troubled countenance. The plot was made up, but it was well nigh being defeated when at the point of execution ; for the favourite, by some means or other, had obtained a vague hint of what was going on. This was a nervous moment for the young king : Mortimer proclaimed to the members of the council that a base attempt was making against him and the queen-mother, and that Edward himself was privy to the conspiracy. Edward denied the charge ; but the favourite treated him as a liar. At the dead of the night the Lord Montacvite and his associates returned quietly to Nottingham. The strong castle was not a place to be taken by assault or surprise. A proper military guard was kept, and the keys of the great gates were carried every evening to Isabella, w^ho laid them by her bed-side. But the conspirators had taken measures to defeat all these precautions : Moistacute had won over the governor of the castle, who had agreed to admit them through. Mortimee's Hole, Nottingham Castle. The PaBsage through •which Lord Montacute and his Party entered the Castle. a secret subterraneous passage, the outlet of which, concealed by brambles and rubbish, opened at the foot of the castle hill. It was near the hour of midnight when Montacute and his friends crawled through this dismal passage : when w-ithin the castle walls, and at the foot of the main tower, they were joined by Edward, who led them up a silent staircase into a dark apartment. Here they heard voices proceeding from a hall which adjoined to the queen-mother's chamber ; they were the voices of Mortimer, the Bishop of Lincoln, and other adherents, who were sitting in late and anxious consultation. The intruders burst open the door, killing two knights who tried to defend the en- trance. The guilty Isabella rushed from her bed, and in tears and in an agony of grief implored her " sweet son" to spare " her gentle Mortimer," " that worthy knight, her dearest friend, her well- beloved cousin." The favourite was not slaugh- tered there, which, considering the barbarity of the times and the violent excitement against him, was rather extraordinary j but he was dragged out of the castle, and committed to safe custody. On the following morning Edward issued a procla- mation informing his lieges that he had now taken the government into his own hands ; and he sum- moned a new parliament to meet at Westminster on the 26th of November.* Before this parliament the fallen favourite was arraigned : the principal charges brought against him were, his having procured the death of the late king, and the judicial murder of the Earl of Kent ; his having " accroached" or usurped the povver which lawfully belonged to the council of regency, and appropriated to himself the king's moneys, — especially the tw^enty thousand marks recently paid by the king of Scots. His peers found all these articles of impeachment to be "notoriously true, and known to them and all the people ;" and, as his proper judges in parliament, they sentenced him to be drawn and hanged as a traitor and enemy of the king and kingdom.! Eldward, who was present in court during the trial, then requested them to judge Mortimer's confederates, but this they would not do until they had protested in form that they were not bound to sit in judgment on any others than men who were peers of the realm, like themselves. Sir Simon Bereford, Sir John Mal- • Knyght. — IJeming.— Wals. — Rymer. + Bot. Pari.— Knyghton. Chap. I. "I CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. liJO travers, John Deverel, and Boeges de Bayonne, were condemned to death as accomplices, but three of these individuals had escaped. Mortimer was accompanied to the gallows only by Bereford. Tliey were hanged, at " the Elms," on the 29th of November. The queen-mother was deprived of her enormous jointure, and shut up in her castle or manor-house at Risings, where she passed the remaining twenty-seven years of her life in obscu- rity. Edward, however, paid her a respectful visit at least once ayeav, and allowed her three thousand, and afterwards fom- thousand pounds, for her annual expenses. In this same parliament a price was set upon the heads of Gourney and Ogle, the reputed murderers of the late king. Gourney was arrested in Spain, and delivered over to an English officer, wlio, obeying secret instructions, cut ofi' his head at sea, without bringing him to England for trial. From this and other circumstances it has been imagined that there were persons who still retained their influence at court, to whom silence upon all that regarded this horrid subject was particularly convenient. What became of Ogle does not appear; but it is probable that he died abroad before the murder of Gourney. Sir John Maltravers was taken and executed, but on a different charge, namely, for having aided Mortimer in misleading tlie Earl of Kent by false reports of the late king's life. The Lord Berkeley, in whose castle the deed had been done, demanded a trial, and was fully acquitted by a jury ; nor does there appear to be any good reason for qxiestioning the propriety of this verdict. Edward was now his own master, and account- able for the good and evil of his government. His first transactions are not very honourable to his character; but it might be said in justification of an older head and better heart than his (and his was not a bad heart), that he was carried away by the general feeling of the nation, whose pride was hurt by the last treaty v.'ith the Scots, and who eagerly longed for a fresh war. On the borders, indeed, this war had scarcely ceased, having been prolonged in an irregular manner by the vindictive spirit of the people on 1)oth sides. We have noticed tlie death of the great Bruce, which hap- pened in 1.330: in the following year his brave companion in arms, the Lord James Douglas, was killed by the Moors in Spain as he was carrying his master's heart to the Holy Land ; and in the month of July, 1332, Randolph, Earl of Moray, who had been appointed regent of the kingdom of Scotland and guardian of Prince David, died sud- denlv. The Earl of Moray was succeeded in the regency by Donald, Earl of Marr, a man inferior to him in prudence and ability. An article in tlie last treaty of peace had stipulated that a few English noblemen should be restored to estates they held in Scotland. This article was faithfully observed with regard to Henry de Percy ; but, for various reasons, it was disregarded with respect to the lords Wake and Henry de Beaumont, and these two noblemen resolved to obtain redress by changing the dynasty of Scotland. Setting up the rights of Edward Baliol, the son and heir of the miserable John of that name, whom Edward T. had crowned and uncrowned, they went into the counties near the borders, where they were pre- sently joined by other English lords who had claims similar to their own, though they had not had the address to get their estates in Scotland tacked to a treaty. In those northern districts the elements of war and havoc were rife and ready ; and Avhen Edward Baliol came over from Normandy, and raised his standard there, a few disaffected Scots came over the borders to join him. Edward felt, or pretended to feel, many scruples, — for the infant queen of Scotland was his own sister, and he had also sworn to observe the treaty. Proclamations were issued prohibiting the gathering of any army of invasion on the borders ; but this did not pre- vent — nor was it intended to prevent — Baliol and the lords Wake and Henry de Beaumont, with their associates, from getting ready a small fleet and army on the shores of the Humber. In the beginning of August this expedition sailed from Ravenspur : entering the Frith of Forth, the army landed at Kinghorn, on the coast of Fife, on the 6th, and five days after won one of the most astonishing victories recorded in history. Edward Baliol, — we use his name because he was first in dignity, though it is evident the campaign was directed by some bolder and abler mind than his, — on finding himself suddenly in presence (or nearly so) of two Scottish armies, — the one commanded by the regent Marr, the other by the Earl of March, — boldly threw himself between them, and encamped at Forteviot, wnth the river Earn running between him and the forces of the regent. At the dead of night he crossed the Earn by a ford, and fell upon the sleeping Scots, who were slaughtered in heaps before they could get ready their arms or ascertain the force of the assailants. As day dawned, the regent blushed to see the insignificant band that had done all this mischief: he was still in a condi- tion to take vengeance, but, in his blind fury, he engaged in a wretched pass where his men could not form ; and his own life, with the lives of many of the Scottish barons, and of nearly all the men- at-arms, paid forfeit for his military blunder. Thirteen thousand Scots, in all, are said to have fallen, while Baliol, who had not three thousand when he began the battle, lost but a few men. From Duplin Moor, where this victory was gained, Edward Baliol ran to Perth, being closely pursued the whole way by the Earl of March, at the head of the other strong division of the Scots. He had just time to get within that city, and throw up some barricades. March besieged him there ; but there were both scarcity and trcacliery in the Scottish camp ; their fleet was destroyed by the English squadron which Baliol had ordered round to the mouth of the Tay ; the ancient followers of his family, with all those who had forfeited their estates for their treasons under Bruce, with all who were in any way disaffected, or who hoped to '^6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. benefit largely by a revolution, flocked to the standard of the Pretender, who was crowned King of Scotland, at Scone, on the 24th of September. Edward Baliol had thus gained a crown in some seven or eight weeks, but he lost it in less than three months. Having secretly renewed to the English king-all the forms of feudal submission imposed on his father by Edward I., and having stvipified his opponents in Scotland by the rapidity of his success, he retired with an inconsiderable force to Annan, in Dumfriesshire, where he intended to pass his Christmas. On the night of the 16th of Decem- ber he was surprised there by a body of horse com- manded by the young Earl of Moray, Sir Archibald Douglas, and Sir Simon Frazer. He got to horse, but had no time to saddle, and, nearly naked himself, he galloped away on a bare back, leaving his brother Henry dead behind him. He succeeded in cross- ing the borders into England, where Edward re- ceived him as a friend. There was probably not a man in Scotland hut knew that the English king had secretly countenanced the whole expedition : the greatest exasperation prevailed, and, with or without orders, the people near the Tweed and the Solway Frith made incursions into England, carry- ing fire and slaughter with them. Edward had applied to his parliament, assembled at York, to legalize, or at least to justify in the eyes of the English, his ambitious projects on Scotland ; but the ])relates, barons, and commons were much divided in opinion, and gave no direct answer. The inroads of the Scots, however, gave Edward a colourable pretext for declaring that they had in- fringed the treaty of peace, and lie prepared for war, — the parliament then engaging to assist him to the utmost.* In tlie month of May, 1333, Berwick was in- vested by a powerful English army ; and on the 16th of July, Sir William Keith, the governor of that important town, Avas obliged to treat and to pro- mise that he would surrender on the 20th at sun- rise, if not previously relieved by Lord Archibald Douglas, who now acted as regent of Scotland. On Monday, the 19th, after a fatiguing march, Douglas came in sight of Berwick, and found Edward's main army drawn up on Halidon Hill, about a mile to the north-west of the town. This elevation was in part surrounded by bogs and marshes ; yet, in spite of all these advantages, the Scots, whose heads were heated, resolved to attack them. As they moved slowly through the bogs they were sorely galled by the English bowmen : when they got firm footing tliey rushed up the hill with more rapidity than order : their onslaught, however, was tremen- dous, and for a moment seemed to be successful ; but the English, w-ho were fresh, and admirably posted, repelled the attack : the regent Douglas was killed in the melee ; many lords and chiefs of clans fell around him ; and then the Scots fell into confusion, and fled on every side. Edward spurred after them with his English cavalry,— the Lord • I'orduu.— Knyght.— Ilemin:,'.— Rymer. [Book IV. Darcy followed up with a horde of Irish kerns who w-ere employed as auxiliaries. Between the battle and the flight the loss was prodigious : never, say the old writers, had Scotland sustained such a defeat or witnessed such slaughter. The young king, David Bruce, with his wife, Edward's inno- cent sister, was conveyed into France, and Edward Baliol was again seated on a dishonoured throne. The price which Edward exacted for this service was immense, and the readiness with which Baliol paid it incensed the nation against him, and even estranged many of his former partisans. He openly professed homage and feudal service in its full extent to the king of England ; and he not only made over the town of Berwick, which sur- rendered the day after the battle of Halidon Hill, but ceded in perpetuity the whole of Berwickshire, Roxburghshire, Selkirkshire, Peebleshire, and Dumfriesshire, together with the Lothians, — in short, the best part of Scotland. Edward left his mean vassal an army of Irish and English to defend him in his dismembered kingdom; but soon after his departure the indignant Scots drove Baliol once more across the borders, and sent to request assistance from the king of France, who hos])itably entertained their young king and queen in the Chateau Gaillard. Edward, on his side, re- inforced Baliol, who returned to the south of Scot- land, and maintained himself there among English garrisons, though he could make no impression north of Edinburgh. In 1335, Edward, having still further reinforced his vassal, marched with a powerful army along the western coast of Scotland, while Baliol ad- vanced from Berwick by the eastern. In the month of August these two armies formed a junc- tion at Perth, and, as they had met with little opposition, it was thought that the spirit of the Scots was subdued ; but no sooner had Edward turned his back than the patriots fell upon Baliol from all quarters, and harassed his forces with continual skirmishes and surprises. In the follow- ing summer Edward was again obliged to repair to the assistance of his creature, and having scoured the country as far north as Inverness, and burnt several towns, he flattered himself that he had at last subdued all opposition. During this campaign, which was marked with more than usual cruelty and waste, the Scottish patriots, who had not been able to procure any aid from France, kejit themselves in inaccessible mountains and wilds, but, again, as soon as the English king had crossed the borders, they fell upon Baliol. This obliged Edward to make a second campaign that same year : he marched to Perth in the month of November, and, after desolating other parts of the country, he returned to England about Christmas, once more buoyed up liy the confident hope that he had mastered the Scots. As long as he was thus supported Baliol contrived to maintain a sem- blance of authority in the Lowlands ; but the nation regarded him with that hatred and contempt which will ever be, or ever ought to be, the rcconi- Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 757 pense of an intrusive king imposed on a free people by foreign arms. Affairs were in this uncertain state in Scotland when Edward's attention was withdrawn, and his mind filled by a wilder dream of ambition, — the plan of attaching the whole French kingdom to his domi- nions. The idea was not altogether new, — it had been suggested several years before ; but Edward's youth, and other circumstances, had then prevented the pressing of his absurd claims by force of arms. It would occupy a volume to discuss at length the grounds of this dispute, and many volumes have been written upon the subject ; the main facts of the case may be stated in short compass. Charles IV., the last of the three brothers of Isabella, the queen-mother of England, died in 1328, in the second year of Edward's reign : he had no children, but left his wife enciente. A regency was appointed, and the crown was kept in abeyance ; if Joan should be delivered of a son, then that infant was to be king; but in due time she gave birth to a daughter, and, by an ancient interpretation of a portion of the Salic law, and by the usages and precedents of many ages, it was held that no female could reign in France. The daughter of the last king was set aside without debate or hesitation ; and Philip of Valois, cousin- german to the deceased king, ascended the throne, taking the title of Philip VI. Edward's mother, Isabella, with the state lawyers of England and some foreign jurists in English pay, pretended from the first that Edward had a preferable riglit ; but it was deemed unsafe to press it at the time : and when Philip of Valois demanded that the king of England should, in his quality of Duke of Aqui- taine, go over to France and do homage to him, threatening to dispossess him of his continental dominions if he refused, the young king of England was obliged to comply, though he rendered the homage in vague terms, and, according to one account, entered his protest against the measure, not before Philip or his ambassadors, but before his own council in England, the majority of whom, it is said, advised this base but childish sub- terfuge. Putting aside the incapacity of females, Edward certainly was nearer in the line of succes- sion ; he was grandson of Philip IV. by his daughter Isabella, whereas Philip of Valois was grandson to the father of that monarch, Philip III., by his younger son Charles of Valois. But Philip traced through males, and Edward only through his mother. The latter, however, main- tained that, although by the fundamental laws of France his mother, as a female, was herself ex- cluded, he, as her son, was not ; but Plnlip and all France insisted, on the contrary, that a mother could not transmit to her children any right whicli she never possessed herself. The principle assumed by Edward was a startling novelty, — it had never been heard of in France : but, even if he had been able to prove it, he would have proved a great deal too much, and would have excluded himself as well as Philip of Valois ; for by that very principle the succession rested with the son of Joan, queen of Navarre, who was the daughter of Louis X., the eldest brother of Isabella, as also of Philip V. and Charles IV., who had, in default of issue male, succeeded the one after the other ; and if this son of the queen of Navarre had been born a little earlier than he was, then, by this same jDrinciple, Charles IV., the last king, must have been an usurper ;* and tlie same king, from the moment that the boy really was born, must have occupied an unsteady throne. Sucli a principle was con- trary to the maxims of every country in Europe, and repugnant alike to the practice in public and in private inheritances ; the latter of which had been pretty clearly defined. The French, moreover, who ought to have been the only judges in this case, maintained it to be a fundamental law, that no foreigner could reign in France, and contended that one of the principal objects of the so-called Salic law was to exclude the husbands and children of the princesses of France, who generally married foreigners. It is very true that, when it suited their own interests, the French kings insisted on a diflerent law of succession in some of the great fiefs of the crown ; but here they tried to cover themselves with local laws or usages particular to the province or territory, and when they could not do this, — as happened more than once, — the injus- tice of their procedure formed but a bad precedent for others. It was in every sense with a peculiarly bad grace that the English set themselves up as authorities in the laws of royal succession : by no people had such laws been more thoroughly dis- regarded at home : from the time of William the Norman, who was an usurper by conquest, four out of ten of their kings had been usurpers, or were only to be relieved from that imputation by the admission of the principle that the estates of the kingdom had the right of electing the king from among the members of the royal family. The present question would have been at once decided by leaving this same right of election to the French, who were unanimous in their support of Philip of Valois. The peers of the kingdom had voted that the crown belonged to him ; the Assembly of Paris had decreed the same thing; and the States General afterwards confirmed their judgment : and not only the whole nation, but all Europe, had recognized Philip. Edward himself, in 1331, had repeated his homage to him in a more satisfactory way than on the former occasion ; and it was not till 1336 that he openly declared that the peers of France and the States General had acted rather like villains and robbers than upright judges ; and that he would no longer submit to their decision, or recognise the French king, who had now reigned in peace more than seven years, f But the ])Iain trutli was, that • Joan was married in, 1310, Ouring the reign of her first uncle, Pliilip v. ; slie was tlien only six years old, and certainly had not borne a son four years after (1322), when her second uncle, Charles IV., ascended the throne, + Rymer.— Froissart.— Villaret, Hist. Fr.— Gaillard, Hist, de la Rivaliie de la France ct de lAuglettrre. — Kdward repeatedly uiTiTed to give np his claimii if Philip would ubandou the cat'se of the liin^ HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Edward had not been able to shape his intrigues and make his preparations earlier ; and now several concurring circumstances hurried him on. Philip had not only given an asylum to David Bruce, but was actually beginning to aid the Scottish patriots with ships, arms, and money. Edward, on his side, had given shelter to Robert of Artois, who was descended from the blood royal of France, who had married king Philip's sister, and who was supposed to have a strong party in France. On account of a disputed succession to the great fief of Artois, this Robert had been involved in a quarrel, that entailed disgrace on both parties, with his brother-in-law of France, who eventually had driven him into exile and hanged some of his adherents. Robert was a man of violent passions ; his rage against the French king was boundless ; and it is said that, before raising him up a for- midable rival in the person of Edward of England, he had attempted his life by spells and witchcraft, and by the surer agency of the assassin's dagger. He was also gifted with great eloquence or powers of persuasion ; he was skilful alike in the cabinet and the field, few princes enjoying a higher mili- tary reputation. Philip, who foresaw the conse- quences of his stay in England, threatened to fall upon Guienne, where, in fact, he had seized several castles, if Edward did not immediately dismiss him. There was not a sovereign in Europe so little likely to bear this insulting threat as the powerful English king, who sent over a commis- sion, bearing date the 7th October, 1337, to the Earl of Brabant and others, to demand for him the crown of France as his indisputable right. The nation went along with the king ; the coming war with France was most popular with all men ; and having obtained subsidies, tallages, and forced loans, — having seized the tin in Cornwall and Devonshire, and the wool of the year all over the kingdom, — having even pawned the jewels of the crown, and adopted almost every possible means of raising money to subsidize his allies on the conti- nent, Edward sailed from Orewell, in Suffolk, with a respectable fleet, and a fine but not large army, on the 15th of July, 1338. Four days after he landed at Antwerp, where he had secured himself a friendly reception. The Earl of Flanders was bound to his rival Philip; but this prince had scarcely a shadow of authority in the country, where the democratic party had triumphed over the nobles, and the inhabitants of the great trading cities had placed themselves under the government of James Von Artaveldt, a brewer of Ghent, who was in fact in possession of a more than sovereign authority in that rich and populous country, — an authority which he exercised rigorously enough, but on the whole with great wisdom. " To speak fairly," says Froissart, whose sympathies were enlisted on the other side, and who was all for knights and chivalry, " there never was in Flan- of Scots, and restore some places he had seized in Gascony. See Kymcr.— Pliilip thought the claims too ridiculous to he worth any aacnfice of honour, and ha was not captivated bv Edward's pro- posal of intermarrying their children. ders, nor in any other country, prince, duke, nor other, that ruled a country so peaceably as d' Ar- taveldt. " Under this rule, industry, trade, and prosperity had wonderfully increased. The king of France was hated by the Flemings, as the declared enemy of this state of things, and the avowed protector of the expelled cr humbled nobles; and when Edward, doing violence probably to his own feelings, did not hesitate to court their plebeian alliance, they forgot some old grudges against the English, and engaged to assist heart and hand in their wars. Edward's other allies were the emperor of Germany, the dukes of Bra- bant and Gueldies, the archbishop of Cologne, the marquis of Juliers, the counts of Hainault and Namur, the lords of Fauquemont and Bacquen, and some others, who, for certain subsidies, engaged to assist him with their forces. The English king, like his grandfatlier, Edward I., soon found how little reliance is to be placed on such coalitions. At the same time Philip of France allied himself with the kings of Navarre and Bohemia, the dukes of Brittany, Austria, and Lorraine, the palatine of the Rhine, and with several of the inferior princes of Germany. For the present, however, the ope- rations in the field did not correspond with the magnitude of these preparations. The whole of this year, 1338, was passed in inactivity; and after granting trading privileges to the Flemings and Brabanters, and spending his money among the Germans, all that Edward could procure from them was a promise to meet him next year in the month of July. But it was the middle of Septem- ber, 1339, ere the English king could take the field, and then only fifteen thousand raen-at arms followed him to the siege of Cambray. On the frontiers of France the counts of Namur and Hai- nault abandoned him. Edward thanked thein for their past services, and then advanced to Peronne and St. Quentin, burning all the villages and open towns. Here the rest of his allies halted, and refused to go farther. Edward then turned' towards the Ardennes, and, as Philip avoided a battle, he found himself obliged to retire to Ghent, having spent all his money and contracted an enormous debt, without doing anything except inflicting ruin on some unoff'ending citizens and miserable French peasants. The pope, Benedict XII., made an attempt to restore peace ; but Edv»rard, vmafi'ected by his failure, turned a deaf ear to his remon- strances, and immediately afterwards, by the advice, it is said, of Von Artaveldt, publicly assumed the title of king of France, and quartered the French lilies in his arms.* About the middle of February, 1340, he returned to England to obtain fresh resources, and the parliament, still sharing in his madness, voted him immense sup- plies. Before he could return to Flanders he was informed that Philip had collected a tremendous fleet, in the harbour of Sluys, to intercept him. • Until lie assumed the title of lawful king of France, many, even among the turbulent Flemings, had scruples; they cared nothing lor Philip or his authority, but as vassals (nominal at least) they rev spi'cted the name of kiuL' of France. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. '59 His council advised him to stay till more ships could be collected ; but he would not be detained, and set sail, with such an English fleet as was ready, on the 22nd of June. On the following evening he came in sight of the enemy, who, on the morning of the 24th, drew out to the mouth of the harbour of Sluys. As Edward saw this move- ment he exclaimed—" Ha ! I have long desired to fight with the Frenchmen, and now I shall fight with some of them by the grace of God and St. George."* The battle soon joined; stones were cast and arrows discharged from the decks ; and then fastening their ships together with grappling- irons and chains, the enemies fought hand-to-hand with swords, and pikes, and battle-axes. The English gained a complete victory; nearly the whole of the French fleet was taken, and from ten to fifteen thousand of their mariners were killed or drowned. So dreadful was this disaster in the eyes of all of them, that none of Philip's ministers or courtiers dared to break the news to him. This task was left to his buffoon. " The English are but cowards," said the fool. " How so ?" inquired the king ; " because they had not the courage to leap into the sea like the French and Normans at Sluys," replied the fool.t After this frightful loss of human life (and, besides the French, four thousand English had perished), Edward went to church to say his prayers and return thanks ; and in the letter which he wrote to the bishops and clergy of England, he told them how, by heavenly grace and mercy, he had won so great a victory. This splendid success, and, still more, the great sums of money he carried with him, brought his allies trooping round his standard. Two hundred thousand men, in all, are said to have followed him to the French frontier; but again the mass of this incongruous host broke up without doing anything, and after challenging the French king to single combat, and spending all his money, Edward was obhged to agree to an armi- stice. The pope again laudably interfered, and endeavoured to convert the truce into a lasting peace ; but Philip would not treat with his rival so long as he bore the lilies in his arms and took the title of King of France. Edward could not chas- tise his lukewarm allies, but he resolved to vent his spite on his ministers at home, who, he pretended, had not done their duty. One night, in the end of November, he appeared suddenly at the Tower of London, where no one expected him, and where there were very evident signs of a culpable negli- gence. The next morning he threw three of the judges into prison, displaced the chancellor, the treasurer, and the master of the rolls, and ordered the arrest of several of the officers who had been employed in collecting the revenue. Stratford, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was president of the council of ministers, fled to Canterbury, and when summoned to appear, appealed for himself and his colleagues to the protection of Magna Charta, and issued the old excommunication against * Froissart. + Wals.- Froissurt. — Avosb. — Knyght. all such as should violate its provisions and the liberties of the subject by arbitrary arrests or the like. He would be tried, lie said, by his peers, and would plead or make answer to no other persons or person whatsoever. The king then ordered a proclamation to be read in all the churches, accus- ing the archbishop of having appropriated, or irregularly applied to other purposes, the supplies voted by parliament for the king's use. The arch- bishop replied by a circular letter, exonerating himself, and stating that the taxes raised were mortgaged for the payment of debts contracted by the king in the preceding year. Edward rejoined, but as he fell into a violent passion in his letter, it has been fairly concluded that he had the worst of the argument ; and in the end of this long quarrel, he was fairly beaten on constitutional grovuids by the archbishop.* The king was now greatly distressed for money, and acting on that wise system, from the observance of which it has happened that the liberties of England have been purchased rather by the money than by the blood of the subject, parliament refused to pass the grants he wanted, unless he gave them an equivalent in the shape of a reform of past abuses and a guarantee against future ones. In the course of the year 1341, the French king allowed David of Scotland, who had now attained his eighteenth year, tu return to his own dominions. David, with his wife, landed at In- verbervie on the 4th of May, and was received with enthusiastic joy. Long before his coming the patriots had triumphed ; they had taken castle after castle, and, in 1338, had again driven Baliol into England. They now enabled the young king to form a respectable government. The alliance v/ith France was continued, and, within a year after his return, the Bruce made several successful inroads into the northern covmties of England. Edward was so absorbed by his continental schemes that he delayed his vengeance, and was even glad to con- clude a truce with the restored king of the Scots. This truce was prolonged till the end of the year 1344. Baliol, who had been driven three times from a throne, was provided for in the north of England, where for some years he did the duty of keeping watch and ward against the Scottish bor- derers. As long as Edward fought with foreign mer- cenaries and from the side of Flanders, he was unsuccessful; but now he was about to try the eff'ect of the arms of his native English, and cir- cumstances soon opened him a new road into France, and enabled him to change the seat of the war from the Flemish frontier to Normandy, Brittany, and Poictou, the real scenes of his military glory. It was another disputed suc- cession that occasioned the renewal of the war. John III., Duke of Brittany, died in 1341, and left no children though he had had three wives. Of his two brothers, Guy and John de Montfort, Guy, the elder, had died sometime before him, • Rymer. — Rot. Pari. — Hurning. ■GO HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV leaving only a daughtei, Jane, surnamed La Boiteuse (or The Lame), who was married to Charles de Blois, nephew of the French king. A dispute then arose between the uncle and the niece, each claiming the duchy by the laws of inheritance. The uncle, John de Montfort, was by far the more active and the more popular of these two competitors : as soon as his brother was dead, he i"ode to Nantes, and caused his claim to be recog- nised by the majority of the bishops and nobles; — he got possession of the treasures of the late duke, besieged and took Brest, Vannes, and the other chief fortresses, and then crossed over to England, privately, to solicit the co-operation of Edward, being well assured that, with or without reference to the old laws of Brittany, Philip would protect his nephew. Charles de Blois, in efl'ect, went to Paris with his wife, and having no party in Brit- tany, threw himself upon the protection of Philip, who received him in a manner that left no doubt as to his decision. John de Montfort soon returned from England, and when summoned to attend a court of peers and other magnates (all of them French) which Philip had convoked to try this great cause, he went boldly to Paris, accom])anied by four hundred gentlemen of Brittany. Mont- fort's pleadings, which have been preserved, are remarkable specimens of the taste, the law, and the spirit of the times. The divine law, the natural law, the Roman law, and the feudal law, the canons of the church, and the ancient customs of Brittany were all put in requisition. He maintained, or his lawyers maintained for him, that the Salic law, excluding females, which obtained in France, must now be the law- of Brittany, which was a fief of France, — that he was nearer in blood to the late duke, his brother, than Jane, who was only the daughter of another brother ; but what was' evi- dently considered the strongest ground of all was, the incapacity of females, and on this particular point heathen philosophers, Moses, and the Christian apostles were cited in most admired confusion. " We have," said he, " the example of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who- never succeeded her son either in temporal or si)iritual government ; and it ought to appear that women cannot succeed to peerages, for the peers are counsellors of the king, and are bound at his coronation to put their hands to the sword ; and what in sooth would become of us if all the peers of France were females?" To all this Charles de Blois replied, that Jane, his wife, had all the rights of her father, — that she was the last shoot of the elder branch, — that females had repeatedly inherited the duchy, — and that her sex did not exclude her from holding a French peerage, seeing that the Countess of Artois had shortly before been preferred to her nephew Robert, who had disputed the succession with her.* But this was a question where interests had more weight than arguments. Philip demanded of De Mont- fort the immediate surrender of tlie treasures of the Darn, Iliat. tie In Bret.ngtie. Tlie ovi>,'in:il manuscripts quoted wfi''?« "•'■'^ '""*" ^^fcliives of Nantes, and in the Biblioth^que dn Uel at I'uris. ' late duke. This demand convinced John that the judgment of the French couit would be against him ; — he saw, or suspected, prepai ations for arresting him, and leaving his parchments and most of his friends behind him, he fled from Paris in disguise. A few days after his flight, sentence was pronounced in favour of his opponent. As Voltaire has remarked, the two parties here might be said to have changed sides : the King of Eng- land, who claimed the French crown through a female, ought to have sustained Jane and the rights of women ; and the King of France, who was so deeply interested in the support of the Salic law, ought to have sided with De Montfort.* But law or right of any kind had little to do with these de- cisions, and neither Edward nor Philip was likely to be much embarrassed by a legal inconsistency. After his escape from Paris, De Montibrt re- paired to London, and there did homage for his duchy to Edward as lawful King of France. At the same time Charles de Blois did homage to Philip, who furnished him with an army of six thousand men. Edward's assistance was not so prompt ; but De Montfort, relying on the afl'ection of the people of Brittany, returned to make head against the French invadei's. Soon after, he wag taken prisoner by treachery, and sent to Philip, who committed him to close confinement in the Tower of the Louvre. Charles de Blois then got possession of Nantes and other towns, and thought that the contest was over ; but De Montfort's wife was still in Brittany, and the fair countess had "the courage of a man and the heart of a lion."t With her infant son in her arms, she presented herself to the people, and implored their assist- ance for the only male issue of their ancient line of princes. Such an appeal fiom a young and beautiful woman made a deep impression, and by eloquent discourse, by promising, and giving, she reanimated tlie courage of her party. As if expressly to refute the argumentations of her husband, she put her hand to the sword, put a steel casque on her head, and rode from castle to castle, — from town to town, — raising troops and commanding them like a hardy knight. She sent over to England to hasten the succour which Edward had promised her husband ; and to be at hand to receive these auxiliaries, she threw herself into Hennebon, one of the strongest castles of Brittany, situated on the coast at the point where the small river Blavet throws itself into the sea, leaving what was then a convenient port at its mouth. Long before the English ships arrived at this port, she was besieged by the French inider Charles de Blois. Within the walls she had the worst of enemies in a cowardly old priest, the Bibhop of Leon, \ who was incessantly expatiating to the inhabitants on the horrors of a town taken by • Essai sur les Mccurs. Pliilip, however, was so fur ri^ht that, by tlie old usages of Hrittany, women liad succeeded; but then tlie other paity could assert .Tnd ])rove that this had only been the case in default of males, or w hen there was no near male blond relation of ilm reigning family. ■f Froissart. t It is not quite clear whether this bishoi) was cowaid or traitor • ho had a brother in the scrviee of Charles de Utois. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 761 assault, and showing them how prudent it would be to capitulate ; but the young countess con- stantly visited all the posts, showed hertielf upon the ramparts, where the arrows of the enemy fell thickest, and repeatedly headed sorties against the besiegers. They could not be men who were not animated by this spectacle; — the women of the place caught the spirit of their chieftainess, and, without distinction of rank, dames, demoiselles, and others, took up the pavement of the streets and car- ried the stones to the walls, or prepared pots full of quicklime to throw over the battlements on the assailants. One day, during an assault whicli liad lasted nearly ten hours, the fair countess ascended a lofty tower to see how her people defended them- selves : looking beyond the walls, she saw that Charles de Blois had brought up nearly all his forces to the attack, and that his camp was badly guarded. She descended and, " armed as she was," mounted her war-horse ; three hundred brave knights and squires sprang into the saddle to follow her, and issuing through a gate on the side opposite to that where the French were fighting, she galloped round, under cover of some hills and woods, and fell upon the camp, where she found none but horse-boys and varlets, wlio instantly fled. She set fire to the tents, and caused a wonderful disorder. When the lords of France saw their lodg- ings burning and heard the alarum, they ran back to the camp crying out, " Treason ! treason !" and nobody remained to carry on the assault. Having thus relieved the town, the countess would have returned into it, but the besiegers threw themselves across her path, and obliged her to fly for safety into the open country. Louis d'Espagne,who was marshal, pursued the enemy without knowing that she was among them, and he killed several of her men-at-arms that were not well mounted ; but the countess " rode so well " that she and a great part of her three hundred companions escaped unhurt, and soon after threw themselves into the castle of Aulray, which, according to the tradition of the Bretons, had been built by King Arthur. When the French knew that it was the countess who had done them all that mischief, they marvelled greatly. Within Hennebon it was not known for five whole days w hat had become of the brave lady ; some thought she must be slain, and all were ill at ease on her account. But the wife of De Montfort had made good use of this time ; she summoned her friends in the neighbouring country, and managed so well, that instead of three hundred, she had five hundred or six hxnidred companions, armed and well mounted. Leaving Aulray at midnight, she appeared at sunrise on the sixth morning under Hennebon, and dashing between the besiegers' camp and the ramparts, she got safely to a gate which was opened for her, and entered the town with the triumphant sounds of trumpets and horns, at all which the French host marvelled mightilv, and then went to arm themselves.* At last, a scarcity of provisions began to be felt within these well-defended walls, and still the suc- cours of Edward did not an-ive. Day after day, anxious eyes were cast seaward, and still no fleet w'as seen. The Bishop of Leon renewed his dis- mal croaking, and at length was allowed to pro- pose a capitulation. The countess, however, entreated the lords of Brittany, for the love of God, to conclude nothing as yet, and told them she was sure she should receive great help before three days passed. On the morrow, the garrison was wholly disheartened, the bishop again commxuii- cated with the enemy, and the French were coming up to take possession, when the countess, who was looking over the sea from a casement in the tower, suddenly cried out with great joy, " The I^nglish, the English ! I see the succours coming." And it was, indeed, the English fleet she saw crossing the line of the horizon. It had been detained forty days by contrary winds, but it now came merrily over the waves with a joress of sail. The people of Hennebon crowded the seaward rampart to enjoy the sight. All thoughts of surrendering were aban- doned ; in brief time the English ships, " great and small," shot into the port, and landed a body of troops, under the command of Sir Walter !Mamiy, as brave a soldier as ever drew sword. The fair countess received her deliverers with en- thusiastic gratitude, and with a refinement of courtesy. For the lords and captains she dressed up chambers in the castle with fine tapestry, mud she dined at table with them. On the following day, after a good dinner. Sir Walter Manny said, " Sirs, I have a great mind to go forth and break dow'n this great battering engine of the French, that stands so near us, if any will follow me." Then Sir Hugh of Tregnier said that he would not fail him in this first adventure; and so said Sir Galeran. The knights armed, and the yeomen of England, who really did the business, took their bows and arrows. Marmy went quietly out by a postern with three hundred archers, and some forty men-at-arms. The archers shot " so thick together," that the French in charge of the en- gine could not stand it; they fled, and the ma- chine was destroyed. Manny then rushed on the besiegers' tents and lodgings, set fire to them in many places, smiting and killing not a few, and then withdrew with his companions " fair and easily." The countess, who had seen the whole of this gallant sortie from the high tower, now descended, and came forth joyfully and kissed Sir Walter Manny and his comrades one after the other two or three times, like a brave lady.* The French now despaired ; and the very morning after this affair they raised the siege of Hennebon, and carried the war into Lower Brit- tany, where they took several towns. But soon after, they suffered a tremendous loss at Quim- perle, where an army, under the command of Don Louis d'Espagne, was cut to pieces almost to a man, by the English and the people of the coun- tess. Some months after, however, Charles de 762 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Blois re-appeaied in great force before Hennebon, and began a fresh siege. Encouraged by the re- collection of their former defence, and by the pre- sence of their lieroic countess and Sir Walter Manny, the people in the town cared little for the number of the besiegers, to whom they cried in mockery, from the walls, " You are not nume- rous enough yet ; you are hot enough ! go, and seek your companions who sleep in the fields of Quimperle." Another brilliant sortie, headed by Sir Walter, put an end to this second siege — the French retreating with disgrace. The wife of De Montfort then went over to England to press for further reinforcements which had been promised. Edward furnished her with some chosen troops, which were placed under the command of Robert of Artois, and embarked in forty-six vessels, most of which were small and weak. Off Guernsey, the ships encountered a French fleet of thirty-two tall ships, on board of which were a thousand men-at- arms, and three thousand Genoese crossbow-men. A fierce fight ensued, during which De Montfort's wife stood on the deck with a " stiff and sharp sword"' and a coat of mail, fighting manfully ; but the combat was interrupted by the darkness of night and a tremendous storm, and the English, after suffering some loss, got safely into a little port between Hennebon and Vannes. Robert of Artois landed the troops, and proceeded with the countess to lay siege to Vannes, which had been taken for Charles de Blois. Vannes was carried by a night assault, and then the lady returned to Hennebon. Soon after, Vannes was retaken by an immense host, led on by Olivier de Clisson and De Beaumanoir. Robert of Artois escaped with difficulty through a postern gate, but he was sorely wounded, and obliged to return to London, where, within a few weeks, he finished his stormy career, to the infinite joy of his loving brother-in- law the French king. Edward then determined to head the war in Brittany himself, and sailed to Hennebon with twelve thousand men. He marched to Vannes, and established a siege there ; he then proceeded to Rennes, and thence to Nantes, wast- ing the country, and driving the French before him. But Charles de Blois was reinforced by the Duke of Normandy, the eldest son of the Frencli king, and then Edv.ard retraced his steps to Vannes, which his captains had not been able to take. When the Duke of Normandy followed him with a far superior force he intrenched himself in front of Vannes, and then the French formed an intrenched camp at a short distance from him. Here both parties lay inactive for several weeks, during which winter set in. The Duke of Nor- mandy dreaded every day that Edward would be reinforced from England ; and it appears that an English fleet was actually on the way. On the other side, Edward dreaded that he should be left without provisions before it arrived. At this junc- ture, two legates of the Pope arrived at the hostile campSj and, by their good offices, a truce was con- cluded for three years and eight months. The English departed, boasting that the cardinals had saved the city of Vannes — the French vaunted that the truce had saved Edward.* Never was a truce less observed. One of the conditions of it was, that Philip should release John de Montfort ; but Philip kept him in closer imprisonment than before, and answered the re- monstrances of the pope with a miserable quibble. The war was continued against the Bretons, who still fought gallantly under their countess, and hostilities were carried on, both by sea and land, between the French and English. The people of both nations were so exasperated against each other, that they seldom missed an opportimity of fighting, caring nothing for the armistice which their princes had sworn to. A savage deed threw an odium on King Philip, and roused the enmity of many powerful families. During a gay^ tourna- ment, he suddenly arrested Olivier de Clisson, Godfrey d'Harcourt, and twelve other knights, and had their heads cut off in the midst of the Hades, or market-place of Paris. He sent the head of De Clisson into Brittany, to be stuck up on the walls of Nantes. Other nobles were disposed of in the same summary manner in Normandy and else- where. They were all said to have been guilty of a treasonable correspondence with England; but not one of them was brought to trial, or subjected to any kind of legal examhiation. A cry of horror ran through the land. The lords of Brittany, who had supported Charles de Blois, instantly v/ent over to the countess ; other lords, fearing they might be suspected, fled from the court, and the?i really opened a correspondence with Edward, and doomed Philip to destruction. But of all the enemies created by this atrocious act, none was so ardent as Jane de Belville, the widow of the mur- dered De Clisson — a daring woman, who soon rivalled the exploits of the Countess de Montfort, to whom she presented her son, a boy of seven years, that lie might be brought up with the young De Montfort. Soon after these events, John de Montfort, who had been a captive for three years, and who now probably feared for his life, contrived to escape in the disguise of a pedlar, and to get over to England, Having renewed his homage to Edward, he received a small force, with which he repaired to Hennebon. The joy of his heroic wife was of short duration — for De Montfort sickened and died shortly after, appointing by will the king of England guardian to his son. Charles de Blois returned into the country, and renewed the war with greater ferocity than ever; but he had no chance of success, and Brittany remained an effi- cient ally of Edward. Whether he carried the war into Norm.andy or Poictou, it covered one of his flanks, and remained open to him as a place of retreat in case of a reverse. For some time, both he and Philip had been preparing for more ex- tended hostilities. The latter had adulterated the coinage, had impoverished France with all manner * p. Lobineau. — Darn.— Fioissart, Chap. 1.1 CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 763 of levies and taxes, and at this crisis he established the monopoly of salt. Edward declared that his rival now, indeed, reigned by salic law; Philip retorted by calling Edward a wool merchant.* A. D. 1345. Sharing in the popular feeling, the English parliament recommended war, begging, however, that the king would not suiFer himself to be duped by foreigners, and expressing their hope that he wovdd finish the contest in a short time hy battle or by treaty. An army was sent into Guienne, where the French had seized many towns, under the command of Edward's cousin, the brave and accomplished Earl of Derby. The earl fell like a thunderbolt among the French ; beat them in a decisive battle near Auberoche ; took many of their nobles prisoners, and drove them out of the coun- try, leaving only a few fortresses in their hands. About the same time Edward went in person to Sluys, to treat with the deputies of the free cities of Flandei-s. As Louis, the Count of Flanders, though deprived of nearly all his revenues, and left with scarcely any authority, still refused to acknowledge the rights of the English king to the crown of France, Edward endeavoured, rather pre- maturely, to persuade the Flemings to transfer their allegiance to his own son. His old ally, James Von Artaveldt, entered into this view ; and his exertions for Edward cost him his life. Many of the cautious burgomasters opposed this extreme measure, and set intrigues on foot; and Von Arta- veldt's long and great power, however wisely used, in the main, for the good of the country, had raised him up numerous enemies, Bruges and Ypres assented to his proposals, but Ghent was in the worst of humours. As he rode into the town he saw the people, who were wont to salute him cap in hand, turn their backs upon him. Doubting some mischief, he got to his house, and made fast his gates. Scarcely had he done this, when the street in which he dwelt was filled from one end to the other by a furious mob, who presently pro- ceeded to force his doors. With the help of his trusty servants he defended bis house for some time, and killed and wounded several of the assailants ; but the mob still increased, the mansion was surrounded, was attacked on all sides, — further resistance was hopeless. Then Von Artaveldt presented himself at a window bare-headed, and spoke with fair words. " Good people," said he, "what aileth you, and why are you so troubled against me ?" " We want to have an account of the great treasures of Flanders Avhich you have sent out of the country without any tittle of reason," cried the multitude as with one voice. Von Arta- veldt replied very mildly, " Certes, gentlemen, of the treasures of Flanders never have I taken gr\y- thing: return quietly to your homes, I pray you, and come here to-morrow morning, when I will give you so good an account that you must in reason be satisfied." But they cried " Nenny I Nenny ! [No ! No !] we will have it now ; you shall * Most of Edw aid's giants were voted on wool — the great staple of England. not escape us ; for we know that you have emptied the treasury, and sent the money into England without our assent; for which thing you must die." When Von Artaveldt heard these words he joined his hands together, and began to weep very ten- derly, and said, " Gentlemen, what I am, you your- selves have made me : in other days you swore to defend me against all men, and now yovi would kill me without reason : do it you can, for I am but one man against so many. Take counsel of yourselves, for God's love, and remember the past. You would now render me a sorry reward for all the good I have done you. Do you not know how trade was ruined in this country, and how I reco- vered it. After that 1 governed you in so great peace ; so that in time of my governing ye have had all things as you could wish— corn, oats, money, and all other merchandizes ; by the which you have restored yourselves, and got into good condition."' But the fury of the mob was imabated by this touching appeal, though the truth it con- tained was undeniable : they cried out, " Come down, and do not preach to us from such a height;" and they renewed their attack. Then Von Artaveldt shut the window, and intended getting out of his house the back way, to take shelter in a church adjoining : but his hotel was already broken into on that side, and more than four hundred fierce men were there calling out for him. At last he was seized, and slain without mercy : his death-stroke was given by a saddler who was named Thomas Denys. Tlius, James Von Artaveldt finished his days ; — the brewer of Ghent, who, in his time, had been complete master of Flanders. " Poor men first raised him, and wicked men killed him."* The news of this great event gave great joy to tlie Count of Flanders, and great grief to King Edward, who sailed away from Sluys, vowing vengeance against the Flemings who had thus murdered his steady friend and most valuable ally. The free towns fell into great consternation, — their prosperity depended on their trade ; their trade in a great measure depended on England. If Edward should shut his ports to their manufactured good?, or prohibit the exportation of English wool, they knew that they would be little better than ruined. Bruges, Ypres, Courtray, Oudenarde, — all the chief towns except Ghent, — sent deputies to London to soften the dangerous wrath of the English king, and to vow that they were guiltless of the murder. Edward waved his claim to the formal cession of Flanders to his son, and contented himself with other advantages and promises, among whicli was one that the Flemings would, in the covirse of the following year, pour an army into France, while Edward attacked that kingdom from another quarter. In 1346 Edward collected a fine army, consist- ing solely of English, Welsh, and Irish, and landed with them on the coast of Normandy, near Cape la Hogue, about the middle of July. That • Froissatt, 764 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. province was defenceless, for Edward's attack had been expected to fall upon the south. In the latter direction the Uuke of Normandy had fallen upon the gallant Earl of Derby, and was endea- vouring, with the flower of the French army, to drive the English from Guienne. One of Edward's principal objects was to create an alarm which should draw the French out of that province, and, by crossing the Seine, to join his allies, the Flemings, who had actually passed the French frontier. Having taken Carenton, St. Lo, and Caen, and plundered and wasted the country, he marched to the left bank of the Seine, intending to cross that river at Rouen ; but, when he got opposite that town, he found that Philip was there before him, that the bridge of boats was removed, and that a French army, in numbers far superior to his own, occupied the right bank. The English then ascended the river towards Paris by the left bank, the French manoeuvring along the right, breaking down all the bridges, and prevent- ing the enemy from passing the river. Edward burnt the villages, sacked the towns of Vernon and Mantes, and at last came to Poissy, within eight or nine miles of Paris. Here tliere was a good bridge, but it had been partially destroyed by order of Philip, who was as anxious to keep his enemy on the left bank as Edward was to get to the right. The English marched from Poissy to St. Germain, which they burnt to the ground : by seizing some boats on the river they were enabled to do still further mischief; and St. Cloud, Bourg-la-Reine, and Neuilly were reduced to ashes. Still, however, Edward's situation was critical ; he was separated from his auxiliaries, and Philip was reinforced daily. Having examined the bridge at Poissy, Edward struck his tents, and advanced as if he would attack Paris, and his van really penetrated to the suburbs of that capital. This movement obliged the French to march over to the opposite bank, to the relief of that city. This was what Edward wanted : he then wheeled round, cleared the remains of the bridge of Poissy by means of his bowmen, repaired it, and crossed to the right bank with little loss. From the Seine he continued his way, by forced marches, towards the river Somme, burning the suburbs of Beauvais, and plundering the town of Pois. Philip now determined to pre- vent his crossing the Somme : by rapid movements he got to Amiens on that river, and sent detach- ments along the right bank to destroy the bridges and guard every ford. The English attempted to pass at Pont St. Remi, Long, and Pequigny, but failed at each place. Meanwhile, Philip, who had now one hundred thousand men, divided his force, and while one division was posted on the right bank to prevent the passage of the English, he marched Avith the other along the left, to drive them towards the river and the sea. So close was he upon his enemy, that he entered Airaines, where Edward had slept, only two hours after his departure. That evening the English reached Oisement, near the coast, wliere they found them- selves cooped up between the sea, the Somme, and the division of the French army with Philip, which was six times more numerous than their whole force. The marshals of the army were again sent to see whether there were any ford, but they again returned with the sad news that they could find none. Edward then assembled all his prisoners, and promised liberty and a rich reward to any one of them that could show him where he, his army, and waggons might cross without danger. A common fellow, whose name was Gobin Agace, told him that there was a place, a little lower down, called Blanche-Taque, or the White Spot, which was fordable at the ebb of the tide. "The King of England," says Froissart, " did not sleep much that night, but, rising at midnight, ordered his trumpets to sound." Instantly the baggage was loaded, and everything got ready. At the peep of day the army set out from the town of Oisemont under the guidance of Gobin Agace, and soon came to the ford of Blanche-Taque ; but Edward had the mortification to find not only that the tide was full, but that the opposite bank of the river was lined with twelve thousand men imder the command of a great baron of Normandy called Sir Godemar du Fay. He was obliged to wait till the hour of " primes," when the tide was out. This was an awful suspense, for every moment he ex- pected Philip in his rear. The French king, how- ever, did not come up, as he certainly ought to have done ; and as soon as it was reported that the river was fordable, Edward commanded his marshals to dash into the water, " in the names of God and St. George." Instantly the most doughty and the best-mounted spurred into the river. Half way across they were met by the cavalry of Sir Godemar du Fay, and a fierce conflict took place in the water. When the English had over- come this opposition they had to encounter another, for the French still occupied, in battle array, a narrow pass which led from the ford up the right bank. Among others posted there, was a strong body of Genoese crossbow-men, who galled them sorely ; but the English archers " shot so well together," that they forced all their opponents to give way, upon which Edward cleared the bank of the river; and while part of his forces pursued Du Fay, he encamped with the rest in the pleasant fields between Crotoy and Crecy. Philip now ap- peared on the opposite side of the ford, where Edward had so long waited ; but he was too late — the tide was returning and covering the ford ; and, after taking a few stragglers of the English army who had not crossed in time, he thought it prudent to return up the river, to cross it by the bridge of Abbeville. On the following day Edward's mar- shals rode to Crotoy, in the harbour of which they found many vessels laden with wines from Poictou, Saintonge, and La Rochelle : tlie best of the wines tliey carried off" as a seasonable refreshment to the army — the town they burnt. Edward was now within a few days' march of the frontiers of Flanders, but nothing was seen or Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1390. 765 heard of Ins Flemish auxiliaries. He was pro- bably tired of retreating, and encouraged by the result of the remarkable battle at Blanche-Taque, — or thei'e might have been other strong motives with which we are unacquainted to induce him to stay where he Avas and fight the whole French army, with what, to most men, would have ap- peared a hopeless disparity of numbers. When told that Philip would still pursue him, he merely said, " We will go no fartlier ; I have good reason to wait for him on this spot ; I am now upon the lawful inheritance of my lady-mother, — upon the lands of Ponthieu, whicli were given to her as her marriage portion ; and I am resolved to defend them against my adversary, Philip de Valois." As he had not the eighth part of the number of men that Philip had, his marshals selected an advantageous position on an eminence a little behind the village of Crecy. There the army set about brightening and repairing their armour, and the king gave a supper that evening to the earls and barons, — and he made good cheer. After supper he entered his oratory, and, falling on his knees, prayed God to bring him off with honour if he should fight on the morrow. Rising at early dawn, he and his son Edward heard mass, and communicated : the greater part of his people con- fessed, and put themselves in a comfortable state of mind. They had not been harassed for many hours ; they had fared well ; they had had a good night's rest, and were fresh and vigorous. After mass the king ordered the men to arm and as- semble, each under his proper banner, on spots which had been carefully marked out during the preceding day. In the rear of his army he enclosed a large park near a wood, in which he placed all his baggage-waggons and all his horses ; for every one, man-at-arms as well as archer, was to fight that day on foot. Then his constable and marshals went to look to the three divisions. The first division was under the command of his young son, with whom were placed the earls of Warwick and Oxford, Sir Godfrey d'Harcourt, Sir John Chandos, aud other experienced captains ; it con- sisted of about eight hundred men-at-arms, two thousand archer;^, and one thousand Welsh foot. A little behind them, and rather on their flank, stood the second division of eight hundied men-at- arms and twelve hundred archers, who were com- manded by the earls of Northampton and Arundel, the lords i3e Roos, Willoughby, and others. The third division stood in reserve on the top of the hill ; it consisted of seven hundred men-at-arms and two thousand archers. The archers of each division formed in front, in the shape of a port- cullis or harrow. When they were thus arranged, Edward, momited on a small palfrey, with a white wand in his hand, and a marshal on either side of him, rode gently from rank to rank, speaking to all his officers, exhorting them to defend his honour and his right ; and he spoke so gently and cheerfully that those who were discomforted were comforted on hearing him and looking into his confident countenance. This courageous serenity was one of the greatest advantages that J^dward had over his rival. At the hour of three he ordered that all his people should eat at their ease and drink a drop of wine ; and they all ate and drank very comfortably : and when that was over, they sate down, in their ranks, on the ground, with their helmets and bows before them, so that they might be the fresher when their enemies should arrive. After his march and counter-march, on the day of Blanche-Taque, Philip rested at Abbeville, and he lost a whole day there, waiting for reinforce- ments, among which were a thousand lances of the Count of Savoy, " and," says Froissart, " they ought to have been there, as the count had been well paid for them at Troves in Champaign three months in advance." This morning, however, the French king marched to give battle, breathing fury and vengeance : his countenance was clouded, — a savage silence C(juld not conceal the agitation of his soul, — all his movements were precipitate, without plan or concert. It seemed as if the shades of de CUsson and his murdered companions flitted before his eyes and obscured his vision. He marched rapidly on from Abbeville, and when he came in sight of the well-ordered divisions of Ed- ward, his men were tired and his rear-guard far behind. By the advice of a Bohemian captain, he agreed to put oft" the battle till the morrow, and two officers immediately rode', one along the van and the other towards the rear, crying out, " Halt, banners, in the name of God and St. Denis 1" Those that were in Iront stopped, but those behind rode on, saying that they would not halt imtil they were as forward as the first. When the van ]jerceived the rear pressing on them they pushed forward, and neither the king nor the marshals could stop them, but on they marched without anv order until they came near the English, when they stopped fast enough. Then the foremost ranks fell back at once in great disorder, which alarmed those in the rear, who thought there had been fighting. There was then room enough for those behind to pass in front had they been willing so to do : " some did so, and some remained very shy." All the roads between Abbeville and Crecy were covered Avith common jieople, who, while they were yet three leagues from their enemy, drew their swords, bawling out, "Kill! kill!" and with them were many great lords that were eager to make a show of their prowess. " There is no man," says Frois- sart, " unless he had been present, that can imagine or truly record the confusion of that day, especially the bad management and disorder of the French, whose troops were innumerable." If all these circumstances are borne in mind, the most marvellous parts of the story will be reconcileable to probability and truth. The kings, dukes, earls, barons, and lords of France, advanced each as he thought best. Philip was carried forward by the torrent, and, as soon as he came in sight of the English, his blood began to boil, and he cried out, '66 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. " Order the Genoese forward, and begin the battle, in the name of God and St. Denis !" These Ge- noese were famous crossbow-men, under the com- mand of a Doria and a Grimaldi : according to Genoese Aecheh, Windikq up on Bkndi^nu his Ckoss-bow. Froissart, they were fifteen thousand strong. But they were quite fatigued, having that day marched six leagues on foot, completely armed and carrying their heavy cross-bows. Thus they told the con- stable that they were not in a state to do any great exploit of battle that day. The Count d'Aien9on, King Philip's brother, hearing this, said, " See what we get by employing such scoundrels, who fail us in our need." The susceptible Italians were not likely to forget these hasty and insulting words, but they formed and led the van. They were sup- ported by the Count d'Alenqon, with a numerous cavalry, magnificently equipped. While these things were passing, a heavy rain fell, accompanied by thunder ; and there was a fearful eclipse of the sun : and before this rain a great flight of crows, the heralds of the storm, had hovered in the air, screaming over both armies. About five in the afternoon, the weather cleared up and the sun shone forth in full splendour. His rays darted fvdl in the eyes of the French, but the English had the sun at their backs. When the Genoese had made their approach, they set up a terrible shout to strike terror into the English ; but the English yeomen remained motionless, not seeming to care for it : they sent up a second shout, and advanced, but still the English moved not ; they shouted a third time, and advancing a little, began to discharge their cross-bows. Then the English moved, but it was one step forward, and they shot their arrows with such rapidity and vigour " that it seemed as if it snowed." These well-shot arrov.'s pierced shield and armour ; the Genoese could not stand them. On seeing these auxiliaries waver and then fall back, the King of France cried out in a fury, " Kill me those scoundrels, for they stop our way without doing any good !" and at these words the French men-at-arms laid about them, killing and wounding the retreating Genoese. All this wonder- fully increased the confusion ; and still the Eng- Cross-bow and Qvakrelt,. lish yeomen kept shooting as vigorously as before into the midst of the crowd : many of their arrows fell among d'Alen9on's splendid cavalry, and, killing and wounding many, made them caper and fall among the Genoese, " so that they could never rally or get up again." Many of these knights were despatched by Cornishmen and Welshmen, who had armed themselves with long knives for the purpose, and who crept through the ranks of the English archers and men-at-arms to fall upon the French, among whom they spared no one, killing earls and barons, knights'and common men alike. Having got free from the rabble-rout, d'Alenqon and the Count of Flanders skirted the English archers and fell upon the men-at-arms of the prince's battalion, where they fought fiercely for some time. The second division of the English moved to the support of the prince. The King of France was eager to support d'Alen^on, but he could not penetrate a hedge of English archers which formed in his front. But without the king's forces, d'Alen^on, with whom fought French, Germans, Boliemians, and Savoyards, seemed to all eyes more than a match for the prince. At a Chap. 1.1 CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121G— 13.99. 767 moment when the conflict seemed doubtful, the Earl of Warwick sent to request a reinforcement from the reserve. Edward, who had watched the battle from a windmill on the summit of the hill, and who did not put on his helmet the whole day, asked the knight whether his son were killed, or wounded, or thrown to the ground ? The knight replied, " No, Sire, please God, but he is hard beset." " Then," said the king, " return to tliose who sent you, and tell them that they shall have no help from me. Let the boy win his spurs, for I am resolved, if it please God, that this day be his, and that the honour of it be given all to him and to those to whose care I have intrusted him." When Sir Thomas Norwich reported this message, they were all greatly encouraged, and repented of having ever sent him. Soon after this, d'Alen^-on was killed, and his battalions were scattered. The King of France, who certainly showed no deficiency of courage, made several hrilliant charges, but he was repulsed each time with great loss : his horse was killed under him by an English arrow, and the best of his friends had fallen around him. Night now set in, but not before he had lost the battle. At the hour of vespers he had not more tlian sixty men about him of all sorts. John of Hainault,"* who had once remounted the king, now said, — " Sire, withdraw, it is time ; do not sacrifice your- self foolishly : if you have lost this time, you may win on some other occasion," and so saying, he laid hold of his bridle-rein and led him away by force, for he had entreated him to retire before this, but in vain. The king rode away till he came to the castle of La Broye, where he found the gates shut, for it was dark night. He summoned the chate- lain, who came upon the battlements and asked who called at such an hour. The king answered, " Open, open, chatelain, it is the fortune of France I" The governor knew the king's voice, descended, opened the gates, and let down the bridge. The king and his company entered the castle, but he had with him only five barons. After drinking a cup of wine, they set out again about midnight, and rode on, under the direction of guides w^ho knew the country, vmtil daybreak, when they came to Amiens, where the king rested. On the side of the English, matters went on much more joyously : the soldiers made great fires, and lighted torches be- cause of the great darkness of the night. And then King Edward came down from his post, and, in front of his whole army, took the prince in his arms, kissed him and said, " Sweet son ! God give you good perseverance! You are my true son, for loyally have you acquitted yourself this day, and worthy are you of a crown." Young E'.dward bowed very lowly, and. humbling himself, gave all the honour to the king his father.f Such was the memorable battle of -Crecy : it was • This prcu.f clii'Viilier of Queen Isaliella had quitted the English service, and entered the French, some time before. When first applied to by Pliilip, he urged tliat he had sjjent the flower of his youth in fi};htin2 for Enj^land, and that King Kdward had always treated him with afTection; — but he was not proof against u promise of increased pay. ■f Froigsart. fought on Saturday the 26th day of August, 1346. That night, however, Edward was scarcely aware of the extent of his victory ; and on the following day he gained another, if that could be called a victory where there was no resistance made, the French falling like sheep in the shambles. On the Sunday morning a fog arose, so that the English could scarcely see the length of half an acre before them. The king sent out a detachment of five hundred lances and two thousand archers to re- connoitre and learn whether there were any bodies of French collecting near him. This detachment soon found themselves in the midst of a body of militia from Beauvais and Rouen, who, wholly ignorant of what had happened, had marched all night to overtake the French army. These men took the English for French, and hastened to join them.* Before they found out their mistake, the English fell upon them and slew them without mercy. Soon after, the same party took a different road, and fell in with a fresh force, under the Arch- bishop of Rouen and the Grand Prior of France, who Avere also ignorant of the defeat of the French, for they had heard that the king would not fight till the Sunday. Here began a fresh battle, f(;r those two spiritual lords were well provided wdth stout men-at-arms. They could not, however, stand against the English ; the two lords were killed, and only a few of their men escaped by flight. In the course of the morning the English found many Frenchmen, who had lost their road the preceding evening, and had lain all night in the open fields, not knowing what was become of the king or their own leaders. All these wxre put to the sword ; and of foot soldiers sent from the municipalities, cities, and good towns of France, there Avere slain this Sunday morning more than four times as many as in the great battle of Satur- day. When this destructive detachment returned to head-quarters, they found King Edward coming from mass, for during all these scenes of carnage, he never neglected the offices of religion. He then sent to examine the dead, and learn what French lords had fallen. The lords Cobham and Stafford were charged with this duty, and they took with tliem three heralds to recognize the arms, and two secretaries to write down the names. They re- mained all that day in the fields, returning as the king was sitting down to supper, when tliey made a correct report of what they had seen, and told him that they had found the bodies of eleven princes, eighty bannerets, twelve hundred knights, and about thirty thousand common men. On Monday morning, the King of England ordered the bodies of the great knights to be taken from the ground, and cari-ied to the monastery of Montenay, there to be buried in holy ground : and he made it known to the people of the country that he gave them three days' truce, that they might clear the field of Crecy and inter all the dead. He then marched off to the north, keeping near the * Some old French writers say that the English hoisted French colour.s, and so decoyed the militia. 768 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. coast, and passing through Montreuil-sur-mer. Among the princes and nobles that fell were Pliilip's ownbrother, the Count d'Alen^on, the Dukes of Lorraine and Bourbon, the Counts of Flanders, Blois, Vaudemont, and Aumale. But the most remarkable victim was John de Luxembourg, King of Bohemia : he was old and blind, but on hearing that his son was dangerously wounded and forced to abandon the field, and that nothing could resist the Black Prince, he resolved to charge himself; and placing himself between two knights, whose bridles were interlaced on either side with his, he charged and fell. His crest, three ostrich feathers with the motto " Icli dien " (I serve), was adopted by Prince Edward, and has ever since been borne by the jiriuces of Wales* On Thursday the 31st of August, five days after the great battle of Crecy, Edward sate down before Calais and began his famous siege of that strong and important place, — a siege, or rather a blockade, which lasted nearly a year, and which was enlivened by many brilliant feats of arms. An immediate consequence of his victory at Crecy was the with- drawing of the Duke of Normandy from Guienne, where the Earl of Derby was almost reduced to extremities notwithstanding the gallant Jissistance of Sir Walter Manny, who had removed a small body from Brittany to Gascony. As soon as the French army had cleared the country, Derby, with an inconsiderable force, left Bordeaux, and crossing the Garonne and the Dordogne, laid waste the land even as far as the walls of Poictiers, which rich city he took by storm and plundered. After these ex- ploits, he returned loaded with booty to Bordeaux. While Edward was occupied at Calais, Pliilip resorted to measures which lie hoped would create such a confusion in England as to oblige his im- mediate return thither. Ever since his guest David Bruce had been reseated on the throne he had kept up an active correspondence with Scot- land, and three successful inroads on the English frontier had arisen, not less from his suggestions than from the eagerness of the Scots for revenge and plunder. His communications were now more frequent, and, in the month of September, King David himself marched from Perth at the head of three thousand regular cavalry and about thirty thousand others, mounted on galloways. It is said that he was confident of success, seeing that nearly the whole chivalry of England was absent. He rode into Cumberland, took the peel, or castle, of * Fioissart. lie says tliat lie liail liis accounts of tlie battle of Ciecy, not only from Eii(;lislimeu engaged in it, but also from the ppojile of John of Hainault, who was near the person of tlie King of France the whole day. A contemporary writer, Giovanni Villani, in his ' History of Florence,' relates that cannon were used by the English at the batlle of Crecy, and that four of these newly invented engines which Edward ))l«iitcil in the front of his army did great execution. This circumstance is not mentioned by Froissart ; nor is his account very consistent with the supposition that cannon were used. It seems unlikely, too, that he should have omitted so re- maikable and so material a circumstance. It appears to be certain, however, tliat the use of cannon was introduced some years before the battle of Crecy. Ducange (art. • Bombarda') shows that the French employed cannon at the siege of Puy Guillaume, in 1338 ; and a species of fire-arms at least, whicli Harbour in his ' Life of Hruce, calls " crakys of war," was used by the English in the expedition against Scotlond, in 1327. [Book IV. Liddel on the 2nd of October, and then marched into the bishopric of Durham. While he lay at Bearpark, near the city of Durham, the English assembled an army in Auckland Park. Queen Philipjja, according to Froissart, mounted a horse and rode among these troops, discoursing like a heroine, and recommending to their courage the safety of their country, and the honour of their absent king. She did not, however, he admit?, like the Countess of Montfort and the other heroines in Brittany, take a part in the battle, but after recommending them to God and St. George, she withdrew to a safe place. But no old English writer mentions the presence of Pliilippa on this occasion ; and we fear the story, however orna- mental, must be reckoned among the fabulous embellishments of history. The Scots were igno- rant of all the movements of the Engli&h : Douglas, the famous knight of Liddesdale, who had scoured the country as far as Ferry Hill, was intercepted on his return by the English at Sunderland Bridge. He cut his way through them, but lost five hundred of his best men. David, though taken by surprise, immediately formed his troops, and a decisive battle was fought at Nevil's Cross. The English counted among their forces three thousand archers, and these men as usual decided the affair. While the Scottish horse were crowded together, they let ily at them from under cover of hedges, and choosing their aim, they soon unhorsed many of their best knights. On this occasion David showed much of the courage of his father, but that great man's pru- dence and generalship were altogether wanting. After being twice wounded, and still disdaining to flee or surrender, he was forcibly made prisoner by one Copland a gentleman of Northumberland, who carried him off' the field to his tower of Ogle. Three earls and forty-nine barons and knights shared the fate of the king. The Earl of Monteith, who had accepted office under Edward, and the Earl of Fife, who had done homage to Edw ard Baliol, were condemned as traitors without any form of trial, by the king in council at Calais. Monteith was barbarously executed, but Fife was reprieved on account of his relationshi]), his mother having been niece to Edward I. King David Avas soon carried to London and safely lodged in the Tower. The battle of Nevil's Cross, \^hich wonderfully elated the Engli.-h, was fought on the 17th of October.* In the meantime Edward's ally, the Countess of Montfort, continued to defend the inheritance of her infant son, being well supported by an English force of one thousand men-at-arms and eight thousand foot, under the command of Sir Thomas Dagworth. On the night of the 18th of June, 1347, while her bitter enemy, Charles de Blois, was lying before Roche Derrien, which he was besieging with fifteen thousand men, he was sud- denly attacked by the English, In the confusion of a nocturnal battle, Sir Thomas was twice taken prisoner, and twice released by his brave followers. • Froissart. — Knyght. — Kymcr. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 769 A sortie from the garrison finished this affair — the French were thoroughly beaten and dispersed ; Charles de Blois was taken prisoner, and sent over to England, to add another royal captive to those already in Edward's power : he was confined in the Tower of London, as his rival, de Montfort, had been confined in the Tower of the Louvre. The affairs of Charles were hereby ruined ; but his wife, Joan the Lame, foLight some time for her captive husband, as the wife of de Montfort had fought for hers when he was a prisoner at Paris. This has been well called the age of heroines ; in Brittany alone there were three ladies showing the firmness and valour of men ; but, in the end, the Countess Joan was foiled, and the Coimtess of Montfort preserved the dominion for her son, who afterwards held the country, and transmitted it to his children.* Edward, meanwhile, pressed the blockade of Calais, the garrison and inhabitants of which were neither won by his promises nor intimidated by his threats. As it w\is a place of incredible strength, he Avisely resolved not to throw away the lives of his soldiers in assaults, but to reduce it by famine. He girded it on the land side by intrench- ments, and he built so many wooden houses for the accommodation of his troops, that his encamp- ment looked like a second town growing round the first : the old French writers, indeed, call it La Villc de Bois. At the same time his fleet block- aded the harbour, and cut off" all communication by sea. John de Vienne, the governor of Calais, could not mistake Edward's plan, and, to save his provisions, he determined to rid himself of such as are called, in the merciless language of war, " useless mouths. " Seventeen hundred poor people, of both sexes and of all ages, were turned out of the town and driven towards the English lines. Edward gave them all a good dinner, and then dismissed them into the interior of the coun- try, even presenting them with a little money to supply their immediate wants. As jirovisions waxed low the governor made a fresh search for " useless mouths," and five hundred more of the inhabitants were thrust out of the town: but this time Edward was not so merciful, and all of them are said to have perished miserably between his lines and the town walls, as the governor would not re-admit them. A few Norman vessels eluded the vigilance of the English fleet, and conveyed some victuals into the town ; but from that time the mouth of the port was quite blocked up, and the Earl of Warwick, with eighty " tall ships," constantly swept the Channel. Fresh squadrons of English ships were sent to sea from time to time, till at length their united number was pro- digious, t A French fleet, attempting to relieve • After nino yours" cii))tivity, Charles ele Blois was liberated on a ransom, which he never paid; and he was killed in 1364, at the battle of Aulray, or Auray, where the young Count de Mjutfurt, and his English allies, gained a aroat victory. + Ilakluyt has printed the roll of these fleets, extant, in his time, ill the liiuj^'s great wardrobe. TIio south fleet consisted of 493 sail, and 96.30 men; the north of 217 sail, and 4521 men. There were 38 foreign ships, among \vhir;h « as included 1 from Ireland ; the VOL. I. the place, was met by the Earl of Oxford, and carried to England. After this the hopes of the garrison began to fail them, and they wrote to King Philip that they had eaten their horses, their dogs, and all the unclean animals they could pro- cure, and that nothing was left for them but to eat one another. This letter was intercepted by the English ; but Philip knew the straits to which they were reduced, and resolved t o make a great effort to save this important ])lace. The " Ori- flamme," the sacred banner of France, which was not to be used except against infidels, was un- furled ; the vassals of the crown were summoned from all parts; and, in the month of July, Philip marched towards Calais. That town, however, was only approachable by two roads — the one along the sea-shore, the other over bogs and marshes ; and Edward guarded both — the one with his ships and boats, which were crowded with archers ; the other by means of towers, fortified bridges, and a great force of men-at-arms and archers, under the command of the brave Earl of Derby, who, as well as Sir Walter Manny, had come from Gascony for this great enterprise. Philip was not bold enough to attempt either passage ; and after a fruitless attempt at nego- tiation, and an idle challenge, he withdrevv his army, and left Calais to its fate. When the faithful garrison had witnessed his departure, they hung out the flag of England, and asked to capi- tulate. Edward, enraged at their obstinate resist- ance, and remembering, it is said, the many acts of piracy they had formerly committed upon the English, refused them any terms, saying that he would have an unconditional surrender. Sir Walter Manny, and many barons who were then present, pleaded in favour of the men of Calais. " I will not be alone against you all," said the king. " Sir Walter, you will tell the captain that six of the notable burgesses must come forth naked in their shirts, bare-legged, with halters round their necks, and the keys of the town and castle in their hands. On these I will do my will, and the rest I will take to my mercy." When Sir Walter Manny reported this hard condition to John de Vienne, that governor went to the market- place and ordered the church bells to be rung : the people — men, women, and children — repaired to the spot, and, when they had heard Edward's message, they all wept piteously, and were inca- pable of forming any resolution. Things were in this state when the richest burgess of the town, who was called Messire Eustace de St. Pierre, rose up and said, before them all, — " Gentlemen, great and little, it were great pity to let these people perish, — I will be the first to offer up my life to save theirs." After him another notable burgess, a very honest man, and of great business, rose and said that he would accompany his compeer, Messire Eustace ; and this one was named Messire Jehan others were, 13 from Bayonne, 7 from Spain, 14 from Flanders, and 1 from Guelderland. Most of these vessels must have been very small ; but there were some carrying crews of 100 to 200 raeu eacli. — Hackluyt, Southey's Nav. Hist. 2 w 770 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. d'Aire. After him rose up Jaques de Wisant, who was very rich in goods and lands, and said that he would accompany his two cousins, as did Peter Wisant, his brother : then the fifth and the sixth offered themselves, which completed the number the king demanded. The governor, John de Vienne, mounted a small hackney, for his wounds prevented him from walking, and conducted them to the gate. The English barriers were opened, and the six were admitted to the presence of Edward, before whom they prostrated themselves, and, presenting the keys, begged for mercy. All the barons, knights, and others who were there present, shed tears of pity, but the king eyed them very rpitefully, for much did he hate the people of Calais ; and then he commanded that their heads should be struck off. Every Englishman entreated him to be more merciful, but he would not hear them. Then Sir Walter Manny said, " Ha ! gentle sire, let me beseech you to restrain your wrath ! You are renowned for nobleness of soul, — do not tarnish your reputation by such an act as this. These worthy men have, of their own free will, nobly put themselves at your mercy, in order to save their fellow-citizens." Upon this the king made a grimace, and said, "Jjet the headsman be summoned." But the Queen of England, who was far advanced in her pregnancy, fell on her knees, and, with tears, said, " Ah ! 'gentle sire ! since I have crossed the sea with great danger, I have never asked you anything : now, I humbly pray, for the sake of the son of the Holy Mary and your love of me, that you will have mercy of these six men." The king looked at her, and was silent awhile : then he said, " Dame, I wish you had been somewhere else ; but I cannot refuse you — I put them at your disposal." Philippa caused the halters to be taken from their necks, gave them proper clothes and a good dinner, and then dismissed them with a present of six nobles eacli.* * Frois?ait. QUKEK THILirrA INTERCEDING FOK THE BL'EGESSES OF CALAIS.—IUrd. On the following day, August 4th, 1347, the king and queen rode towards the town, which they entered to the sound of trumpets, drums, and all kinds of warlike instruments. "They remained there until the queen was delivered of a daughtei-, who was called Marf^aret of Calais ; and after that ClIAP. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 771 they returned to England, Edward having agreed to a truce with Philip, which was gradually pro- longed for six years. The French king's finances were completely exhausted ; but it appears that neither he nor his rival would have suspended hos- tilities had it not been for the interference of the pope, who had never ceased to implore for peace. Encouraged by his brilliant successes, the par- liament had hitherto voted grants to the king with great liberality, but now the weight of taxation began to be felt, and people, as usual, wearied of the war for which they had been so eager. The wealth brought into the country by the plunder of France was probably far from being equal to that which was taken out of it, though, in numerous instances, the scenes of the Conquest were reversed, and men who went " poor wights" out of England returned rich lords ; and though, what with prizes made by sea and pillages by land, the country was stocked with French goods and furniture of all kinds. The siege of Calais had cost immense sums, and Edward on his return was greatly in want of money. On the 14th of January, 1348, he asked the advice of his parliament touching the prosecution of the Avar with France. The commons, suspecting that this was but a prelude to the demand of a subsidy, declined giving any answer. When the parliament met again, on the 1 7th of March, the king told them that the French were making mighty preparation to invade England, and he demanded an aid on that account. In real truth, there was no danger whatever; but, after bitter complaints of taxation, and consequent poverty, three fifteenths were voted to be levied in three years. In the course of this year, an attempt made by the French to recover Calais, by bribing the governor, gave Edward an opportunity of dis- playing his personal valour and generosity ; and in the following year he commanded in a naval battle against the Spaniards belonging to the ports of the Bay of Biscay, who had given him many causes of discontent by joining the French and by plun- dering his trading vessels. The battle was fought within sight of the hills behind Winchelsea, whence the queen's servants watched it with an anxious eye. Edward and the Prince of Wales were never in such danger : the king's ship was sinking, when the brave Earl of Derby, recently created Duke of Lancaster, came to his assistance, and in the end they gained a brilliant victory, taking fourteen of the Spanish ships, but not without great loss of knights and men. About this time Philip of France died, and was succeeded by his son, the Duke of Normandy, now John I. This new king gladly consented to prolong the truce, which, however, was but indifferently ob- served, the English and French frequently fighting at sea, in Brittany, and in the south of France. As if in mockery of the petty carnage of men, who, doing their most, could only sacrifice a few thousand lives at a time, and on a given spot, the plague now invaded Europe, destroying its hundreds of thousands, and depopulating hundreds of towns and cities at one and the same time. From the heart of China, this pestilence, sweeping across the desert of Cobi and the wilds of Tartary, found its way through the Levant, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, and at last embraced the western coast of England, whence it soon spread all over the land. It appeared in London in November, 1348, and there committed the most frightful ravages. According to some historians one-half of the whole population of England was swept away, and the dreadful malady affected the cattle in an equal degree. The poor suffered most ; and, at the end of the great pestilence, there were not hands enough left to till the soil. Edward repeatedly complained to his parliament of the bad faith of the French, and got money from them to provide against their reported preparations for a renewal of the war ; but this money was not thrown away, for at nearly every grant some con- cession favourable to the liberty of the subject was asked and obtained from this warlike king. In part probably from a desire to reduce the Scots, who maintained their independence in spite of the cap- tivity of their king, he several times made offers of peace to John of France, on condition of re- nouncing his pretensions to the French crown in exchange for the absolute sovereignty of Guienne, Calais, and the other lands which had been held as fiefs by the former kings of England. The pride of the French people, however, revolted at this notion ; and after their king had committed his honour, and promised, at the congress of Guisnes, to accede to Edward's propositions, they drove him into a most unfortunate war.* In 1355, Prince Edward opened the campaign in the south of France with an army of sixty thousand men, only a small part of whom were English. From Bordeaux he marched to the foot of the Pyrenees, burning and destroying : from the Pyrenees he turned northward, and ravaged the country as far as Toulouse ; he then proceeded to the south-east, to the wealthy cities of Carcassonne and Narbonne, both which he plundered and burnt. Loaded with booty, his destructive columns got safely back to Bordeaux. A simultaneous move- ment made by his father in the north of France proved a failure; for the country was cleared of everything before his approach, King John, though at the head of a numerous army, would not fight, and Edward was obliged to turn back upon Calais through want of provisions ; and there he was amused by a sort of challenge to a general battle, to take place some day or other, till the Scots retook their town of Berwick, and rushed across the borders in hopes of rescuing their captive king, or of retrieving the honour they had lost at Nevil's Cross. At this news Edward hurried to meet his parliament, which assembled on the 23rd of No- vember, and promptly voted him supplies for this emergency. It was the middle of January, 1356, before Ed- ward could appear at Berwick ; but, at his ap- • Uymer. — Mezeroy. 772 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. proach, as the Scots had only got possession of the town, and not of the castle, they withdrew. Edward was now fully resolved to put an end to the inter- ruptions which the Scottish wars had so frequently offered to his wars in France, and to effect a final conquest of the kingdom. His army was im- mense, and composed in great part of tried sol- diers, men elated by the many victories they had obtained on the continent. As if nations were to be bought and sold, and made over by sheets of parchment, he purchased, at Roxburgh, on the 20th of January, all Edward Baliol's rights to the Scottish throne for 5000 marks, and a yearly annuity of 2000/. — a vast deal more than they were worth — for Baliol had no rights acknowledged by the nation, which had thoroughly expelled and renounced him ever since the year 1341. With these parchments in his chest, the King of Eng- land marched through the Lothians, burnt Had- dington and Edinburgh, and wasted the neighbour- ing country. But here again he was compelled to retreat, by want of provisions : the Scots, who could not meet him in the field, harassed his retiring forces, and inflicted a dreadful vengeance on the rear, and on all stragglers, for the horrible devastations they had committed. The Scots called this inroad the " burnt Candlemas ;" and many an English village afterwards was made to blaze for the fires which Edward had kindled. From this time Edward Baliol drops out of notice, and he died a childless and a childish old man, at Doncaster, in the year 1363, From causes which are not explained, but at which it is not difficult to guess, Edward neither renewed the war in Scotland, nor reinforced his son in France ; "for the Black Prince,* as late as July in the following year, took the field with only twelve or fourteen thousand men, few of whom were English, except a body of archers, the rest being chiefly Gascons. The prince's plan seems to have been merely to repeat the plundering, de- vastating expedition of the preceding year. By rapid marches, he overran the x\genois, the Limou- sin, and Auvergne, and penetrated into Berri, in the very heart of France, burning, destroying, and plundering. He advanced so far, that he " came to the good city of Bourges, w"here there was a grand skirmish ac one of the gates." He found Bourges, and afterwards Issodun, too strong for him, but he took Vierson by storm, and burnt Romorantin, a town about ten leagues from Blois. The King of France advanced from Chartres, and, crossing the Loire, at Blois, made for the city of Poictiers. Edward, it appears, had so exasperated the French by his destructive proceedings, that not a man could be found to give him information of John's march ; and, in utter ignorance, he turned to the south-west, and marched also for Poictiers. On the I7th of September, the English van came un- expectedly upon the rear of the great French army * It appears to be now that tlie younger Edward was first called till! " Hlack Prince,'' Crom the colour of his armour, which, says the Pen- d'Orlcans, " gave eclat to the fairness of his complexion, and a relief to his bonne mine." at a village Avithin tw'o short leagues of Poictiers ; and Edward's scouts soon after discovered that the whole surrounding country swarmed Avith the enemy, and that his retreat towards Gascony was cut off. "God help us!" said the Black Prince; "we must now consider how Ave can best fight them." He quartered his troops for the night in a very strong position, among hedges, vineyards, and bushes. On the following morning, Sunday, the 18th of Se^jtember, John drew out his host in order of battle : he had, it is said, sixty thousand horse, besides foot ; Avhile the Avhole force of the Black Prince, horse and foot, did not exceed ten thousand men. But Edward had chosen a most admirable position, and the issue of this battle, in- deed, depended on his " military eye" and on " the sinewy arms of the English bowmen."* When the battle Avas about joining, a legate of the pope, the Cardinal Talleyrand, arrived on the field, and implored the French king to avoid the carnage which must inevitably ensue. John re- luctantly consented to let the cardinal-legate go to the English camp, and represent to the English prince the great danger in Avhich he stood. " Save my honour," said the Black Prince, " and the honour of my army, and I Avill listen to any rea- sonable terms." The cardinal answered, " Fair son, you say well, and I will endeavour to procure you such conditions." If this prince of the church failed, it was no fault of his ; for all that Sunday he rode from one army to the other, exerting him- self to the utmost to procure a truce. The prince offered to restore all the towns and castles Avhich he had taken in this expedition, to give up all his prisoners Avithout ransom, and to swear that he would not, for the next seven years, bear arms against the king of France. But John, too confi- dent in his superiority of numbers, Avould not agree to these terms, and, in the end, he sent, as his ultimatum, that the prince and a hundred of his best knights must surrender themselves prisoners, or he would not alloAV them to pass. Neither the prince nor his people Avould ever have agreed to such a treaty. All Sunday was spent in these negotiations. The prince's little army Avere but badly off for provisions and forage ; but, during the day, they dug some ditches, and thrcAv up some banks round their strong position, which could only be approached by one narroAV laiie. They also arranged their baggage- Avaggons so as to form a rampart or barricade, as had been done at Crecy. On the folloAving morning, Monday, September 19th, the trumpets sounded at earliest dawn, and the French again formed in order of battle. Again Cardinal Talleyrand spoke to the French king ; but the Frenchmen told him to return whence he came, and not bring them any more treaties or pacifications, lest Avorse should betide him. Tlie cardinal then rode to Prince EdAvard, and told him he must do his best, for that he could not move the French king, " Then God defend the right," said EdAvard, preparing Avith a cheerful counte- * Sir J. Mackinlosh. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 773 nance, like his father at Crecy, for the unequal conflict. A mass of French cavalry charged along the lane to force his position, but such a flight of arrows came from the hedges, that they were soon brought to a pause, and at last were compelled to turn and flee, leaving the lane choked up with their dead and wounded and their fallen horses. Of the two marshals of France who led this attack, Arnold d'Andreghen was wounded, and taken pri- soner ; and Clermont, the other, w^as killed, by the stout bowmen of England. After this success, Edward became the assailant. Six hundred Eng- lish bowmen making a circuit, suddenly showed their green jackets and white bows on the flank and rear of John's second division. " To say the truth," quoth Froissart, " these English archers were of infinite service to their army, }bt they shot so thickly and so well that the French did not know which way to turn themselves." The second division scarcely waited to feel the points of their arrows : the knights becoming alarmed for their horses, which they had left in the rear, quitted their banners. Eight hundred lances were detached to escort the French princes from this scene of danger, and presently after the whole division dis- persed in shameful disorder. At this pleasant siglit the knights and men-at-arms under the Black Prince, who had as yet done nothing but look on, mounted their horses. As soon as they were mounted, they gave a shout of " St. George for Guienne!" and Sir John Chandos said to the prince, " Sire, ride forward, the day is yours ! let us address ourselves to our adversary, the King of France ; for in that part lies all the strength of the enterprise. Well I know that his valiancy will not permit him to flee, and he will remain with us, please God and St. George." Then the prince said to his standard-hearer, " Advance banners, in the name of God and St. George!" They went through the lane, — charged across the open moor where the French had formed their battalia, — and the shock was dreadful. The Constable of France stood firm with many squadrons of horse, his knights and squires shouting, " Mountjoy, St. Denis !" but man and horse went to the ground, and the duke was slain, with most of his knights. The Black Prince then charged a body of German cavalry, who were soon put to flight. But even here it seems to have been rather the arrow of the English yeomanry than the lance of the knight that gained the advantage. A strong body of reserve, under the command of the Duke of Orleans, fled without striking a blow. But Cliandos was not mistaken as to the personal bravery of John ; that king led up a division on foot, and fought desperately with a battle-axe; and when nearly all had forsaken him, his youngest son, Philip, a boy of sixteen, fought by his side. John received two wounds in the face, and was beaten to the ground ; but he rose and still s^trove to defend himself, while the English and Gascons pressed upon him, crying, " Surrender, or you are a dead man !" They would have killed him, but a young knight from St. Omer, named Sir Denis, burst through the crowd and said to the king in good French, " Sire, surrender !" The king, who found himself in desperate case, said, " To whom shall I surrender ? Where is my cousin, the Prince of Wales?" " He is not here," replied Sir Denis; " but surrender to me and I will conduct you to him." "But who fvre you?" said the king. " Denis de Morbecque," he answered, " a knight of Artois ; but I serve the king of England because I cannot belong to France, having forfeited all I had there."* King John then gave him his right- hand glove, and said, " I surrender to you." There was much crowding and struggling round about the king, for every one was eager to say — " I took him." At last John was removed out of a situation of great danger (for the English had taken him by force from Sir Denis, and were quarrelling with the Gascons) by the Earl Warwick and the Lord Cobham, who saluted him with profound respect, and conducted him, with his youngest son Philip, to the Prince of Wales. f Edward received his illustrious captive with the greatest modesty and respect, treating him with all the courtesy of the most perfect chivalry. He in- vited him to supper, waited on him at table as his superior in age and dignity, soothed his grief, and praised his matchless valour, which had gained the admiration of both armies. The day after this victory, Edw'ard contiiuied his march ; he passed through Poictou and Saintonge without meeting with any resistance, for the French no where rallied to rescue their king, and, coming to Blaye, he crossed the Garonne, and presently came to the good city of Bordeaux, where he safely lodged all his prisoners. He then concluded a truce for two years with the Dauphin Charles, now appointed Lieutenant of France, and in the spring he returned to England, taking King John and Prince Philip with him. Their entrance into London (24th April, 1357) was magnificent; the King of France was mounted on a cream-coloured charger, richly caparisoned ; the Prince of Wales rode by his side, as his page, on a small black palfrey ; but the former could scarcely be flattered by being made the principal figure in such a procession. The King of England received John with all the honours due to a crowned head ; and yet, if Edward's pre- tensions to the French crown were well founded, what was John but a rebel and usurper? The truth, however, seems to be that, even in his own eyes, these pretensions, as also those to the crown of Scotland, appeared, if not unreasonable in them- selves, at least surrounded by too many difiiculties of execution, and Edward soon showed an inclina- tion to renounce his French scheme, and to follow up the Scottish project by other means than those of conquest. As early as the year 1351, he had opened negotiations with the Scots for the liberation of their king, but the ransom he then fixed was ex- * Sir Denis, it appears, had been banished from France, for killing a man in an affray, i- Froissart. 774 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. travagantly high ; in 1354, these negotiations were renewed, and the Scots consented to pay ninety thousand marks in nine years ; but their alUes, the French, induced them to depart from this agree- ment, and, leaving their king a prisoner, they pre- pared to invade England. Edward's " burnt Candle- mas " and the victory over their allies at Poictiers made them willing to treat again, and the English king, in spite of those successes, was not in a con- dition to renew a war in the north. On the 3rd of October, 1357, a treaty was concluded, the Scots agreeing to pay one hundred thousand marks in ten years, and to give hostages as security for such payments ; and in the month of November, David, after a captivity of eleven years, recovered his liberty and returned to Scotland.* It was soon made to appear that his long residence in England and his intimate association with Edward had pro- duced their effect on the weak mind of David Bruce, and that Edward, in discontinuing the struggle by arms, had not renounced his ambitious hopes. In 1362, David's wife died childless, and, in a parlia- ment held at Scone in the following year, David coolly proposed that they should choose Lionel Duke of Cambridge, Edward's third son, to fill the throne in the event of his dying without issue. At this time the next heir in the regular line was the Stewart of Scotland, the son of David's elder sister. David hated his nephew, and this feeling may have had a great share in influencing him to make this strange proposal, and it also appears probable that Edward had bound him by some secret com- pact before he consented to his release. But the parliament of Scotland rejected the project with in- dignation. The death of Edward Baliol without children, which happened soon after this conference at Scone, made David less careful in his proceed- ings : he went to London and agreed, in a secret conference with Edward, that, in default of the King of Scots and his issue male, the King of England for the time being should succeed to the throne of Scotland. Edward could not be blind to the difficulties that stood in the way of this project, and the unworthy son of the great Bruce was in- structed to sound the inclinations of his people, and to keep Edward and his council informed of the result. The king of England took advantage of the debt owing to him for David's ransom to trouble and insult the Scots on many occasions, and the intrigues of his agents added to the unhappiness of that people ; but David remained steady to his purpose, and, probably to escape the reproaches of his subjects, spent a good deal of his time in Eng- land. When Edward was engaged abroad, the Scots breathed more freely : in 1365, it was agreed that the truce between the two countries (for it had been repeatedly renewed, and as yet there was no treaty of peace) should be prolonged till 1311 ; and four years later a reduction was made on the amount of the money due for the ransom. King David died in February, 1371, and his project died with him : his nephew, the Stewart of Scotland, • Eymer. Hailes. ascended the throne without opposition, taking the title of Robert II. ; and though Edward at one moment seemed inclined to undertake another Scottish war, old age, the loss of his son the Black Prince, and other misfortunes, prevented his so doing. Of all his conquests in Scotland, none were permanent except that of the town of Berwick. The house of Stewart held the independent crown of Scotland for two hundred and thirty-two years, and then James VI. succeeded by inheritance to the throne of England, thus laying a better founda^ tion for the happy union between the two countries than could ever have been effected by conquest. Edward's proceedings -with his other kingly captive may be briefly related. Two legates of the pope followed John and the Prince of Wales to London, where they laboured to promote an amicable ar- rangement between England and France. Edward readily consented to waive his absurd claim to the French crown, and to liberate John, on condition of receiving an enormous ransom, and the restoration of Normandy, of the heritage of Eleanor of Aqui- taine, and of all the provinces which had belonged to Henry II., to be held in separate sovereignty without any feudal dependance on the French king.* John hesitated and tried to gain time, but time only increased the wretchedness and weakness of his kingdom, which fell into a frightful state of anarchy. The king of Navarre, who descended from the royal family of France, defied the au- thority of Charles the Dauphin, and was in close alliance with the citizens of Paris, who were engaged, as they had been for some years, in a laudable attempt to put constitutional checks on the arbitrary power of their kings. These men acted imprudently and impetuously : after being led into bloody excesses, they were betrayed and abandoned by the King of Navarre and their other royal and noble allies ; but still their original project was worthy of all praise; its unfortunate failure de- layed for centuries the march of a rational liberty in France, and the English writers who denounce the attempt as altogether base and treasonable, must have been ignorant of the subject, or void of sym- pathy for the glorious struggle which had taken place in their own country. By breaking their faith with the people, the Dauphin and his nobles provoked the excesses of which they afterwards complained, and John himself had left behind him a mass of unsatisfied revenge by certain illegal executions resembling those of his father Philip. The streets of Paris ran with blood ; and, on the 22nd of February, 1358, Stephen Marcel, the pro- vost of the merchants, killed two of the Dauphin's counsellors, Robert de Clermont and John de Con- flans, so near that prince that their blood sprinkled his robes ; and at the same time the people obliged the Cardinal de la Forest, chancellor and chief minister, to resign his places and flee for his life. The nobles, not excepting those who had been in the league, grew jealous of the citizens ; and tiien the peasants, or serfs, who had been treated like • Uymer. CiiAr. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 775 beasts of burden for many ages, even until they had almost lost the qualities of humanity, rose against their oppressors, plundered and burnt their castles, and massacred the nobles, men, women, and chil- dren, wherever they could find them. This hor- rible Jacquerie,* which was but faintly imitated in England during the next reign (by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw), lasted the greater part of the years 1357 and 1358, and was not suppressed without slaughter equally atrocious on the part of the go- vernment. On one occasion, the Dauphin killed more than twenty thousand peasants : the Sire de Couci made such a butchery of them iu Picardy and in Artois that the country was soon cleared of them. They were cut down in heaps, — crushed to death, — slaughtered like beasts, by the knights and men-at-arms. No quarter was given ; no prisoners were taken except a few hundreds to furnish an exhibition and expire in horrible tortures. This dreadful state of things conquered the pride of John, and he signed the treaty of peace as dictated by Edward; but the French nation, divided as it was, unanimously rejected it. Edward, enraged at what he termed the bad faith of the enemy, — for he thought that the signature of a king was every- thing, and the will of the nation nothing, — passed over into France in the autumn of 1359 with an army more numerous than any which he had hitherto employed on the continent. From his convenient landing-place at Calais, he poured his irresistible forces through Artois and Picardy, and laid siege to Rheims, with the intention, it is said, of being crowned King of France in that city, where such ceremony was usually performed. But the winter season and the strength of the place baffled his efforts: after losing seven or eight weeks, he raised the siege, and fell upon Bur- gundy. The duke was forced to pay fifty thousand marks, and to engage to remain neutral. While Edward was in Burgundy, a French fleet took and plundered the town of Winchelsea, committing great barbarities, which the English soon after retaliated on the French coast. From Burgundy Edward marched upon Paris, and, on the last day of March, 1360, the English encamped in front of that capital. He, however, was not strong enough to besiege Paris ; the Dauphin wisely declined a challenge to come out and fight ; and in the month of April, a want of provisions compelled Edward to lead his army towards Brittany.f His route was * So called from Jacques Bon-homme, or James Good-man, a name applied in derision to the Frencli peasantry. ■f Petrarca, who visited Paris about tins time (in 1360), has left a lamentable picture of the state of the country, the consequence of the English war, and of internal anarchy. " I could not believe," says the Italian poet, ' that this was the same kingdom wliichi had once seen go rich and flourishing. Nothing presented itself to my eyes but a fearful solitude, aii 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." Ac- cording to Mezeray, the French bore all these calamities with their usual light-heartedness,— " Misfortunes did not correct them, — pomps and games and tournaments continued all the wliile. The French danced, so to speak, over the dead bodies of tlieir relations; they seemed to rejoice at the burning of their castles and houses, and at the death of their friends. Wliile some were getting their tliroats cut in the country, others amused themselves in the towns. The sound of the violin was not interrupted by the blast of the trumpet} soon covered by men and horses, who died from want or dropped from the severe fatigues they had undergone in this winter campaign. Edward's heart was touched ; but it was a terrific tempest of thunder, lightning, wind, hail, and rain, which he encountered near Chartres, and which reminded him of the day of judgment, that completely sub- dued his resolution. " Looking towards the church of Notre-Dame, at Chartres, he took a vow ; and he afterwards went devoutly to that church, con- fessed himself, and promised (as he afterwards said) that he would grant peace ; and then he went to lodge at a village near to Chartres called Bre- tigny."* An armistice was arranged, and, on the 8th of May, 1360, the great peace was concluded by the treaty of Bretigny. " The King of England, Lord of Ireland and of Aquitaine," as Edward was now content to style himself, renounced his pretensions to the crown of France, and his claim to Normandy, Anjou, and Maine, with some other territories that had belonged to his ancestors : he restored all the conquests made by himself and his son, with the exception of Calais and Guisnes, and reserved to himself Guienne and Poictou, with their dependencies Saintonge, Agenois, the Limousin, Perigord, Thenars, and other districts in the south, and the county of Ponthieu in the north-west, the inheritance of his mother. The Dauphin of Francef agreed that Edward and his heirs for ever should have full and free sovereignty of the countries ceded by this treaty ; that three million crowns of gold should be paid in six years as John's ransom, and that sixteen of the prisoners taken at Poictiers, twenty-five French barons, and forty-two burghers chosen in the richest cities of France, should be con- stituted hostages for the faithful fulfilment of the articles. In July, John was sent over to Calais that he might ratify the treaty. Three months were spent in explanations and attempts at mutual deception, and then this treaty was ratified at Calais on the absurd condition that the really important clauses should remain in suspense and not be executed till the Feast of the Assumption, or that of St. Andrew, in the following year.J On the 24th of October, 1360, there was a solemn interchange of oaths in the church of St. Nicholas at Calais : King John with twenty-four French barons swore to be true to the treaty, and Edward swore to the same effect with twenty-seven English barons. On the follow- ing day, King John was set at liberty, and Edward returned to England. John, with all his faxilts and vices (and these were so numerous that we wonder how he ever obtained the surname of " the good "), was sen- sitive on the point of honour , and a scrupulous observer of his word, but the impoverished con- dition of his country, and the decided opposition of and the voices of those who sang and rejoiced at balls and festivals, and tlie piteous cries of those who perished in the flames, or by the edije of the sword, were heard at one and the same time." * Froissart. — Knyght. — Rymer. t John, as a prisoner, was at first no parly to the compact, but when he went to Calais, ou parole, he was considered as a free agent. i That is, the 13th of August or the 30tU of November, 1361. 776 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. his sons and great nobles, prevented his fulfilling any of the important parts of the treaty. There was no money to pay the heavy ransom, and, when- ever he mentioned the renunciation of the suze- rainty of his crown over the provinces ceded to Edward, he encountered a violent opposition. It is not so written in the annals of France, but it appears to us pretty evident, that the uncomfortable life he led in his own dominions had a good deal to do with what followed. The Duke of Anjou dishonourably broke his parole, and, flying from Calais, where' he was living as one of the hostages, repaired to Paris. Flis father was much affected by this breach of honour, and he felt that part of his own conduct since his return required ex- planation. It is said that he also hoped to obtain some modification of the treaty of Bretigny, and to speak with Edward about a new crusade. The French courtiers laughed at his scruples, but, to their astonishment, he went over to London, where Edward received him with every token of affection. It was then said, in France, tliat it was his violent love for an English lady, and not his honour, that induced him to put himself again in the power of his enemy. John quietly took up his old quarters in the Savoy ; but soon after his arrival, and before any business was transacted, he fell dangerously ill. He died at London in the month of April, 1364, much regretted, it is said, by Edward and the English nobles.* The Dauphin, now Charles V., held the treaty of Bretigny in the same state of suspense, and complained bitterly of the ravages committed in his dominions by the " companies of adventure " which had been in the service of the Black Prince. The truth was, that many of these lawless bands had been in the pay of France, so that Edv/ard was not accountable for the whole of the mischief. Tlie " free companions," as they called themselves, were mercenaries, vagabonds, and adventurers, from nearly every country in Europe, who sold their services to the best payers, and as Edward was by far the wealthier of the two kings, he certainly had the greater number of them. When peace was concluded between the sovereigns, they associated together, chose skilful captains, took or retained castles which they had been paid to garrison, and carried on a war on their oMui account. They defeated a royal army led against them by John de Bourbon, who was mortally wounded in that action. They made Charles tremble in Paris, and the pope at Avignon, f Edward engaged to clear the country of them, but Charles had no wish to see another English army in his territory. Events in Spain aff"orded oppor- tunities of getting rid of the marauders. Pedro IV., called the "Cruel," was then legitimate king of Castile, but his atrocities pi'ovoked an insurrec- tion. He was, however, strong enough to defeat the insurgents, who fled for refuge to the king of * Rymer.— Froissart.— Continuator of Nangis.— Villiiiet. A 1 J °"*'' °'^'^*^'°" "^ tioop of these Ijanditti, commanded by Arnaldo di Cervola, forced the pope to redet'm himself in Avisnou by the payment of 40,000 crowDs. Arragon. The latter sovereign was unable to resist the arms of the tyrant, who made war upon him ; and then the Castilian exiles, among whom were two illegitimate half-brothers of Pedro, — Enrique, Count of Trastamara, and Tello, Count of Biscay, — fled into France. Among his many recent murders, Pedro the Cruel had poisoned his wife, a F'rench princess. It occurred to Enrique of Trastamara, or probably it was suggested to him by the French court, that he might collect among the veteran " companies" such a force as would give him a decided superiority over his half-brother Pedro. The king of France gave money ; the pope gave more ;* and thirty thousand of the adven- turers put themselves under the command of the celebrated warrior Duguesclin and of Don Enrique, and, marching across the Pyrenees, drove the tyrant from his throne. Don Pedro, who had not even the satisfaction of fighting a battle in his defence, fled through Portugal to Corutia, where he embarked in the first ship he found, and sailed with his daughters for Bordeaux. The Black Prince, to whom his father had ceded all his domi- nions in the south, was residing at Bordeaux, and there gave the tyrant a most friendly reception, considering him as an unfortunate legitimate sove- reign, and his half-brother Don Enrique as a usurper. His father took the same view ; and it was soon determined to restore the fugitive king by force of arms. Charles of France at the same time took measures to support Don Enrique ; but his means were very limited. The Black Prince had been married some time to a beautiful widow, ■ — his second cousin, — Joan, Countess of Kent, J who had been familiarly and endearingly called "the Fair Maid of Kent;" but the 'arrival of Pedro's daughters was not without its eff'ect ; and the marriage of two of them to Edward's brothers, the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl of Cambridge, which took place a few years after, gave rise to the claim of an English prince to the throne of Castile, —a ridiculous claim, like many others of those times, but which did not the less cost England some blood and treasure. For the present the fair Spaniards remained at the gay and splendid court of Bordeaux, while their father and the Black Prince and the Duke of Lancaster raised their banners of war. Among the adventurers who had taken service under Don Enrique, there were several English captains; and such was Prince Edward's popularity among the companions gene- • At first the pope wanted Duguesclin to remain satisfied with his blessing, but the bold adventurer assured liis holiness tliat the com- panies could make shift without absolution, but not without monev. — See Hist. Duguesclin, a very curious old book. t The history of this fair lady, the mother of the unfortunate Riohaid II., as of anelder brother (Kdward) who died in inlancy.is ra'.hor curious. She was daughter and heiress to the Earl of Kent, uncle to Edward III., who had been put to death at the beginning of tlio present reign, by Mortimer and Isabella. She was married when very young to Montacule, Earl of Salisbury, from whom she was divorced; she then espoused Sir Tliomas Holland, who as-jumed in her right the title of Earl of Kent, aud was summoned to parlia- ment as such. By this second husband she had two sous,— Thomas Holland, who inherited the honours of his father, aud John Holland, who was afterwards created Earl of Huntingdon and Duke of lixeter. They will both appear in the sequel— John as the perpe- trator of a savage murder. Her second husband had scarcely been dead three niontha when she married the IJlatk rriiiee. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 777 rally, that as soon as they knew what was pre- paring, twelve thousand men, under the command of Sir John Calverly and Sir Robert Knowles, abandoned their new master, and returned with all speed to join Edward in Guienne. As Pedro's promises were most liberal, and the fame of Edward so prevalent, they soon marched with thirty thousand men. The king of Navarre, who was master of that pass of the Pyrenees, was bought over; and in the midst of winter, snow storms, and tempests, the Black Prince led his army in safety through Roncesvalles, the famed scene of the "dolorovis rout" of Charlemagne and all his paladins — the deep and dangerous valley, which, at the distance of four centuries and a half, was threaded in a contrary direction by a victorious English army under the Duke of WelHngton. On the 3rd of April, 1367, Don Enrique met the invaders in the open plains between Navarete and Najara, with an army which is represented as l)eing three times as numerous as that of Prince Henry and Don Pedro. The battle was begun by the young Duke of Lancaster, who was emulous of the military fame of his brother Edward, and who probably entertained already the hope that the plains over which he was charging would one day acknowledge him as their king. When the Black Prince charged Don Tello, the brother of Don Enrique, that prince wheeled about, and fled in disorder with his whole division, without striking a blow. After this, Edward advanced against the main division, which was commanded by King Enrique in person : and now the fight began in earnest. The Castilians had slings, with which they threw stones with such force as to break helmets and skull-caps : the English archers, " as was their wont," shot briskly with their bows, " to the great annoyance and death of the Spa- niards," who, feeling the sharpness of the Englisli arrows, soon lost all order. In the end the Black Prince gained a complete victory ; Enrique fled, and Don Pedro re-ascended the throne.* Misfor- tune had not taught him mercy; Pedro wanted to massacre all his prisoners, but this Prince Edward prevented. Noav came the time for the tyrant to show his gratitude; but he was alike unable and unwilling to keep his engagements ; and after being half-starved in the country he had won for another, and contracting heavy debts and a malady from which he never recovered, Edward was obliged to lead his army with all haste back to Guienne, where he arrived in the month of July, 1367. Pedro, however, had soon cause to deplore his departure : in a little more than a year his bastard half-brother returned to Castile, and defeated him in battle. A conference was arranged, but, as soon as the two brothers met, they flew at each other with the fury of wild beasts, and in the struggle Don Enrique killed Pedro with his dagger. The bastard, who was still supported by Charles of France, again took possession of the throncf • Froissart. + Froissart. — Walsing. — Mariana. — Edward's assisting the monster Hon Podro bas been attributed to a defect in cliivalrous morality; The wary Charles had been recovering strength while the English were losing it ; he was now almost ready for an open war, and he bound Enrique by treaty to assist him as soon as he should declare it. At the same time he conciliated the King of Navarre, and entered into a secret understanding with the disaff"ected lords, vassals of the Black Prince, whose lands lay near the Pyrenees. For seven years the treaty of Bretigny had been little more than a dead letter : John's ransom had never been paid ;* many of the hostages, breaking their jjarole, had returned to France ; some of the terri- tory stipulated had never been ceded ; the sove- reign title to the whole had been withheld by Charles, who had watched with a keen eye the decaying vigour of King Edward, now an old man, and the shattered health of the Black Prince, who, melancholy and spirit-broken, was evidently sink- ing to a premature grave. The expedition for Don Pedro proved a curse in more ways than one, — it so embarrassed the ]Trince that he was obliged to impose additional taxes upon his subjects of Guienne, in order to obtain the means of paying his army. Upon this the Count of Armagnac, and other Gascon lords, already in the interest of France, went to Paris, and appealed to the King of France, as the lord paramount. Charles had waited patiently for years, but he now thought that circumstances, and, above all, the deplorable state of the prince's health, would allow him to declare himself. He summoned Edward, as Prince of Aquitaine and his vassal (which he was not since the treaty of Bretigny), to appear in his covnt at Paris to answer to the complaints of the Gascon lords. The prince knew what this meant; and he replied that he would go, indeed, to Paris, but it shbuld be at the head of sixty thousand men. His father, however, was less violent, or probably only better acquainted with the increasing difficul- ties of raising money in England for such purposes ; and, lowering his claims, the elder Edward, setting aside some territory which had been included in the treaty of Bretigny, said he would content him- self with the separate sovereignty of Guienne and Poictou, with the adjoining provinces, which he ac- tually possessed. But Charles took this moderation as a certain proof of weakness, and, declaring the Prince of Aquitaine to be contumacious, he poured his troops into his territories. In Poictou, and still more in Guienne, his arms were assisted by the people, who never had been steady to either party : when united with the French they com- plained of an arbitrary and excessive taxation, and of checks put upon the freedom of trade ; and when united with the English they complained of the insolence and arrogance with which they were treated by the pi oud islanders. but it seems to us that chivalry had notliingto do with it. Pcdiowas, not only by treaty, but also by blood, an ally of England; but what still more powerfully urged King Edward and his son was Enrique de Trastamara's throwing himself into llie French interests. Had there been no French interference, it is proballa that Edward would never have undertaken to restore the tyrant. • It appears that Edward received about a fourth of the sum pro- raised. 778 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Edward now re-assumed his title of King of France, and offered lands and honours in that kingdom to any soldier of fortune that could con- quer them with his good sword. He sent rein- forcements to the Black Prince in the south ; and at the same time despatched his other hrave son, the Duke of Lancaster, with a gallant army from Calais. The duke marched through the north- western provinces, but the French would not risk an engagement with him ; and, while he laid waste the open country, Charles gradually extended his conquests in the south, where some towns and castles were taken, and still more delivered up by the garrisons and inhabitants. The Black Prince was sick almost to death, but when he heard that the dukes of Anjou and Berri were marching against him from opposite points, he roused him- self and took the field. The royal dukes had not heart to meet him, — they both retreated with pre- cipitation ; and, after garrisoning the places they had acquired, they disbanded their army. Limoges, the capital of the Limousin, had been betrayed to the dukes by the bishop and tlie inhabitants ; and the prince was the more sensible to this treachery, as it was a place upon which he had conferred many honours and benefits, so that he had counted on the gratitude and affection of the people. He swore, by the soul of his father, that he would have the to\vn back again, — that he would not move or attend to any other thing until he got it, — and that, then, he would make the traitors pay dearly for their perfidy. He was now so ill that he could not mount his horse, but he caused him- self to be carried on a litter from post to post, and he pressed the siege with a savage fury which had not hitherto been observed in him. After a month's labour a part of the works was undef- mined, and a wide breach made in the walls, appa- rently by the explosion of gunpowder : the be- siegers rushed through the breach, with orders, which were but too faithfully obeyed, to massacre all they found. Men, women, and children threw themselves on their knees before the prince, crying " Mercy ! Mercy !'' but he would not hear them ; although, as the chronicler remarks, most of the poor and humble class could have had nothing to do with the betraying the town to the French. They were all murdered, — upwards of three thousand. "God have mercy on their souls!" says Froissart, with more feeling than usual, " for they were veritable martyrs." John de Villemur, Hugh de la Roche, and the other knights whom the dukes had thrown into Limoges, in all about eighty persons, retreated to one of the squares, placed themselves with their backs to an old wall, and with their banners before them, resolved to sell their lives dearly, as good knights ought. The English knights, as soon as they saw them thus, dismounted, and attacked them on foot. The French fought with the courage of despair against very superior numbers. The prince, who came up in his litter, looked on with admiration at their feats, and he became mild and merciful at the sight of such gallantry. Three of the French knights, looking at their swords, said, " We arc yours — you have conquered — treat us according to the laws of arms." Edward relented ; and, instead of being massacred, they were received as prison- ers, and their lives were spared in the midst of that universal butchery. But no mercy was shown to any of the meaner sort — the whole city of Limoges was ransacked, and then burnt to the ground.* The massacre of Limoges was the last military exploit of the Black Prince. Hoping that the air of his native country might benefit his ruined constitution, he returned to England, leaving the command in the south to his brother John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. Soon after his departure the Duke of Lancaster, having now married the Lady Constance, eldest daughter of Don Pedro, assumed in her right the arms and title of King of Castile and Leon,t an imprudent step, which complicated the difficulties of the Englisli, for Pedro's bastard brother, Don Enrique, who was firmly seated on the throne, drew the bonds of his alliance with France still closer, and prepared to take an active part in the war. In the month of June, 1372, when the Earl of Pembroke came off Rochelle with a fleet carry- ing reinforcements to the duke, he found a Spanish fleet, consisting of ships far larger than his own, and furnished with engines, — probably cannons, — lying between La Rochelle and the Isle of Rhe. The inhabitants of the town and coast, though they were as yet subjects of the English, assisted the Spaniards in every possible manner. Pembroke either could not or would not avoid a battle : he fought desperately the whole day, and renewed the unequal combat on the morrow ; but at last, his sliip was grappled by four Spanish ships at once, and boarded on every side : he was made prisoner, and not a single sail of his fleet escaped. Many of them vvent down with their flags flying ; and a ship carrying the military chest, with 20,000/. in it, sank with the rest. J This was a heavy blow to the king and to the whole nation, who had already begun to consider the sea as their proper element. And from this time, one ill success followed another with amazing rapidity. Charles V., who not with- out reason was called "the Wise," had determined not to hazard a general battle with the English ; and he did not alter this resolution when he ap- pointed Duguesclin, that consummate general, to be constable of France and leader of his armies. The war became a succession of surprises and sieges, the French general advancing slowly and methodi- cally, but surely, leaving no strong fortress in his rear, and retreating whenever the English showed themselves in force. Charles established the same system everywhere, and Edward, in his old age, was often heard to say, that he had never known a • The Bishop of Limoges, tlie real oflcnder, escaiietl death through the maiiaifenient of the Duke of Lancaster. t The daughters of Don Pedro were illegitimate ; but after the death of their mother, the celebrated Maria Padilla, he took an oath that he had been married to her, and he declared her daughters liiB heirs. i Froissart. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 779 king fight so little and yet give so much trouble. Sir Robert Knowles swept the whole of France from Calais to the walls of Paris, which he in- sulted ; and the Duke of Lancaster marched through France from one end to the other without meeting any opposition ; but they found all the important fortresses and great towns well guarded, and they both lost many men from want of provisions, while every straggler from their army was cut to pieces. Benon, Surgere, Saint Jean d'Angely, and Saintes were taken by the constable. The fortune of the war seemed to lie for some time within the walls of Thouars, but after an unsuccessful attempt made to relieve it, that place fell before the arms and engines of Duguesclin; and Niort, Aunay, and other towns soon shared the same fate. The Duke of Lancaster marched and counter-marched, but could never bring the French to a battle. He con- cluded a truce with the Duke of Anjou, and de- parted for England ; but as soon as he had gone Charles broke the armistice. Of all Edward's allies none proved true to him except young De Montfort, and he had enough to do to maintain himself in Brittany, where there was a strong French party, headed by de Clisson. A.D. 1374. — The pope had never ceased his endeavours to procure a lasting peace ; his legates had followed the army of the Duke of Lancaster in all his last campaign, and other envoys were constantly about the court of Charles. When the French had gained almost all they could hope to get, and when Edward's confidence in his own resources was broken by long disappointment, the arrangement for a treaty was commenced at the town of Bruges, whither the Duke of Burgundy, who negotiated for France, carried some of the real blood of our Sa- viour to give greater solemnity to the contract.* After months of negotiation, a truce was concluded for one year only ; but this was subsequently re- newed, and lasted till the death of Edward. At this time all that the English king retained of his con- tinental dominions was Bordeaux, Bayonne, a few towns on the Dordogne, and his own important conquestof Calais, with a strip of territory round it. On his return to England, the Black Prince em- braced a course of popular opposition in parliament, and if he irritated his old father thereby, he had the good fortune to please the nation, whose idol he had ever been. But the state of his health obliged him to seek quiet and retirement, and then his unpopular brother, the Duke of Lancaster, mono- polized all the authority of government, for the kin^ had become indolent and reckless, and, like other heroes in their old age, a slave to a young and beautiful woman. In the spring of 1376 the Black Prince rallied and took part in public affairs, or at least it is supposed that he directed the mea- sures now adopted by parliament. Peter de la Mare, as Speaker of the Commons, complained of taxation, venality, and corruption, and impeached nearly all the ministers, who were little more than agents of the Duke of Lancaster. The Lord • Barante, Hist, des Dues ile liourgogiie. Latimer was expelled from the king's council and thrown into prison ; the Lord Nevil was deprived of all his employments ; and certain farmers of the customs were arrested and put at the king's mercy. Not stopping here, the Commons raised their voice in accusation against the royal mistress. Philippa, Edward's excellent wife, had died seven years before, and the fortunes of her husband were overcast from the day of her death. Alice Ferrers, a married woman, whose wit is said to have equalled her beauty, and who had been a lady of the bed-chamber to the queen, so captivated Ed- ward that he could refuse her nothing, and was never happy except when he was in her company. Among other presents, he gave her the late queen's jewels, and these Alice was vain enough to show in public. She soon became an object of popular outcry ; but the Commons stopped short with this significant ordinance, — " Whereas complaints have been laid before the king that certain women have pursued causes and actions in the king's courts by way of maintenance, and for hire and reward, which thing displeases the king, the king forbids that any woman do it for the future, and in par- ticular Alice Ferrers, under the penalty of forfeit- ing all that she, the said Alice, can forfeit, and of being banished out of the realm." It is said that the mistress was removed from about the king's person ; but the reformers do not appear to have carried their severity so far : — at all events, she was with him at his last moments if a revolting story be true.* But the nation lost all thoughts of Alice Ferrers in the great event which now took place : the Black Prince died on Trinity Sunday, the 8th day of June, 1376. It will appear, from our un- adorned narrative of facts, that this extraordinary man, though generally both merciful and generous, was not wholly exempt from the vices and barba- rity of his^ times; but it is clear, from the universal popularity which he enjoyed at home, and from the frequent praises extorted from his bitterest enemies abroad, that he had endearing qualities, and many virtues beside those of gallantry and courage, in which he was probably never surpassed by a mortal being. So entirely had the nation been accustomed to look up to him, that though the melancholy event had long been expected, his death seemed to toll the knell of the coimtry's glory. " The good fortune of England," says a contemporary, " as if it had been inherent in his person, flourished in his health, languished in his sickness, and expired in his death ; for with him died all the hopes of Englishmen ; and during his life they had feared no invasion of the enemy nor encounter in battle."! His body was carried in a stately hearse, drawn by twelve horses, to Canter- bury, the whole court and Parliament attending it in mourning through the city, and he was buried with great pomp on the south side of the cathedral near to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. • Rot. Piiil. — Mnrimuth. — Walsiiig. — Rymer, t Walsiugham, 780 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV, Effigy of Edward iiib Black Piunce. — From the Tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. The nation seemed well inclined to transfer all their affection to Prince Edward's only surviving legitimate son, Richard of Bordeaux, who was only in his tenth year ; and a few days after the funeral, Parliament petitioned the king to introduce the young prince among them, that he might receive the honours due to him as heir to the crown. The dislike of Prince Richard's uncle, the Uuke of Lancaster, who was suspected of aiming at the throne, no doubt hastened this measure. With the full consent of the old king, the Archbishop of Canterbury presented the young prince to the two houses as " the fair and perfect image of his father,'' and the successor to all his rights. Lan- caster, however, resumed all his former power ; and as soon as the Black Prince was dead, the whole efficacy of the parliamentary opposition which he had directed ceased. Sir Peter de la Mare, the speaker of the Commons, was arrested, and William of Wickham, the celebrated Bishop of Winchester, was deprived of his temporalities without trial, and dismissed the court. In the next parliament, which met on the 27th of Janu- arj', 1311, the duke had a strong majority; and Sir Thomas Hungerford his steward was appointed speaker of the Commons. It appears to have been the object of Lancaster to conciliate the doat- ing king and the royal mistress ; for parliament drew up a petition, imploring that the Lord Lati- mer, Alice Perrers, and others, might be freed from the censures and restrictions passed upon them, and restored to their former state. Although forming a very weak minority, there still existed an opposition with spirit enough to speak and remonstrate ; and while the Commons demanded, in right of the great charter, that Sir Peter de la Mare should be liberated or put upon his trial, the bishops demanded the same thing in behalf of their brother of Winchester. Wycliffe, a poor parish priest, the precursor of Huss, Luther, Calvin, and the great men who effected the Reformation, had long been preaching and writing against the abuses of the Catholic clergy, and his party, though small, already included some persons of the highest rank in England. It is generally stated that the Duke of Lancaster took up the cause of Wycliffe, who was lying under a dangerous prosecution, merely to spite the bench of bishops. On the day of trial, when the English reformer stood up to plead in the great church of St. Paul's, before Courtenay, bishop of London, he was accompanied and supported by the duke, and by his friend, the Lord Percy, marshal of England. These two great laymen were so ardent, that a violent altercation ensued in the church between them and the bishops : Lancaster, it is said, even threatened to drag the pre- late out of the church by the hair of his head. The Londoners hotly resented the insult offered to their bishop. On the following morning a mob broke open the Lord Marshal's house, and killed an un- lucky priest whom they mistook for Earl Percy in disguise : they then proceeded to the Savoy, the duke's palace, and gutted it. The duke and Percy, who were dining at the time in the house of a great Flemish merchant, ran to the water-side, got into a boat, and rowed themselves over to Kennington, where young Prince Richard and his mother were residing. The Bishop of London put down the riot by his admonitions ; but to show their hatred, tlie people reversed the duke's arms as those of a traitor.* The riot was so terrible that it inter- rupted the debates in Parliament ; and one of the last audiences of the great Edward was given at Shene (now Richmond) to the lord mayor and aldermen of the city of London, who were brought there to submit themselves to the duke, and crave pardon for their grievous offence. But neither their submission nor their protestations of inno- cence saved them from Lancaster's wrath ; they were all " ousted," and creatures of the Duke put into their places. When parliament resumed business, they took into consideration the circumstance that the truce with France was on the point of expiring ; and to provide for a renewal of the war, which seemed probable, they granted an aid in the shape of a poll-tax — a disastrous precedent. All beneficed clergymen were taxed at a shilling a head, and all other individuals in the kingdom, male or female, above the age of fourteen — common beggars ex- cepted — Avere to pay fourpence a head. In the mnnth of February the king had completed the fiftieth year of his reign, and he published a gene- ral amnesty for all minor offences — from which, however, the Bishop of Winchester, who seems to have committed no offence at all, was excepted by name.t This was Edward's last public act : he • Walsini;. — Murim. — Stow. + In the month of June, tlie bishop pot bae.k the revcnties of his see, by making a rieh present to the mistress. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 781 spent the remaining four months of his life be- tween Eltham Palace and the beautiful manor of Shene. Decay had fallen alike on body and spirit ; he was incapable of doing much, and he did no- thing. The ministers and courtiers crowded round the Duke of Lancaster or round Prince Richard and his mother : the old man was left alone with his mistress : and even she, it is said, after draw- ing his valuable ring from his finger, abandoned him in his dying moments. What followed was not unusual — indeed it seems generally to have happened at the demise of a king ; — his servants left his chamber to plunder the house ; but a priest was not unmindful of his duty, he went to the deserted bed-side, presented a crucifix, and stood there till the great sovereign was no more. Ed- ward died at Shene, on the 21st of June, 1377, in the sixty-fifth year of his life, and the fifty-first of his reign.* • Walsing.— Rot. Pari.— Uyra.— Slow. Richard II. (surnamed of Bordeaux.) RiCHAPj) 11.— nom a 1 amimg in the Old Jerusalem Chamber m the Palace at Westminster. Great Skai, of RrciiAnc II. 782 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. A.D. 1377. — The reign of this young king was counted to begin on the feast of St. Alban, the 22nd of June, the day after the death of his grand- father ; on which day the great seal was delivered to the king, and by him intrusted to Sir Nicholas Bonde until the return of the Bishop of Ely, the chancellor, who was engaged in business beyond sea, but who returned on the 26th of the same month, and opened the purse containing the seal and divers letters patent in his chapel at his house in Fleet-street, London.* The funeral obsequies of the late king occupied some time, but on the 16th of July Richard was cro\vned in Westminster Abbey. The ceremony was unusually splendid, but the fatigue and excitement were too much for the royal boy, wlio, after being anointed and crowned, was so completely exhausted that they were obliged to carry him in a litter to his apart- ment. After some rest he was summoned to the great hall, where he created four earls and nine knights, and partook of a magnificent banquet, which was followed by a ball, minstrelsy, and other somewhat turbulent festivities of the time.t Considerable pains were taken to spoil this young king from the first ; such adulation and prostrations had not been seen before in England ; and if the bishops and courtiers did not preach to the boy the " divine right," they seem to have made a near approach to that doctrine ; and they spoke gravely of the intuitive wisdom and of the heroism of a child not yet eleven years old. These men were indisputably answerable for much of the mischief that followed ; but now the beauty of the young king's person, and the memory of his father, en- deared him to his people, and a long time passed before they would think any ill of the son of their idol, the Black Prince. The Duke of Lancaster, the titular king of Castile, more popularly known imder the name of " John of Gaunt,"J had long been suspected of the project of supplanting his nephew ; but his unpopularity was notorious, and he yielded with tolerably good grace to the force of circumstances. As if on purpose to exclude the duke, no regular r&gency was appointed ; but the morning after the coronation the prelates and barons chose, " in aid of the chancellor and trea- surer," twelve permanent counsellors, among whom not one of the king's uncles was named. John of Gaunt withdrew to his castle of Kcnil- worth, and, it is said, in some discontent with the advisers of the young king, who had taken from him the castle of Hereford. But nothing could remove the popular belief that the duke aimed at the throne, and prophecies were afloat which probably helped to work their own fulfilment a few years later, when his son, Henry of Bolingbroke, dethroned his cousin Richard. The French were not slow in trying to take the usual advantage of a minority. The truce expired • Rot. Pari.— Sij H. Nicolas, Cliron. Hist. t Walsingluini. — He gives an elnborate account of the corona- tion. t He was so called from the town of Ghent or Gan;l (then pro- nounced Gaunt), the place of his liirth. before the death of Edward, and Charles refused to prolong it. In close union with Henry of Tras- tamara, who was provoked by the Duke of Lan- caster continuing to assume the title of king of Castile, he got together a formidable fleet, and insulted the English coast before Richard had been a month on the throne. In August the whole of the Isle of Wight, with the exception of Caris- brook Castle, was plundered and wasted, and the town of Hastings was burnt, as that of Rye had been a short time before. The town of Winchelsea made a good resistance, and at Southampton the French and Spaniards were repulsed with great loss by the Earl of Arundel. But the combined fleets, which were occasionally joined by marauders of other nations, were strong enough to interrupt the foreign commerce of the country, and, as this had become considerable, the injury was a very serious one.* A parliament was assembled while the impression of these injuries was fresh ; and in order to obtain supplies of money (the treasury being exhausted) it was stated that the realm was in greater danger than it had ever been. Supplies were voted, and, by borrowing greater sums of the merchants, government was enabled to put to sea a considerable fleet under the command of the Earl of Buckingham, one of the Duke of Lancas- ter's brothers. Buckingham met with little success, and his failure, however unfairly, added to the un- popularity of the Lancastrian party. In this very parliament, the first which Richard held, and before the Earl of Buckingham took the command of the fleet, it was made evident how much the Duke of Lancaster had declined in power. The majority of the house of commons consisted of the very men who had driven his party from office in 1376, and the new speaker was his old enemy Sir Peter de la Mare, whom he had arbitrarily thrown into prison soon after the death of the Black Prince. When the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been made chancellor, requested the advice of the commons as to how the enemies of the kingdom might be opposed with the least expense and the most honour, the commons replied that they could not of themselves answer so great a question ; and they asked for the aid of twelve peers, with " my Lord of Spain" at their head. The duke com- plained of the reports circulated against him, and said that the commons had no claim on him for advice or assistance. They had charged him, the most loyal of men, with that which amounted to treason ; but let his accusers declare themselves, and he would meet them as if he were the poorest knight of England, either in single combat or in any other way. After a great ferment, the bishojis and lords declared that no living mortal would credit the scandalous reports ; the commons asserted their belief of his innocence ; and a reconciliation took place without any immediate increase of Laii- • Not long after several places on the const of Sussex and Ki-nt were plundered. A fleet even ascendod the Thames, and burned tlie greater part of the town of Gravesend. These irritating circum- stances were recent at the time of Wat Tyler's rebidlion (as it Is called), and they helped to hasten tliat terrible outbreak. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 783 caster's power. The commons, indeed, insisted that, as so much money had been wasted, two citi- zens, John Philpot and William Walworth, both merchants of London, should be appointed to receive the monies now voted for the defence of the country ; and this important point was yielded to them. In other pretensions, which would have given them the appointment of all the justices, ministers, and court functionaries, they were only partially defeated.* In this same session of par- liament Alice Ferrers was prosecuted, and being abandoned by her former ally, the Duke of Lan- caster, she was sentenced to banishment and the forfeiture of all her property. A.D. 1378. — John of Gaunt, however, obtained the command of the fleet, with nearly all the money which had been voted. He detached a squadron under the earls of Arundel and Salisbury, who, in crossing the Channel, fell in with a Spa- nish fleet, and suffered considerable loss. The two earls, however, succeeded in their main object, and took possession of the town and port of Cher- bourg, on the coast of Normandy, which were ceded to England by the king of Navarre, who was again engaged in a war with the French king, and who was glad to purchase the assistance of England at any price. Nine large ships, which the duke had hired at Bayonne, on their way to England, met a Spanish fleet of merchantmen, and took fourteen ships laden with wine and other goods. In the month of July the duke sailed v.-ith the great fleet for the coast of Brittany, where the conquests of the French had reduced another ally of England almost to despair. The Duke of Brittany, the son of the heroic Countess of Mont- fort, ceded to the English the important town and harbour of Brest, which Lancaster secured with a good garrison. The duke then invested St. Malo, but the Constable Duguesclin marched with a very superior force to the relief of that place, and compelled the duke to return to his ships : the great fleet then came home. The possession thus obtained of Cherbourg and of Brest Avas an im- mense advantage : it deprived the French of two ports, whence they could best attack England, and it gave the English two other keys to France ; but the places had been given up by friendly treaty, and not gained by arms; and the people, who were evidently disinclined to allow Lancaster any merit, said that he had wasted the money and done nothing. A striking circumstance which had occurred did not tend to brighten the duke's lau- rels. The Scots receiving their impulse from • The commons had petitioned that eight new counsellors, the great oflicers ol' state, tlie chief justices, and all the household of the king, should be named by the lords in concurrence with tlie commons,— or, at least, it was aslved that the lords should certify all suclt appointments to the commons in parliament. The lords, in the kiuij's name, appointed a new council, consisting of nine persons of different ranks, — three bishops, two earls, two bannerets, and two knights bachelors, who were to continue in ofTice for one year; to the^e the lords added eight others, at the request of the commons. The lords reserved to themselves the .appointment of the chancellor, chamberlain, and steward of the household, during the minority. Even by this arrangement nearly the whole executive government «as transferred to the two houses of parliament. — Hallam, Mid, Ages. — Lingard, Hist. — Kot. I'.irl. France, renewed the war, surprised the castle of Berwick, made incursions into the northern counties, and equipped a number of ships to cruize against the English. Berwick was recovered soon after by the Earl of Northumberland ; but one John Mercer, who had got together certain sail of Scots, French, and Spaniards, came to Scarbo- rough, and made prize of every ship in that port. Upon learning the injuries done, and the still greater damage apprehended from these sea-rovers, John Philpot — " that worshipful citizen of Lon- don" — lamenting the negligence of those that should have provided against such inconveniences, equipped a small fleet at his own expense, and, without waiting for any commission from the go- vernment, went in pursuit of Mercer. After a fierce battle, the doughty alderman took the Scot prisoner, captured fifteen Spanish ships, and reco- vered all the vessels which had been taken at Scarborough. On his return, Philpot was received in triumph by his fellow-citizens ; but he was harshly handled by the council of government for the unlawfulness of acting as he had done without authority, he being but a private man. The alder- man, who was backed by the people, replied very . Ijoldly : according to an old historian, " he incurred the hard censure of most of the noblemen, from whom he seemed to have snatched, by this his fortunate attempt, the native cognizance of true nobility ;" but the council dared not proceed fur- ther than a reprimand.* In the month of October, the parliament met at Gloucester, and in a very bad humour : the go- vernment wanted money — the commons a reform of abuses. The disputes ended in a compromise — the commons being allowed to inspect the accounts of the treasurers, which was granted as a matter of favour, but not of right, nor were they to consider it as a precedent : they also obtained copies of the papers, showing how the monies they had voted had been raised ; but this also was granted as if proceeding from the king's good pleasure. In the end, they granted a new aid by laying additional duties on wool, wool- fells, hides, leather, and other merchandize. John de Montfort, the Duke of Brittany, had been driven to seek refuge in Eng- land, and the French king annexed his dominions to the crown of France. This premature measure reconciled all the factions in the country ; and John was recalled by the unanimous voice of the Bretons. Leaving his wife, an avmt of King Richard,t in England, he embarked with one hundred knights and men-at-arms, and two hun- dred archers. St. Malo opened its gates at his approach ; the nobles, including even many who had helped to expel him, rushed into the water chin- deep to meet him ; the people hailed his return with transports of joy ; and the States, meeting at Rennes, wrote respectfully to the king of France, for per- • Trussell, Contin. of Daniel's Hist, — Southey, Nav. Hist — Walsing. t De Montfort married Mary, the fourth daughter of Edward III. and Queen Philippa. 784 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. mission to retain their native prince. * Instead of consenting, Charles instantly prepared to send a French army into Brittany, and then the duke im- plored the assistance of a force from England. A considerahle army was raised, and sent to his relief, under the command of the Earl of Buckingham, one of the king's micles. Buckingham landed at Calais, which the English had rendered stronger than ever ; and from Calais he marched through Artois, Picardy, Champagne, and other inland provinces of France, plunderhig and devastating the open country. His progress was watched by far superior forces, but, firm to the system which the cautious Charles had adopted, the French would not risk a battle, and the English, after a circuitovis march, reached the frontiers of Brittany without meeting any resist- ance. But the Earl of Buckingham was scarcely there when the King of France died, and the Bre- tons, who knew that a boy was to ascend the throne, thinking that they should no longer stand in need of their assistance, began to entertain as much jealousy and hatred of the English as they had hitherto done of the French. De Montfort, though certainly inclined to maintain his close alliance with England, was unable to resist the wishes of his subjects, and as the micles of the young King Charles VI., who formed the regency, were willing to treat and to recognise his restoration, he con- cluded a peace with France, and engaged wholly to abandon the interests of England. Buckingham owed his safety only to the brave men he had about him and to the supplies of provisions he received from home, and he returned in the follow- ing spring, glad to escape from the hostility of the Bretons. The English complained of the treachery and unsteadiness of the Bretons ; the Bretons com- plained of the pride and rapacity of the English.f These proceedings, though they were considered as failures, had certainly given the French occupation in their own country, and had kept them from our shores ; but they had cost large sums of money, and the nation was sorely harassed by taxation, or by the way in which the taxes were levied. In an evil hour, parliament passed a capitation tax : this was a repetition of the tax imposed in the last year of the preceding reign, but slightly modified, so as to make it fall less heavily on the poor. Every male and female of fifteen years of age was to pay three groats; but in cities and towns the aggregate amount was to be divided among the inhabitants according to their abilities, or in such a way that no individual should pay less than one groat, or more than sixty groats for himself and his wife. Where there was little or no registration, the fixing of the age was sure to lead to disputes : the col- lectors might easily take a boy or girl of fourteen to be fifteen, and poverty would induce many of the poor knowingly to make a mis-statement of the opposite kind. But the levying of this awkward tax might have passed over with nothing more serious than a few riots between the people and the * Daru, Hist, de la Bretagno. + Froissart.— Archives de Nantes, quoted by Dani. tax-gatherers, had it not been for other circum- stances involved in the mighty change which had gradually been taking place in the whole body of European society. The peasantry had been gra- dually emerging from slavery to freedom, and began to feel an ambition to become men, and to be treated as such by their superiors in the accidental circumstances of rank and wealth. In this transition state there were mistakes and atrocious crimes committed by both parties ; but ignorance may be particularly pleaded in excul- pation of the people, while that very ignorance and the brutalised state in which they had been kept were crimes and mistakes on the part of the upper classes, who had now to pay a horrible penalty. The enfranchisement of the peasantry, which was the real motive of the movement, for the rest was an after-thought, begotten in the madness of suc- cess and the frenzy inspired in unenlightened minds by the first consciousness of power, was so sacred an object that nothing could disgrace or eventually defeat it. " Their masters in some places (tve believe in all) pulled them back too violently ; they were themselves impatient of the time which such an operation requires. Accidental provocations — malignant incendiaries — frequently excited them to violence ; but in general the com- motions of that age will be found to be near that point in the progre^s of slaves towards emancipa- tion when their hopes are roused and their wrongs not yet redressed."* In Flanders, notwithstanding that there the more respectable burghers took a share in the insurrection, many frightful excesses had been committed upon the aristocracy, and in France the recent Jacquerie had been little else than a series of horrors. The attempt of the French peasantry offered a discouraging example to their neighbours in England ; but the demo- cratic party had had a long triumph in Flanders; and at this very moment the son of Von Artaveldt, the brewer of Ghent, with Peter du Bois, was waging a successful war against their court, their nobles, and the whole aristocracy of France. From the close intercourse between the two countries, many of the English must have been perfectly acquainted with all that was passing in Flanders, and may have derived encouragement therefrom. A new revolt had also commenced in France headed by the burghers and inhabitants of the towns : it began at Rouen, where the collectors of taxes and duties on provisions were massacred, and it soon spread to Paris and other great cities. Many of our historians have attributed part of the storm which was now gathering in England to the preaching of Wycliffe's disciples, but their ori- ginal authorities seem to have been prejudiced witnesses against the church reformer. The con- vulsion is sufficiently accounted for by the actual condition of the jieople of England at this period, considered in connexion with the particular point in its progress at which society had arrived. That condition, though far superior to the state of the • Sir J.Mackiutosh, Hift. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 12HS—VS'J[K 785 French people, was sufficiently wretched and gall- ing. A considerable portion of the peasantry were still serfs or " villains," bound to the soil, and sold or transmitted with the estates of the nobles and other landed proprietors. With the exception of some of the lower order of the secular clergy, there were but few persons disposed to consider or treat them as fellow-creatures. The discontents and sufferings of the classes immediately above these serfs, — the poor towns-people on the coast, more particularly, who had been plundered by the foreign fleets, — no doulrt contributed to hurry on the sanguinary crisis ; but it was the poll-tax that was the proximate cause of the mischief. At first the tax was levied witli mildness ; but, being farmed out to some courtiers who raised money upon it from Flemish and Lombard merchants, it was exacted by their collectors with great severity, and this severity increased as it became more and more evident that the recei])ts would in no case come up to the amount calculated. But the obstinacy of the people kept pace with the harshness of the col- lectors j many of the rural districts refused pay- ment. The recusants were handled very sorely and uncourteously, " almost not to be spoken," in various places in Kent and Essex, " which some of the people taking in evil part, secretly took counsel together, gathered assistance, and resisted the exactors, rising against them, of whom some they slew, some they wounded, and the rest fled." Alarmed at these proceedings, goveinment sent certain commissioners into the disturbed districts. One of these commissioners, Tliomas de Bampton, sat at Brentwood in Essex : the people of Fobbing, on being summoned before him, said that tliey would not pay one pemiy more than they had done, " whereupon the said Thomas did grievously threaten them, having with him two serjeants-at- arms of the king." These threats made matters worse, and when Bampton ordered his Serjeants to arrest them, the peasants drove him and his men- at-arms away to London. Upon this Sir Robert Belknape, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, was sent into Essex to try the offenders ; but the peasants called him traitor to the king and realm, forced him to flee, and chopped off the heads of the jurors and clerks of the commission. They stuck these heads upon poles and carried them through all the neigh- bouring townships and villages, calling upon all the poor to rise and join them. Sir Robert Hales, prior of the knights of St. John of Jerusalem, who had recently been created Lord Treasurer of Eng- land, was an especial object of the popular fury. He liad a goodly and delectable manor in Essex, " Avhcrein were ordained victuals and other ne- cessaries for the use of a chapter-general, with great abundance of fair stuff of wines, arras, cloths, and other provisions for the knights brethren." " The commons of England " (for so the peasants called themselves, and were called by others) ate up all the provisions, drank all the wine, and tlien destroyed the house. Nothing was wanting but a leader, and this they soon found in the person of a VOL. 1. " riotous priest," who took the name of Jack Straw. Messages and letters were sent in all directions ; and in a few days, not only the whole agricultural population of Essex was up in arms, but their neighbours in Kent, Suffolk, and Norfolk were followHig the example. In Kent, an act of brutality on the part of a tax-gatherer, and an act of great imprudence (considering the prevailing excitement) on the part of a knight, fanned the fiames of revolt. One of the collectors of the poll-money went to the house of one Walter the Tyler, in the town of Dart- ford, and demanded the tax for a young maiden, the daughter of Walter. The mother maintained that she was but a child, and not of the womanly age set down by the act of ])arliamcnt : the collector said he would ascertain this fact, and he offered an intolerable insult to the girl ; " and in many places they made the like trial." The maiden and her mother cried out, and the father, who was tiling a house in the town, ran to the spot and knocked out the tax-gatherer's brains. The neighbours ap- plauded the deed, and every one prepared to sup- port the Tyler. About the same time Sir Simon Burley* went to Gravesend with an armed force, and claimed an industrious man living in that town as his escajjcd bondsman. A villain, accord- ing to the law, acquired his freedom by a residence of a vear and a day in a town ; but in this case Burley demanded the great sum of three hundred pounds of silver for the surrender of his claim to the man ; and when this was refused, he carried him ofi' a prisoner to Rochester Castle. The com- mons of Kent now rose as one man, and being joined by a strong body of the men of Essex, who crossed the Thames, they fell upon Rochester Castle, and either took it or compelled the garrison to deliver up Sir Simon's serf with other prisoners. In the town of Maidstone, the insurgents appointed Wat the Tyler their captain, and then took out of prison, and had for their chaplain or preacher, " a wicked priest called John Ball," who had been several times in confinement, and who was then under prosecution by the archbishop for irregu- larity of doctrine. On the Monday after Trinity Sunday, 1381, Wat Tyler entered Canterbury, denouncing death to the archbishop, who, however, was absent : after terrifying the monks and the clergy of the cathedral, he forced the mayor, aldermen, and commons of the town to swear to be true to Richard and the lawful commons of England : then beheading three rich men of Canterbury, Wat marched away towards London, followed by five hundred of the poor towns-folk. On his march recruits came to him from all quarters of Kent and Sussex; and by the time he reached Blackheath (11th June) there were, it is said, one hundred thousand desperate men obeying the orders of Wat Tyler. AVhile at this spot the widow of the Black Prince, the young king's mother, fell into their hands ; but, in the • 'Pliis kiii^'lit v,a.% tutor oi' s<'ssi'il !;re;>t influence at court. l)reiei)liy. ;u;ivitiaii to the young kiiijj, an<l iir.s- His melancholy eud will he nuiic?d 786 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. midst of their fury, tliey respected lier, and after granting a few kisses to some dirty -faced and rough-bearded men, she was allowed, with her retinue and maids of honour, to proceed quietly to London, the leaders even engaging to protect her and her son. While this host was bivouacked about Blackheath and Greenwich, John Ball, the priest of Kent, kept them to their purpose by long orations or sermons, in which he insisted that all men Avere equal before God, and ought to be so before the laws, — and so far he was right ; but it appears that he went on to recommend an equality of property, which is impracticable, and a destruc- tion of all the upper clasi^es, which v.as monstrous. It has been suspected, and not without probability, that Ball's real views may have been somewhat misrepresented by his enemies, but the nature of his discourses may be collected from his standing text, which was — When Adam delved, and Eve span, W)io was then a geutlemuu ? His eloquence had such an effect on the multitude, that, forgetting his own doctrines of equality, they vowed that they would make him primate and chancellor of England. They occupied all the roads, killed all the judges and lawyers that fell into their hands, and made all the rest of the pas- sengers swear to be true to King Richard and the commons, to accept no king whose name was " John,"* and to pay no tax except the fifteenths which had been paid by their forefathers. The young king with his mother, with his cousin Henry of Bolingbroke, with Simon, archbishop of Canter- bury and chancellor. Sir Robert Hales, treasurer, and some other members of the government, threw himself into the Tower of London. The Duke of Lancaster was in Scotland negotiating a peace, and Gloucester and York, the other uncles of the king, were absent. Some of the council were of opi- nion that Richard should go and speak with the insurgents, but the archbishop and the treasurer strongly objected to this measure, and said that nothing but force should be used " to abate the pride of such vile rascals." On the 12th of June, however, Richard got ^nto his barge, and descended the river as far as Rotherhithe, where he found a vast multitude drawn up along shore, with two banners of St. George and many pennons. " When they perceived the king's barge," says Froissart, " they set up shouts and cries as if all the devils from hell had come into their company." Startled and terrified, the persons with the king put about the boat, and, taking advantage of the rising tide, rowed back with all speed to the Tower. The commons, who had always professed the greatest attachment to Richard's person, now called aloud for the heads of all the ministers ; and marching along the right bank of the river to Southwark, and then to Lambeth, destroyed the Marshalsea * John was nn unhappy name in English history; and Joliu of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the kinj^'s uncle, was held guilty of all the oppressions the pcojile had recently sufTered. The notion, moreover, of liis having designs on the crown was as prevalent as ever. and King's Bench, and burned the furniture and all the records and books in the palace of the primate. At the same time the men of Essex advanced along the left bank of the river, and after destroying a mansion of the lord treasurer's at Highbury, threatened the north-eastern part of London. Walworth, the mayor, caused the move- able part of London-bridge to be drawn up, to pre- vent the men of Kent from crossing the river ; but on the following day a passage was yielded to them through fear, and the insurgents entered the city, where they were presently joined by all the rabble. At first their demeanour was most moderate ; — " they did no hurt, they took nothing from any man, but bought all things they wanted at a just price." But the madness of drunkenness was soon added to political fury. The rich citizens, hoping to conciliate the mob, had set open their wine-cellars for them, to enter at their pleasure, and, when the peasants had once tasted of this rare luxury, they tliought they never could have enough of it, and seized it and other strong drinks by force wlierever they could find them. Thus excited, they went to the Savoy, the house of the Duke of Lancaster, " to which there was none in the realm to be compared in beauty and state- liness." They broke into this palace, and set fire to it. To show tliat plunder was not their object, the leaders published a proclamation ordering that none, on pain of death, should secrete or convert to his own use anything that might be found there, but that plate, gold, and jewels should all be de- stroyed : and so particular were they on this head, that a fellow who hid a silver cup under his clothes was thrown into the Thames, cup and all. It would have been well had the prohibition ex- tended to the duke's wines ; but they drank there immoderately, and thirty-two of the rioters, en- gaged in the cellars of the Savoy, were too drunk to remove in time, and were buried under the smoking ruins of the house. Newgate was then demolished; and the prisoners who had been con- fined there and in the Fleet joined in the work of havoc. The Temple was burnt, with all the books and ancient and valuable records it contained ; and about the same time a detachment set fire to the priory of St. John of Jerusalem, in Clerken- well, which had been recently built by Sir Thomas Hales, the prior of the order, and treasurer of the kingdom. They now also proceeded to the shed- ding of blood ; to every man they met they ])ut their watchword — "For whom boldest thou?" — the answer was — " With King Richard and the true commons :" and whosoever knew not that watchword, off went his head. They probably felt that antipathy to foreigners common to un- educated people ; but against the Flemings, who it was popularly said fattened on their miseries, they bore the most deadly rancour. The sanctuary of the church was disregarded, and thirty Flemings were dragged from the altar into the streets, and beheaded amidst shouts of triumph and savage joy ; thirty-two more were seized in the Vintry, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D, 1216—1399. 787 KuiNs OF THK Savoy Palace, Sthand. 1711. and underwent the same fate. JNIany of the rich citizens were massacred in attempting to escape : those who remained did nothing for the defence of the city ; and all that night London was involved in fire, murder, and debauchery. On the morning of the 14th it was resolved to try the effect of concesi^ion, and of promises which the court had no intention of keeping, nor had it the power of so doing, had the will been ever so strong. A proclamation was issued to a multitude that crowded Tower-hill, preventii;g the introduc- tion of provisions into the fortress, and clamouring for the heads of the chancellor and treasurer ; and they were told that, if they wuvdd retire quietly to Mile End, the king wtmld meet them there, and grant all their requests. The gates were opened, the drawbridge was lowered, and Richard rode forth with a few attendants without arms. TliG commonalty from the country followed the king : " but all did not go, nor had they the same objects in view." On the way Richard's half-brothers, the Earl of Kent and Sir John Holland, alarmed for their own safety, jjut spurs to their horses, and left him. On urri'viiig at Mile End, Richard law himself surrounded by upwards of sixty thousand peasants ; but tlieir demeanour was mild and re- spectful, and they presented no more tlian four de- mands, three of which were wise and moderate, and .the exceptionable one, which went to fix a maximum for the price of land, was not more absurd than an act of their rulers in the preceding reign, which fixed the maximum price of agricultural labour. These four demands of the peasants were — 1. The total abolition of slavery for themselves and their children for ever. 2. The reduction of the rent of good land to fourpencc the acre. 3. The full liberty of buying and selling, like other men, in all fairs and markets. 4. A general pardon for all past offences. The king, witli a gracious coun- tenance, assured them that all these demands were granted ; and, returning to town, he employed upwards of thirty clerks to make copies of the charter containing the four clauses. In the morning these copies were sealed and delivered, and then an inmiense body of the insurgents, con- sisting chiefly of the men of Essex and Hertford- ehire, quietly withdrew from the capital : but more dangerous men remained behind. The people of Kent, who had been joined by all kinds of mis- creants, had committed some atrocious deeds on the preceding day, while the king was marching to Mile End. Almost as soon as his back was turned, with a facility which excites a suspicion of treachery or disaffection on tlie part of the gar- rison,* they got into the Tower, where they cut off the heads of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor; Sir Robert Hale?, the treasurer ; William Aplildore, the king's confessor ; Legge, one of the farmers of the tax, and three of his associates?. The Princess of Wales, who was in the Tower, was completely at their mercy ; but the ci-dcvanl '' Fair Maid of Kent" was again quit for a few untavoury kisses. The horror of the scene, however, overpov.ered her ; and she was carried by her ladies in a Bcnseless state to a covered boat, in which she was rowed across the * There were six hundred men-at-arms, nxid as many archers, in llie Tower. The rebels or insurgents were miserably armed and eqiiivijed, " Ol' tliose commons and husbandmen," sajs Holinshed, " many were weaponed only with sticks Among alhousandof that kind of lersons ye should not have seen one well armed." 788 _ river. As soon as he could the king joined his mother, who had been finally conveyed to a house called the Royal Wardrobe, in Carter-lane, Ber- nard's Castle Ward. Wat Tyler and the leaders with hun rejected the charter which the men of Essex had so gladly accepted. Another charter was drawn up, but it equally failed to please, and even a third, with still larger concessions, was rejected with contempt.* The next morning the king left the Wardrobe, and went to Westminster, where he heard mass and paid his devotions before a statue of " our Lady " in the abbev, which had the reputation of perform- ing mauy miracles, particularly in favom of Euglibh kings. After this he mounted his horse, and witli a retimie of barons and knights rode along the " causeway " towards London. On coming into West .Smithfield, he met Wat Tyler, who was there with a great multitude. The mayor and some other city magistrates had joined the king, but his whole company, it is said, did not exceed sixty persons, who were all on horseback. In the front of the Abbey of St. Bartholomew, Richard drew rein, and said that he would not go thence until he had appeased the rioters. Wat Tyler, on seeing him, said to his men, " Here is the king ! I will go speak with him. Move not hand or foot • Accordiii;; to Knvglitoii, Wat Tyli-r insistc.l on the total rei)eal of the forest or game'laws, and that all "aTretis, waters, parks, and tioods should be common, so that the poor as well as the rich might freely fish in all waters, hunt the deer in fotUEts and paiks, and the hare in tho field. HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. unless I give you a signal." Wat, v/ho had pro- cured arms and a horse, rode boldly up to Richard, and went so near that his horse's head touched the flank of Richard's steed. "King!" said he, "dost thou see all those men there?" " I see them," replied the king, " why dost thou ask?" " Because they are all at my will, and have sworn by their faith and loyalty to do whatsoever 1 should bid tliein." During this parley the Tyler played with his dagger, and, it is said by some, laid hold of Richard's bridle. It is probable that this un- educated man, intoxicated by his brief authority, was coarse and insolent enough ; but to suppose that he intended to kill the king is absurd. Some say that Richard ordered his arrest ; others that John Walworth, the lurd mayor, thinking that ho intended to stab the king, rode up, and plunged a short sword into his throat without any orders. All accounts agree in stating that, whether witli sword, dagger, or mace, it was the mayor that struck the first blow. Wat Tyler turned his horse's head to rejoin his men, but Ralph Standish,one of the king's esciuires, thrust his sword through his side, " so that he fell flat on his back to the ground, and beating with his hands to and fro for a while, gave up his unhappy ghost." When the men of Kent saw his fall they cried out, " We are betrayed ' They have killed our captain and guide !" and the foremost men in that disordered array began to put their arrows on the string. The personal intrepi- dity of the royal boy — for Richard was only in his Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 789 fifteenth year — saved his life. He rode gallantly up to the insurgents and exclaimed, " What are ye doing, my lieges? Tyler was a traitor — I am your king, and I will he your captain and guide." On hearing these words, many slipped away — others remained ; hut, without a leader, they knew not what to do. The king rode back to his lords, and asked what steps he should take next. " Make for the fields," said the lord mayor : " if we attempt to retreat or flee, our ruin is certain ; but let us gain a little time, and we shall be assisted by our good friends in the city, who are preparing and arming with all their servants." The king and his party made for the northern road, and the mob, wavering and uncertain, followed him to the open fields about Islington. Here 1000 men-at- arms (Froissart says from 7000 to 8000) joined the king, under the command of Sir Robert Knowles. The insurgents now thinking their case hopeless, either ran away through the corn fields, or, throwing their bows on the ground, knelt and implored for mercy. " Sir Robert Knowles was in a violent rage because they were not attacked and slain in a heap, but the king would not con- sent, saying that he would have his full revenge on them in another way, which in truth he after- wards had." While these events were passing in London and its neighbourhood, the servile war had spread over a great part of England — on the southern coast, as far as Winchester, on the eastern as far north as Scarborough. As the nobles shut themselves up in their strong castles, but little blood was shed. Henry Spencer, the bishop of Norwich, despised this safe course ; he armed his retainers, collected his friends, and kept the field against the insur- gents of Norfolk, Cambridge, and Huntingdon. He surprised several bodies of peasants, and cut them to pieces : others he took prisoners. Then, putting off the complete armour which he wore, and laying down the sword, he took up the crucifix, confessed his captives, gave them absolution, and sent them straight to the gibbet or the block.* Soon after the death of W^at Tyler, Richard found himself at the head of 40,000 horse, and then he told the villains that all his charters meant nothing, and that they must return to their old bondage. The men of Essex, whose conduct had been the mildest and most rational, made a stand, but they were defeated with great loss. Then courts of commission were opened in different towns to condemn rather than to try the chief offenders. Jack Straw and John Ball, the strolling preachers. Lister and Westbroom, who had taken to themselves the titles of kings of the commons in Norfolk and Suffolk, with several hundred more, were executed. At first they were beheaded : afterwards they were hanged and left on the gibbet, to excite horror and terror ; but their friends cut down the bodies, and curried them off; upon which the king ordered that they should be hanged in strong iron chains. f • Froksart. — Knyghton. — W.-lsingham. — Stow. — irolinshed. ^ This is V)elievcil to be the first introduction of tliis Uisjjusting p'aclice. i According to Holinshed the whole number of exe- cutions amounted to 1500. When parliament assembled, it was seen how little the upper classes of society were prepared for that recognition of the rights of the poor, to which in the present day no one could demur without incurring the suspicion of insanity. In truth, it would have belied all history and all experience if the victorious party in such a contest should have immediately followed up their success by giving in to tlie demands of their opponents. The king had annulled, by proclamation to the sheriffs, the charters of manumission which he had granted to the in- surgents, and this revocation was warmly approved by both lords and commons, who, not satisfied with saying that such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent, added, that they would never give that consent, even to save themselves from perishing altogether in one day. There was a talk indeed about the propriety and wisdom of abolish- ing villainage; but the notion was scouted, and the owners of serfs showed that they neither doubted the right by which they held their fellow-creatures in a state of slavery, nor would hesitate to increase the severity of the laws affecting them. They passed a law by which " riots, and rumours and other such things," were turned into high treason,* a law most vaguely expressed, and exceedingly likely to involve those who made it in its fangs. But this parliament evidently acted under the im- pulses of panic and of revenge for recent injuries. The commons presented petitions calling for re- dress of abuses in the administration : they attri- buted the late insurrection to the extortions of purveyors, to the venality and rapacity of the judges and officers of the courts of law, to the horrible doings of a set of banditti called Maintainers, and to the heavy weight of recent taxation ; but they said not a \^•()rd about that desire for liberty which was in fact the main torrent in that inundation, the others being but as tributary streams swelling its waters. When the king demanded a supply, the commons refused, averring that a new tax would provoke a new insurrection. When the commons, in their turn, asked for a general pardon, not for the insurgents, but for themselves and others, for illegal acts committed by them in putting doicn the rebels, the king gave them to understand that the commons mu^t make their grants before he dispensed his favours. This discussion M'as curious : when the king pressed again for money, they told him that they must have time for consideration; and then the king told the commons that he too must have time to deliberate on their petition of pardon. The commons gave way first, and voted that the tax upon wool, woolfells, and leather should be continued for five years. The obnoxious poll- tax was not mentioned. The king then gave the general pardon requested, ybr all loyal subjects; and this grace was a few weeks later extended to the peasantry f A.D. 1382. The king being now in his sixteenth » stilt. Rich. ii. c. 7. i Rot. Pari. 790 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV year, was mamed to Anne of Bohemia, daughter of the late Emperor Charles IV., an accomplished and excellent princess, who deserved a better and a wiser husband. A few days after the marriage, on January the 24th, parliament re-assembled, and Lancaster, yearning after his kingdom of Castile, proposed carrying an army into Spain. He only wanted sixty thousand pounds, but after a warm debate, the duke was defeated. At this time there were two popes, Urban VI., an Itahan, and Clement VII ., a Frenchman. When there was no schism, the pope was generally a peace-maker; but on occasions like the present, each of the rival pontiffs tried to arm Europe in his cause. France, Scotland, Spain, Sicily, and Cyprus Were for Clement ; England, Flanders, and the rest of Europe for Urban, who, on good grounds, con- sidered France his greatest enemy. The Italiari pope, after looking aboiit for a brave and sure champion, fixed his eyes on the warlike Bishop of Norwich, who had so lately distinguished himself in the servile war of England. At the same time, the Flemings, who were devoted adherents of Urban, were sorely pressed by the French ; and they re- newed their applications to England for assistance.* After preaching a sort of crusade, the Bishop of Norwich asked in the pope's name a tenth on church property, obtained the produce of a fifteenth on lay property, and raised two thousand five hundred of the best lancers in the land, and about an equal number of archers, and so passed over the Channel to make war, " for he was young and adventurous, and loved the profession of arms above all things. "f The war in which this military churchman engaged, presented two aspects : under one, it was a sacred crusade for the pope, but under the other, it was a conflict waged in union with, and for the rights and independence of the burghers and commons of Flanders against the aristocracy. He was so fond of war, that he probably cared little how he indulged in it. After the murder of James Von Artaveldt, the cause of democracy declined; and thirty-six years after that event, the Flemings were almost reduced to extremities. In this state they fixed all their hopes on Von Artaveldt's son, who had been named Philip, after his godmother Philippa, the wife of Edward III. Philip Von Artaveldt, warned by his father's fate, had passed his life in a quiet and happy retirement; and in 1381 he was dragged, with his eyes open to the worst consequences, to head the council and lead the armies of the dis- pirited people. His character and his fate form one of the most interesting episodes in the history of modern Europe. For about fifteen months, which included the whole of his public life, his career was as brilliant as a romance ; he forced the enemy to raise the siege of Ghent, the centre and soul of the confederacy ; with the wea-vers and other artisans of Ghent he defeated the French, the count, and _ • In the preceding year they had shown iliemselves bad nego- ciatovs, for, at the moment of soliciting a fivvour, thev demanded pay- ment of two hundred thousand florins, a debt of Edward II I., which they asserted had been due to tliem fortv years, t FroissarU the whole chivalry of Flanders ; he took Bruges, burnt Elchin, a town in France, and laid siege to the strong fortress of Oudenarde; but in the month of November, 1382, he was defeated in the sanguinary battle of Rosebecque, and (in this more fortunate than his father) was killed by the enemy. After that dreadful defeat, the cause of the commons again declined : many towns submitted, and Ghent was besieged or threatened, but without effect.* Affairs were in this state at the arrival of the English force, whose main object it was to assist the free burghers of Ghent. The Bishop of Nor- wich led his little army to Gravelines, which he stormed and took : he next defeated an army of the Count of Flanders, took the town of Dunkirk, and occupied the whole coast as far as Sluys : he then marched with an impetuosity which asto- nished more regular warrioi's to lay siege to Ypres, where he was joined by twenty thousand of the men of Ghent. Meanwhile, the count implored the protection of the young King of France, who, convoking the ban and the arriere ban, sent a splendid army, in which were counted twenty-six thousand lances, across the frontier. The bishop made one furious assault ; but, on the approach of the French, he ran back to the coast more rapidly than he had advanced from it. A part of his army got back with considerable booty to Calais ; the bishop, with the rest, threw himself into Grave- lines — where the French were glad to be rid of him, by permitting him to destroy the fortifications of the place, and tlien embark wuth bag and bag- gage. The French chroniclers say that he made but a bad use of tlie pope's money, and tliat the issue of the expedition was owing to his own follv and precipitation ; but in England his failure was attributed to the jealousy of the Duke of Lan- caster. Tlie bishop, on his return, was prosecuted by parliament, and was for some time deprived of his temporalities. At the same time, four of his principal officers were condemned for having sold stores and provisions to the enemy. A.D. 1384. In her jealousy of the powers of his uncles, the Princess of Wales had suiTounded her son with ministers and officers who were chiefly men of obscure birth and fortune. Richard, who lived almost entirely in the society of these individuals, contracted an exclusive affection for them, and, as soon as he was able, he began to heap wealth and honours upon them. Hence there arose a perpe- tual jealousy between the favourites and the king's uncles, and a struggle in which both parties seem to have resorted to the most nefarious proceedings. A dark mystery will for ever hang over most of these transactions. Once the Duke of Lancaster was obliged to hide himself in Scotland, and he would not return until Richard publicly pro- claimed his conviction of his innocence, and allowed him to travel always with a strong body-guard. In the month of April of this year, just after tiie duke had done good service against the Scots, the • Froiss.— Barante, Hist, des Dues do Bourpogne. Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—139.9. '91 parliament met at Salisbury. One day during the session, John Latimer, a Carmelite friar, a native of Ireland, gave Richard a parchment, containing the particulars of a conspiracy to place the crown on the head of his uncle. The king communicated the contents to Lancaster, who swore that they were all utterly false, — offered to fight in proof of his innocence, and insisted that his accuser should be placed in safe custody to be examined by the council. The monk was accordingly committed to the care of John Holland, the king's half- brother, who is said to have strangled him with his own hands during the night. The king's friends asserted that the friar had killed himself. The Earl of Buckingham swore that he would kill any man that dared to accuse his brother Lan- caster of treason. The Lord Zouch, whom the friar had named as the author of the memorial, de- clared upon his oath that he knew nothing about it, and the matter dropped. Some suspicions, however, lingered in the mind of Richard, and an attempt was made some time after to arrest Lan- caster. But the duke threw himself into his strong castle of Pontefract, and stayed there till the king's mother brought about a reconciliation, and obtained a pardon for her own son, Sir John Holland. Truces with Scotland which had been negotiated by the Duke of Lancaster, were prolonged till the month of May, 1385, when the French, in order to bring about the renewal of hostilities, sent John de Vienne, lord admiral of France, with one thousand men-at-arms, and forty tliousand francs in gold, and other supplies to induce the Scots to make an inroad into England. The French knights soon complained bitterly of the pride of the Scots, the poverty of the land, and the lack of amusements, such as banquets, balls, and tournaments. The common soldiers were not sufficiently respectful to the women ; and, on the whole, these allies agreed very badly. At last, however, the French and Scots broke into North- umberland ; but Richard, who now took the field for the first time, came up from York, and forced them to retire. With eighty thousand men, Richard crossed the borders, burnt Edinburgh, Perth, and other towns; but then he was obliged to retreat — • for information Avas brought that John de Vienne had crossed the Solway Frith, and was besieging Carlisle. The French and Scots marched off by the west, and returned towards Edinburgh, boasting that they had done as much mischief in England as the English had done in Scotland. Richard then disbanded his army, without ever having had an opportunity of measuring swords with the enerriy. During this campaign, the royal quarters had been disgraced by a vile murder, and by fre- quent quarrels between the king's imcles and his favourites. At York, during the advance, Sir John Holland assassinated one of the favourites, and the g-rief, shame, and anxiety, caused by this event broke the heart of the Princess of Wales, who died a few days after. On the retreat from Scotland, Sir Michael de la Pole, another of the favourites, who was then chancellor, excited some fresh jealousy in the mind of Pcichard, who there- upon had a violent and indecent altercation with his uncle Lancaster. After the campaign the king made great promotions to quiet the jealousy of his relations; — honours fell upon them, but these were nothing compared to the honours and grants con- ferred on the king's minions. Henry of Boling- broke, Lancaster's son, was made Earl of Derby ; the king's uncles, the Earls of Cambridge and Buckingham, were created Dukes of York and Gloucester ; Michael de la Pole was created Earl of Suffolk ; and Robert de Vere, a still more in- fluential favourite, Marquis of Dublin, -receiving, at the same time, the extraordinary grant of the Avhole revenue of Ireland, out of which he was to pay a yearly rent of five thousand marks to the king. He was soon after made Duke of Ireland. As Richard had no children, he declared at the same time that his lawful successor would be Roger, Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel, Duke of Clarence.* Soon after these arraiigements, the Duke of Lancaster was enabled to depart to press his claim to the throne of Castile by force of arms. A dis- puted succession in Portugal, and a war between that country and Spain, seemed to open a road for him. The king was evidently glad to have him out of England. Parliament voted supplies, one half of which were given to the duke ; and in the month of July, he set sail for the Peninsula, with an army of ten thousand men. Lancaster landed at Coruiia, opened a road through Gallicia into Portugal, and formed a junction with the king of that country, who married Philippa, the duke's eldest daughter by his first wife. At first, the duke was everywhere victorious ; he defeated the Spa- niards in a pitched-battle, and took many towns ; but, in a second campaign, his army was almost annihilated by disease and famine; and his own declining health forced him to retire to Guienne. In the end, however, he concluded an advanta- geous treaty. His daughter Catherine, the grand- daughter of Peter the Cruel, was married to Henry, Prince of Asturias, the heir of the reigning King of Castile. Two hundred thousand crowns were paid to the duke for the expenses he had incurred ; and the King of Castile agreed to pay forty thousand florins by way of annuity to the Duke and Duchess of Lancaster. The issue of John of Gaunt reigned in Spain for many generations. Encouraged by the absence of the duke with so many choice warriors, the French determined to in- vade England. Never had tliat nation made such mighty preparations. Upwards of a hundred thou- sand men, including nearly all the chivalry of France, were encamped in Flanders, and an immense fleet lay in the port of Sluys ready to carry them over. This fleet was composed of ships collected in all maritime countries from Cadiz to Dantzic. Charles VI., who determined to take a part in the expedi- * Froissait.— W.alsing.— Knyght.— itot, Piul.— Ryiuer. 792 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV tion, went to Sluys, and even embarked ; but this young king was entirely in the power of his intriguing and turbulent uncles, who seem to have determined (not unwisely, perhaps) that the expe- dition should not take place. There were other impediments and causes of delay, and in the end the army was disbanded. The fleet was dispersed by a tempest, and many of the ships were taken by the English. The expenses incurred by France in these preparations were enormous, and ground the people wlio had to pay them to the very dust. That country indeed was so exhausted by the outlay that there was no fear of its making any such great attempt for many years to come. Richard gained no increase of comfort by the absence of Lancaster, whose younger brother, the Duke of Gloucester, was far harsher than John of Gaunt had ever been. At the meeting of parlia- ment, in the month of October, the Duke of Gloucester headed an opposition which determined to drive Richard's favourites de la Pole and de Vere from office. They began with de la Pole, who, after a weak attempt to save him, was dis- missed. * After his expulsion, the commons impeached him of high crimes and misdemeanors, and he was sentenced to pay a heavy fine and to be imprisoned. Gloucester and his party then said that no good government could be expected until a permanent council was chosen by parlia- ment to reform the state of the nation — a council like those which had been appointed in the reigns of John, Henry III., and Edward U. Richard said he would never consent to any such measure, and threatened to dissolve the parliament. The commons then coolly produced the statute by which Edward II. had been deposed ; and while he was agitated by this significant hint, one of the lords reminded him that his life would be in danger if he persisted in his refusal. Upon this Richard yielded, and the government was substantially vested for a year in the hands of eleven commis- sioners, bishops and peers, to whom were added the three great officers of the crown. At the head of all was placed his \nicle Gloucester, whom from that moment he hated with an intensity which seems almost incompatible with his light, frivolous character.f The king was now twenty years of age, but he was reduced to as mere a cipher as when he was but eleven. In the month of August in the follow- ing year, 1387, acting under the advice of De la Pole and Tresilian, the chief justice, he assembled a council at Nottingham, and submitted to some of the judges who attended it this question, — whether the commission of government appointed by par- liament, and approved of under his own seal, were legal or illegal? These judges certified under their hands and seals that the commission was illegal, and that all those who introduced the measure were • According to Knyghton, when Rich.ard first received tlie messa-^e of Parliament, recjuesting tliat De la Hole Earl of SulTolk and chan- cellor mii;ht be removed, he replied with bovith petulance, tliat he would not for them remove the meanest scullion from his kitchen. + Rot. Pari. liable to capital punishment; that all who sup- ported it were by that act guilty of high treason ; and in short, that both lords and commons were traitors. On the 11th of November following, the king, who had returned to London, and who seems thus early to have formed the absurd idea of governing the country by a junta or council of his own choosing, was alarmed by the intelligence that his uncle Gloucester and the Earls of Aiundel and Nottingham, the constable, admiral, and marshal of England, were approaching the capital with 40,000 men. The decision of the judges had been kept secret, but one of the number betrayed it to a friend of Gloucester. As soon as Richard's cousin the Earl of Derby, Lancaster's son and lieir, learned the approach of his uncle of Gloucester, he quitted the court with the Earl of ^"V^^rwick, went to Waltham Cross, and there joined him. The members of the Council of Eleven were there already. On Sunday the 17th of November the duke entered London with an irresistible force and ''• appealed" of treason the Archbishop of York, de Vere, now Duke of Ireland, de la Pole, Earl of Sufiblk, Robert Tresilian, chief justice, and Sir Nicholas Brember, Knight, and lord mavor of London. The favourites instantly took to flight. De la Pole, the condemned chancellor, who had returned to court, and seemed dearer than ever to his master, succeeded in reaching France, where he died soon after; de Vere, the Duke of Ireland, got to the borders of Wales, wliere he received royal letters authorizing him to raise an armv, and begin a civil war. He collected a few thousand men, but was met on the banks of the I sis, near Radcot, and thoroughly defeated by Gloucester and Henry of Bolingbroke. He then' fled to Ireland and afterwards to Holland, where he died about four years after. The Archbishop of York was seized in the nortli, but was allowed to escape by the people : he also finished his days not long after, in the humble condition of a parish priest iii Flanders. Tresilian and Brember remained con- cealed in or about London. After the defeat of his army under de Vere, Richard, who was only courageous by fits and starts, lost all heart, ai;d retired into the Tower. His uncle Gloucester, who believed on pretty good grounds that the kiii"- and tiie favourites had intended to arrest him secretly and put him to death, showed little mcrcv. He drove every friend of Richard, even down to his confessor, away from the court, and threw some ten or twelve of them into prison. The " wonder- ful parliament," which met in the beginning of the year 1388, carried out the impeachments "he had made, and gave him. their full support. The five obnoxious councillors were found guilty of high treason, their property was confiscated, and Tresi- lian and Brember the mayor, who were discovered, were executed, to the joy of the people. With the cause of Brember's areat unpopidaritv we are not acquainted; but the chief justice hail made himself odious by his " l)loodv circuit" against the peasants who had been engaged in Chap. L] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 12 1 G— 139.9. 793 the insurrection. The judges who had signed and sealed the answer at Nottingham Avere next impeached. Their only plea was, that they had acted under terror of the king and the fa- vourites : they were capitally convicted; hut the bishops interceded in their behalf, and, instead of being sent to the scaflfold, they were sent into exile for life to Ireland. Blake, however, who had draAvn up the questions at Nottingham, was exe- cuted, and so was Usk, who had been secretly appointed under- sheri ft" to seize the psrson of the Duke of Gloucester. The king's confessor, who swore that no threats had been used with the judges at Nottingham, was also condemned to exile in Ireland. It was hoped that the shedding of blood would stop here, but such was not the inten- tion of Gloucester. After the Easter recess he im- peached four knights, and these unfortunate men were all convicted and executed. Of these, the fate of Sir Simon Burley excited most sympathy : he had been the much-esteemed friend of P^dward III. and the Black Prince; he had acted as guar- dian to Richard ; had negotiated his marriage ; and was tenderly loved both by the king and the queen. Richard was not so base as to abandon this worthy knight without making an elTort ; but his uncle Gloucester told him that his keeping the crown would depend on the immediate execution of this individual. The young queen — the " good Queen Anne," as she was called by the people — in vain begged on her knees that he might be spared : in vain Henry of Bolingbroke, who had been Gloucester's right hand in this enter- prise, added his most earnest solicitations. The iron-liearted Gloucester had a violent quarrel on this occasion. with his nephew Henry, who never forgave him.* For about tw'elve months Richard left the whole power of government in the hands of his uncle and of the council or commission. It was during this interval that the battle of Otterbourne, famous in song under the name of Chevy Chase, was fought (15th August, 1388) between the Scottish Earl Douglas, and the Lord Harry Percy, the re- nowned Hotspur. Douglas was slain, but the English were in the end driven from the field, after both Hotspur and his brother, liOvd Ralph Percy, had been taken prisoners. At length Richard gave a proof of that decisive promptitude which visited his mind at uncertain intervals. In a great council held in the month of May, 1389, he sud- denly addressed his uncle — " How old do you think I am ?" " Your highness," replied Glou- cester, " is in your twenty-second year." " Then," added the king, " I am surely of age to manage • Rot. Pari.— Knyght. FiKi.D OP THE Batti.k OF CiiKVY Chase.— Bird. '94 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. my own affairs. I have been Iwiger tinder the control of guardians than any ward in my domi- nions. I thank ye, my lords, for your past ser- vice?, but I want them no longer." Before they could recover from their astonishment he demanded the great seals from the archbishop, and the keys of the Exchequer from the Bishop of Hereford ; and within a few days he drove Gloucester from the coiuicil, and dismissed most of the officers he had appointed without meeting with any oppo- sition. He informed the people, by proclamation, that he had now taken the reins of government into his own hands ; but, in fact, this v.as far from being the case. Richard had not the needful ap- plication to business, and the chief administration of affairs was left to another uncle, the Duke of York, and to his cool-headed and calculating cousin, Henry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby.* For some years this government was undisturbed and the nation tranquil; but Richard was evi- dently simulating or dissimulating the whole time. Lancaster returned from the continent after an absence of more than three years, and, from cir- cumstances with which we are not sufficiently acquainted, he became all at once exceedingly moderate and popular. He conducted his brother Gloucester and the nobles of his party to court, where an affecting reconciliation took place, the king playing his part so ably that nobody seems to have doubted the sincerity with which lie embraced his " dear uncle" Gloucester. The duke was re- admitted into the council ; Lancaster was created Duke of Aquitaine for life,t and intrusted with the negotiation of a peace with France, the parliament voting a liberal sum to defray his expenses at a sort of congress held at Amiens. Hostilities had been suspended by a succession of armistices, and in 1394 a truce was concluded for four years. This truce also embraced Scotland, the king of which country, Robert II., had died the 19th of April, 1390, leaving the crown to his eldest son John, Earl of Carrick, who took the name of Robert IH.t A.D. 1394. — After the death of the good Queen Anne, which happened at Shene, on Whit Sunday, the king collected a considerable army, and crossed over to Ireland, where the native chiefs had been for some time making head against their English oppressors, and where some of the English them- selves had revolted. This campaign was a blood- less one : the Irish chiefs submitted ; Richard en- tertained them v.'ith great magnificence, knighted some of them, and, after spending a winter in the country, and redressing some abuses, he returned home, and was well received by his subjects. Although the council was divided on the matter, Richard at last decided on contracting a matri- monial alliance with France ; and in the month of • Walsiiii;.— Knyghl.— Rut. Pari. t This giant was subsequently recalled. t The same popular prejudici- a;,'aiust tlie name of Jolin, at least for a king, w'jich we have seen displayed by the English followers of Wat Tyler, was also entertained at this time by the Scots. It is commonly traced to the unfortunate reigns of John of England, John of France, and John Baliol. October, 1396, he passed over to the continent, and married Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI. — a princess, a miracle of beauty and of wit, ac- cording to Froissart, but who was little miore than seven years old. The blessing of a peace, or at least of a truce, for twenty-five years, was the consequence of this imion, and yet the marriage was decidedly unpopular in England. The Duke of Gloucester had always opposed it ; and the people, whose favour he had never forfeited, now considered him in the light of a champion for the national honour. " Our Edwards," said the duke, "struck terror to the heart of Paris, but under Richard we court their alliance, and tremble at the French even in London." It is said that the duke's declamations were the more vehement, because he suspected what would follow to himself; and it is certain that Richard asked assistance from Charles VI., to be given in case of need, and that this alliance with France gave him courage to undertake a scheme which his deep revenge had nourished for many years. The year after his marriage, in the month of July, Richard struck his blow with consummate treachery : after enter- taining him at dinner, in his usual bland manner, he arrested the Earl of Warwick. Two days after he craftily induced the primate to brhig his brother, the Earl of Arundel, to a friendly con- ference; and then Arundel was arrested. He had thus got two of his victims : to entrap the third, and the greatest of all, he went with a gay company to Fleshy Castle, in Essex, where his uncle Gloucester was residing with his family. The duke, suspecting no mischief, came out, with all his household, to meet the royal guest, and, while Richard entertained the duchess with friendly discourse, Gloucester was seized by the earl mar- shal, carried with breathless speed to the river, put on board ship, and conveyed to the castle of Calais. A report ran that the duke was murdered : to quiet the agitation, Richard issued a procla- mation stating that the recent arrests had been made by the assent of the chief officers of the crmvn, and with the knowledge and approbation of his uncles of Lancaster and York, and his cousin Henry, Earl of Derby.* A few days after Richard went to Nottingham Castle, and there, taking his uncles Lancaster and York, and his cousin Henry, by surprise, he made them, with other noblemen, put their seals to a parchment, by which Gloucester, Arundel, and Warv.ick were " appealed " of treason in the same manner that they (with Henry of Bolingbroke among them) had appealed the king's favourites ten years before. A parliament was then summoned to try the three traitors, for so they were now called by men, like Henry of Bolingbroke, who had been partakers in all their acts, and by others who had supported them in their boldest measures. These men can only escape the suspicion of being a set of fickle and unprincipled scoundrels by our admit- ting that many circumstances remain untold ; and * Rot. Pari.— Kymer, Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 795 indeed the contemporary accounts of the transac- tion are unusually vague and unsatisfactory. One great key to the secret might be found in the terror inspired by Richard's masterly craft and his dis- play of military force. On the 17th of September, he went to parliament with six hundred men-at- arms wearing his livery, and a body-guard of choice archers. The Commons, who had received their lesson, began by impeaching Thomas Arun- del, Archbishop of Canterbury, of high treason. Fearing the primate's eloquence, Richard artfully prevented his attending in the Lords, and he was, at the king's will, banished for life. On the fol- lowing day his brother, the Earl of Arundel, who offered to prove his innocence by wager of battle, who challenged a trial by jury, and who at last pleaded a general and particular pardon, was con- demned and immediately beheaded on Tower Hill. On the 21st of September, a writ was issued to the Earl Marshal, governor of Calais, commanding him to bring the body of his prisoner, the Duke of Gloucester, before the king in parliament, that he might answer to the lords who had appealed him of treason. On the 24th (and three days were pro- bably then scarcely enough for a king's messenger to travel to Calais and back) an answer was returned to the Ijords, that the Earl Marshal could not pro- duce the dulce, for that he, being in custody in the king's pris.iu in Calais, had died there. This par- liament, which was assem.bled to procure his death, cared little how he had died, and made no inquiries. The Lords appellants demanded judgment; the Commons seconded their demand, and the dead duke was declared to be a traitor, and all his pro- perty was confiscated to the king. On the next day a document, puqiorting to be Gloucester's con- fession taken by Sir William Rickhill, one of the justices who had been sent over to Calais in the preceding month for that sole purpose, as was pretended, was produced and read in parliament.* On the 28th, Gloucester's friend, the Earl of War- wick was brought before the bar of the House : the earl pleaded guilty, but his sentence was com- muted into perpetual imprisonment in the Isle of Man. In passing sentence on these nobles, there were many who condemned themselves. The Duke of York, the Bishop of Winchester, and Sir Richard Scroop had been members of the com- mission of eleven ; the Earl of Derby and the Earl of Nottingham had been two out of the five who entered Jjondon in arms and appealed the favourites of treason. After their recent ex- perience of the king, nothing but fatuity could make them repose confidence in any of his assurances, or in the steadiness of parliament; but for want of any better security, they extracted from Richard a declaration of their own innocence in regard to all past transactions. This declaration • Rickhill saw the Duke alive, .it Calais on the 7th of September. The real object of his mission, and the real circumstances of Glo'i- cesttn's death, are involved in a mystery never likely to be cleared up. But it seems that the universal impression, not only in England but also on the continent, was correct, and that he was secretly murdered, and in a manner not to disfigure the corpse, which was afterwards deliveied to his family. was made in full parliament. After this the king, ^yho was very fond of high-sounding titles, and a great conferrer of them, made several promotions of his nobles. Among these, his cousin Henry Boling- broke was created Duke of Hereford; Mowbray, the Earl of Nottingham, Duke of Norfolk; and the king's half-brother, John Holland, who had committed the murder at York, was made Duke of Exeter.* Gloucester's "wonderful" parliament of 1386 had taken an oath that nothing there passed into law should be changed or abrogated ; and now the very same men, with a few exceptions, took tlie same oath to the decisions of the present parlia- ment, which undid all that was then done. The answers of the judges to the questions put at Not- tingham, which had then been punished as acts of high treason, were now pronounced to be just and legal. It was declared high treason to attempt to repeal or overturn any judgment now passed ; and the issue male of all the persons who had been con- demned were declared for ever incapable of sitting in parliament or holding office in council. " These violent ordinances, as if the precedent they were then overturning had not shielded itself with ths same sanction, were sworn to by parliament upon the cross of Canterbury, and confirmed by a national oath, with the penalty of excommunication de- nounced against its infringers. Of those recorded to have bound themselves by the adjuration to Richard, far the greater part had touched the same relics for Gloucester and Arundel ten years before, and two years afterwards swore allegiance to Henry of Lancaster. "t Before this obsequious parlia- ment separated, it set the dangerous precedent of granting the king a subsidy, for life, upon wool ; and a commission was granted for twelve peers and six commoners, " all persons well affected to the king," to sit after the clissolution, and examine and determine certain matters as to them should seem best. These eighteen commissioners usurped the entire rights of the legislature : they imposed a perpetual oath on prelates and lords to be taken before obtaining possession of their estates, that they W'Ould maintain the statutes and ordinances made by this parliament, or afterwards by the lords and knights, having power committed to them by the same ; and they declared it to be high treason to disobey any of their ordinances. Thus, with the vote of a revenue for life, and with the power of parliament notoriously usurped by a junto of his creatures, Richard was not likely soon to meet his people again, and he became as absolute as he could wish. Some people, admitting the follies and extravagances of this king, profess to be blind to any serious state crime in him that can justify the contempt and hatred in which he was held by his subjects ; but we think that the fev/ prece<ling lines are sufficient to clear their vision in this respect. Richard was elated with his success, and he • Rot. Pari. — Froiss.— Kuyglit. t Hallam. Midd. Ages, iii, 115. "96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. gloried in his dissimulation, which he fondly hoped had overthrown all opposition. He began to reign much more fiercely than before. " In those days," says Froissart, " there was none so great in Eng- land that durst speak against anything that the king did. He had a council suitable to his fancies, who exhorted him to do what he list : he kept in his wages ten thousand archers, who watched over him day and night." This high and absolute bearing was, however, of short duration. The people, a share of whose attachment or respect had been preserved by Gloucester even in his worst moments, because he always showed a concern for the public interest, were soon disgusted with Rich- ard, who appeared only to crave power and money that he might lavish them on his minions and indulge himself in an indolent and luxurious life. His grandfather, Edward III., had maintained a magnificent court ; but his was a homely affair compared to that kept by Richard. Never had the nation seen — nor did it see for long after — sucli gorgeousness in furniture and apparel, such pa- geants, such feasting, and such Apician extrava- gance and delicacy in repasts. Putting aside the tailors, the drapers, and the hosts of servants, all clad in costly liveries, Richard's cooks and adjutants of the kitchen alone formed a little army. In some respects his taste and magnificence might have benefited the nation, but they were carried to excess, and the spectators of his riotous living were but too often a beggared and a starving people. A general murmur was soon raised against the late parliament : people said that it had not been freely chosen ; that it had with bad faith and bar- barity revoked former pardons and coimived at illegal exactions ; that it had been a party to the shameful impunity of the murderers of Gloucester ; and that it had assisted the king in destroying the liberties of the kingdom. Matters were approach- ing this state when the mutual distrusts of two great noblemen, and the fears they both entertained of the cunning and vindictive spirit of the king, hurried on the catastrophe. Henry of Bolingbroke, now Duke of Hereford, and Mowbray, now Duke of Norfolk, were the only two that remained of the five appellants of 138G. To all outward appear- ance they enjoyed the favour and confidence of tlie king; but they both knew that their original sin had never been forgiven. The Duke of Norfolk, who, much to his honour, had shown a reluctance to join in the prosecution of his former friends, seems to have been the more alarmed or the more communicative of tlie two. Overtaking the Duke of Hereford, who was riding on the road between Windsor and London, in the month of December, during the recess of parliament, Mowbray said, " We are about to be ruined." Henry of Boling- broke asked " For what?" and Mowbray said, " For the affair of Radcot bridge." " How can that be after his pardon and declaration in parlia- ment?" " He wdll annul that pardon," said Mowbray, " and our fivte will be like that of others before us. It is a marvellous and treacherous world this Me live in !" And then he went on to assure Hereford (what must have been unneces- sary) that there was no trust to be put in Richard's promises or oaths, or demonstrations of affection, and that he knew of a certainty that he and his minions were then compassing the deaths of the Dukes of Lancaster, Hereford, Albemarle, and Exeter, the Marquis of Dorset, and of himself. Henry then said, " If such be the case, we can never trust them ;" to which Mowbray rejoined, " So it is, and though they may not be able to do it now, they will contrive to destroy us in our houses ten years hence."* This reign, as abounding in dark and treacherous transactions, is rich in historical doubts. It is not clear how this conversation was reported to Richard, but the damning suspicion rests upon Henry of Bolingbroke. When parliament met, after the recess, in the month of January, 1398, Hereford was called upon by the king to relate what had passed between the Duke of Norfolk and himself, and then Hereford rose and presented in writing the whole of the conversation as we have related it. Norfolk did not attend in parliament, but he sur- rendered on proclamation, called IJenry of Lan- caster a liar and false traitor, and threw down his gauntlet. Richard ordered both parties into custody, and instead of submitting the case to par- liament, referred it to a court of chivalry, which, after many delays, awarded that wager of battle should be joined at Coventry on the 16th of Septem- ber. As the time approached, Richard was heard to say, " Now I shall have peace fron) hencefor- ward;" but, on the appointed day, when the com- batants were in the lists, and had couched their lances, throwing down his warder between them, he took the battle into his own hands. After consulting with the committee of parliament — the base eighteen (who had just been appointed) — to the surprise and bewilderment of all men, he condemned Hereford to banishment for ten years, and Norfolk for life. Hereford, apparently confi- dent in his abilities and many resources, went no farther than France : Norfolk made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and not long after died broken- hearted at Venice. On the death of the Duke of Lancaster, which happened about three months after the exile of his son Hereford, Richard seized his immense estates and kept them, notwithstand- ing his having, before his departure out of Eng- land, granted letters patent to Hereford, permitting him to appoint attorneys to represent him and take possession of his lawful inheritance. f The illega- lity and dishonour of this proceeding did not pre- vent the court lawyers from justifying it. But now there was no law in the land except what ])ro- ceeded from the will of Richard, who, after ridding himself, as he fancied, for ever, of the two great ])eers whom he feared and hated, set no limits to his despotism. He raised money by forced loans ; * Rot. Pa'l. This is the rxcpoiint which Hercfovil gave In par- liament, t Rot. I'avl— Rvmor. Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 79T he coerced the judges, and in order to obtain fines he outlawed seventeen counties by one stroke of the pen, alleging that tbey had favoured his enemies in the affair of Radcot bridge. He was told by some friends that the country was in a ferment, and that plots and conspiracies were forming against him ; but the infatuated man treated them with contempt, and chose this very moment for leaving England. In the end of the month of JMay, 1399, he sailed from Milford Haven with a splendid fleet, whicli however conveyed more courtiers and parasites than good soldiers. After some delay lie took the field against the Irish on the 2()th of June, and a fortnight after his cousin, the Duke of Hereford, landed at Ravenspur in Yorkshire. The duke had not escaped from France without difficulty, and all the retinue he brought with him consisted of the exiled Archbishop of Canterbury, the son of the late Earl of Arundel, fifteen knights and men-at- arms, and a few servants. But the wily Henry was strong in the affections of the people : he knew by the grief shown when he set out on his exile that many thousands mouUI be glad to see him back; and both he and the arclibishop had many personal friends among the nobles. As soon as he landed, he was johied by the great Earls of Northumberland and West- moreland ; and as he declared that he only came for his right, or for the estates belonging to his father, he was speedily reinforced by many who did not foresee, and who, at tliat stage, would not have approved his full and daring scheme. He marched with wonderful rapidity towards the capi- tal, and arrived there at the head of sixty thousand men. His uncle, the Duke of York, having no confidence in the Londoners, quitted the city be- fore his approach, and, as regent of the kingdom during Richard's absence, raised the royal standard at St. Alban's. The Londoners received Hereford as a deliverer, and still further strengthened his army. A general })anic prevailed among the crea- tures of Richard, some of whom shut themselves up in Bristol Castle. The Duke of York, with such forces as he could collect, moved towards the west, there to await the arrival of Richard, to whom messengers had been dispatched. After staying a few days in Ijondon, Henry of Boling- broke marched in the same direction, and so rapid was his course that he reached the Severn on the same day as the regent. The Duke of York had discovered before this that he could place no reli- ance on his troops : he was himself a man of no energy, and probably his resentment for the mur- der of his brother Gloucester was greater than his affection for his nephew Richard. Henry of Bolingbroke was also his nephew, and when he agreed to meet that master-mind in a secret confer- ence, the effect was inevitable. York joined liis forces to those of Henry, turned aside with him, and helped him to take Bristol castle. Three members of the standing committee of eighteen, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy, and Green were found in the castle, and executed, without trial, but to the infinite joy of the people, who had clamoured for their deaths. Henry then marched towards Ches- ter, but York stopped at Bristol.* For three weeks Richard remained ignorant of all that was passing. Contrary winds, and storms, are made to bear the blame of this omission, but it is probable thatEome of the messengers had proved unfaithful. When he received the astoimding in- telligence, his first remark was, that he sorely regretted not having put Henry to death, as he might have done. From Dublin he dispatched the Earl of Salisbury with part of his forces, and then he repaired himself to Waterford, with the intention of crossing over with the rest. Salisbury landed at Conway, and was reinforced by the Welsh ; but tlie king did not appear so soon as was expected, and the earl was soon deserted by his whole army, both Welsh and English. A few days after, when Richard at last arrived at Milford Haven, he was stunned by bad news of every kind ; and on the second day after his landing, the few thousands of troops which he had brought with him from Ire- land deserted him almost to a man. At midnight, disguised as a priest, and accompanied only by his two half-brothers, Sir Stephen Scroop, his chan- cellor, the Bishop of Carlisle, and nine other indi- viduals, he tied to Conway, to seek refuge in the strong castle there. At Conway he found the Earl of Salisbury and about one hundred men, who, it aj)pears, had already consumed the slender stock of provisions laid up in the fortress. Richard then dispatched his two half-brothers to Chester, Henry's head-quarters, to ascertain what were his intentions. Henry put them under arrest. Soon after sending them, Richard rode to the castles of Beaumaris and Caernarvon : they were both bare of provisions, and he returned in despair, and probably in hunger, to Conway Castle. A romantic and touching story is usually told, on the ffuth of two anonymous ma- nuscripts, according to which, Richard was lured from his stronghold by the ingenious treachery of the Earl of Northumberland ; but we are inclined to believe that famine drove him from Conwav castle, and that, in a hopeless state, he surrendered to Northumberland, who, however, very probably offered him delusive terms. f At the castle of Flint, Henry of Bolingbroke met him, and bent his knee, as to his sovereign. " Fair cousin of Lancaster," said Richard, uncovering his head, " you are right welcome.*' " My lord," answered Henry, " I am come somewhat before my time ; but I will tell you the reason. Your jieople complain that you have ruled them harshly for twenty-two years ; but if it please God I will help you to rule them better." The fallen king replied, " Fair cousin, since it pleaseth you, it pleaseth me well." The trumpets then sounded to horse, and, mounted on a miserable hackney, Richard rode a prisoner to Chester. No • Wiilsinff. + It is said that the sea was open to Iiim, and that he might havo escaped to Guietine ; hut it is by no means clear that, at Uiis moment, he had eillier a ship or provisions for such a voyage. Besides, after sucli repeated desL>rtious, he may well have feared trusting himself in the hands of a few sailors. And then, again, he knew that quitting his kingdom nt !hi,s moment would be equivalent to an abdication. 798 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. JIeetixo op Eichaed and Bolingbroke at Flint Castle.* (Richard is disguised as a Priest, and Bolingbroke is represented in ."\Iourning for the death of Ins father, John of Gaunt.) one appeared to pity his fate ; and if we are to believe Froissart, his very dog left his side to fawn upon his destroyer. At Lichfield, while on the ■way from Chester to the capital, the king eluded the vigilance of his guards, and escaped out of a window ; but he was retaken, and from that time treated with greater severity. On their arrival in London, Richard was cursed and reviled by the populace, and thrown into the Tower. Henry was received by the mayor and the principal citizens ; while at Chester, writs were issued in Richard's name for the meeting of parliament on the 29th of September. On the day of that meeting, a depu- tation of lords and commons, which included the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Earl of Northumber- land, two justices, two doctors of laws, with many others, ecclesiastics and laymen, waited on the king in the Tower, who there, according to the reporters^ • From the Ilarleian MS. 1319. a Hislory of the Deposition of Richard IF., in French verse, pi-ofessing to he "composed by a French gentleman of mark, who was in Uie suite of llie said king, witli permission of the King of France." " T!ie several illumina- tions contained in this book," says a MS. note by Bishop I'eroy, appended to the volume, " are extremely valuable and curious, not only for tlie exact display of the dresses, &c. of the time, but for the finished portraits of so many ancient characters as are pre- Bented in them." These interesting and beautiful illuminations are sixteen in number; our copies of three of them, which have lieen carefully traced from the originals, will convey some notion of the style of minute and high finish in which they are executed. The whole have been engraved in the 20tli volume of the Archa;ologia, where the poem is printed with an English translation, and ample explanatory notes, by the Rev. John Webb, M.A., F.A.S., Hector of Tretire, in Herefordshire ; pp. 1-423. made, " with a cheerfid countenance," a formal renunciation of the crown, acknowledged his unfit- ness for government, absolved all his sulyects from homage and fealty, gave his royal ring to his cousin Henry, and said, that he of all men should be his successor, if he had the power to name one. Whe- ther all this passed as thus stated by the triumphant party ef Lancaster is of little consequence, and Henry was too sagacious to rest his title to the crown upon what could never be considered in any other light than that of a compulsory resignation. The only right that Henry could pretend, was a concise and obvious one ; but in his " abundant caution, and to remove all scruple," he determined to pro]) himself with all sorts of devices, and to heap title upon title. Of these accumulated pre- tensions, some were nugatory or conflicting, and in reality weakened instead of strengthening his claim ; but the lawyers were gratified, and possibly some delicate consciences were tranquillized by each of the clauses. On Tuesday, the 30th day of Sep- tember, the parliament having met in Westminster Hall, the resignation of Richard was read. All the members then stood up, and signified their accept- ance of it, and a great concourse of people outside the hall shouted with joy. Thirty-three articles of impeachment against Richard were afterwards read, and being declared guilty on every charge,Jiis de- position was pronounced; thus a deposition was Chap. I.] CIVIL AND MILITARY TRANSACTIONS: A.D. 1216—1399. 799 BOLINGBROKE CONDUCTINO ElCHAKD II. INTO LONDOX. Ilail. MS. 1319. added to an act of abdication. Only one voice was raised in his favour. Thomas Merks, Bishop of Carlisle, spoke manfully in vindication of his cha- racter ; but as soon as he sate down, he was arrested and removed to the abbey of St. Albans.* • Among th» many doubts that beset tliis remarkable part of our liistojy.it is Ucubted whether Bisliop Merks's speech be not a fabrica- tjon. During these proceedings Henry remained seated in his usual place near to the throne, which was empty, and covered with a cloth of gold. As soon as eight commissioners had proclaimed the sentence of deposition, he rose, approached the throne, and having solenmly crossed himself, said, " In the name of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I, Henry of Lancaster, challenge this realm of England, Pakliajje-nt assembled fob the Deposition or IIicuaud II. llarl. Jlri. 1319. (The Earl of AYestmoreland on the right of the Throne ; the Earl of Northumberland on the left ; Henry of Bolingbroke behind the latter.) 800 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. because I am descended by right line of blood from the good lord King Henry III., and through that right, that God of his grace hath sent me, with help of my kin and of my friends, to recover it; the which realm was in point to be undone for default of government and undoing of the good laws." He knelt for a few minutes in prayer on the steps, and then was seated on the throne by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.* * Kot. Pari.— Knyght.— Brady. The history of Scotland during this period is so intermixed with that of England, and has ne- cessarily in consequence been so fully detailed in the preceding narrative, that no further summary of it is required. The reign of the meek and pious, but feeble-minded Robert III. continued down to the date at which we are novv arrived, without furnishing any events beyond what have been above related. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1216—1399. 801 CHAPTER II. THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. HE papal dominion in Europe reached its height about the be- ginning of the thir- teenth century, and maintained itself with little outward evi- dence of decline nearly throughout the cen- tury. Boniface VIII. was as arrogant an asscrtor of the supre- macy of the successor of St. Peter over all other earthly powers and principalities, as his predecessor Innocent III., but he was not so fortunate in the time and circum- stances in which he attempted to compel submis- sion to his high pretensions. In truth, it was not in the nature of things that such a dominion should last ; it was thrown up, as it were, into the air, by a violent, volcanic force ; and the greater the height it had attained, the nearer it was to the commence- ment of its descent and downfal. The very suc- cess of Innocent, by the extravagance of the as- sumptions to which it gave rise in himself and those who came after him, and the dream of secu- rity in which it lulled them, was more fatal than anything else could have been to the stability of their colossal sovereignty ; its pressure, thus aggra- vated, awoke and gradually diffused a spirit of resistance both among kings and people ; till at length Philip le Bel began, and WyclifFe, nearly a hundred years later, carried forward, the great rebellion, which after little more than another hun- dred years was to be fought out triumphantly by Luther. But for nearly a century before the time of Philip le Bel the causes which were preparing this conflict were in active though hidden opera- tion, and the proud pontificate of Innocent may be properly fixed upon as the culmination of the papacy — the point at which it both attained its highest rise and commenced its decline. From the time of Boniface the decline became appa- rent, and has been progressive to our own day. " Slowly," as it has been finely said, " like the retreat of waters, or the stealthy pace of old age, that extraordinary power over human opinion has been subsiding for five centiuries."* In no country were the exactions and encroach- ments of the Roman pontiffs, in the thirteenth century, carried to a more exorbitant extent than in England. The good nature of the people, and • Hallam. Middle Ages, ii.329. VOL. I. something perhaps of a turn for superstition in their temper or their habits, their insular separa- tion from the rest of Europe, and their wealth, which even at this period was considerable, con- curred with the political circumstances of the country, which from the latter years of Henry II. had been eminently favourable to the spread of this foreign usurpation, in making England the great field of papal imposition and plunder. Throughout this century the bishoprics were filled either by the direct nomination of the pope, or, what was perfectly equivalent, by his arbitration in the case of a disputed election. The course that was taken in regard to this matter may be illustrated by the history of the succession of the archbishops of Canterbury. On the death of Car- dinal Langton, in 1228, the chapter chose as his successor one of their own number, Walter de Hemesham ; but both the king and the bishops of the j)rovince having appealed to Rome against this election, the pope annulled it, and appointed Richard le Grand, or Weathershead, chancellor of Lincoln, to be archbishop. Le Grand died in 1231, on which three successive elections were made by the chapter and set aside by the pope ; and at last Edmund Rich, treasurer of Salisbury, whom the pope recommended, was chosen and consecrated. Archbishop Edmimd died in 1242, when King Henry first compelled the chapter by threats, and almost by force, to nominate Boniface of Savoy, the queen's uncle, and then purchased the confirmation of the election at Rome. On occa- sion of the preceding vacancy the pope had made no scruple in setting aside the original selection of the chapter, although the king had concurred in it. On the death of Boniface, in 1270, William Chillenden, their sub-prior, was elected by the chapter ; but the pope nominated Robert Kirwarby, and he became archbishop. Exactly the same thing was repeated in 12*78, when Kilwarby re- signed on being made a cardinal ; the monks elected Robert Bumel, bishop of Bath and Wells, but John Peckham, a Franciscan friar, was never- theless appointed to the see by the pope of his own authority. The next time the chapter at once elected the person who it was understood would be agreeable to the pope, namely, Robert Wiiichelsey, who succeeded Peckham in 1293, and fought the battle of the clergy against the crown with great valour during a twenty years' occupation of the see. The right of nominating to inferior benefices was seized in a still more open manner. It had been a frequent practice of the popes to request 2 Y 802 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. bishops to confer the next benefice that should become vacant on a particular clerk. Gradually these recommendations, which were called mandats, became more frequent ; but it was not till the time of Gregory IX. (a.d. 1221—1241) that they were distinctly avowed to be of an authoritative charac- ter. Even that pope claimed, in words, no more than the right of nominating one clerk to a benefice in every church. But he and Innocent IV. are asserted to have, in fact, placed Italian priests by their mandatory letters in all the best benefices in England. In the three last years of Gregory IX. it is said that three hundred Italians were sent over to this country to be provided for in the church. It was solemnly stated by the English envoys to the council of Lyons (held in 1245) that Italian priests drew from England at this time sixty or seventy thousand marks every year — a sum greater than the whole revenue of the crown. Nor did these foreigners even spend their incomes in the country. Most of them continued to reside at Rome, or elsewhere in Italy, where, in general, they held other preferments : it is affirmed that in some cases fifty or sixty livings were accumu- lated in the possession of one individual. At length the universal right of nomination to church livings was asserted in plain terms by Clement IV., in a bull published in 1266. Nor was even this the utmost extent to which the claim was carried. By what was called a reservation, the pope assumed the power of reserving to himself, the next presen- tation to any benefice he pleased which was not at the time vacant; or by another instrument, called a provision, he at once named a person to succeed the present incumbent. In this way all the benefices in the kingdom, both those that were vacant and those that were not, were turned to account, and .made available in satisfying the herd of clamorous suitors for preferment and dependants on the holy see. In a letter addressed to the pope by the king, the prelates, and barons of England, in 1246, complaint is made that the foreigners upon whom livings were thus bestowed not only did not reside in the country, nor understand its language, but, even in their absence and incom- petency, appointed no substitutes to perform their duties. In the numerous churches filled by them, it is declared there was neither almsgiving nor hospitality, nor any preaching or care of souls whatever. The Italians, it is moreover affirmed, were invested with their livings without trouble or charges, whereas the English were obliged to pro- secute their rights at Rome at a great expense. The letter also touches upon some of the other vexatious modes by which the holy see laboured to extend its power or to gratify its rapacity, particu- larly the great grievance of drawing all causes of importance to be heard and decided at Rome. This was a material part of the scheme for bring- ing the civil under subjection to the ecclesiastical power, which had been pursued with such perti- nacity from the time of Anselm and the first Henry. It was also a means of drawing much wealth from the country, and augmenting the ample stream, fed by multiplied contrivances of exaction and drainage, that was constantly flowing thence into the papal treasury. The entire taxation or tribute annually paid, under a variety of names by England to Rome, must have amounted to an immense sum. Gregory IX. is said to have, in one way and another, extracted from the kingdom, in the course of a very few years, not less than nine hundred and fifty thousand marks, — a sum which Mr. Hallam estimates as equivalent to fifteen millions at present.* In 1376, the commons, in a remonstrance to the king against the intolerable extortions of the court of Rome, affirmed that the taxes yearly paid to the pope out of England amounted to five times as much as all the taxes paid to the crown. A considerable portion, indeed, of the revenue thus extracted by the Roman pontiff was levied directly from the clergy themselves, in the form of Peter- pence, annates, or first-fruits, fees upon institution to benefices, &c. ; but it did not the less on that account come ultimately out of the property and industry of the nation. The church was but the vast conduit or instrument of suction by which the money was drawn from the country. It is calculated, from a statement of the historian Knyghton, that in the early part of the fourteentli century the annual revenue of the church amounted to the enormous sum of seven hundred and thirty thousand marks, which was more than twelve times the amount of the whole civil revenue of the king- dom in the reign of Henry Ill.f Very nearly one-half of the soil of England was at this period in the possession of the church. At the same time, as we have seen, all the richest benefices were in the hands of foreigners. Where a cure thus held by a non-resident incumbent was served at all, it was intrusted to a curate, who appears to have been usually paid at the most wretched rate. In his account of the great pestilence of 1349, Knyghton observes, that before that plague a curate might have been hired for four or five marks a-year, or for two marks and his board ; but that so many of the clergy were swept away by it, that for some time afterwards no one was to be had to do duty for less than twenty marks or pounds a-year. To remedy this evil a constitution or edict was published a few years afterwards by the au- thority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, forbidding any incumbent to give, or any curate to demand, more than one mark a-year above what had been given to the curate of the same church before the plague. The extensive and more systematic form given to the canon law in the course of the thirteenth cen- tury considerably aided the pope and the church in their contest with the civil power. We extract from Mr. Hallam the following summary of the additions made during this period to the Decretum of Gratian, originally the great text-book of that • Mid. .\ges, ii. 306. f Macpherson, An. of Com. i. 519. Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1216—1399. 803 jurisprudence.* " Gregory IX. caused the five books of Decretals to be published by Raimond de Penna- fort in 1234. These consist almost entirely of rescripts issued by the later popes, especially Alex- ander III., Innocent III., Honorius III., and Gre- gory himself. They form the most essential part of the canon law, the Decretum of Gratian being comparatively obsolete. In these books we find a regular and copious system of jurisprudence, de- rived, in a great measure, from the civil law, but with considerable deviation, and possibly improve- ment. Boniface VIII. added a sixth part, thence called the Sext, itself divided into five books, in the nature of a supplement to the other five, of which it follows the arrangement, and composed of decisions promulgated since the pontificate of Gre- gory IX." " The canon law," proceeds Mr. Hal- lam, " was almost entirely founded upon the legis- lative authority of the pope ; the decretals are in fact but a new arrangement of the bold epistles of the most usurping pontifis, and especially of Inno- cent III., with titles or rubrics comprehending the substance of each in the compiler's language. The superiority of ecclesiastical to temporal power, or, at least, the absolute independence of the former, may be considered as a sort of key-note which regulates every passage in the canon law. It is expressly declared that subjects owe no allegiance to an excommunicated lord, if after admonition he is not reconciled to the church. And the rubric prefixed to the declaration of Frederic H.'s deposi- tion in the Council of Lyons asserts that the pope may dethrone the emperor for lawful causes. These rubrics to the decretals are not ])erhaps of direct authority as part of the law ; but they express its sense, so as to be fairly cited instead of it. By means of her new jurisprudence, Rome acquired in every country a powerful body of advocates, v/ho, though many of them were laymen, would, with the usual bigotry of lawyers, defend every preten- sion or abuse to which their received standard of authority gave sanction. "f But a still higher power assumed by the popes than even that of declaring or making the law was that of dispensing with its strongest obligations in any particular case at their mere will and pleasure. They assumed and exercised this power in parti- cular in regard to the canonical impediments to marriage, and in regard to oaths. By the ancient laws of the church, marriages were forbidden both between blood relations and relations by affinity within the seventh degree. " It was not until the twelfth century," says Mr. Hallam, " that either this or any other established rules of discipline were supposed liable to arbitrary dispensation ; at least the stricter churchmen had always denied that the pope could infringe canons, nor had he asserted any right to do so. But Innocent III. laid down as a maxim, that out of the plenitude of his power he might lawfully dispense with the law; and accordingly granted, among other instances of this prerogative, dispensations from impediments of » See ante, p. 610, t Mid. Ages. ii. 289. marriage to the Emperor Otho IV. Similar in- dulgences were given to his successors, though they did not become usual for some ages. The fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, removed a great part of the restraint, by permitting marriages 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 canonical limits, to keep on good terms with the court of Rome, which, in several instances that have been men- tioned, fulminated its censures against sovereigns who lived without permission in what was con- sidered an incestuous union."* And as uncanonical unions could be legalized by the pope, so it was held, and equally to the benefit of the holy see, that any illegitimacy of birth could be entirely removed by the same authority. With regard to oaths, again, it was expressly laid down as the law, not only that any oath extorted by fear might be annulled by ecclesiastical authority, but that an oath disadvantageous to the church was essentially, and from the first, without any force, whether it were formally dispensed with or not. These con- venient principles required very little ingenuity to be so applied as to get rid of the obligation of any oath whatever. As in preceding ages, new monasteries still con- tinued to be founded, and additions to be made, by the gifts and bequests of the pious, to the landed property of the clergy ; although in England the zeal which displayed itself in these ways perhaps rather declined after the twelfth century. Indeed, independently of the restraints which, as we shall presently see, the law now began to place upon the disposition to make over estates to the church, both the motive and the means of that kind of liberality were of course diminished by the extent to which it had been already carried. When the clergy were in possession of nearly half the land of the kingdom, it must have appeared to the most excited devotee less necessary than it formerly might have been to augment their endowments. But the rise in the thirteenth century of the new religious orders of the Mendicant Friars amply compensated for any falling off in the old rate of increase of the houses of the regular monks. The Dominicans or Black Friars (called also Friar Preachers), insti- tuted by St. Dominic de Guzman, and the Francis- cans or Gray Friars (called also Cordeliers), founded by St. Francis of Assisa, were formally established by the authority of Pope Honorius III., in 1216 and 1223. Of many other orders which soon sprung up in imitation of these, all were eventually suppressed except two, — the Carmelites, or White Friars, and the Augustines, also known, as well as the Franciscans, by the name of Gray Friars, from the colour of their cloaks. The success of this novel mode of appeal to the religious passions of • Mid. Ai^es, 296. 804 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Dominican, or Black Fkiar. Franciscan, or Grey Fuiar. the time was prodigious. The profession of po- verty, the peculiar distinction of the Mendicant Friars, was well calculated to work a powerful effect, thus exhibited in contrast with the wealth and grasping spirit of the other clergy of all degrees and kinds — secular and regular, priests and monks, alike. It is true the poverty of the Mendicants like the same vow of the elder orders of monks, in no long time became, in so far as the community of the brethren was concerned, a profession merely, and their establishments gradually accumulated extensive estates and ample revenues ; but it served its purpose in the first instance, as well as if it never was to give way to this corruption. And the individual friar mendicant always continued, it is to be remembered, to present the show, and, it must be admitted to a great extent, the reality, also, of destitution and a hard rule of life. The very name of the mendicants was a standing proclama- tion of their sympathy with the humbler and more numerous classes, and their indifference to the pomp and pre-eminence which appeared to be so much coveted by the other clergy. Meanwhile their activity in preaching, and in all the ministra- tions of religion, and the pains they took to win the favour of the multitude, completely distanced what- ever had been before attempted in the same line. Nor must it be omitted, that among the means of influence of which they availed themselves, while some were perhaps less creditable, others were of the highest and most legitimate description ; for it was not long before the Franciscans and Domini- cans became the most distinguished of the clergy in all the learning of the age, and numbered in their ranks the most eminent names in every depart- ment of such scholarship and philosophy as were then in vogue. With all these arts and real merits, it was impossible that, with the support of au- thority, the concurrence of favouring circumstances, and wise management in the direction of their pro- ceedings, they should have failed to be at once taken up and borne along by a gale of popular enthusiasm. Accordingly we find the historian, Matthew Paris, in the middle of the thirteenth century, already complaining that nobody con- fessed except to these new-fashioned monks-errant, and that the parish churches were deserted. But in course of time, many of the parochial cures came to be served by mendicant friars, to whose com- munities the advowsons of the livings had been made over by admirers of the order. So rapidly did the members of these new orders increase, that in less than ten years after the institution of that of the Franciscans the delegates to its general chapter formed alone a multitude of more than five thou- sand persons. " And by an enumeration in the early part of the eighteenth century, Avhen the Reformation must have diminished their amount at least one-third, it was found that even then there I were twenty-eight tliousand Franciscan nuns in Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1216—1399. 805 nine hundred nunneries, and one hundred and fifteen tho\isand Franciscan friars in seven thou- sand convents, besides very many nunneries, which, being under the immediate jurisdiction of the ordinary, and not of the order, were not included in the returns."* All these troops of religious persons were bound in their whole interests and affections to the church, not only by their voluntary vows, but by the strong incorporating tie of celibacy, the practice of which, in conformity to what had certainly been the distinctly - declared law of the church from very early times, was now also enforced upon all descriptions of the clergy with a strictness greatly beyond what it had heretofore been found possible to maintain. In the reign of Henry I. it is stated that more than half the English clergy were married ; but after the twelfth century, although a few occasional violations of the rule may have still occurred, celibacy was certainly the general prac- tice as well as the law of the church. The rise of the Mendicant orders probably more than made up to the church for the destruction of the Templars in the beginning of the next cen- tury ; it was the substitution of a force strong with the inspiration of a new principle, and happily adapted to the time, for another, the first vigour of which, as well as its fit occasion, was in a great degree worn out. And as to the era of the Tem- plars belonged the Crusades, so with the Mendicant Friars appeared the Inquisition, of which, indeed, St. Dominic is commonly reputed the founder, or at least the first suggester. The crusades which took place in this age were animated by little or nothing of the old spirit. In the preceding Book we noticed the fourth, which was undertaken in 1203, but which was eventually diverted from an expedition against the infidels in Palestine to a war with the Greeks in Constantinople. Both this and the fifth crusade (a.d. 1218) were under- taken at the instigation of the energetic Innocent III. ; but even his breath was impotent to blow up again into a blaze the dying fire. As Gibbon ob- serves, " except a king of Hungary, the princes of the second order were at the head of the pilgrims ; the forces were inadequate to the design ; nor did the effects correspond with the hopes and wishes of the pope and the people." Of the sixth and seventh crusades, both conducted by St. Louis, the former (which set out in 1248) issued in the captivity, the latter (in 1270) in the death of the enthusiastic monarch : and ere the century had closed the Christians were driven for ever from their last narrow footing in the Holy Land. Mean- while, in the midst of these abortive attempts to revive crusading in the East, a new species of crusades, as they were also called, was introduced in the West, — namely, military expeditions against the unconverted heathens in various parts — against the Jews, against the Albigenses, and other here- tics; the object being in each case to extirpate in- differently either the misbelief or the misbelievers. • Southey, Book of the Church, i.325. Here, tlien, was exactly the object of the Inqui- sition, to which, therefore, these expeditions may be regarded as the natural transition from the ori- ginal crusades. Both the crusades and the inqui- sition equally operated, though in diflferent ways, to uphold for their season the fabric of the papal ascendancy. It was in the nature, however, of most, if not of all of these stimulants, to contribute something to the weakening, in the end, of the system upon which they apparently bestowed an immediate strength. Even the strict celibacy of the clergy, if it invigorated the internal organization of the church, tended to loosen its roots in the general soil of human society. Nor did the Mendicant orders themselves always continue to be the same manageable and subservient allies of the papal power which they were at first ; when certain questions came to be debated between the church and the people, the constitution and position of these bodies inevitably led them to a great extent to side with the latter. But especially the various usurpations and extravagant assumptions of the church, whatever temporary advantages may have accrued from them, all proved incumbrances and sources of debility in the long run, and, by the manner in which they outraged the natural feelings and common sense of men, became the main pro- vocatives of the alienation and hostility under which this once sovereign power in human affairs gra- dually sunk. Excommunications, interdicts, dis- pensations, the inquisition, the arrogant pretensions of the ecclesiastical courts, the oppressive exactions of the popes, the enormous wealth of the clergy, and their still unsatisfied rapacity, had all been long preparing the elements of the mighty explosion to which indulgences and Luther at last set the match. Meanwhile many less violent eflforts were made to shake off the yoke, or at least to mitigate its pres- sure. In our own country, as we have already seen, from the time of Henry I., and more especially from that of Henry II., both the crown and the parlia- ment had repeatedly attempted, with various suc- cess, to check the encroachments of the ecclesiastical power. In the course of the period now under review some important measures were adopted against the more glaring and intolerable evils of this foreign tyranny. Even during the feeble reign of Henry III. considerable progress was made in restraining the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical tribunals. " The judges of the king's courts," says Mr. Hallam, " had imtil that time been themselves principally ecclesiastics, and consequently tender of spiritual privileges. 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 assert the supremacy of their jurisdiction, by issuing writs of prohibition whenever the ecclesiastical tri- bunals passed the boundaries which approved use had established. Little accustomed to such control, 806 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. the proud hierarchy chafed under the bit ; several provincial synods reclaim against the pretensions of laymen to judge the anointed ministers whom they were bound to obey ; the cognizance of rights of patronage and breaches of contract is boldly asserted ; 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 next reign we find an archbishop of Canterbury unreservedly admitting the right of the King's Bench to issue prohibitions. The question was finally settled in the thirteenth year of Edward I., by the statute entitled ' Circumspecte agatis,' which, under the form of an order to the judges to respect the privileges of the spiritual jurisdiction, in fact restrained them, by express enumeration, within certain specified limits. Ten years before this, by the statute of Westminster the First, it had been provided that clerks charged with felony should be first indicted by solemn inquest in the King's Court, and that, being then delivered to the ordinary, if found guilty by such inquest, they should in no • Middle Ages, ii. 317. manner be let free without due purgation, — words which were afterwards construed to mean that their property, both real and personal, should be for- feited to the crown. In the seventh year of this reign, also, as will be more particularly noticed in the next chapter, the making over of lands to reli- gious persons or societies was for the first time effectually restrained, by what is commonly called the first statute of mortmain. By another statute, passed in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, Edward prohibited all abbots, priors, or other religious persons of whatsoever condition, from henceforth sending any money, under any name or pretence whatsoever, as a payment to their superiors beyond the sea. It is also stated that one of this king's subjects having obtained a bull of excommuni- cation against another, Edward ordered him to be executed as a traitor, according to the ancient law, and was only induced to commute the punishment into banishment out of the realm on a represen- tation made by the chancellor and treasurer, on their knees, that the law in question had not for a long time been put in execution.* • See Blackstone, by Coleridge, iv. HO, and the authorities there quoted. iiiiiiPiiflP^^^^ Archbishop EKADixa a Papai, Bull. Harl. MS. 1319. One of the principal charges made by the par- liament against Edward II., on his deposition, was, that he had given allowance to the bulls of the see of Rome. "But Edward III.," says Blackstone, " was of a temper extremely different ; and to remedy these inconveniences first by gentle means, he and his nobility wrote an expostulation to the pope ; but receiving a menacing and contemptuous answer, withal acquainting him that the emperor. and also the king of France, had lately submitted to the holy see, the king replied, that if both the emperor and the French king should take the pope's part, he was ready to give battle to them both in defence of the liberties of the crown. Hereupon more sharp and penal laws were devised against provisors, which enact, severally, that the court of Rome shall not present or collate to any bishopric or living hi England ; and that whoever Chap. II.] THE HISTORY OF RELIGION: A.D. 1216—1399. 807 disturbs any patron in the presentation to a living by virtue of a papal provision, such provisor shall pay fine and ransom to the king at his will, and be imprisoned till he renoiuices such provision ; and the same punishment is inflicted on such as cite the king, or any of his subjects, to answer in the court of Rome. And when the holy see resented these proceedings, and Pope Urban V. attempted to revise the vassalage and annual rent to which King John had subjected his kingdom, it was unani- mously agreed by all the estates of the realm in parliament assembled, 40 Edw. III., that King John's donation was null and void, being without the concurrence of parliament and contrary to his coronation oath ; and all the temporal nobiUty and commons engaged, that if the pope should en- deavour, by process or otherwise, to maintain these usurpations, they would resist and withstand him with all their power.* By subsequent statutes, passed in the reign of Richard II., it was enacted that no alien should be capable of being presented to any ecclesiastical preferment, and that all liege- men of the king accepting of a living by any foreign provision should forfeit their lands and goods, and be banished from the realm, and the benefice made void. It was also provided that any person bring- ing over any citation or excommunication from beyond sea, on account of the execution of the above-mentioned statutes, should *' be taken, ar- rested, and put in prison, and forfeit all his lands and tenements, goods and chattels, for ever, and incur the pains of life and of member." Finally, by the famous statute commonly called the Statute of Prsemunire,t passed in 1392, it was "ordained and established," in still more comprehensive terms, that any person purchasing in the court of Rome or elsewhere, any provisions, excommunications, bulls, or other instruments whatsoever, and any person bringing such instruments within the realm, or receiving them, or making notification of them, should be put out of the king's protection; that their lands and goods should be forfeited ; and that they themselves, if they could be found, should be attached and brought before the king and council, there to answer for their offence. The popes maintained the struggle for some time, even after the passing of this statute, continuing at least to present, as before, to all English benefices the in- cumbents of which had died at Rome ; but the king and the parliament were resolute and steady in their resistance ; in no instance were these foreign presentations permitted to have effect ; and at last, although the Roman pontiff still formally conferred many of the chief benefices by presentations and provisions, these instruments were issued only in favour of persons who had been previously nomi- nated by the crown. The victory, therefore, * See Black stone, iv. 111. + This statute (the 16th Rich II. c. 5), and also the offence against which it is directed, are so called from the words " PrsKmunire," or "Praemonere facias," used to command a citation of the party in the ■writ for the execution of this and the precodinf; statutes respecting provisions. It does not clearly appear tliat the statute of Praemunire was ever regularly passed by the parliament ; but it has been re- peatedly recognised as a statute by subsequent actsofthe legislature. obtained by the civil over the ecclesiastical power, in this great battle, was complete. These efforts of the legislature, however, were only one of the forms in which a spirit expressed itself that was now extensively diffused over the nation. While the king, lords, and commons were repelling the encroachments of the papal power by the statutes of provisors and praemunire, a great reformer and his disciples were shaking the church at once in its doctrine, its discipline, and the whole fabric of its polity. This was John de Wycliffe, whom we have already had occasion to mention in the preceding Chapter. He was born about the year 1324, in the parish from which he takes his name, in Yorkshire ; and having previously distinguished himself at Oxford by an extraordinary proficiency in almost every branch of learning then cultivated, he had so early as ] 356, in a treatise entitled ' Of the Last Age of the Church,' assailed the high-flown notions then commonly held on the subject of the authority of the pope. A few years later he began to direct his attacks against the Mendicant orders ; but it was not long before the church in general, and all orders in it, became the subject of his unsparing and indiscriminate invective. In one of his works we find him enumerating twelve classes of religious persons, beginning with the pope and ending with the mendicant friars, all of whom he denounces as anti-Christs and the proctors of Satan. This general corruption of the church Wycliffe traced chiefly to the profusion of wealth with which it had been endowed in later times : his favourite topic was the recommendation of the poverty of the first teachers of the Gospel ; and by his own example, and that of a body of disciples whom he called his poor priests, and who, like himself, went about preaching his doctrines barefoot and clothed in the coarsest attire, he gave the strongest evi- dence of the reality of his convictions, and made a prodigious impression upon the popular mind. The coincidence of many of his views, also, with the objects of one of the political parties which divided the state, obtained for him the counte- nance and support of some of the greatest of the nobility. We have already related the circum- stances of his appearanoe before the Bishop of London at St. Paul's, in the last year of the reign of Edward III., on which occasion he was sup- ported by personages of no less consequence than the Duke of Lancaster, and Percy, the I^ord Marshal.* A paralytic stroke terminated the stormy career of Wycliffe on the 31st of October, 1384, at his rectory of Lutterworth, in Leicester- shire. During his life, those of his novel views that made the greatest ^apparent impression and progress were those respecting the constitution of the church, and the subject of ecclesiastical autho- rity. When he latterly began to attack the doc- trines of the church, he seems to have met, in the first instance, with less success even among the common people, and his patroiis among the higher • See ante, p. 780. 808 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. ranks generally declined supporting him in that new course. But here, also, it was eventually found that he had awakened a spirit of inquiry by his preaching and his writings which did not die when he himself was taken from among men. What the opinions of WyclifFe really were on many points of theology has been matter of much disputation ; and his own writings, voluminous as they are, seem scarcely to afford the materials for a complete and consistent exposition of his creed : his views enlarged or varied as he prosecuted his inquiries ; and much that he has written is so obscure as to defy any very precise or satisfactory interpretation. But, whatever became of some of his peculiar notions, the principle of his mode of investigating the truths of Christianity took root and flourished, and in no long time came to bear abundant fruit. WyclifFe's fundamental posi- tion was, that the knowledge of the revealed will of God was to be found in the Scriptures only, and, moreover, was to be found there, not by the church alone, or its recognised heads, but by every private individual who should earnestly and humbly address himself to the search. English translations of many parts, perhaps of the whole, of the Scrip- tures existed before the time of Wycliffe, but they appear to have been entirely unknown to the great body of the people. In his writings and dis- courses the paramount authority of the Holy Books was acknowledged and inculcated in the most ex- plicit terms ; whatever he advanced he endeavoured to rest upon their testimony ; and he at once fami- liarized the popular ear to many passages of the word of God to which it had never before listened, and excited, by these quotations, the anxious curiosity of men to obtain access to the whole of the sacred volume. It is Wycliife's highest title to the gratitude of his countrymen and to ever- lasting renown, and at the same time the most conclusive vindication that now remains of the sin- cerity of his professions, as well as our best evi- dence of the true learning and laborious industry of the man, that, like his great successor Luther, he devoted several years of his life to the comple- tion of a translation of both the Old and New Testaments into his native tongue. This is the oldest English version of the Scriptures that is now extant, — the next that has come down to us after the partial Saxon version attributed to Alfred.* Many copies of this translation are said to have been dispersed by the care of the author and his disciples ; and the effects which it had produced became very perceptible not many years after the death of Wycliffe, when, under the new name of the Lollards, the inheritors of his opinions, in for- midable numbers, again awoke the cry of refor- mation. The history of the Lollards, however, must be reserved for the next period, to which chiefly it belongs. * Wycliife's translation of the New Testament lias been twice printed : first, in folio, under the care of the Rev. J. Lewis, London, 1731 ; secondly, in 4to, edited by H. H. Baber, London, 1810. The translation of the Old Testament still remains in manuscript. SrEciMEN FKOM A CoPY OF Wycliffe's Bibi.k, in the British Mupcuni. Itoyal MS. I. C. viii. Chap. HI.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 809 CHAPTER III. HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS. E now emerge, as it were, from the twilight in which we have hitherto journeyed, and we enter upon a path illumined by, at least, some por- tion of the light of day ; or, to lay aside figurative language, enter now upon the period of the commencement of the authentic legislative records of England, enacted by the great national council or parliament. Of the form- ation of the parliament, or rather of its settle- ment into the form which it still retains, we must first speak; though, while engaged with that part of our subject, we must still continue our course in comparative darkness. As we have already seen, the Commune Conci- lium, or great council of the realm, was, in the first ages after the Conquest, composed only of the tenants in chief, or immediate vassals of the king. Of these, one portion consisted of the bishops and abbots, or heads of religious houses holding immediately of the crown. It has been the opinion of the most eminent English lawyers that these spiritual lords sat in parliament by virtue of their baronies. From this opinion Mr. Hallam dissents. " I think," says he, carrying his view back to the Saxon Witenage- mote, " 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 coun- cil of advice and assent in matters of legislation or national importance was essential to all the northern governments. And all of them, except perliaps the Lombards, invited the superior ecclesiastics to their councils ; not upon any feudal notions, which at that time had hardly begun to prevail, but chiefly as representatives of the church and of religion itself; next, as more learned and enlight- ened counsellors than the lay nobility, and in some degree, no doubt, as rich proprietors of land. It will be remembered, also, that ecclesiastical and temporal affairs were originally decided in the same assemblies, both upon the continent and in England. The Norman Conquest, which destroyed the Anglo-Saxon nobility, 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 Europe, and by the common law of England, which the Conquest did not overturn. Some smaller arguments might be urged against the supposition that their legislative rights are merely baronial; such as that the guardian of the spiritualities was commonly summoned to parlia- ment during the vacancy of a bishopric, and that the five sees created by Henry VIII. have no baronies annexed to them ; but the former reason- ing appears less technical and confined."* The lay portion of the great council consisted of the earls and barons, meaning by the latter those holding of the king. It is agreed that the only baronies known for two centuries after the Con- quest arose from tlie tenure of land held imme- diately of the crown. As to the exact nature, however, of these baronies, the opinions of some of the most eminent legal antiquaries vary ; Selden holding that every tenant 171 capite, or in chief, by knight service, was a parliamentary baron by reason of his tenure ; Madox, on the other hand that tenure by knight's service in chief was always distinct from that by barony, but in what the dis- tinction consisted he has not clearly explained. "The distinction," says Mr. Hallam, " could not consist in the number of knight's fees, for the barony of Ilwayton consisted of only three, while John de Baliol held thirty fees by mere knight service. Nor does it seem to have consisted in the privilege and service of attending parliament, since all tenants in chief were usually summoned. But whatever may have been the line between these modes of tenure, there seems complete proof of their separation long before the reign of John. Tenants in cliief are enumerated distinctly from earls and barons in the charter of Henry I."f It is evident, however, from a passage in the Great Charter of King John, that by that time at least all tenants in chief were entitled to a sum- mons ; the greater barons by particular writs, the rest through a writ directed to their sheriff; — without a summons a baron certainly could not sit by mere right of his tenure. It is not ascertained how long the inferior tenants in chief continued to sit personally in parliament ; but the attendance of these, some of whom were too poor to have received knighthood, became intolerably vexatious to them- selves and was not agreeable to the king. This led at last to the complete establishment of a prac- tice from which the most important results were • Middle Ages, vol. iii. p. 6. t Ibid., vol. iii. p. 13. 810 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. to flow — the adoption of the prmciple of repre- sentation. Among the few earlier instances of apparent representation which have been collected, the most remarkable belongs to the year 1255, the thirty- eighth of Henry III. In that year a writ was issued, which, after reciting that the earls, barons, and other great men, were to meet at London three weeks after Easter, with horses and arms, for the purpose of sailing into Gascony, required the sheriff to compel all within his jurisdiction, who held 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 men- tioned, he should 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 should have chosen for this purpose, in the stead of all and each of them, to consider, along with the knights of other counties, what aid they would grant the king in such an emergency. At length, in the year 1265, the forty-ninth of Henry III., who was then a captive in the hands of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Lord High Steward of England, writs were issued in the king's name to all the sheriffs, directing them to return two knights for their county, with two citizens or burgesses for every city and borough within it. In regard to the question whether the knights were elected by none but the king's tenants in chief, or by all freeholders without distinction, the legal antiquaries are divided.* But here the really great innovation is the appearance of the burgesses in the national assembly — an innovation destined to exercise a most momentous influence on the future destinies not only of England and Europe, but of the world. Before the Norman Conquest several of the towns had been populous, rich, and of considerable importance. Immediately after that great revolution, as we have had occasion to show in a former Chap- ter,t a considerable decay seems to have taken place in most of them. The burgesses were grievously oppressed by the tallages and other exactions to which they were subjected by the king or other lord who was held to be the proprietor of the town. Although some of these payments were of fixed amount, others appear to have been levied at the discretion of the lord, and from such of the bur- gesses as he chose to select. " One of the earliest and most important changes in the condition of the burgesses, " says Mr. Hallam, " was the conversion of the individual tributes into a perpetual rent from the whole borough. The land was then said to be afFermed, or let in fee-farm to the burgesses and their suc- cessors for ever."* This was called burgage- tenure, which is said by Littleton to be " teniue • Matthew Paris gives, for the first time, in 1246, tlie name of par- liament to the great council of the barons. The word parliament, Harrington observes (On the Statutes, p. 56), seems anciently to liave been used for any kind of conference. + See Book III, Cliaptcr vii. t Middle Ages, iii. 32. in socage,"* and is by Blackstone said to be " only a kind of town socage ; as common socage, by which other lands are holden, is usually of a rural nature."t Beginning with the reign of Henry I. the towns gradually rose in importance and independence. From that prince the city of London received a charter, which, besides other immunities, grants to the citizens the right of choosing their own sheriff and justice, to the exclusion of every external juris- diction. The right of choosing magistrates began to be more generally given from the reign of John. In the mean time, hoAvever, the voluntary incorpo- rations of the burgesses, which had existed in tlie Saxon times under the name of guilds (from guildan, to pay or contribute), had gradually ac- quired more and more of the character of asso- ciations for the protection and regulation of trade. From the middle of the twelfth to that of the thirteenth century the trading towns greatly in- creased in prosperity, London was distinguished above the rest for the number and wealth of its citizens, who were remarkable for their free and insurgent spirit. They bore a part in deposing William Longchamp, the chancellor and justiciary of Richard I., as well as in the great struggle for Magna Charta, in which the privileges of their city are specially confirmed ; and the mayor of London was one of the twenty-five barons to whom the maintenance of its provisions was delegated. Never- theless, until the date of the writs above mentioned, of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, — namely, the 12th of December, 1264, — we have no clear evidence that the cities and boroughs had any regu- lar place in the national councils. At the same time it is remarkable that no writer of the time notices the calling of the burgesses to parliament by De Mont- fort as an innovation, nor are the writs so expressed as to lead us to suppose that the practice was then introduced for the first time. But though the trading part of the community held from this time a regular place in the national council, they appeared there at first in a very humble and unimportant character, scarcely daring to raise their eyes in presence of the haughty pre- lates and nobles. " To grant money," says Mr. Hallam, " was 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 purse drew after it immediately, or only by degrees, those indispen- sable rights of consenting to laws which they now possess. "J The business of the commons appears to have been, from the first, to petition for redress of grievances, as well as to provide for the necessities of the crown. And in fact the high court of par- • Middle Ages, iii. 162. + Com. ii. S2. t lb. vol. lii. p. 52. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 811 liament, as far as they at their first introduction into it, and for a considerable time after, were concerned, is to be viewed not so much in the light of a legislative council or assembly as in that of a court of justice, in which, on condition of paying certain fees, by no means very low ones, in the shape of subsidies, they enjoyed certain pri- vileges in the capacity of suitors. Indeed, it is impossible to understand fully the character of the English parliament, especially in the earlier stages of its history, without viewing it more as a judicial than as a legislative establishment. With regard to the question at what time par- liament was divided into two houses, we extract the following passage from Mr. Hallam : — " It has been a very prevailing opinion that parliament was not divided into two houses at the first admission of the commons. If by this is only meant that tlie commons did not occupy a separate chamber till some time in the reign of Edward III., the proposition, true or false, will be of little import- ance. They may have sat at the bottom of West- minster Hall while the lords occupied the upper end ; but that they were ever intermingled in voting appears inconsistent with likelihood and authority. The usual object of calling a parlia- ment 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 twenty-third of Edward 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 Edward II. the counties paid a twentieth, the towns a fifteenth : in the sixth of Edward III. the rates were a fifteenth and a tenth. These dis- tinct grants imply 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, however, there is abundant proof of their separate existence long before the seventeenth of Edward III., which is the epoch assigned by Carte, 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. These must surely have been the commons assembled in parliament, for who else could thus have entitled themselves ? In the nineteenth of the same king we find several peti- tions, evidently proceeding from the body of the commons in parliament, and complaining of public grievances. The roll of 1 Edward III., though mutilated, is conclusive to show that separate peti- tions were then presented by the commons, accord- ing to the regular usage of subsequent times; and, indeed, the preamble of 1 Edward III., stat. 2, is apparently capable of no other inference."* Having thus put the reader in possession of the few leading facts, that have been established on sufficient evidence, respecting the formation of the legislative body, we shall proceed to give an account of the legislation itself during the present period of our history. The principal legislative acts worthy of notice in the reign of Henry III. are his confirmation of the Great Charter and of the Charter of the Forest. "These," observes Sir Matthew Hale, "were the great basis upon which the settlement of the English laws stood in the time of this king and his son. There are also some additional laws of this king yet extant which much polished the common law, — namely, the statutes of Merton and Marlbridge, and some others." t To this reign belongs Bracton's Treatise, of which Sir Matthew Hale gives the following account : — " It yields us a great evidence of the growth of the laws between the times of Henry II. and Henry III. If we do but compare Glanville's book with that of Bracton, we shall see a very great advance of the law in the writings of the latter over what they are in Glanville. It would be needless to instance particulars. Some of the writs and processes do, indeed, in substance agree, but the proceedings are much more regular and settled as they are in Bracton above what they are in Glanville. The book itself, in the beghming, seems to borrow its method from the civil law. But the greatest part of the substance is, either of the course of proceed- ings in the law known to the author, or of resolu- tions and decisions in the courts of King's Bench and Common Bench, and before justices itinerant ; for now the inferior courts began to be of little use or esteem. "J There are one or two statutes or ordinances of Henry III., upon which, though not acts of parlia- ment, it seems proper to make a few remarks. And first in respect to the Assisa Pants et Cervisiae, the Assize of Bread and Ale, which, however, though generally given as a statute of 51 Henry III., is printed in the Record Commission edition of the Statutes as of uncertain date, what is re- markable is, that to the parliament or council at which it was passed, held at Winchester, were called not only " omnes magnates terrae," all the great men of the land, but " omnes uxores comi- tum et baronum qui in hello occisi fuerunt, vel captivorum," — that is, all the wives of the earls and barons who were slain in battle or captive. § The Statutum de Scaccario, the Statute of the Exchequer, which is usually attributed to the fifty- first year of Henry III., though printed by the Record Commission among the statutes of uncertain date, is remarkable, if we assume the common date, as being the first in the French language, and just two centuries after the Conquest. Barrington * Middle Ages, vol. iii. pp. 54 — 56. f History of the Common Law of England, chap. vii. t Ibid. § Anual. Waverl., quoted by Barrington, On the Statutes, p. 41. 812 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. considers this fact as showing that the reason usually assigned for our laws being in the French language, — namely, that it was the will of the conquering Normans, — is by no means satisfactory ; and he conceives the practice to have arisen from there " being a standing committee in parliament to receive petitions from the provinces of France which formerly belonged to the crown of England." *' This conjecture," he adds, " seems to be strongly confirmed by the statutes having continued to be in English from the time in which we fortunately were dispossessed of the French provinces, as most of the statutes in the reign of Henry VI. continue to be in French." *' Another reason," he proceeds, " for the statutes being in French arose from the general affectation which prevailed at this time of speaking the French language, inso- much that it became a proverb, that Jack xvould be a gentleman if he could speak French. It was very corrupt indeed, and therefore Chaucer says [of his Prioress, in the Canterbury Tale?, — Full well she sange the service divine,] Entuned in her nose full swetely. And French she spake full fair, and fetisly,* After the school of Stratford atte Bow ; For French of Paris was to her uuknow." Bafrington further says — " I cannot conclude these observations without taking notice that the present statute of Henry III., in French, is in- serted between others in Latin ; and that, during the same session of parliament, there is an instance in the statute of Westminster the Second (which is, properly speaking, a Capitularium^j- of French chapters being inserted in the same law, preceded and followed by chapters in Latin. From a very diligent and attentive perusal of the Statute-Book, the best general rule which can be given with regard to an act of parliament being in Latin or French is, that where the interests of the clergy are particularly concerned the statute is in Latin. I do not, however, pretend to say that this rule is without exceptions." \ We may add to what has been said on this subject the following remark in the Introduction to the edition of the Statutes by the Record Com- mission : — " Nothing is known with certainty on this subject ; and at the present day it is utterly impossible to account, in each instance, for the appearance of the statute in French or in Latin. It seems, on the whole, to be highly probable that, for a long period of time, charters, statutes, and other public instruments were drawn up indiscri- minately in French or Latin, and generally trans- lated from one of those languages into the otlier before the promulgation of them, which in many instances appears to have been made at the same time in both languages." The title of Capitalis Justitiarius AyiglicP, i.e.. Chief Justiciary of England, ended in Philip Basset, (the third of his family who had held the office), who was advanced to that place in the forty-fifth • " Neatly.'' — We have corrected the quotation, which is given by Barrinjjton from n very bad text. + That is, a collection of laws, and not a single l.iw, X Obsery. on Stat. pp. 47, 48. of Henry III. ; and the first who had the office of Capitalis Justitiarius ad placita coram Rege tenenda, i.e., Chief Justice of the King's Bench, was Robert de Bruis, appointed in the fifty-second of Henry HI.* The salary of the Justices of the Bench (?.e. of the Common Pleas) in the twenty-third year of this reign was 20/. ; in the forty-third year, 40/. In the twenty-seventh year the Chief Baron of the Exchequer had 40 marks; the other barons 20 marks ; and in the forty-ninth year, 40/. per annum. The salary of the Justices Coram Rege (of the King's Bench) was, in the forty-third year, 40/. per annum. The Chief Justice of the Common Pleas had, in the forty -fourth of Henry ML, 100 marks per annum ; and another who suc- ceeded in this same year, had 100/. per annum. In the thirty-fifth of Henry III. the Chief Justice of the King's Bench had 100 marks per annum. t We come now to the time of Edward I., who has been styled the English Justinian, not because he resembled that monarch in making either a digest or a code, but because, according t6 Sir Matthew Hale, " in his time the law, quasi per saltum, obtained a very great perfection." We shall divide the enactments of this prince, to which we propose more particularly to call the reader's attention, into two classes — 1. Those of a political or constitutional nature — 2. Those that regard the rights of private property and the 'admi- nistration of justice between man and man. And we shall be guided in our notice of them not so much by the mere chronological order, as by what may appear their relative degree of im- portance. I. The first in importance in the first class are the several confirmations of the Great Charter and of the Charter of the Forest. | In the thirteenth year of this reign the king was entreated by the par- liament to confirm all former charters ; a form of inspeximus^ and confirmation was accordingly agreed upon. In the twenty-fifth year there was a more solemn confirmation of the Great Charter in the statute called Conjirmaiio Chartarum. This statute ordained that the Chai-ters of Liberties and of the Forest should be kept in every parish ; and that they should be sent under the king's seal as well to the justices of the Forest as to others, to all sheriffs and other officers, and to all the cities in the realm, accompanied by a writ commanding them to publish the said charters, and declare to the people that the king had confirmed them in all points. All justices, sheriffs, mayors, and other ministers were directed to allow them when pleaded before them ; and any judgment contrary thereto was to be null and void. The charters were to be sent under the king's seal to all cathe- dral churches throughout the realm, there to remain, and to be read to the people twice a-year. It was ordained that all archbishops and bishops • Dugd Orig. 38. + Ibid. 104. t The Charter of tlie Forest was first granted in the 9th of Henry III.Ca.d.1224.) § That is, an inspection and ratification of the former rerhatim. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 813 should pronounce sentence of excommunication against those who, by word, deed, or counsel, did contrary to the aforesaid charters. It was likewise ordained that such aids and tasks as had been granted to the king by the people of his realm " beforetime towards his wars and other business, of their own grant and good will, however they were made," should not be drawn into custom or precedent. Moreover, the king granted for him and his heirs, that no aids or prises should be taken but by consent of the realm, saving the ancient aids and prises due and accustomed. Mr. Reeves remarks* that this is the first mention in the Statute-Book of a renunciation of right to levy money on the subject without consent of parlia- ment. There had been a like declaration in the charter of John, but it was omitted in that of Henry III. Further, because there had been a particular outcry against a tax of forty " soiidz" -f upon every sack of wool, it was declared that tliis should not be again levied without the "common assent and good will of the commonalty of the realm." The next notice of the two charters of liberties is in the preamble to the statute De Jinihus Le- vatis, 27 Edw. I., where the king refers to the former confirmations of them, and again solemnly ratifies them. In this ratification, however, there is a somewhat ominous clause, " saving always our oath, the right of our crown, and our exceptions and challenges, and those of all other persons." In the next year something more was done for the confirmation of the charters in the statute of Articuli super Chartas, 28 Edw. I. This Act men- tions that the charters, notwithstanding the several confirmations of them, were not observed, and this is attributed to there being no specific penalty pre- scribed for the violation of them. To remedy this the charters are directed to be delivered to every sheriff in England, under the khig's seal, to be read four times a-year before the people in the full county. For the punishing of offenders it is enacted that "there shallbe chosen, in every shire court, by the commonalty of the same shire, three substantial men, knights, or other lawful, wise, and well-dis- posed persons, which should be justices sworn and assigned by the king's letters patent under the great seal, to hear and determine without any other writ, but only their commission, such plaints as shall be made upon all those that commit or offend against any point contained in the foresaid charters, in the shires where they be assigned, as well within franchises as without, and as well for the king's officers out of their places as for others ; and to hear the plaints from day to day without any delay, and to determine them, without allowing the delays which be allowed by the common law. And the same knights shall have power to punish all such as shall be attainted of any trespass done contrary to any point of the foresaid charters, where no • Hist, of Eng. Law, vol. ii. p. 102. + This word is put' shillings' in the tronslation.but it could hardly be that ; it was more probably ' pence' or ' halfpence,' — tous. remedy was before by the common law, as before is said, by imprisonment, or by ransom, or by amerciament, according to the trespass." The statute expressly declares that this special proceed- ing shall only be in cases where there was no remedy before by the common law. If the three commissioners could not attend, two were declared sufficient. The king's sheriffs and bailiffs were to be attendant on these commissioners. The next public Act upon the subject of the charters is the Ordinatio Forester, 33 Edw. I., con- taining some regulations respecting the purlieus of the forests. In the following year there was another " Ordinance of the Forest." The famous statute de Tallagio non concedendo was first passed in the year 1297 (the 25th of Edward I.), but in more explicit terms, and in the form in which it was always afterwards referred to, in 1306, the last year but one of the reign. This statute was occasioned by the question about levy- ing money for foreign wars. In its latter and more complete form it declares that no tallage or aid (which Mr. Reeves thinks* included those feudal aids that had been excepted in the statute of Conjirmatio Cartaruni) should be imposed or levied by the king or his heirs without the will and assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses, and other freemen of the land. Nothing was to be taken by way of male-toltt of sacks of wool. In regard to purveyance, it was declared that no officer of the king should take any corn, leather, cattle, or other goods, of any one without the consent of the owner. The following general declaration was also made in favour of the liberties of the subject : " That all men, both clerks and laymen, should have their laws, liberties, and free customs, as largely and wholly as they had used to have the same at any time when they had them best; and if any statutes had been made by the king, his ancestors, or any customs brought in contrary to them, or any manner of article contained in the present charter, that such manner of statutes and customs should be void and frustrate for evermore." Finally, all archbishops and bishops, for ever, were directed to read the statute in their cathedral churches, and openly pronounce a curse against all those who violated it in any point. The king put his seal to this statute or charter, as did the archbishops, bishops, and others, who all voluntarily swore to observe the tenor of it, — a sanction attended v/ith the same solemnities as the several confirmations of the charters of liberties. Of the same nature with the political statutes already mentioned were the Statuta Wallice, 12 Edw. I., by which Wales was in a great measure put on the same footing as England with respect to its laws and their administration. • Hist. Eng. liaw. vol. ii. p. 105. + Otherwise male-tent, and male toute. It is supposed by some to have been a kind of excise; by others, an impost laid on by the royal authority without consent of Parliament. Others conceive that the male-tolt was a duty upon malt — a notion which the act meu- tioned in the text is sulilcient to confute. 814 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. II. The other statutes of this Ving relate more particularly to the administration of justice between subjects ; and though they contain many chapters and clauses which may be considered as bearing upon the general or political interests of the country at large, as indeed in a certain sense all law may be viewed as doing, yet it will be convenient to class them under a separate head, as we previously intimated. Of these the principal are, the Statute of Westminster the First, Statute of Gloucester, Statute of Westminster the Second, of Westminster the Third, and Articuli super Chartas. The statute 3 Edw. I., or of Westminster the First (so called to distinguish it from subsequent statutes, likewise named from parliaments held at Westminster in this reign), contains fifty-one chapters on a variety of subjects, and was made, says the preamble, " because the state of tlie holy church had been evil kept, and the prelates and religious persons of the land grieved many ways, and the people otherwise intreated than they ought to be, and the peace less kept, and the laws less used, and the offenders less punished than they ought to be." This collection of statutes, though usually termed the ' Statute of Westminster the First,' is, in fact, as we before observed, not one law but a body of laws, made at Westminster in Edward's first parliament. The same remarks will apply to the other capitularia, called the Statutes of Westminster, as well as to other documents, each of which is not a statute but a body of statutes, each chapter being a dis- tinct law, generally on one subject, though some- times the same chapter refers to different subjects. Technically, however, all the Acts passed in any one session of parliament are considered as forming only one statute, of which they are severally the chapters. A few of the subjects treated in the Statutes of Westminster the First more especially demand our attention here. Chapter V. is as follows : — " And because elec- tions ought to be free, the king commandeth, upon great forfeiture, that no man by force of arms, nor by malice, or menacing, shall disturb any to make free election." It has been supposed by some that this law referred rather to the election of sheriffs, coroners, and other officers, than to any representatives of the people in the parliament. However, it is admitted by the same parties that, as it is in general words, it may have a construction which will extend it to elections that have been appointed since for any purpose whatever. Concerning wrecks of the sea, it is agreed, says Chapter IV., that when a man, a dog, or a cat escape quick (alive) out of the ship, such ship or barge, or anything therein, shall not be adjudged wreck ; but the goods shall be saved and kept by view of the sheriff, coroner, or king's bailiff, and delivered into the hands of such as are of the town where the goods were found ; so that, if any within a year and a day sue for them, and prove them to be his, or his lord's, and that they perished in his keeping, they shall be restored ; if not, they shall remain to the king; and where wreck be- longeth to another than to the king, he shall have it in like manner. Chapter XII. of this statute deserves consider- ation on account of the discussion to which it has given rise, some being of opinion that the peine forte et dure (which will be explained presently) arose out of it. The words of the Chapter are, " That notorious felons, and which openly be of evil name, and will not put themselves in enquests of felonies that men shall charge them with before the justices at the king's suit, shall have strong and hard imprisonment (prison forte et dure), as they which refuse to stand to the common law of the land : but this is not to be understood of such prisoners as be taken of light suspicion."* Britton describes this penance in the following terms : — " If they will not put themselves upon the country, let them be put to their penance until they pray to do it ; and let their penance be this : that they be bare-footed, ungirded, and bare-headed, in their coat only, in prison upon the bare ground, continually, night and day; that they eat only bread made of barley and bran ; that they drink not the day they eat, nor eat the day they drink ; nor drink anything but water the day they do not eat; and that they be fastened down with irons. "f Lords Chief Justices Coke t find Hale § have both given their opinion, that the peine forte et dure, — the punishment of pressing to death, — was anciently a punishment by the common law, and not such as any judges could have framed upon the general direction of this Act. But they both seem to have supposed that, though the statute could not, from the generality of its terms, have esta- blished that terrible punishment, it referred to that punishment already established and well known, which is proved by Harrington, || from a record in Rymer, not to have been the case, the statute mean- ing nothing more than confinement after the mode above described by Britton, as the word prison implies. As to the mode in which the peine forte et dure arose out of it, Barrington has the follow- ing ingenious conjecture : — " I should conceive, upon the whole, that the words in the present statute, which have occasioned these observations, namely, prison forte et dure, have been miscon- strued, by substituting in the room of prison the word peyne. The record cited from Rymer proves beyond a possibility of doubt that, soon after this statute, the punishment was merely imprisonment, and an injunction to the officers, in whose custody the criminal was, not to provide him with any nourishment. I should imagine tliat the alteration in this punishment, by the different tortures after- wards used, arose from justices in eyre and justices of gaol-delivery not staying above two or three days in a county town, and who therefore could not wait for this tedious method of forcing the criminal to plead ; as the record from Rymer shows that, in the instance already observed upon, the criminal • Cliap. xii. + Britton, iv. 11. J 2 Inst. 178, 1/9. § Hist, of the Pleas of the Crown, c, 43, suhjin. II Obs. on Stat. p. 59 Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1390. 815 had been forty days in this close confinement. It seems likewise clear that, whatever this punish- ment might have been by the common law, this statute hath superseded it ; and it is a presumption (against even such great authorities as Lord Chief Justice Coke and Lord Chief Justice Hale) that there was no such punishment by the common law, as it is admitted that a traitor cannot receive this punishment, because the words of the statute con- fine it to the case of felons ; the argument is also very strong, that, if felons were subjected to this sentence, traitors would still less have escaped it.*'* The judgment of peine forte et dure, which, as latterly administered, consisted in pressing the prisoner to death by loading him with heavy weights, — a sharp stone, or piece of timber, being also sometimes, by way of favour, laid under his back, — to accelerate the extinction of life, was sub- mitted to with the object of avoiding the corruption of blood and escheat of lands which would have followed conviction after a plea. Instances of the application of this torture, or of the preliminary and warning process of tying the thumbs together with whipcord, which appears to have been intro- duced in later times, from motives of humanity, without any statutory sanction, occur down to a comparatively recent period. A prisoner was forced to plead at the Old Bailey, by tying his thumbs together, in the year 1734. At last, how- ever, the peine forte et dure was in effect abo- lished by the statute 12 Geo. IIL c. 20, which enacted that every prisoner who, being arraigned for felony, should stand mute or not answer directly to the offence, should be convicted of the same, and the same judgment and execution thereupon awarded as if he had been convicted by verdict or confession of the crime. The Statute of Gloucester consists of fifteen chapters, most of which relate to the amendment of the common law as then practised. One of its chapters (the 8th) enacts that the cause of action in the king's superior courts shall amount at the least to forty shillings. In the next year was passed the famous statute 7 Edw. I., entitled De Viris Religiosis, and com- monly referred to as the first statute of mortmain. The object of this law was to enforce and to extend a provision of Magna Charta, which prohibited all gifts of land to religious societies without the con- sent of the lord of the fee. Notwithstanding that provision, religious men continued to appropriate lands, whereby services due for such lands were withdrawn and the incidents of tenure were di- minished. The statement of Baker in his Chro- nicle, even allowing for a little exaggeration, that the number of monasteries built in the reign of Henry I. was so great that almost all the labourers of the country became bricklayers and carpenters, conveys an idea of the extent to which this had proceeded. It was now ordained, in the most comprehensive expressions that could be devised, that no person, religious or other, should buy or * Obs. on Stat. pp. 61, 62. sell, or under the colour of any gift or lease, or by any other *' craft or engine," appropriate to himself any lands or tenements, so as such lands should anywise come into mortmain,* under pain of forfeiture of the same. Notwithstanding the care with which this statute was worded, a method of evad- ing it was soon discovered by the ecclesiastics ; for, as the statute extended only to gifts and conveyances between the parties, the religious houses set up a fictitious title to the land which they wished to have, and brought an action to recover it against the tenant, who by fraud and collusion made no defence, and thereby judgment was given for the religious hovise, which then recovered the land by sentence of law upon a supposed prior title. " And thus," observes Blackstone, " they had the honour of inventing those fictitious adjudications of right which are since become the great assurance of the kingdom under the name of Common Recoveries.''^ This was also again defeated by another provision in 13 Edw. I. c. 32. Another provision was made, by statute 35 Edw. I., to check the waste suffered by religious possessions being drained into foreign countries. It is thereby ordained that no abbot, prior, master, warden, or other religious person of whatsoever condition, shall convey any tax im- posed by them or their superiors upon their re- spective religious houses out of the kingdom under heavy penalties. We now come to the famous collection of laws passed in the 1 3th of Edward I ., commonly known by the name of the Statute of Westminster the Second. The first chapter of this, entitled De Donis Condi- tionalibus, has given rise to more discussion perhaps than any other enactment in the Statute Book. A conditional fee was a fee or gift restrained to some particular heirs, to the exclusion of others. " It was called a conditional fee," says Blackstone, " by reason of the condition expressed or implied in the donation of it, that, if the donee died without such particular heirs, the land should revert to the donor." " Now," he proceeds, " with regard to the condition annexed to these fees by the common law, our ancestors held that such a gift (to a man and the heirs of his body) was a gift upon con- dition that it should revert to the donor if the donee had no heirs of his body ; but if he had, it should then remain to the donee. They there- fore called it a fee-simple on condition that he had issue ; so that, as soon as the grantee had any issue born, his estate was supposed to become absolute by the performance of the condition, at least for three purposes : — 1. To enable the tenant to alien the land, and thereby to bar not only his • In " mortuam manum," — literally, into a dead hand. Lands made over to corporate bodies of any description, whether clerical or civil, are now said to go into mortmain; but the term seems at first to have been used only in reference to religious bodies, which indeed were formerly the only corporations. As religious or professed persons were considered dead in law, lands coming to them were said to pass into dead hands. In the preamble to the present statute the reference is exclusively to religious corporations, and the effect of lands passinj; inio their possession is described to be that thereby " the services that are due of such fees, and which at the beginniDfj; were provided for defence of the realm, are wrongfully ■Withdrawn, and the chief lords do lose their escheats of the same." t Com. ii. 271. 816 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. own issue but also the donor of his interest in the reversion ; 2, to subject him to forfeit it for trea- son, which he could not do till issue born longer than for his own life, lest thereby the inheritance of the issue, and reversion of the donor, might have been defeated ; 3, to empower him to charge the land with rents, commons, and certain other in- cumbrances, so as to bind his issue. However, if the tenant did not, in fact, alien the land, the course of descent was not altered by this perform- ance of the condition ; for which reason, in order to subject the lands to the ordinary course of descent, the donees of these conditional fee-simples took care to alien as soon as they had performed the condition by having issue, and afterwards repurchased the lands, which gave them a fee- simple absolute, that would descend to the heirs general, according to the course of the common law."* Now the feudal aristocracy, to put a stop to this practice, obtained the chapter De Donis in the statute of Westminster the Second, which enacted that thenceforth the will of the donor be observed ; and that the tenements so given (to a man and the heirs of his body) should at all events go to the issue, if there were any ; or, if none, should revert to the donor. " Upon the construc- tion of this Act of parliament," proceeds Black- stone, " the judges determined that the donee had no longer a conditional fce-"simple, which became absolute and at his own disposal the instant any issue was born ; but they divided the estate into two parts, leaving in the donee a new kind of particular estate, which they denominated a fee- tail ;f and vesting in the donor the ultimate fee- simple of the land, expectant on the failure of issue, which expectant estate is what we now call a reversion." " The perpetuities," says Barrington, " esta- blished by this statute, in process of time, had so much contributed to the increase of power in the great barons that, about two centuries afterwards, it was in a great measure evaded by the invention of what is called a common recovery " (of which we shall speak in the proper place) : " it was im- possible for the crown to procure a repeal of the law in the House of Lords, and therefore the judges had probably an intimation that they must, by astutia, as it is called, render a statute of no effect, which the king could not extort an alteration of from one part of the legislature. ''t Barrington adds, in a note, that the statute of Westminster the Second, in reference to Chapter L of it, has been called the Statute of Great Men. A considerable portion of this statute, which consists of fifty chapters, treats of improvements in the administration of justice, as far as the jurisdic- tion of the courts and the course of proceeding are concerned. The 30tb chapter contains the law respecting the justices of Jiisi priux, which has since been called the Statute of Nisi Prius. It ordained that tAvo * Com. ii. 110, 111. + From the French tailler, or the barbarous Latin taliare, to cut. t Obs. on Stat. p. 92. justices sworn should be assigned, before whom only, associated with one or two of the discreetest knights of the shire into which they came, should be taken ail assizes of novel disseisin, mortdaunces- tor, and attaints. It was also ordained that no inquest should be taken before any of the justices of the bench, unless a certain day and place were appointed in the county, in presence of the parties, and the day and place inserted in a judicial writ, in certain prescribed words, declaring that the inquest should be taken at Westminster unless {nisi) certain persons named (namely, the judges of assize) should come to those parts before a certain day, — by which Jay the said judges, however, were sure to be there. Thus, the trial in the county was in later times, from the clause in the writ, said to be at nisi prius (unless first), though in the form given in the statute the word p7-ius is not inserted, as it now is, and indeed was usually at that time. It is proper here to add, that these justices have, by virtue of several statutes, a criminal jurisdiction also. These judges of assize and nisi prius su- perseded the ancient justices in eyre, justitiarii in itinere. There were other improvements made in the administration of justice by this statute, such as an execution given against land by the writ called Elegit^ the introduction of bills of exception, and the proceeding by scire facias, to revive a judg- ment of a year's standing. These we shall only name, partly because our space is limited, and partly because a satisfactory explanation of them would be difficult, if not impossible, in a popular work. The mere mention of them, however, will help to convey some idea of the importance of this statute of Westminster the Second in the history of English law. The next statute of this year, 13 Edw. I., is the Statute of Winchester, containing some provisions for enforcing the ancient police, and ordaining some new regulations. This statute throws con- siderable light on the state of society then existing. The preaml)le recites, that when robberies, mur- ders, &c. were committed, the inhabitants of the county were more willing to excuse the offender than to punish for the injury to a stranger ; and that if the felon was not himself an inhabitant of the county, yet the receiver of the stolen goods frequently was so, which produced the same par- tiality in juries, wlio did not give proper satisfaction in damages to the party robbed.* To remedy this, a penalty is established by the statute, making the people of the county answerable for the felonies done among them. It further directs that ciies, that is the hue\ and cry, should be solemnly made in all counties, hundreds, markets, &c., so that none might excuse himself by ignorance. It also directs that the walls of the great towns shall be shut from sun-setting to sun-rising, and that watch- • We give tliis preamble from Barrington, who observes in a note, " I liave given Uie substance of tliis preamble, which is, absolutelj unintelligible in the common translation." — P. 105. + Harrington thinks that Aue comes from the word huer to pursue ; and therefore that hue and O'y will mean pursuit and cry. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 817 men shall be. set; that the highways shall be cleared of wood to the breiidth of two hundred feet, in order to prevent the felon's concealing himself; and that every man, according to his substance, shall have arms in his house, in order to pursue the felon effectually. The statute called Quia Emptores, from the two first words of it, belongs to the 18th Edw. I. It was occasioned by the consequences of the restraint imposed on the alienation of land. " For-as-much," says the Act, " as purchasers of lands and tene- ments of the fees of great men and other lords have entered into their fees, to the prejudice of the lords, the freeholders of such great men having sold their lands and tenements to be holden in fee of their feoffors, and not of the chief lords of the fees, whereby the same chief lords have many times lost their escheats, marriages, and wardships of lands and tenements belonging to their fees," it is ordainetl, " that from henceforth it shall be law- ful to every freeman to sell at his own pleasure his lands and tenements, or part of them, so that the feoffee shall hold the same lands or tenements of the chief lord of the same fee, by such service and customs as his feoffor held before." This, there- fore, w'as a permission to alienate in such a manner that the new holder of the land became the im- mediate vassal of the chief lord, but a prohibition of subinfeudation, by which the new holder of the land became the immediate vassal of the former tenant, who thus constituted himself what was called a mesne, that is, an intermediate, lord. Another Act visually printed as of this year, though inserted by the Record Commission among the statutes of uncertain date, is the Modus le- vandi Fincx, stating the course to be pursued in levying a fine. " A fine," says Blackstone, " is sometimes said to be a feoffment of record, though it might with more accuracy be called an acknow- ledgment of a feoffment of record ; by which is to be understood that it has at least the same force and effect with a feoffment in the conveying and assur- ing of lands, though it is one of those methods of transferring estates of freehold by the common law, in which livery of seisin is not necessary to be actually given, the supposition and acknowledg- ment thereof in a court of record, however ficti- tious, inducing an equal notoriety. But, more particularly, a fine may be described to be an amicable composition or agreement of a suit, either actual or fictitious, by leave of the king or his justices, whereby the lands in question become, or are acknowledged to be, the right of one of the parties. In its original it Avas founded on an actual suit, commenced at law for recovery of the pos- session of land or other hereditaments ; and the possession thus gained by such compositions was found to be so sure and effectual that fictitious actions were, and continued to be, every day com- menced, for the sake of obtaining the same se- curity."* * Com. 11. 349. Xfine (from the Latin 7fn«>, an end) is so called, says the statute 18 Edw\ I., because it puts an end to all suits concerning the matter in question. The statute 18 Edw. I., Modus levandi Fines, did not originate fine?, but declared and regulated the manner in which they should be levied or carried on. Upon the detail of these technical minutiae, however, we cannot enter here ; but we shall have occasion to return in a future chapter to the subject of fines, which makes an important figure in the history of English tenures. It remains to give some account of the jurisdic- tion of the various courts in this reign. The different courts are mentioned by Fleta in the following order : 1 . The High Court of Par- liament, of which, having already spoken, and having again to speak, we shall not say more here. 2. The Court of the Seneschal, Dapifer, or Steward of the Household, who is described by Fleta* as filling the place of the chief justiciary (an office, as was before observed, abolished in the last reign), who used to determine the king's own causes, and administer justice without writ. The jurisdiction of this court both before and after the passing of the statute, may be learned from the 3rd chapter in the statute, Articuli sujjer Chartas, 28 Edw. I., expressly made to limit it. It is thereby ordained that this court " from henceforth shall not hold plea of freehold, neither of debt nor of covenant, nor of any contract made between the king's people, but only of trespass done within the house, and of other trespasses done -within the verge, and of contracts and covenants that one of tlie king's house shall have made witli another of the same house, and in the same house, and none other where. And they shall plead no plea of trespass, other than that which shall be attached by them before the king depart from the verge where the trespass shall be committed ; and shall plead thence speedily from day to day, so that they may be pleaded and determined before that the king depart out of the limits of the same verge where the trespass was done. And if it so be that they cannot be determined within the limits of the same verge, then shall the same pleas cease before the steward, and the plaintififs shall have recourse to the common law." The verge or bounds of the household contained twelve miles,f which circuit or space, was called the virgata regia, because it was within the government of the marshal, who carried a virga (rod) as the badge of his office. Before the passing of the statute above quoted, the steward of the household appears to have exercised a very considerable portion of the powers of the chief justiciary, and to have been virtually the high steward (of which officer we hear little or nothing, he being, for the reasons mentioned in last Book, probably considered as in a state of abeyance). The judicial functions which, as shown in last Book, the chief justiciary had bor- rowed from the steward on the extinction of the Fleta, C6. ■t Ibid., 66. 818 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. office of the former, appear to have returned again to the latter. 3. The next court of the king mentioned in Fleta, is that held in his Chancery, over which, says Fleta, was set some discreet person, as a hishop, or other dignified ecclesiastic ; and to him was committed the keeping of the great seal. 4. After this, he places a court held before auditors specially appointed a latere regis, as it was called, that is, from the persons usually in attendance upon the king. The business of these auditors was, not to determine, but to report to the king what they had heard. 5. His justices, before whom, and no others, (except himself and his coun- cil, or special auditor,) false judgments and errors of justices were reversed and corrected. 6. Next to these, are ranked " the justices sitting at the Ex- chequer ;" and 7, those in banco at Westminster. 8. The justices of gaol-delivery. 9. Those assigned to take assizes, jurors, inquisitions, certificates, and attaints. 10. The justices itinerant or in eyre, " appointed to the first assizes for hearing and de- termining all pleas criminal and civil." 1 1. The justices itinerant for pleas of the forest. All these were the king's courts. There were, besides, the county, town, and hundred courts ; those in the king's manors, and those in cities and boroughs.* Some account has already been given in last Book of the trial by jury, or rather of what it originally was. It appears from Fleta and Britton, that at the time of which we are now writing, the jurors were still considered as wilnesses ; and to call witnesses before them would have been con- trary to the supposition by which they sat as jorors, viz., that they knew more about the matter in question than any other equal number of men. Coming from the vicinage where the fact took place, they were better able than any others to speak the truth, as they were swora to do, and that from their own knowledge, and not from testimony brought before them in court. When the condi- tion of society was so changed, that, notwithstanding the supposition of their personal knowledge of the fact, they were in reality wholly ignorant of it ; and it was necessary that evidence should be brought before them, before they could pronounce on the guilt or innocence of the party ; then the old proceeding became productive of injustice and oppression, till it was at length reformed by the calling of witnesses to furnish the twelve jurors with the necessary information. But this last improvement was not thoroughly effected till the time of Edward VI. and Queen Mary. The first evidence admitted consisted of written evidence ; such as depositions, informations, and examina- tions, taken out of court : this led gradually to a sparing use of oral testimony.! " The inclination in favour of juries," says Mr. Reeves, " had gone so far in this reign, that there seemed a backwardness to allow the trial by duel, • Fleta, 66. t Reeres's Hist, of Eng. Law, vol. ii, p. 271. when a defendant insisted upon it as his right ; which could only be in an appeal. Should there be any slip in the proceedings of which the de- fendant had omitted to avail himself, the judge was ex officio to examine and point it out, in order to stop the duel. Fleta says that this was a trial not to be resorted to rashly, if by any possible means it could be avoided. Another alteration in our criminal proceedings was, that the eyre was no longer to be a time of limitation for the prosecution of oifenders ; but they might be prosecuted at any distance of time."* The eyres were every seven years, and sometimes at shorter intervals : no one could be indicted for anything done before the preceding eyre. We shall conclude our account of the state of the law in this reign with some remarks by Lord Chief Justice Hale, on various points not included in what has preceded. With regard to the rolls of judicial proceedings, especially those in the King's Bench and Common Pleas, and in the eyres, he says, " I have read over many of them, and do generally observe — 1. That they are written in an excellent hand. 2. That the pleading is very short, but very clear and perspicuous ; neither loose or uncertain, nor perplexing the matter either with impropriety, obscurity, or multiplicity of words : they are clearly and orderly digested — effectually representing the business that they intend. 3. That the title and the reason of the law upon which they proceed (which many times is expressly de- livered upon the record itself) is perspicuous, clear, and rational. So that their short and pithy pleadings and judgments do far better render the sense of the business, and the reasons thereof, than those long, intricate, perplexed, and formal pleadings, that oftentimes of late are unnecessarily used."t With regard to the reports, he says, " they are VERY GOOD, but VERY BRIEF. Either the judges then spoke less, or the reporters were not so ready- handed, as to take all they said. Some of these reports, though broken, yet the best of their kind, are in Lincoln's Inn library. "J With respect to the law treatises written in this reign, such as those books known by the names of Fleta, the Mirror, Britton, and Thornton, he says that, by comparing them with Bracton, " there appears a growth and a perfecting of the law into a greater regularity and order." Lord Chief Justice Coke observes, that " in the reign of Edward II., Edward L, and upwards, the pleadings were plain and sensible, but nothing curious ; evermore having chief respect to the matter, and not to forms of words. "§ We have mentioned the title of Capitalis Justi- tiarius (or chief justice) as having been borne by the chief of the King's Bench, in the latter part of the reign of Henry III. The first mention of capitalis justitiarius of the bench (Common Pleas) is in the first year of Edward I. * Reeves's Hist, of Eng. Law, vol. ii. p. 272. t Hist, of Com. Law, e. 7. % Hist, of Com. Law, c. 7- § 1 Inst. 304. a. Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 819 In the reign of Edward II. begin the year- books, so called because they were published annually from the notes of certain persons who were paid a stipend by the crown for the work. These contain reports of cases adjudged from the beginning of this reign to the end of Edward III., and from the beginning of Henry IV. to the end of Henry VUI. It may be useful to add a short explanation of the technical meaning of the terms " report" and " record." A record is a concise entry of all the effective steps made in a judicial proceeding. A report is a short note of the pro- gress towards making those steps ; of the debate in court concerning some of them ; the decision and the grounds on which it is supported. We may here notice the compilation entitled the ' Mirror of Justices,' about the antiquity of which much difference of opinion has existed ; some pro- nouncing it older than the Conquest — others ascribing it to the time of Edward II. ; both which opinions may be partly right. A work as old as the earlier date may have been taken up in the reign of Edward II., and worked into the present form, which partakes somewhat of the marvellous, or even the monstrous. " This book," observes Mr. Reeves, " should be read with great caution, and some previous knowledge of the law as it stood about the same period; for the author certainly writes with very little precision. This, with his assertions about Alfred, and the extravagant punishments inflicted by that king on his judges, has brought his treatise under some suspicion."* Mr. Reeves gives the following account of the foundation of Lincoln's Inn : — " There is nothing but a vague tradition to give us any trace of the places where the practisers and students of the law had their residence before the reign of this king. But in the reign of Edward II. we are informed that such places were called hostels, or inns of court, because the inhabitants of them belonged to the king's courts. It is re- ported that William, Earl of Lincoln, about the beginning of this reign, being well affected to the study of the Idws, first brmight the professors of them to settle in a house of his, since called Lin- coln's Inn. The earl was only lessee under the bishops of Chichester; and many succeeding bishops, in after times, let leases of this house to certain persons, for the use and residence of the practisers and students of the law ; till, in the 28th year of the reign of Henry VIII., the Bishop of Chichester granted the inheritance to Francis Sul- vard and his brother Eustace, both students ; the survivor of whom, in the twentieth year of Queen Elizabeth, sold the fee to the benchers for 520/. "f Since the separation of the Chancery from the Aula Regis, the rolls and records of the former had been kept separate, and of late they had greatly multiplied. To relieve the chancellor of that duty, a particular officer was appointed for the keeping of them. With the consent of the • Hist, of Eng. Law, vol. li. 359. t Ibid., vol. ii. p. 360. chancellor, John de Sandale, William de Armyn was appointed keeper, or master of the rolls, in the twentieth year of this reign.* As we have before observed, the reign of a single weak prince interpolated here and there in the course of a long line of princes, most of whom are energetic and able., will finally be found to ad- vance the liberty of the subject. Thus, compare the state of things under Henry II. or Richard I., with that under Edward I., and we find the effect of the interpolation of the two feeble princes John and Henry III. The royal prerogative had de- clined considerably from Henry II. to Edward L : and when we again compare the reign of Edward III. with that of Edward I., we are struck with the change, produced no doubt in great part by the feeble reign of Edward II. When we come to look at the state of things vmder Edward IH ., not- withstanding his vigorous and warlike character, and notwithstanding even his great victories over the French, and the prestige of military glory attached to his name, we find the royal prerogative sensibly declining, as exemplified in the statutes respecting purveyance, the jurisdiction of the steward's and marshal's courts, the power of aliena- tion accorded to the king's tenants in capite, &c. The Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest were confirmed no less than fifteen times in this reign. This has by some, indeed, been taken as an indication rather of the king's disposition to break them than of anything else. However, it also indisputably showed a power in the parlia- ment, to which the king deemed it convenient to manifest a semblance of respect. To these two charters was sometimes added a confirmation of all franchises and privileges enjoyed by cities, bo- roughs, or individuals. Besides this, particular parts of Magna Charta were especially re-enacted. Thus, it was declared by stat. 5 Edw. III. c. 9, that no man should from thenceforth be attached on any accusation, nor forejudged of life or limb, nor his lands, tenements, goods, nor chattels, seized into the king's hands, against the form of the Great Charter and the law of the land ; and again, by stat. 28 Edw. III. c. 3, that no man, of what esfate or condition soever, should be put out of land or tenement, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disinhe- rited, nor put to death, without being brought in to answer by due process of law. It may be pre- sumed to have been in the same spirit that the stat. 4 Edw. III. c. 14 was made, ordaining that " a parliament should be holden every year once, and more often if need be ;" which enactment was renewed by stat. 36 Edw. III. st. 1, c. 10. It ia true that these constant renewals of important laws which we meet with in our earlier reigns, show very lax notions as to the binding force of laws ; and, indeed, our earlier kings do not seem to have considered any laws of their predecessors which seemed against their own interests binding on thera till they had specially confirmed them ; and more- • Reeves, ^ol. ii. p. 302. 820 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. over did not scruple to use the meanest subterfuges to evade them. But sincerity and love of truth are among the last virtues learned by civilized men ; and it is vain to look for them in the earlier stages of any people's social progress. " The statutes now," (14 Edw. III.) observes Barrington, " begin to appear in a new and more regular form ; the titles henceforward are almost always English ;" (though the body of the statutes continues to be in the French language ;) " and the session of parliament is generally held at West- minster, whilst the preamble in every instance makes express mention of the concurrence of the . commons.''* The most important statute of this reign — at least that which most demands notice in a work like the present — is the Statute of Treasons, the 25th Edw. III. St. 5, c. 2.f It defines far more particularly than had been done before what should be considered as treason. The treasons declared are under the following heads: — To compass or imagine the death of the king, queen, or that of their eldest son and heir ; to violate the king's companion, or the king's eldest daughter unmar- ried, or the wife of the king's eldest son and heir; to levy Avar against the king in his realm, or be adherent to the king's enemies in his realm, giving to them aid and comfort in the realm, or elsewhere ; of which a man must be provably attainted of open deed by people of his own condition ; to counter- feit the king's great or privy seal, or his money; to bring into the realm false money counterfeit to the money of England, or the money called Lushburgh, or other, like to the money of England, knowing it to be false, to merchandise, or make payment in deceit of the king and his people ; to slay the chancellor, treasurer, or the king's justices of the one bench or of the other, justices in eyre or of assize, or any other justices assigned to hear and determine, being in their places, doing their offices. All the above cases, says the statute, shall be judged treason that extends to our lord the king and his royal majesty; andofsvich treasons the forfeiture of the escheats belongs to the king, as well of lands and tenements holden of another as of himself. Moreover (the statute goes on to say), there is another manner of treason, viz. — when a servant slays his master, a wife her husband, or when a man, secular or religious, slays his prelate, to whom he owes faith and obedience : in these treasons the forfeiture is to go to the lord of the fee. And thus this act divides treasons into high and petit — the distinction by which they have since been known. There have been many comments on the words compass and imagine; and it does not seem pro- bable that any comments would be able to render them very precise. Mr. Barrington observes, * Obs. on Stat. p. 192. + Uarrini^ton says, with regard to this, " I shall take a very extra- ordinary liberty with regard to the title of this statute, wliicli 1 have altered from the Statute of Purvcyont^ (o tliat of the Statute of Trea- sonj."_Stat. p 211. The first charter related to purvevance'as nrll as the nfteenth. " I have looked into the laws of most countries in Europe on this head, which in general are much more loosely worded than the present statute."* By the statute 36 Edw. III. stat. ], c. 15, it was ordered that henceforth pleas should be pleaded in the English tongue, and inrolled in Latin. The reasons stated for this alteration we shall give in the words of the statute (with which reasons, by the by, the French, in which the statute isvvorded, seems strangely at variance) :t — " Because it is often showed to the king by the prelates, dukes, earls, barons, and all the commonalty, of the great mischiefs which have happened to divers of the realm ; because the laws, customs, and statutes of this realm be not commonly holden and kept in the same realm, for that they be pleaded, showed, and judged in the French tongue, which is much unknown in the said realm ; so that the people which do implead, or be impleaded, in the king's courts, and in the courts of other, have no know- ledge nor understanding of that which is said for them or against them by their Serjeants and other pleaders;" and because the king, the nobles, and others who have been in divers regions and coun- tries have observed that they are better governed, because their laws are in their own tongue. The same enactment contains the following clause : — " That, by the ancient terms and forms of the de- clarations, no man be prejudiced, so that the matter of the action be fully showed in the declaration and in the writ." Though the language of the courts in all argu- ments and decisions was henceforward to be Eng- lish, the written language of the laws still continued French, and so continued for some centuries. Moreover, many significant terms and phrases of that language were still retained in de- bate and conversation upon topics of law. The history of the courts of justice throws more liglit perhaps than the discussion of any other question, on the subject of constitutional law. It is for this reason that we have already devoted so much attention to the investigation of the real posi- tion and character of the great officers of the king's court : — and, for the same reason we shall continue throughout to devote as much of our space as we can spare to the discussion of the nature and juris- diction of the respective courts. In the earlier stages of its history, the parlia- ment appears to have partaken considerably more of the character of a supreme court of judicature than it afterwards did ; for not only were suits depending in the courts below brought into parlia- ment by petition of the parties, but also on the motion of the judges themselves, who, in cases of difficulty, would rather take the advice of the par- liament than hazard their own judgment. It was * Obs. on Stat. p. 213. + In 18 Edw. III. Stat 2, there is a still more striking instance of tliis. The French preamble of this statute recites that the French king " s'afforce tant come il poet a destruir iiotre dit seigneur le roi, ses alliez, ct subgitz, terres ct lieus, et i-a t.anok d'Enoi-etersk" (cnfoi-ceth himself as mucli as he may to destroy our said sovtreipn lord the king, and his allies, siilijects, lands, and place.', and the tongue of England). Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 821 m this spirit that the statute of treasons (25 Edw. III.) ordains, that wlien any new case of supposed treason should arise, not expressly within the terms of that act, the judges should not proceed upon their own conceptions of the case, but should take the opinion of the parliament. Towards the latter end of this reign the com- mons first began to appear as prosecutors, and., among their other petitions, to exhibit accusations for crimes and misdemeanors against offenders who were thought to be out of the reach of the ordinary course of the law. In these prosecutions the king and lords were considered as judges. Thus began prosecution by impeachment ' of the commons. The tribunal next in authority to the parliament was the council. As the parliament was often called by this name, much difficulty has arisen in distinguishing them. The king had a council which consisted of all the lords and peers of the realm. This was called the grand coimcil, as well as the parliament (being probably the original commune concilium regni, before the commons were summoned thither), and was thereby distin- guished from the other council, which the king had most commonly about him for advice in mat- ters of law. This last council (corresponding some- what to what has since been called the Privy Council) consisted of the treasurer, chancellor, justices, keeper of the rolls, justices in eyre, &c. The method of address to the two councils was, like that to the parliament, by petition.* In con- sequence of the jealousy entertained of the arbi- trary authority of these councils of the king, several statutes were made in this reign to regulate and check it. But, as we shall see in the sequel, it was not to be effectually checked yet for several centuries. There is nothing more indicative of the form the English government and constitution were gradually assuming, than the decline of the court of the steward and marshal — a tribunal which, when the king was everything, and the nation and the law nothing, was of great power and import- ance; but now, that there were other powers in the country than that of the king, and when the common law had attained a considerable degree of perfection, was sinking both in jurisdiction and importance. This might be not altogether because lawyers did not preside in this court (for Littleton was at one time steward or judge of this courtt), but rather from an idea that the rules of decision of the court were framed more upon the king's pleasure than the rules of law. • Reeves's Hist, of Eng. Law, vol. ii. p. 415. t Coke ?.iys (2 Inst 548). tliat" the slenard of the court of the marshalseii of the household is ever a professor of the common law ;" and that in the statute Artkuli super Chaitas, c. 3, the words " des seneschals et marshals," are to be " understood of the stewunl of the co^irt of Uie marshalsea of the household, and not of the steward of the kinfj's household." This, we apprehend, is incorrect. Various statutes, for example (5 Edw. III. c, 2, and 10 Edw. III. st. 2, c. 1,), expressly call that officer " steward of the kinij's house" (^seneschal delhostiel le rot) in the singular. Indeed, in the Record Commission edition ol tlie statutes, seneschal is singular, not plural, in the pas- sage commented on by Coke in the Art. sup. Chart, c. 3. In point of A" large portion of the original power of the court of the steward of the king's household passed to the court of King's Bench. By statute 5 Edw. III. c. 2, it was ordained, that if any one would complain of error in the former court, he should have a writ to remove the record and process be- fore the king in his place, that is, in the King's Bench. The court of the steward was originally the court of the king in his place, since the steward was originally the king's immediate representative. The above provision was re-enacted in statute 10 Edw. III. St. 2, c. 1. " So that," observes Mr. Reeves, " the King's Bench was confirmed in that appellate jurisdiction, which the court of the steward and marshal possessed once over the other courts.'* As the law became complicated and voluminous, it became necessary to have professional lawyers to administer it ; and, as shown in the preceding note, the business of the steward of the household's court came to be performed by a deputy, who was a lawyer, and was called the steward of the court of the marshalsea of the household. In like manner it is at least highly probable that the marshal of the marshalsea of the King's Bench was originally the deputy of the marshal of the king's household, who was originally the same as the earl marshal, as appears from a passage of Britton quoted in the preceding Book of this History. In this reign several regulations were made for the keeping of the peace. Statute 1 Edw. III. c. 16, ordained, " for the better keeping and main- tenance of the peace, that in every county, good men and lawful, that were no maintainers of evil, or barrators in the covmty should be -assigned to keep the peace." Three years after, these officers were intrusted with greater powers, having the ad- ditional authority to take indictments. f In the eighteenth year of this reign they were empowered to hear and determine felonies and trespasses done against the peace in the same counties, and to inflict punishment according to law and reason, and the circumstances of the fact. J The statute 34 Edw. III. c. 1, enacts, that in every county there should be assigned for the keeping of the peace, one lord, and three or four of the most worthy in the county, with some learned in the law. These were to have power to restrain oflt'endejs, rioters, &c., and chastise them according to their trespass or offence. " They were," says the act, " to take of all them that be not of good fame, where they shall be found, sufficient surety and mainprise of their good behaviour towards the king fact, the steward spoken cf by Coke as a professor of the common law, was merely the steward of the househohrs aotinif deputy. Coke's object always was to magnify the Court of King's Bench, of which he had been chief justice ; and if he knew— which is doubtful — he would not like to acknowledge the real magnitude of the original authority of the lord steward's court, from which, as shown in the text, was borrowed the appellate jurisdiction of the Court of King's Bench over the other courts. Coke calls the grand justiciary (the miyhty Capita/is Justitiarius Anglice) merely Chief Justve of Kng- land ; and he bestows upon liimself (Sir E. Coke) the same title, in- stead of his proper one, that of Chief Justice of the King's Bench, • Hist, of Eng. Law, vol, ii. p. 420, + 4 Edw. III. c. 2. X 18 Edw. III. St. 2. c % 822 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. and his people." On this clause Mr. Reeves re- marks, " This was the first authority they had to take sureties for good behaviour ; and, indeed, the first mention of it in any statute or law book."* In the statute 36 Edw. III. st. 1, c. 12, the keepers of the peace are for the first time distin- guished by the name, which is now so well known, of " justices of the peace," The words of the French statute are, " justices de la pees.'* And thus, at the close of the reign, the keepers of the peace were become justices, presiding over a court. In the reign of Richard II. the only act of legislation that peculiarly seems to demand atten- tion is the famous statute of Prsemunire ; and of that, as well as of the other acts of a similar ten- dency by which it was preceded, an account has already been given in the preceding Chapter. The subject of the royal revenue now becomes more closely connected than in earlier times with that of the constitution and government, inasmuch as in the present period the king came to be de- pendent for his income chiefly upon parliamentary grants. The several charters of liberties had consi- derably curtailed the ancient pecuniary resources of the crown, by the abridgment of the prerogative ; and the greater part even of the hereditary estates that survived the reigns of Richard and John was dissipated by the weak profusion of Henry III. This prince was reduced by his own folly, and the circumstances in which he was placed, to the most pitiable state of destitution. From the terms on which he stood with his barons, their assistance in raising money was very grudgingly afforded ; and the only extraordinary aids levied by him during his long reign were two-fifteenths, one-thirtieth, and one-fortieth for himself, and one-twentieth for the relief of the Holy Land. According to Matthew Paris, his entire income did not amount, on an average for the whole reign, to more than 24,000 marks, or about 16,000/. per annum. His principal resource in his later years was the plun- der of the clergy, whicli he w-as enabled to eflPect through the assistance of his friend Pope Alexander IV. In 1256, a tenth part of all eccle- siastical benefices was ordered to be paid for five years into the royal exchequer. The Jews were another still more defenceless class of his subjects from whom he repeatedly extorted larger sums of money. Matthew Paris records that, in the year 1241 alone, they were forced to pay no less than twenty thousand marks ; and scarcely a year seems to have passed in which they were not subjected to exactions of the like arbitrary character, though not perhaps to the same amount. One individual, Aaron of York, from whom four thousand marks had been wrung in 1243, was again, in 1230, con- demned, on pretence that he had been guilty of forgery, to pay a fine of thirty tliousand. Alto- gether, in the course of his reign, Henry is said to have obtained four hundred thousand marks from the Jews. But this, and all his other sources of • Hist, of Eng. Law, vol. ii. p. 473. CBookIV. income, regular and irregular, were insufiicient to supply the waste occasioned by his imprudent ma- nagement, his donations to his minions, and the foolish and expensive projects in which he en- gaged. Towards the end of his reign his debts were declared by himself to amount to nearly three hundred thousand marks. In order to raise money, he was sometimes obliged to pawn the jewels of the crown, and to sell the very furniture of his palace ; at other times he went from place to place personally soliciting contributions almost in the fashion of one asking alms. The reign of Edward I. is an important era in the history of English taxation. The popularity of this monarch's Scottish wars long induced the par- liament to be liberal in their supplies, and even made the nation submit without much murmuring to many arbitrary exactions. The church and the Jews (till they were finally expelled from the kingdom in 1290) continued to yield large returns to the royal exchequer. It was upon the liberality of his parliament, however, that Edward wisely placed his chief reliance : this assembly, by the complete establishment of county and borough re- presentation, was now become a national organ ; and when the statute De Tallagio non Concu- dendo was passed in 1297, the first decided step may be considered to have been taken towards the great constitutional object of subjecting the public income and expenditure to the public control. It was not, however, till after a long struggle that this object was practically accomplished even to the extent to which it was aimed at by the present statute. The concession of the statute was extorted from Edward, and he made repeated attempts to evade a restriction to which he never had intended to yield further compliance than the pressure of the moment might render convenient. One source of revenue which was greatly improved in the reign of Edward I. was that afforded by the cus- toms on the export and import of goods. Edward considerably raised the rate of these ancient duties by his own authority, and also imposed certain additional duties upon foreign merchants, which came to be distinguished by the name of the new or alien customs. But Edward did not satisfy himself with mere taxation. On pressing emer- gencies he did not hesitate openly to seize tlie goods of merchants and the property of his other subjects whenever he could lay his hands upon it. Forced loans formed another of his occa- sional resources. In short, although the foun- dations of parliamentary taxation were laid in this reign, by the establishment of the practice of re- gularly summoning to parliament representatives of the shires and boroughs, and by the passing of the statute De Tallagio, most of the old arbitrary modes of raising money by the crown continued to be exercised throughout the whole of it, in the face, indeed, of considerable dissatisfaction and outcry, but without encountering, except in a few instances, any effectual resistance. The old method of taxation by scutages fell into disuse in Chap. III.] CONSTITUTION, GOVERNMENT, AND LAWS: A.D. 1216-1399. 823 this reign; and taxes upon personal property, which had not been known in the first ages after the Conquest, came to be common. Edward, not- withstanding the heavy expenses of his military operations, never was reduced to anything re- sembling the pecuniary difficulties that his father had suffered. The vigour of his character and his general popularity enabled him, in addition to his arbitrary exactions, to obtain vastly more ample supplies from parliament than had been granted to Henry ; and in one way and another the amount of money which he raised, in the course of his long reign, must have been very great. At his death he is said to have left a hundred thousand pounds of accumulated treasure, which he had intended to devote to the prosecution of the Scottish war. One benefit which the country reaped from the feeble and otherwise calamitous rule of Edward II. was a great reduction of taxation. The law, called the New Ordinances, enacted by the parlia- ment which met in Augaist, 1311,* altogether abolished the new customs. Very few grants were made by parliament in this reign. The fifty years of the reign of Edward III., on the contrary, were a period both of parliamentary taxation on a large scale, and also of many illegal imposts. The grants by parliament, indeed, now became almost annu.al, being generally in the form of a certain portion, varying from a fiftieth to a seventh, of the value of the moveable property of persons of all ranks. These repeated grants tended no doubt to establish the practice of the crown coming for supplies to parliament; but Edward also resorted to many arbitrary methods of raising money. Besides granting monopolies, a practice which he is said to have been the first to introduce, and compelUng all persons having estates of a certain' value to accept of knighthood, he renewed the old practice of imposing tallages on cities and boroughs ; he extorted money from the clergy and others by what were called forced loans ; he even made direct seizures of merchandise and other property on some occasions, just as his grandfather had done. In 1339 he restored, by his own authority, the new customs which had been abolished in the preceding reign ; and all the opposition of the parliament could not prevail upon him to renounce the right he claimed to collect these duties, although he at last consented not to continue them longer than two years. They were maintained, in fact, for a considerably longer period. Another duty which was now regularly levied was that afterwards called tho^ tonnage and poundage duty, being an assessment of two shil- lings on every tun of wine imported, and of six- pence on every pound of other merchandise either imported or exported, which was originally granted, not by the full parliament, but by annual vote of • See ante, p. 733. the representatives of the cities and bo-roughs only. From 1373, however, it came to be granted by both houses in the usual form. The first parlia- mentary grant of a specific sum is said to have been made in 1311, when a subsidy of 50,000/. was voted to be raised by an average assessment of twenty-two shillings and fourpence on each parish, the number of parishes being taken at forty- five thousand, whereas they turned out to be only eight thousand six hundred, on which the assessment was afterwards raised to one hundred and sixteen shillings on each.* It was also in this reign that the first poll-tax was granted, A pell, or ex- chequer roll, of the year 1341, makes Edward's entire revenue for that year to have amounted to 154,139Z. 175. bd. It is probable, however, that this sum does not include many irregular payments. Notwithstanding his numerous reeources, Edwafd was constantly in want of money and oppressed by debts. The straits in which he was involved were occasionally so extreme as to force him to the most painful and degrading expedients. At one time Queen Philippa was obliged to paWn her jewels; on another occasion the cfown itself was given in pledge, and remained unredeemed for eight years. A tax imposed in the second year of the reigii of Richard II. is said to be the first that was distin- guished by the name of a Subsidy, which afterwards became the common name for a parliamentary grant to the crown. It was in fact a poll or capi- tation tax, graduated according to the rank and property of each individual. This was followed the same year by the famous poll-tax which occa- sioned the insurrection of Wat Tyler. This, also, was to be regulated according to each person's ability, it being arranged that no one should pay for himself and his wife less than one groat, or more than sixty. The entire sum proposed to be raised was 160,000/, Richard's expenditure, in the latter part of his reign, was extravagantly lavish, and was sustained by various arbitrary exactions, and also by liberal grants almost annually made by a servile parliament. Much of what he thus obtained was wasted in the mere maintenance of his house- hold, which is affirmed to have consisted of ten thousand persons, of whom three hundred were employed in the royal kitchens. The first parlia- mentary grant for life was made to Richard II. ; it consisted of a du.ty on the exportation of wool, woolfels, and leather. In 1382, also, the parlia- ment passed an act (the 5th Rich. II. stat. 2, c. 2) offering a certain discount from the duties on the exportation of wool, woolfels, and hides, to all merchants who would pay the Calais duties before- hand, which is supposed to be the first attempt ever made to anticipate the revenue ; — a practice which, in later times, gave rise to the national debt. » See ante, p. 349. 824 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. CHAPTER IV. HISTORY OF THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY. HE history of Eng- lish commerce during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is in great part the re- cord of a course of legislative attempts to annul the laws of na- ture, such as probably never was outdone in any other country. A full detail, if our limits would allow us to give it, would serve no useful purpose here ; but a few samples will be found both curious and instructive. A term which makes a great figure in the com- mercial regulations of this period is that of the Staple. The word, in its primary acceptation, ap- pears to mean a particular port or other place to which certain commodities were obliged to be brought to be weighed or measured for the pay- ment of the customs, before they could be sold, or in some cases exported or imported. Here the king's staple was said to be established. The articles of English produce upon which customs were anciently paid, were wool, sheep-skins, or woolfels, and leather ; and these were accord- ingly denominated the staples or staple goods of the kingdom. The persons who exported these goods wei'e called the merchants of the staple : they were incorporated, or at least recognized as forming a society with certain privileges, in the reign of Edward II., if not earlier. Hakluyt has printed a charter granted by Edward II., the 20th of May, 1313, to the mayor and council of the merchants of the staple, in which he ordains that all merchants, whether natives or foreigners, buy- ing wool and woolfels in his dominions for ex- portation, should, instead of carrying them for sale, as they had been wont to do, to several places in Brabant, Flanders, and Artois, carry them in future only to one certain staple in one of those countries, to be appointed by the said mayor and council. It appears that, upon this, Antwerp was made the staple. But although the power of naming the place, and also of changing it, was thus conferred upon the society, this part of the charter seems to have been very soon disregarded. In subsequent times the interferences of the king and the legislature with regard to the staple, were incessant. In 1326 it was, by the royal order, re- moved altogether from the continent, and fixed at j certain places within the kingdom. Cardiff, in Wales, a town belonging to Hugh Despenser, is the only one of these new English staples the name of which has been preserved. It may be noted, also, that tin is now mentioned as one of the staple commodities. In 1328 (by the statute 2 Edw. III. c. 9.) it was enacted, " that the staples beyond the sea and on this side, ordained by kings in times past, and the pains thereupon provided, shall cease, and that all merchant strangers and privy (that is, foreigners and natives) may go and come with their merchandizes into England, after the tenor of the Great Charter." In 1332, however, we find the king ordaining, in the face of this act, that staples should be held in various ^places within the kingdom. Acts of parliament, indeed, on all kinds of subjects were as yet accustomed to be regarded by all degrees of people as little more than a sort of moral declarations or preachments on the part of the legislature — expressions of its sentiments — but scarcely as laws which were compulsory like the older laws of the kingdom. Most of them Avere habitually broken, until they had been repeated over and over again ; and this repetition, rather than the exaction of the penalty, appears to have been the recognized mode of enforcing or establish- ing the law. In many cases, indeed, such a way of viewing the statute was justified by the principle on which it was evidently passed ; it was often manifestly, if not avowedly, intended by its authors themselves as only a tentative or experimental enactment, the ultimate enforcement of which was to depend upon the manner in which it was found to work. The Act of parliament was frequently entitled, not a statute, but an ordinance ; and in that case it seems to have been merely proposed as an interim regulation, which was not to become a permanent law until some trial should have been had of it, and such amendments made in it as were found by experience to be necessary.* In other cases, again, and those of no rave occurrence, the law was of such a nature that it could not be carried into execution ; it was an attempt to ac- complish what was impossible. These considera- tions may account for the numerous instances in which our old laws are merely confirmations, or in other words, repetitions of some preceding law, and also for the extraordinary multiplication which we find of fluctuating or contradictory laws. Of this latter description, those relating to the staple afibrd an eminent example. In 1334, all the lately established staples were again abolished l)y • See on this subject Hallam's Middle Ages, iii. 72-75. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 121G— 1399. 825 the king in a parliament held at York. In 134], the staple ^vas re-established by a rojal act at Bruges, in Flanders. In 1348, again, after the capture of Calais, that town Avas made the staple for tin, lead, feathers, English-made woollen cloths, and worsted stuffs, for seven years. All the former inhabitants of Calais, with the exception, it is said, of one priest and two lawyers, had been removed, and an English colony, of which thirty-six mer- chants from London were the principal mem- bers, had been cettled in their room. In 1353, by the statute called the Ordinance of the Staples (27 Edw. III. st. 2, c. 1), the staple for wool, leather, woolfels, and lead, was once more removed from the continent by act of par- liament, and ordered to be held for ever in the following places, and no others — namely, for England, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, York, Lincoln, Norwich, Westminster, Canterbury, Chichester, Exeter, and Bristol ; for Wales, at Carmarthen ; and for Ireland, at Dublin, Waterford, Cork, and Drogheda. The " for ever" of this statute re- mained in force for ten years, and no longer. From the preamble of the statute 43 Edw. III., it ap- pears that it had been ordained, for the profit of the realm, and ease of the merchants of England, that the staple of wools, woolfels, and leather, should be holden at Calais ; and that there accordingly it had been holden since the 1st of March, 1363. By this last-mentioned act, however, passed in 1369, it was again, m consequence of the renewal of the war with France, fixed at certain places within the kingdom— being for Ireland and Wales the same that have been just mentioned, but with the substitution in the case of England, of Hull, Boston, Yarmouth, and Queenburgh, for Canter- bury, York, Lincoln, and Norwich. In 1376 nevertheless, on the complaint of tlie inhabitants of Calais, that their city was declining, the staple was restored to that place ; and it was now made to comprehend, not only the ancient commodities of Avool, woolfels, and leather, and those more re- cently added, of lead, tin, worsted stuffs, and fea- thers, but also cheese, butter, honey, tallow, peltry (or skins of all kinds), and what are called " gau- Ise," which have been supposed to mean osiers for making baskets ; these different articles probably comprehending all the ordinary exports irom the kingdom. But this restriction of the whole export trade to one market was soon relaxed. In 1378 (by the 2nd Rich. II. stat. 1, c. 3), it was enacted, that all merchants of Genoa, Venice, Catalonia, Arragon, and other countries toward the West, that w(juld bring their vessels to Southampton, or else- where within the realm, might there freely sell their goods, and also recharge their vessels with wools, and the other merchandises of the staple, on paying the same customs or duties that would have been payable at Calais; and in 1382 (by the 5th Rich. II. stat. 2, c. 2), all merchants, whether foreigners or natives, were permitted to carry wool, leather, ai^d woolfels, to any country whatever, except France, on payment of the Calais duties beforehand. In 1384, we find the wool-staple altogether removed from Calais, and established at Middleburgh. In 1388 (by the statute 12 Rich. II. c. 16), it was ordered to be fixed once more at Calais; but in 1390 (by the 14th Rich. II. c. 1), it was brought back to the same English towns in whicli It had been fixed in 1353. The very next year, however, it was enacted, that instead of these towns, the staple should be held at such others upon the coast as the lords of the council should direct; and it would even appear (from the 15th Rich. II. c. 8), that, at least for a part of the year, the staple of wool and also of tin was still at Calais. " Staples and restraints in Eng- land, and a second staple and other restraints at the same time on the continent!" exclaims the historian of our commerce, in noting this fact : " the condition of the merchants who were obliged to deal in staple goods was trulv pitiable in those days of perpetual clianges."* It is not quite clear, however, that the English staples were still continued ; it is perhaps more probable that they had been abolished when the staple was restored to Calais. However this may be, it appears from the statute 21 Rich. II. c. 17, passed in 1398, that at that time Calais was the only staple ; and such it continued to be from this time till it was recovered by the French in 1538, when the staple was established at Bruges. The old staple laws, however, had been considerably relaxed in the course of that long interval. The history of the staple is an important part of the history of our early foreign commerce, of which it in some degree illustrates the growth and gradual extension from the progressive develop- ment of the resources of the country, as well as the artificial bonds and incumbrances against the pressure and entanglement of which the principle of that natural growth had to force its way. We now proceed to quote some further instances of the perplexities, the blunders, and the generally op- pressive or annoying character of our ancient com- mercial legislation. One of the prerogatives assumed by the crown in those days, somewhat similar in its nature to that of fixing the staple of the foreign trade of the kingdom, was the right of restricting all mer- cantile dealings whatever, for a time, to a certain place. Thus, Matthew Paris tells us that, in the year 1245, Henry III. proclaimed a fair to be held at Westminster, on which occasion he ordered that all the traders of London should shut up their shops, and carry their goods to be sold at the fair, and that all other fairs throughout England should be suspended during the fifteen days it was ap- pointed to last. The king's object, no doubt, was to obtain a supply of money from the tolls and other dues of the market. What made this inter- ference be felt as a greater hardship was, that the weather, all the time of the fair, happened to be excessively bad ; so that not only the goods were spoilt, exposed as they were to the rain in tents • Macplierson, Aunals of Com. i. 604. 826 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. only covered with cloth, and that probably imper- fectly enough; but the dealers themselves, who were obliged to eat their victuals with their feet in the mud, and the wind and wet about their ears, suffered intolerably. Four years afterwards the king repeated the same piece of tyranny, and was again seconded by the elements in a similar fashion. This time, too, the historian tells us, scarcely any buyers came to the fair ; so that it is no wonder the unfortunate merchants were loud in expressing their dissatisfaction. But the king, he adds, did not mind the imprecations of the people. There was nothing that more troubled and bewildered both the legislature and the popular understanding, during the whole of this period, than the new phenomena connected with the in- creasing foreign trade of the country. The ad- vantages of this augmented intercourse with other parts of the world were sensibly enough felt, but very imperfectly comprehended ; hence one scheme after another to retain the benefit upon terms wholly inconsistent with the necessary conditions of its existence. Of course, in all exchange of commodities between two countries, besides that supply of the respective wants of each which constitutes the foundation or sustaining element of the commerce, a certain portion of what the con- sumer pays must fall to the share of the persons by whose agency the commerce is carried on. It is this that properly forms the profits of the com- merce, as distinguished from its mere advantages or conveniences. The general advantages of the commerce, apart from the profits of the agents, are alone the proper concern of the community : as for the mere profits of the agency, the only inte- rest of the community is, that they shall be as low as possible. From the course, however, that the popular feeling has at all times taken, it might be supposed that the very contrary was the case ; for the cry has constantly been in favour of making this agency, as far as possible, a monopoly in the hands of the native merchants, although the eflFect of the exclusion of foreign competition, if it could be accomplished, really could be nothing else than an enhancement of the profits of the agency, and consequently of the charge upon the consumer. In fact, if the exclusion were not ex- pected to produce this effect, it never would be sought for by the native merchants. That it should be sought for by them is natural enough, but that they should be supported in this demand by the community at large is only an instance of popular prejudice and delusion. In all commerce, and especially in all foreign commerce, a body of intermediate agents, to manage the exchange of the commodities, is indispensable ; the goods must be brought from the one country to the other, which makes what is called the carrying trade ; they must be collected in shops or warehouses for dis- tribution by sale ; even their original production, in many cases, cannot be efficiently accomplished without the regular assistance of a third class of persons, — namely, dealers in money or in credit. But to the public at large it is really a matter of perfect indifference whether these merchants, ship- owners, and bankers or other capitalists, be natives or foreigners. Not so, however, thought our an- cestors in the infancy of our foreign commerce. The commerce itself was sufficiently acceptable ; but the foreigners, by whose aid it was necessarily in part carried on, were the objects of a most intense and restless jealousy. Whatever portion of the profits of the commerce fell to their share was looked upon as nothing better than so much plunder. This feeling was even in some degree extended to the whole of the foreign nation with which the commerce was carried on ; and in the notion that all trade was of the nature of a contest between two adverse parties, and that whatever the one country gained the other lost, the inflammation of the popular mind occasionally rose to such a height that nothing less would satisfy it than an abjuration of the foreign trade altogether. But it never was long before this precipitate resolution was repented of and revoked. In the wars between Henry III. and his barons, the latter endeavoured to turn to account against the king the national jealousy of foreigners, which his partiality to his wife's French connexions had greatly exasperated. In 1261 they passed a law which may be regarded as the first attempt to establish what has been called, in modern times, the manufacturing system. It prohibited the ex- portation of wool, the chief staple of the country, and ordained that no woollen cloths should be worn except such as were manufactured at home. Whatever may be thought of the policy of nursing the infancy of domestic manufactures in certain circumstances by protections of this description, the present attempt was undoubtedly premature, and its authors confessed as much by appending to their prohibition against the importation of foreign cloth an injunction or recommendation that all persons should avoid every superfluity in dress. What were thus denounced as extravagant super- fluities were evidently those finer fabrics which could not yet be produced in England. The effect of this law, in so far as it was enforced or obeyed, could only have been to add to the general distress, by embarrassing more or less all classes of persons that had been ever so remotely connected with tlie foreign trade, and above all others the chief body of producers in the kingdom. If the wool was not to go out of the country, much wealth both in money and in goods would be prevented from coming in, and all the branches of industry which that wealth had hitherto contributed to sustain and feed, would suffer depression. It would appear that, either from want of skill or a scarcity of woad, in consequence of the usual im- portations from the continent being checked, dyed cloths could not be obtained in sufficient quantity in England a few years after this time ; for it is recorded that many people were now wont to dress themselves in cloth of the natural colour of the wool. Simon de Montfort, it seems, professed to Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 827 be an admirer of this plainness of apparel, and was accustomed to maintain that foreign commerce was unnecessary, the produce of the country being fully sufficient to supply all the wants of its in- habitants. And so no doubt it was, and would be still, on this principle of rigidly eschewing all superfluities ; but that is the principle of the stationary and savage state, not of civilization and progressive improvement. The prohibition against the importation of foreign cloth, however, appears to have been soon repealed. In 1271, when disputes broke out between Henry and the Countess of Flanders, we find it renewed in terms which imply that the trade had for some time previous been carried on as usual. This second suspension, also, was of short duration; and on various subsequent occa- sions on which the attempt was made to break off the natural commercial intercourse between the English producers and the Flemish manufacturers, the result was the same; the inconvenience was found to be so intolerable to both countries that it never was submitted to for more than a few months or weeks. Absurd regulations, however, were from time to time imposed on the trade carried on by foreigners, the temper and principle of which would, if carried out, have led to its complete extinction, and which, half measures as they were, could only have had the effect of diminishing its natural advantages. In 1275, for instance, an order was issued by Edward I., obliging all foreign merchants to sell their goods within forty days after their arrival. If foreigners continued to resort to the country in the face ■f the additional risks created by this law, — ris.vo of inadequate returns if they complied with it, of detection and punishment if they at- tempted to evade it, — we may be certain they exacted a full equivalent in the shape of higher prices for their goods ; or, if they failed to do this, they must soon have been forced to give up the trade altogether, for there was no other way by which it could be made to yield its usual profits. No foreign merchants were in those days allowed to reside in England except by special license from the king ; and even under this protection, they were subjected to various oppressive liabilities. It was not till 1303 that a general charter was granted by Edward I., permitting the merchants of Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Navarre, Lombardy, Tuscany, Provence, Catalonia, Aquitaine, Tou- louse, Quercy, Flanders, Brabant, and all other foreign countries, to come safely to any of the dominions of the English crown with all kinds of merchandize, to sell their goods, and to reside under the protection of the laws. But even this general toleration was clogged with many restric- tions. The goods imported, with the exception of spices and mercery, were only to be sold wholesale. No wine was to be carried out of the country with- out special license. Above all, no relaxation was granted of the ancient grievous liability under wiiicli every resident stranger was placed of being answerable for the debts and even for the crimes of every other foreign resident. It appears from the records of the Exchequer that, in 1306, a number of foreign merchants were committed to the Tower, and there detained until they consented severally to give security that none of their number should leave the kingdom, or export anything from it, without the king's special license. Each of them was at the same time obliged to give in an account of the whole amount of his property, both in money and goods. Security against being subjected to this kind of treatment had been accorded in a few particular instances ; but it was not till the year 1353 that the law was formally altered by the Statute of the Staple already mentioned, and the ancient practice was not wholly discontinued till long afterwards. The general charter of 1303 was followed within four years by a still more extraordinary attempt than any that had yet been made to control the natural course of commerce. In 1307, Edward issued an order prohibiting either coined money or bullion to be carried out of the kingdom on any account. The merchants, therefore, who came from other countries, were now reduced to the necessity of either directly bartering their com- modities for the produce of the kingdom, or, if they sold them for money in the first instance, of investing the proceeds in other goods before they could be permitted to return home. This was a restriction so thoroughly opposed to every com- mercial principle that it could not be rigidly main- tained ; the very year following its promulgation, an exemption from it was accorded to the mer- chants of France by the new king, Edward II., and similar relaxations of it were afterwards per- mitted in other cases. But, although from its nature it did not admit of being strictly enforced, it long continued to be regarded as the law of the country, and repeated attempts were made to secure its observance. In 1335, by the 9th Edw. III. St. 2, it was enacted that no person should henceforth carry out of the kingdom either money or plate without special license, upon pain of for- feiture of whatever he should so convey away. Sworn searchers were appointed to see that the law was observed at all the ports ; and it was further ordered that the inn-keepers at every port should be sworn to search their guests : the fourth part of all forfeits was assigned as the reward of the searchers. In 1343, by the 17th Edw. III., nearly the same regulations were repeated, the principal variation being that, to induce them to do their duty more diligently, the reward of the searchers was now raised to a third part of the forfeits, and penalties were provided for their neglect or connivance. We may gather from all this that the law had been extensively evaded. At length permission was given generally to foreign merchants to carry away one half of the money for which they sold their goods ; the law is thua stated in the 14th Rich. II. c. 1, passed in 1390, and more explicitly in the 2ud Hen. IV. c. 5, 828 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. passed in 1400; but it is still expressly ordered by the former of these statutes that every alien bringing any merchandise into England shall find sufficient sureties before the officers of the customs to expend the value of half of what he imports, at the least, in the purchase of wools, leather, wool- fels, lead, tin, butter, cheese, cloths, or other com- modities of the land. The ignorance and misconception from which all this legislation proceeded, are exhibited in a striking point of view by the fact that the above-mentioned original order of Edward I., prohibiting the ex- portation of money, expressly permits the amount of the money to be remitted abroad in bills of exchange. And at all times, while the exportation of money was forbidden, the remittance of bills seems to have been allowed. But a bill of ex- change remitted abroad is merely an order that a certain party in the foreign country shall re- ceive a sum of money which is due to the drawer of the bill, and which would otherwise have to be sent to the countrv where he resides ; if no such money were due, the bill would not be negotiable ; every such bill, therefore, if it did not carry money out of the country, produced precisely the same effect by preventing money from coming in. It was fit and natural enough, however, that this simple matter should fail to be perceived in times when it was thought that a great advantage was gained by compelling the foreign merchant to sell his goods for produce instead of for the money which the produce was worth ; indeed it may be fairly said, instead of for less money than the pro- duce was worth, for all restraints of this descrip- tion inevitably operate to enhance the price of what is prevented from being openly bought and sold on the terms that would be naturally agreed upon between the parties themselves. Another strange attempt of the English com- mercial legislation of those times was to impose a certain measure upon all foreign cloths brought to the country. By the Act 2 Edw. III. c. 14, passed in 1328, it was ordered that, from the Feast of St. Michael ensuing, all cloths that were imported should be measured by the king's auluagers, and that all those that were not found to be of a certain specified length and breadth should be forfeited to the king. The dimensions fixed by the statute were, for cloth of ray (supposed to mean striped cloth), 28 yards in length by 6 quarters in breadth ; and for coloured cloth, 26 yards in length by 6^ quar- ters in breadth. The regulation of weights and measures within the kingdom was a proper subject of legislation, and had necessarily engaged atten- tion long before this date ; although at a period when science was imknown, the methods resorted to were necessarily very inartificial, and sometimes siiigular enough; Henry I., for example, soon after he came to the throne, in ordaining that the ell or yard should be of uniform length throughout the kingdom, could find no better standard for it than the length of his own arm. Tt might also liave been found ex])edient, both for fiscal and other purposes, to direct that all cloth made for sale within the kingdom should be of certain specified dimensions; regulations to that effect have at least been usual down to our own day. But it was to stretch legislation on such matters beyond all reasonable limits to attempt to fix a measure for the cloth made in all foreign countries. Such a law, in so far as it was enforced, could only have the effect of diminishing the supply, — in other words, of raising the prices of foreign goods. But like most of the other absurd restrictions of the same character, the maintenance of this re- gulation was soon found to be impracticable : if it had been rigorously insisted upon, it would have excluded the manufactured goods of certain foreign countries from the English market altogether; and accordingly, after giving a great deal of useless annoyance both to foreign merchants and their English customers, and after special exemptions from it had been granted to several nations, it was at last repealed by the 27 Edw. III. st. 1, c. 4, passed in 1353, which provided that, " whereas the great men and commons have showed to our lord the king how divers merchants, as well foreigners as denizens, have withdrawn them, and yet do withdraw them, to come with cloths into England, to tlie great damage of the king and of all his people, because that the king's aulnager svu'misetli to merchant strangers that their cloths be not of assize," therefore no foreign cloths should in future be forfeited on that account, but when any was found to be under assize, it should simply be marked by the aulnager, that a proportionate abatement might be made in the price. This was also the era of various statutes against the supposed mischiefs of forestalling. The statute " De Pistoribus" (attributed by some to the 51st year of Hen. III., by others to the 13th of Edw. I.) con- tains the following empassioned description and denouncement of this offence : " But especially be it commanded, on the behalf of our lord the king, that no forestaller be suffered to dwell in any town, which is an open oppressor of poor people, and of all the commonalty, and an enemy of the wliole shire and country ; which for greediness of his private gains doth prevent others in buying grain, fish, herring, or any other thing to be sold coming by land or water, oppressing the poor and deceiving the rich ; which carrieth away such things, intending to sell them more dear; the which come to merchants strangers that bring merchandise, offering them to buy, and informing them that their goods might be dearer sold than they intended to sell, and an whole town or a country is deceived by such craft and subtlety." It might be supposed from all this that the forestaller bought the com- modity for the purpose of throwing it into the sea or otherwise destroying it ; it seems to have been forgotten that, like all other dealers, he bought it only that he might sell it again for more than it cost him, that is to say, that he might preserve it for a time of still higher demand and greater necessity. But for him, when that time of greater Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 829 scarcity came, there •would be no provision for it ; if the ])eople were pinched now, they would be starved then. The forestaller is merely the econo- mical distributor, who, by preventing waste at one time, prevents absolute want at another ; he destroys nothing; on the contrary, whatever he reserves from present consumption, is sure to be repro- duced by him in full at a future day, when it will be still more needed. Were it otherwise, fore- stalling would be the most losing of all trades, and no law wmdd be required to put it down. The English laws against forestalling, regrating, mid engrossing, however, cannot well be made a reproach to the thirteenth century, seeing that they were formally renewed and extended in the sixteenth, * and were not finally removed from the Statute Bouk till towards the end of the eighteenth.! A still more direct attempt to derange the naturar balance of supply and demand was made by parliament in 1315, when, with the view of relieving the people from the pressure of a severe famine, it was enacted that all articles of food should be sold at certain prescribed prices. It was strangely forgotten that the evil did not lie in the high prices, but in the scarcity, of which they were tlie necessary consequence. That scarcity, of course, the act of parliament could not cure. In fact, food became more difficult to procure than ever ; for even those who had any to sell, and would have brought it to market if they could have had a fair price for it, withheld it rather than dispose of it below its value. What was sold was for the most part sold at a price which violated the law, and which was made still higher than it would otherwise have been by the trouble and risk which the illegality of the transaction involved. Butcher-meat disappeared altogether; poultry, an article of large consumption in those times, became nearly as scarce ; gi-ain was only to be had at enormous prices. The result was, that the king and the parliament, after a few months, becoming convinced of their mistake, hastened to repeal the act. The same thing in principle and effect, how- ever, was repeated not many years after, by acts passed to fix the wages of labourers, — in other vi'ords, the ])rice of the commodity called labour. In 1349 (the twenty-third of Edward 1.), after a pestilence which had carried off great numbers of the people, was issued (apparently by the autho- rity of the king, although it is printed as a statute) " an ordinance concerning labourers and ser- vants;" which directed, first, that persons of the class of servants should be bound to serve when required ; and secondly, that they should serve for the same wages that were accustomed to be given three years before. This ordinance, indeed, further proceeded to enjoin that all dealers in victual should be bound to sell the same " for a reasonable price," and inflicted a penalty u^wn persons oflending • By the 5 and 6 Ethviinl VI. c. 14 and 15. t Hyflie 12 Geo. UI.o. /I. against that enactment — although it did not pre- sume expressly to fix a maximum of prices. The next year, by the 25 Edw, ill., st. 2,* after a preamble, declaring that servants had had no re- gard to the preceding ordinance, " but to their ease and singular covetise," the parliament established a set of new provisions for effecting its object : this act, however, contains nothing on the subject of the prices of provisions. The statute of labourers was confirmed by parliament in 1360 (by the 34 Edw^ III. c. 9), and its principle was long obstinately clung to by the legislature, notwithstanding the constant experience of its inefficiency, and indeed of its positive mischief, and its direct tendency to defeat its own proposed object ; for a law is rarely harmless because it is of impracticable execution ; the unskilful surgery of the body politic, as of the body natural, tears and tortures when it does not cure, and fixes deeper and more firmly the barb which it fails to extract. By the 13 Rich. II. St. 1, c. 8 (passed in 1389-90), it is ordained that, " forasmuch as a man cannot put the price of corn and other victuals in certain," the justices of peace shall every year make proclamation " by their dis- cretion, according to the dearth of victuals, how much every mason, carpenter, tiler, and other craftsmen, workmen, and other labourers by the day, as well in harvest as in other times of the year, after their degree, shall take by the dajf, with meat and drink, or without meat and drink, and that every man obey to such proclamations from time to time, as a thing done by statute." It is also ordered that victuallers " shall have reason- able gains, according to the discretion and limita- tion of the said justices, and no more, upon pain to be grievously punished, according to the discre- tion of the said justices." Finally, provision is made for the correct keeping of the assize (or assess- ment from time to time) of the prices of bread and ale. The earliest notice of an assize in England is found in the rolls of parliament for 1203, the 5th of John; but the first introduction of the practice is probably of older date. The most ancient law upon the subject that has been pre- served is that entitled the Assisa Pan is et Cer- visia;, commonly assigned to the 51st Hen. III. (a.d. 1266.) The assize of bread and ale, it is to be remembered, determined the prices of these commo- dities, not arbitrarily, but by a scale regulated ac- cording to the market prices of wheat, barley, and oats, so that the prices that were really fixed were those of baking and of brewing. The assize of bread was re-enacted so lately as the beginning of the last century, and was only abolished in London and its neighbourhood about twenty years ago : in regard to other places, although it has fallen into disuse, the old law still remains unrepealed. But various other articles, such as wine, fish, tiles, cloths, wood, coal, billets, &c., have at different times been made subject to assize ; and in the case of most of these the assize was a perfectly arbitrary determination of the price. The present period • Commonly entitled Statute the Firit ( VWIYER8(T v or 830 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. furnishes us with a curious example of the manner in which some of these attempts operated. By an ordinance issued in 1357 (commonly called the 31 Ed. III. St. 2), it was directed that no herrings should be sold for a higher price than forty shil- lings the last. But, in 1361, we find the king and his council, in a second ordinance (commonly called the statute 35 Edw. III.), frankly confess- ing that the effect of the attempt to fix prices in this case had been, '* that the sale of herring is much decayed, and the people greatly endamaged, that is to say, that many merchants coming to the fair, as well labourers and servants as other, do bargain for herring, and every of them, by malice and envy, increase upon other, and if one proffer forty shillings, another will profiler ten shillings more, and the third sixty shillings, and so every one surmounteth other in the bargain, and such proffers extend to more than the price of the her- ring upon which the fishers proffered it to sell at the beginning." The ordinance promulgated with the intention of keeping down the price of herrings, had actually raised it. Wherefore "we," con- cludes the new statute, " perceiving the mischiefs and grievances aforesaid, by the advice and assent of our parliament, will and grant, that it shall be lawful to every man, of what condition that he may be, merchant or other, to buy herring openly, and not privily, at such price as may be agreed betwixt him and the seller of the same herring." This failure, however, did not deter the parliament two years after from fixing a price for poultry (by the stat. 37 Edw. III. c.3); but the next year, that also was repealed by the 38 Edw. III. st. 1, c, 2, which ordained that all people, in regard to buying and selling and the other matters treated of in the preceding statute, should be as free as they were before it passed, and as they were in the time of the king's grandfather and his othei- good progenitors. Notwithstanding, however, the impediments and embarrassments occasioned by all this blind and contradictory legislation, English commerce un- doubtedly made a very considerable progress in the course of the space of nearly two centuries included within the present period. The directing property of the magnet, and its application in the mariner's compass, appear to have become known in Europe towards the end of the tvvelfth century, and the instrument was pro- bably in common use among navigators soon after the middle of the thirteenth. Both Chaucer the English, and Barbour the Scottish poet, allude familiarly to the compass in the latter part of the fourteenth century, Barbour tells us that Robert Bruce and his companions, Avhen crossing, during the night, from Arran to the coast of Carrick, in 1307,* steered by the light of the fire they saw on the shore, — " for they na needle had nor stane :" the words seem to imply rather that they were by accident without a compass, than that the in- strument was not then known. Chaucer, in his • See ante, p. 729. prose treatise on the Astrolabe, says that the sailors reckon thirty-two parts (or points) of the horizon ; evidently referring to the present division of the card, of which the people of Bruges are said to liave been the authors. Gioia, of Amalfi, who flourished in the beginning of this centurv, is supposed to have been the first who attached'a divided card to the needle ; but his card seems to have had only eight winds or points drawn upon it. The contemporary chroniclers have not recorded the effects produced by the introduction of the compass on navigation and commerce ; . but it must have given a great impulse to both. A few inte- resting facts, however, connected with English shipping during the present period have been pre- served. Henry III. appears to have had some ships of his own. One of the entries in the Liberate Roll of the tenth year of his reign is as follows: — "Henry, by the grace of God,' &c.— Pay ovit of our treasury to Reynold de Berne vail and Brother Thomas, of the Temple, twenty-two marks and a half, for repairs, &c. of our great ship ; also pay to the six masters of our great ship, to wit, to Stephen le Vel, one mark ; Germanus de la Rie, one mark ; John, the son of Sampson, one mark; Colmo de Warham, one mark; Robert Gaillard, one mark; and Simon Westlegrei, one mark. Witness ourself at Westminster, the 17th day of May, in the tenth year of our reign. For the mariners of the great ship." * The vessel here referred to is, we suppose, the large ship called the Queen, which, in 1232, Henry char- tered to John Blancbally, for the life of the latter, for an annual payment of fifty marks. t In an order of the same king to the barons of the Chique Ports, in 1242, mention is made of the king's galley of Bristol, and of the king's galleys in Ireland. Edward I. probably had a much more numerous navy. When he was pre- paring for his war with France, in 1294, this king divided his navy into three fleets, over each of which he placed an admiral, this being the first time that that title is mentioned in English history. We are not, however, to suppose that all the ships forming these three fleets were the property of the king ; the royal navy was still, as it bad heretofore been, chiefly composed of vessels belonging to private merchants which were pressed for the public service. The names of the following king's ships are mentioned in an Issue Roll of the ninth of Edward II. : — the Peter, the Bernard, the Marion, the Mary, and the Catherine ; all of Westminster. J In the reign of Edward III. we find many ships belonging to Yarmouth, Bristol, Lynne, Hull, Ravensere, and other ports, distin- guished as ships of war ; but this designation does not seem to imply that they were royal or public property. • Issues of the Exchequer from Henry III. to Henry VI, itichl- sive. By Frederick Devon. 4to. Lon. 1837. + Madox's Hist, of Excheq., c. 13, § 11. X Issues of p]xcheq., ut supra. The editor adds — "The names of ether ships are also mentioned." Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 831 The dominion of the four seas appears to have been first distinctly claimed by Edward III. At this time the Cinque Ports were bound by their charter to have fifty-seven ships in readiness at all times for the king's service ; and Edward also retained in his pay a fleet of galleys, supplied, according to contract, by the Genoese. By far the greater number, however, of the vessels em- ployed in every considerable naval expedition of those times consisted, as we have said, of the private merchantmen. The English mercantile navy was now very considerable. When Henry III., in 1253, ordered all the vessels in the country to be seized and employed in an expe- dition against the rebel barons of Gascony, the number of them, Matthew Paris tells us, was found to be above a thousand, of which three hundred were large ships. The foreign as well as the English vessels, however, are included in this enumeration ; the former as well as the latter were subject to be thus pressed. According to an account given in one of the Cotton manuscripts of the fleet employed by Edward III. at the siege of Calais, in 1346, it consisted of 25 ships belonging to the king, which carried 419 mariners ; of 37 foreign ships (from Bayonne, Spain, Flanders, and Guelderland), manned by 780 mariners ; of one vessel from Ireland, carrying 25 men ; and of 710 vessels belonging to English ports, the crews of which amounted to 14,151 persons. These merchantmen were divided into the south and the north fleet, according as they belonged to the ports south or north of the Thames. Among the places that supplied the greatest numbers of ships and men were the following: — London, 25 ships with 662 men; Margate, 15 with 160 ; Sandwich, 22 with 504; Dover, 16 with 336; Winchelsea, 21 with 596 ; Wevmouth, 20 with 264 ; Newcastle, 17 with 414 ; Hull, 16 with 465 ; Grimsby, 11 with 171; Exmouth, 10 with 193; Dartmouth, 31 with 757 ; Plymouth, 26 with 603 ; Looe, 20 with 325 ; Fowey, 47 with 170; Bristol, 24 with 608; Shoreham, 20 with 329 ; Southampton, 21 with 572; Lynne, 16 with 482; Yarmouth, 43 with 1095; Gosport, 13 with 403 ; Harwich, 14 with 283; Ipswich, 12 with 239; and Boston, 17 with 361. These, therefore, it may be assumed, were at this time the principal trading towns in the kingdom. It will be perceived that the vessels, if we may judge from the numbers of the men, were of very various sizes ; and none of them could have been of any considerable magnitude. A ship, manned by thirty seamen, which the people of Yarmouth fitted out, in 1254, to carry over Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., to the con- tinent, is spoken of with admiration by the writers of the time for its size as well as its beauty. Some foreign ships, however, were considerably larger than any of the English at this period. Thus, one of the vessels which was lent by the Republic of Venice to St. Louis, in 1270, when he set out on his second crusade, measured 125 feet in length, and carried 110 men. But this was SiiiFS OP Tiiu TIME or lliciiAra) II. Ilavl. MS. 1010. 832 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV reckoned a vessel of extraordinary size even in the Mediterranean. In 1360, Edward III., in an order for arresting all the vessels in the kingdom for an expedition against France, directed that the largest ships shoidd'carry 40 marhiers, 40 armed men, and 60 archers. A ship which was taken from the French in 1385, is said to have been, a short time before, built for the Norman merchants in the East coun- try at a cost of 5000 francs (above 830/. sterling), and to have been sold by them to Clisson, the con- stable of France, for 3000 francs. This was one of eighty vessels of various kinds, ships, galleys, cogs,"carracks, barges, lines, balingars, «&c., which were captured this same year by the governor of Calais and the seamen of the Cinque Ports. " There were taken," says the historian Walsing- ham, " and slain in those ships, 226 seamen and mercenaries. Blessed be God for all things." One ship taken by the Cinque Port vessels was valued — her cargo no dovd}t included — at 20,000 marks. But half a' century before this, we read of Genoese galleys, loaded with wool, cloth, and other merchandise, which were reckoned to be worth 60,000/. and 70,000/. in the money of Genoa, Some notices that have been preserved of the shipping of Scotland during this period prove its amount to have been more considerable than might be expected. Indeed, that country seems to have had some reputation for ship-building even on the continent. Matthew Paris relates that one of the great ships in the fleet that accompanied St. Louis on his first crusade, in 1249, had been built at In- verness, for the Earl of St. Paul and Blois. The historian calls her " a wonderful ship," in allusion, apparently, to her magnitude. Mention is made in an ancient charter, of one ship which belonged to the Scottish crown in the reign of Alexander I i I , who died in 1286; and Fordun states that, at this time, the King of Man was bound to furnish his liege lord, theKing of Scots, when required, with five warlike galleys of twenty-four oars, and five of twelve oars ; and" that other maritime vassals con- tributed vessels in proportion to their lands. One of Alexander's commercial laws was of a singular character, if we may beheve this historian. In consequence of several merchant vessels belonging to his subjects having been taken by pirates or lost at sea while voyaging to foreign parts, he prohi- bited the merchants of Scotland from exporting any goods in their own vessels for a certain time. The consequence, it is affirmed, was, that before the end of a year, numerous foreign vessels arrived with goods of all kinds ; and the kingdom obtained a cheaper and more abundant supply of the pro- duce of other cjuntries than it had ever before enjoyed. If any such effect as this was produced, the law, at the same time that it restrained the native shipowners from importing goods, probably removed some restrictions that had previously been imposed on the entry into the kingdom of foreign merchants. In the war^ between England and Scotland, in the reign of Edward III., the latter country frequently made considerable naval exer- tions, sometimes by itself, sometimes in conjunc- tion with its allies. In 1335, a vessel belonging to Southampton, laden with wool and other mer- chandise, was taken by some Scottish and Norman privateers in the mouth of the Thames ; and in the following year, a numerous fleet of ships and gal- leys equipped by the Scots, attacked and phmdered Guernsey and Jersey, and captured several Eng- lish vessels lying at anchor at tlie Isle of Wight. In the autumn of 1357, again, three Scottish ships of war, carrying 300 chosen armed men, are stated to have cruised on the east coast of England, and greatly annoyed the trade in that quarter, till the equinoctial gales drove them, along with a number of English vessels, into Yarmouth, where they were taken. These appear to have been unautho- rised private adventurers — there being at this time a truce between the two countries. The bold enterprise of the Scottish captain, Jolm Mercer, in 1378, till a stop was put to his career by the pub- lic spirit of a citizen of London, Jolm Philpot, has been mentioned in a former page.* Mercer is said to have been the son of a burgess of Perth, one of the most opulent merchants of Scotland, who, the year before, when returning from abroad, had been driven by stress of weather upon the English coast, and there seized and confined for some time in the castle of Scarborough. It was to revenge this injury that the son fitted out his armament. A few years after this, some privateers of Hull and Newcastle captured a Scottish ship, the cargo of which, according to Walsingham, w^as valued at 7000 marks. The most ancient record, which presents a gene- ral view of the foreign trade of England, is an ac- count preserved in the Exchequer of the exports and imports, together with the amount of the customs paid upon them, in the year 1354. The exports here mentioned are, 31,651i sacks of wool at 6/. per sack; 3036 cwt. (120 lbs.) of wool at 40s. percwt.; 65 woolfels, total value 21^-. ScL; hides to the value of 89/. 5.*. ; 4774^ pieces of cloth at 40s-. each; and 8061 5 pieces of worsted stuff at 16s. ?d. each: — total value of the exports, 212,338/. 5s., paying customs to the amount of 81,846/. 12^. 2(1. Wool, therefore, would appear, by this account, to have constituted about thirteen- fourteenths of the whole exports of the kingdom. The customs would seem to have been almost en- tirely derived from wool ; the amount paid by the hides and cloth exported amounts only to about 220/. The duty on the export of wool exceeded 40 per cent, on the value. The imports mentioned are, 1831 pieces of fine cloths, at 6/. each ; 397f cwt. of wax at 40^. per cwt. ; 1829^ tuns of wine at 40s. per tun ; and linens, mercery, grocery, &c., to the value of 22,943/. 6s. lOd. : — making a total value of 38,383/. 16s. lOd. The great excess, ac- cording to this statement, of the exports over the imports, has been regarded as evincing the mode- ration and sobriety of our ancestors. " But when we look at the articles," it has been well observed, • See ante, p. 783. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 833 " and find that of raw materials for manufactures which constitute so great a part of the modern im- ports, there was not one single article imported, and that, on the other hand, the exports consisted almost entirely of the most valuable raw materials, and of cloths in an unfinished state, which maj', therefore, also be classed among raw materials, we must acknowledge that it affords only a proof of the low state of manufactures and of commercial knowledge among a people who were obliged to allow foreigners to have the profit of manufac- turing their own wool, and finishing their own cloths, and afterwards to repurchase both from them in the form of finished goods."* This account is probably to be considered as comprehending only those articles from which the revenue of tlie customs was derived. We know that several other articles besides those mentioned were, at least occasionally, exported. A demand for the tin of Britain, for instance, appears to have always existed on the continent. A Cornish miner, indeed, who had been banished from his native country, is said to have, in the year 1241, dis- covered some mines of tin in Germany, the pro- duce of which was so abundant that the metal was even imported into England, by which the price in this country was considerably reduced. But this competition certahily did not permanently destroy either the domestic or the export trade in British tin. In 1338 we find Edward III. ordering all the tin in Cornwall and Devonshire, including even what might have been already sold to foreign mer- chants, to be seized and sent to the continent, there to be sold on his account, the owners being obliged to accept of a promise of paj'ment in two years. In 1348, it is recorded that the merchants and others complained to tlie parliament that all the tin of Cornwall was bought and exported by Tid- man of Limburgh, so that no Englishman could get any of it ; they therefore prayed that it might be freely sold to all merchants ; but they received for answer that it was a profit belonging to the prince, and that every lord might make his profit of his own. Cornwall had, in 1337, been erected into a duchy in favour of the Black Prince, and settled by Act of parliament on the eldest son of the king, as it still remains. The export of tin is mentioned, in 1390, in the statute 14 Rich. II. c. 7, which declares Dartmouth the only port at which it shall be shipped ; and also in the follow- ing year, in the 15th Rich. II. c. 8, which repeals the last-mentioned Act, and allows the exportation of the commodity from any port, but provides that it shall be carried only to Calais, so long as wool shall be carried to that place. Lead, butter, and cheese are likewise, as we have seen, enumerated among the " commodities of the land," in which foreign merchants were compelled, by the 14th Rich. II. c. 1, to invest half the money which they should receive for the commodities they imported. The exportation of lead in particular is repeatedly alluded to in the regulations respecting the staple, • Macphereon, Ann. of Com. L 564. VOL. I. and other acts of parliament ; and considerable quantities of that metal are supposed to have been now obtained from the Welsh mines. It may be presumed, also, that iron was occasionally exported during this period, from the statute 28 Edw. III. c. 5 (passed in 1354), which enacts that no iron, whether made in England or imported, shall be carried out of the country. Salted fish, and espe- cially herrings, formed another article of export, at least from the commencement of the thirteenth century, and probably from a much earlier date. Corn appears to have been sometimes exported, sometimes imported, but apparently never without the special license of the crown. Thus we find Edward III., in 1359, granting liberty to the Flemings to trade in England, and to export corn and other provisions from the country on obtaining his special license and paying the customs. In 1376, on the other hand, a permission is recorded to have been granted to import 400 quarters of corn from Ireland to Kendal in Westmoreland. In 1382 a general proclamation was issued, prohibit- ing, under ])enalty of the confiscation of the vessel and cargo, the exportation of corn or malt to any foreign country, except to the king's territories in Gascony, Bayonne, Calais, Brest, Cherbourg, Berwick-upon-Tweed, and other places of strength belonging to the king. But twelve years after- wards, by the statute 17 Rich. II. c. 7, all Eng- lish subjects were allowed to export corn to anv country not hostile, on paying the due customs ; a power, however, being still reserved to the king's council to stop the exportation if necessary. The introduction of the use of coal as an article both of foreign trade and of domestic consumption is pro- bably to be assigned to this period, though some have been disposed to carry it farther back. The earliest authentic document in which coal is dis- tinctly mentioned is an order of Henry III., in 1245, for an inquisition into trespasses committed in the royal forests, in which inquiry is directed to be made respecting sea-coal (" de carbone maris") found in the forests. This expression ap- pears to imply that coals had before this time been brought to London by sea, and probably from Newcastle. Sea-coal Lane, between Skinner Street and Farringdon Street, is mentioned by that name in a charter of the year 1253. Regulations are laid down for the sale of coals in the statutes of the guild of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which were esta- blished in 1284. There is extant a charter of William of Obervell, in 1291, granting liberty to the monks of Dunfermline, in Scotland, to dig coals for their own use in his lands of Pittencriefi but prohibiting them from selling any. It is pro- bable, however, that this description of fuel was not as yet nuich used for domestic purposes ; for the smoke, or smell, of a coal fire was at first thought to be highly noxious. " This same year (1306)," says Maitland, in his History of iWdon, " sea-coals being very much used in the suburbs of London by brewers, dyers, and others requiring great fires, the nobility and gentry resorting thither 3 A 834 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. complained thereof to the king as a public nui- sance, whereby they said the air was infested with a noisome smell, and a thick cloud, to the great endangering of the health of the inhabitants; wherefore a proclamation was issued, strictly for- bidding the use of that fuel. But little regard being paid thereunto, the king appointed a com- mission of Oyer and Terminer to inquire after those who had contvKnaciously acted in open defiance to his proclamation, strictly commanding all such to be punished by pecuniary mulcts ; and for the second offence, to have their kilns and fur- naces destroyed." What would these sensitive alarmists of the fourteenth century have said if they could have been informed that the day would come when London should have constantly some ten or twelve tons of coal-dust suspended over it? The prejudice against coal fires, however, seems to have, in no long time, died away. In 1325 we find mention made of the exportation of coals from Newcastle to France ; and the first leases of coal- works in the neighbourhood of that town of which there is any account are dated only a few years later. They were granted by the monks of Tyne- mouth to various persons at annual rents, varying from two to about five pounds. Ten shillings' worth of Newcastle coals are recorded to have been purchased for the coronation of Edward IIL in 1327. Before the end of the fourteenth century there is reason to believe that an active trade was carried on in the conveyance of Newcastle coal by sea to London and elsewhere. Wool, however, was, during the whole of this period, as for a long time afterwards, the great staple of the kingdom. In 1279, in a petition to Edward I., the nobles asserted that the wool pro- duced in England, and mostly exported to Flanders, was nearly equal to half the land in value. Eng- lish wool appears also to have been in great re- quest in France, in which country, as well as in Flanders, the manufacture of woollen cloth was early established. Little cloth, as we have already had occasion to observe, was made in England, and that little only of the coarsest description, till the wise policy of Edward III., by a grant dated in 1331, invited weavers, dyers, and fullers, from Flanders, to come over and settle in the country, promising them his protection and favour on con- dition that they should carry on their trades here, and communicate the knowledge of them to his subjects. The first person wlio accepted of this invitation was John Kempe, a weaver of woollen cloth ; he came over with his goods and chattels, his servants and his apprentices. Many of his countrymen soon follov/ed : a few years later other weavers came over from Brabant and Zealand ; and thus was established certainly the first manu- facture of fine woollen cloths in England. It was many years, however, as we have seen, before this infant manvifacture was able even to supply the domestic demand, far less to maintain any export trade in woollens. The cloths of the continent, in spite of various legislative attempts to exclude them, long continued to be imported in consider- able quantities. The 4774i pieces of cloth ex- ported in 1354 were evidently, from their price, of the old coarse fabric of the country. Large quantities of the English wool also continued annually to go abroad. With the view of keeping up the price of the article,* it was enacted by the statute 14 Rich. II. c. 4, passed in 1390, that no denizen of England should buy wool except of the owners of the sheep, and for his own use ; in other words, the entire export trade in the commo- dity was made over to the foreign merchant, and he was at the same time confined to the export trade. The object obviously was to secure to tlie grower not only his proper profits, but in addition those of the wool-merchant and retailer, in so far as regarded the domestic consumption. But, besides the injury to the native merchant by his exclusion from the export trade, it was strangely forgotten that the monopoly of that trade secured to the foreigner must have deprived the grower of perhaps half his customers, — namely, of all the English dealers who would have purchased the article for exportation ; and must thus, by dimi- nishing competition, have tended to depress prices instead of raising them. Such, accordingly, is stated to have been the effect produced. The contemporary historian Knyghton tells us that, in consequence of this prohibition of the export of wool by English merchants, the article lay unsold in many places for two and three years, and many of the growers were reduced to the greatest dis- tress. In 1391, however, although the quantity of wool exported is affirmed to have been that year much less than formerly, the customs on it amounted to 160,000/. According to Robert of Avesbury, who is supposed to have died about 1356, the annual exportation of wool from Eng- land had, in his day, reached to above a hundred thousand sacks ; the customs on which, at the duty of 50^. on the sack, would produce a revenue of above 250,000/. This estimate, however, is very inconsistent with the official account already quoted of the entire exports and imports for 1354. If it is to be at all received, it ought probably to be assigned to a date considerably later than that at which Avesbury is commonly assumed to have died. The principal society of foreign merchants at this time established in England appears to have been that of the merchants of Cologne. They had a hall or factory in London called their Gildhall, for the saisine (or legal possession) of which tliey paid thirty marks to the crown in a.d. 1220. " It seems probable," says Macpherson, " that this Gildhall, by the association of the merchants of other cities with those of Cologne, became in time the general factory and residence of all the German merchants in London, and was the same that was afterwards known by the name of the German Gildhall {Gildhalla Teutonicorum). It appears that the merchants of Cologne were bound * Por meutz gardet le haut pris des leyns. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 835 to make a payment of two shillings, probably a reserved annual rent (for we are not told upon ■what occasions it was payable) out of their Gild- hall, besides other customs and demands, from all which they were exempted in the year 1235, by King Henry III., who moreover gave them per- mission to attend fairs in any part of England, and also to buy and sell in London, saving the liberties of the city."* The principal part of the foreign trade, however, seems to have been in the hands of the merchants of the Staple, otherwise called the Merchants of England, who, as noticed above, were incorporated at least as early as the year 1313. This society was composed of native merchants. It has also been affirmed that there existed, so early as the middle of the thirteenth century, an association of English merchants for trading in foreign parts, called the Brotherhood of St. Thomas Becket of Canterbury, from which originated the afterwards celebrated company of the Merchant Adventurers of England ; but this story does not rest on any sufficient authority .f The historian Walsingham has preserved the record of a remarkable proposal which was made in 13*79 to Richard II. by an opulent merchant of Genoa. This foreigner, it is said, submitted to the English king a plan for raising the port of South- ampton to a pre-eminence over every other in the west of Europe, by making it the deposit and mart of all the oriental goods which the Genoese used to carry to Flanders, Normandy, and Bre- tagne, which countries would thenceforth be supplied with these commodities from England. All that the Genoese merchant asked, according to Walsing- ham, was, that he should be allowed to store his goods in the royal castle of Southampton. It is probable, however, that this was only one of the minor features of his plan, which must have been chiefly dependent for its success upon the resources and connexions of its author, the spirit with which it was taken tip and supported by the English king, and the natural aptitude of the port of Southampton to serve as a reservoir of the oriental trade. As yet, it is to be remembered, no direct trade existed between India and Europe; all the produce of the former that found its way to the latter was procured by the merchants of Venice, Genoa, and other cities of Italy, from the emporia in the eastern parts of the Mediterranean, of which the principal at this time were Acre, Constanti- nople, and Alexandria. It is not very obvious what advantage the Italian importers were to ex- pect from bringing all their goods in the first instance to Southampton, instead of proceeding with them directly to the continental markets. Walsingham says it was expected, if the plan had been carried into execution, that pepper would have been sold in England at four pennies a pound, and other spices at a proportionably low * Auuals of Com , i. 383. + Sec Wheeler's Treatise of Commerce, pp. 10 and 14 ; and Mac- pherson, i 397 and 560. rate. Silk was now manufactured, and the silk- worm reared, in Italy and other countries of the south of Europe, and little, if any, was brought from Asia; so that spiceries and fruits seem to have been the' principal commodities which were received from the eastern trade. The cargo of a Genoese ship, which was driven ashore at Dunster, in Somersetshire, in 1380, consisted of green ginger, ginger cured with lemon-juice, one bale of arquinetta,* dried grapes or raisins, sulphur, 1 72 bales of wadde (perhaps woad), 22 bales of writing paper, white sugar (perhaps sugar-candy), 6 bales of empty boxes, dried prunes, 8 bales of riscB (pro- bably rice), 5 bales of cinnamon, 1 pipe " pulveris salvistri," the meaning of which is unknown, and 5 bales of bussus (probably fine Egyptian flax). Some Genoese cogs and carracks, however, bound for Flanders, that were seized on the coast of Kent in 1386, are said to have been laden, not only with spices, but with wines, stuffs of gold and silk, gold, silver, precious stones, &c. The scheme of the Genoese merchant with regard to Southampton was put an end to by its author being murdered in the streets of London by assassins, whom some English merchants are charged with having hired, in the apprehension that his proposal was cal- culated to be injurious to their interests. It seems to have been one of those bold designs which have more in their character of the prophetic than of the practical ; it was a conception that shot ahead of the age, and the attempt to realise it at that time would probably, in the most favourable circum- stances, have proved a failure ; but this selection of Southampton for a great European emporium in the fourteenth century may be regarded as in some degree an anticipation of the project which pro- mises to be accomplished in the nineteenth, of bringing that place within two or three hours' dis- tance of London by means of a railway, and thus turning the natural advantages of its position to full account by making it one of the ports of the me- tropolis. A few facts remain to be added respecting the commerce of Scotland during this period, in addi- tion to those that have already been incidentally noticed. The chief seat of the Scottish foreign trade continued to be at Berwick till the capture of that town by Edward I. in 1296. A society of Flemish merchants, similar, apparently, to the Teutonic Gildhall of London, was established in that place : the gallantry with which they defended a strong building, called the Red Hall, which was their factory, has been mentioned in the account of the siege.f' Berwick, before this catastrophe, is described in the contemporary chronicle of Laner- cost as a second Alexandria, for the number of its inhabitants and the extent of its commerce. The sea, it is added, was its wealth ; the waters were its walls; and the opulent citizens were • Both Anderson and Macpherson quote this term from the orii;inal statement in the FoBdera (vii. 233), without cither explanation or question. We have not been able to discover t)ie meaning of the word. t See ante, p. 713. 836 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. very liberal in their donations to religious houses. The customs of Berwick were rented from Alex- ander III. by a merchant of Gascony for 2197/. 8^., a sum which would in those days have bought about 16,000 quarters of wheat. " By the agency of the merchants of Berwick, the wool, hides, woolfels, and other wares, the produce of Rox- burgh, Jedburgh, and all the adjacent country, ■were shipped for foreign countries, or sold upon the spot to the Flemish company. The expor- tation of salmon appears to have been also a considerable branch of their trade, as we find it some time after an object of attention to the legislature of England, and the regulation of it entrusted to the great officers of the government. When Edward III. wanted two thousand salmon for his own use in the year 1361, he sent orders to procure them for him at Berwick (then belonging to England) and Newcastle — no doubt the places most famous for them in his dominions."* Ber- wick, however, never recovered from the blow giveo to its prosperity by the destructive sack of 1296. In the middle of the following century we find the Scottish pearls still exported to the conti- nent. In the statutes of the goldsmiths of Paris, drawn up in 1355, it is ordered that no worker in gold or silver shall set any Scottish pearls along with oriental ones, except in large jewels (that is, figures adorned with jewellry) for churches. The Scottish greyhounds were also at this time in request in other countries. " The trade of driving cattle from Scotland for sale in England, which has con- tinued down to the present day," Mr. Macpherson observes, " is at least as old as the times now un- der our consideration ; for we find a letter of safe conduct granted (12th January, 1359) to Andrew Moray and Alan Erskine, two Scottish drovers, with three horsemen and their servants, for tra- velling through England or the king's foreign dominions for a year, with horse?, oxen, cows, and other goods and merchandise. "f An act of the Scottish parliament in 1367 orders the strict levy- ing of the duties formerly imposed of forty pennies in the pound on the price of all horses, and twelve pennies on that of all oxen and cows carried out of the country. Both corn and malt were often im- ported into Scotland at this period from England and other countries. From Ireland there was now a considerable ex- portation both of raw produce and of manufactured goods. In the records of the Exchequer for the first year of Edward I. a notice occurs of some cloth of Ireland having been stolen at Winchester in the preceding reign, along with some cloth of Abingdon, and some cloth of London called burrel. Mention has already been made of the supplies of corn that appear to have been occasionally obtained from Ireland. It seems to have been exported to the continent as well as to England, till an ordi- nance was issued in 1288, prohibiting corn and other victuals and merchandise from being carried from Ireland anywhere except to England and • Maqiberson, i. 416. + Ibid., i. 561. Wales. Yet, in 1291, we find some Flemish merchants mentioned as being in the ports of Waterford, Youghall, and Cork. In 1300, while Edward 1 . was in Scotland, the people of Drog- heda sent him a present of eighty tuns of wine to Kirkcudbright in a vessel belonging to their own port; and the same year several cargoes of Irish wheat, oats, malt, and ale were brought to him, and mostly by the merchants of Ireland and in Irish vessels. In 1322, we find Edward II., when pre- ]3aring to march into Scotland, giving orders for 9000 quarters of wheat and other grain to be sent from Ireland. By the statute 34 Edward III. c. 17, 18, passed in 1360, liberty was given to all merchants and others, whether aliens or natives, to trade freely to and from Ireland, on paying the ancient customs and duties. " At this time," says Macpherson, " there were some considerable manufactures in Ireland. The stuffs called saycs made in that country were in such request, that they were imitated by the manufacturers of Cata- lonia, who were in the practice of making the finest woollen goods of every kind ; they were also esteemed in Italy, and were worn by the ladies of Florence, a city abounding witli the richest manu- factures, and in which the luxury of dress was carried to the greatest height. The annual reve- nue derived from Ireland, which amounted to nearly 10,000/., gives a very respectable idea of the balance drawn into that country by its com- merce and manufactures, though we know next to nothing of the particular nature of them ; unless we suppose a great part of the money to have been drawn from the mines, for which, I believe, there is neither authority nor probability."* This year King Edward, understanding, as the record in the ' Foedera' says, that there were various mines of gold and silver in Ireland, which might be very beneficial to himself and the people of that coun- try, had commissioned his ministers there to order a search for the mines, and to do what would be most for his advantage in the matter. The statute 50 Edw. III. c. 8 (a.d, 1376) makes mention of cloth called frise as being made in Ireland, and also of cloth manufactured in England from Irish wool. The denominations and relative values of the dif- ferent kinds of English money continued the same in this as in the preceding period. The coinage had been greatly corrupted, partly by clipping, partly by the issue of counterfeits, in the early part of the reign of Henry III. ; in consequence of which that king, in the year 1247, called in the old coin, and issued a new penny of a different stamp. In the exchange a deduction of thirteen pence in the pound was made from the nominal value of the old coin, which occasioned great complaints ; but the new coin was not depreciated, or made of a less quantity of silver than formerly. The pennies of Henry III. are very common, and there also exist silver halfpence and farthings of his coinage. All the money was now made round. It is also said • Ibid., i. 562, wliere tbe autliorilics are quoted. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A. D. 1216—1399. 837 that, in 1257, Henry issued a gold coin of the weight of two silver pennies, which was ordered to ])ass for twenty pennies of silver. It was however soon recalled, on the complaint of the citizens of London that gold was rated above its value, in being thus made equal to ten times its weight in silver ; and no specimens of this earliest English coinage of gold are now known to exist. Penny of Henby III. Soon after the accession of Edward L the country was again found to be inundated with base or light money, consisting chiefly of pieces fabricated on the continent, and known, from their impresses, by the names of mitres, lionines, pollards, crock- ards, rosaries, staldings, steepings, and eagles, — some being imitations of English money, others professing to be foreign coins. Various laws were made both against the importation of this counter- feit money, and against the clipping of the proper coinage of the realm. The severity with which these crimes were visited upon the Jews in parti- cular has been already recorded* Edward him- self, however, in the latter part of his reign began the pernicious practice of depreciating the coin by diminishing its legal weight. In 1301 he issued a coinage of pennies, of which 243 (instead of 240, as formerly ) were coined out of the pound of silver. In 1279 Edward had issued a new silver coin in imitation of one which had been introduced in France, being of the value of four pennies, and called a gross or groat, that is, a great penny. This coinage of groats seems to have been a small one, but some specimens are still extant. • See ante, p. 693. Pekny of Euwakd I. No coins of Edward II. are certainly known to exist, though it is possible that some of those that have been attributed to his father may be of his coinage ; for it was still usual to omit on the legend the numerical distinction of the king's name. Penny (supposed) of Edward II. Edward III., in 1344, issued no fewer than six different gold coins, — namely, by one coinage, pieces marked with two leopards to pass for six shillings, others of half that weight and value marked with one leopard, and others marked with a helmet, of half the value of the last ; and Ijy a second, nobles of the value of six shilliiigs and eight pence, aiid halves and quarters of nobles. The second coinage was made necessary by the refusal of the people to take the coins first issued at the value placed upon them. This king also carried the depreciation of the coin much farther than his grandfather had done, by an issue tliis same year of silver pennies, of which 266 were made out of the pound. Two 5'ears after he coined 270 pennies out of the pound of silver; and in 1351 he issued anew groat to be current at the old rate of fourpence, although it scarcely weighed Penny op Edward III. Gboat of Edward III. Half-groat of Edward III. 838 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. more than three pennies and a half even of his last diminished money. There are two groats of Edward III., one with the title of King of France, the other without. It is upon his coins also that we first read the motto Dieu et mon droit (God and my right), which was originally adopted in allusion to the claim to the French crown. He also coined half groats. The coins of Richard II., which are nohles, half nobles, quarter nobles, groats, half groats, Penny of Richard II. Groat op Richard II. pence, and halfpence, are of the same real values with those last coined by his grandfather. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish liis silver money, from the want of the numerals, from that of Richard III. The Scottish money was deteriorated in the course of this period to a still greater extent than the English ; the parliament in 1367 having or- dered that 352 pennies should be made out of the pound of silver. It is supposed that gold money was first coined in Scotland in the reign of Robert II. (a.d. 1311 — 1390). There were repeated coin- ages of money in Ireland ; but in 1339 we find a species of coin of inferior quality, and apparently of foreign fabrication, authorised to pass current in that country, on the ground of the insufficient amount of good money. These base pieces were called turneys, or black-money, or sometimes black- mail, from the French word maille, anciently used for a piece of money. Even the legal coins of this period are generally rude in workmanship, and by no means of uniform weight. The standard of weight at this time was scarcely more artificial than that which Henry I. established for measures of length, when he ordered tliat the ell should be as long as the royal arm. The statute called the Assize of Weights and Mea- sures, which is attributed, in some copies, to the reign of Henry III., in others to that of Edward I., states that, " by consent of the whole realm, the king's measure was made so that an English penny, which is called the sterling, round without clipping, shall weigh thirty-two grains of wheat dry in the midst of the car." This is the origin of the weight still called a pennyweight, though it now contains only twenty-four grains. The pro- cess of coining was equally rude. First, the metal, as appears from an entry in the Red Book of the Exchequer in the reign of Edward I., " was cast Half-groat of Richard II. from the melting-pot into long bars; those bars were cut with shears into square pieces of exact weights; then with the tongs and hammer they were forged into a round shape ; after which they were blanched, that is, made white or refulgent by nealing or boiling, and afterwards stamped or im- pressed with a hammer, to make them perfect money. And this kind of hammered money con- tinued through all the succeeding reigns, till the year 1663, when the milled money took place."* The various necessary and useful arts continued in much the same state throughout the present as in the previous period. With regard, however, to the state of the important art of agriculture in par- ticular, we now derive from various authentic sources much more detailed information than we have hitherto possessed. Sir T. Cullum, in a history of the parish of Hawsted, . in Suffolk, has, from books of accounts, inquisitions, and other documents, given as com- plete a view of the ancient practices of husbandry in England as can be expected, considering the difficulties of such an inquiry ; and we shall now proceed to extract some of the most material state- ments from his work. In the reign of Edward I., there were fifty messuages or houses in the parish, being only two less than in 1784. Two-thirds of the land in the parish was held by seven persons, and the remaining third was occupied by twenty- six persons. In 1831, when the last census was taken, the number of occupiers in the same parisii was only eleven, being one-third only of the num- ber five centuries before. Several of the ancient occupiers were apparently merely labourers, for whom there was no continuous employment, but who, by this occupancy of a small piece of land, were enabled to eke out a subsistence. The traces of cultivation which have been most probably left • Leake'3 Historicul Account of English Bloney, Snd Edit. ji. 77. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 339 by this class of the rural population are still visible in many of the southern counties on land now con- verted into pasture. The manor-house was sur- rounded by a moat, and occupied a large site, as it comprised three gardens and two court-yards. A pigeon-house, fish-ponds, and a rabbit-warren were the usual appendages of a manorial residence. The rabbit-warren supplied not only food, but ma- terials of dress in common use ; and on fast-days the fish-ponds were a valuable resource. From two successive surveys of the manor of Hawsted which are recorded within the present period, it appears that a change was taking place in the pro- portion of meadow and arable land, the former being to the latter as 24 to 1, at the time of the first survey, and only as about 11 to 1 at the time of the second. This effect is to be attributed to the increasing value of wool, which rendered sheep a profitable stock. The quantity of woodland was only 68 acres in the whole parish of Hawsted ; but it is surmised that the hedge-rows and borders of the fields were broad, and interspersed with tim- ber, and also contained patches which furnished a considerable addition to the quantity of fodder. The lord of the manor retained in his own hands 572 acres of arable and 50 of meadow land ; pas- ture for 24 cows, 12 horses, and as many oxen; and 40 acres of woodland. The live stock con- sisted of 10 horses and 10 oxen, 1 bull, 20 cows, 6 heifers, 6 calves, 92 sheep, 200 two-year- old sheep, 5 geese, 30 capons, 1 cock, and 26 hens. The number of tenants who did suit and service in the manorial court was 32. They per- formed various services in husbandry, according to the tenure under which they occupied their land, and received from the lord payments in kind and in money, but chiefly in the former. One tenant occupied only three acres, and his condition pro- bably bore a strong resemblance to the Irish cottier of the present day. Plenty was, at least, to be found in the manor-house, and it was occasionally dispensed with a liberal hand. In the reign of Edward II. the estate of the elder Spenser was ravaged by his enemies, who are asserted to have carried away, among other things, 28,000 sheep, 1000 oxen and heifers, 1200 cows with their calves for two years, 500 cart-horses, and 2000 hogs. The diet of the labourers in husbandry usually consisted, in harvest, of herrings, a- loaf of bread, and beer. The principal meals were two — dinner at nine, and supper at five. In the parish of Haw- sted the allowance of food to the labourer in harvest was, two herrings per day, milk from the manor dairy to make cheese, and a loaf of bread, of which fifteen were made from a bushel of wheat. Messes of pottage made their frequent appearance at the rustic board. When the crops were harvested, the portions of the produce to which each tenant was entitled would be distributed, and the quantity which he obtained at this period was intended to last until the next harvest. In ancient valuations, both in towns and in rural districts, the inhabitants are mentioned as having stores of corn of various kinds. Those who purchased corn would do so immediately after harvest ; but grain was not an object of internal commerce to any great extent. The famines which occurred during this and the preceding period arose in a great measure from the improvident consumption which ensued imme- diately after harvest. In 1317 the harvest was all secured by the 1st of September, and wheat fell to one-twelfth of the price at which it had been sold a few weeks before. In the poem called the ' Visions of Pierce Plowman,' written in the time of Edward III., it is said that when the new corn began to be sold, — " Would no l)ej,'!jai- e:vl bread that in it beanes were. But of cocliit and clemantyne, or else clene wliete." Draget and siligo were common crops. The for- mer consisted of a mixture of oats and barley, and the latter was a light description of wheat, about one-half the price of wheat. Many documents relating to the occupancy of land during this period do not contain any clauses binding the tenant to pursue a particular course of husbandry ; but in some of them a stipulation is made that the landlord shall not interfere with the mode of culture. There was much jealousy on both sides, each party surrounding himsel£ with various precautions. Two days of grace were allowed for the payment of the rent, and if it were not made within a fortnight the landlord could distrain ; and if the rent remained unpaid a month after becoming due, he could re-enter upon the possession of the land. There are records extant showing the value of estates ; but as the services of the tenantry were included, the price of the land alone cannot perhaps be accurately determined. Sir T. Cullum supposes 4d. an acre to have- been about the average rate at which land was let towards the close of the" thirteenth century ; and that the average price of wheat per quarter was 4s. 6d., and the average produce about twelve bushels per acre. Attention appears to have been paid to the quality of the seed ; and an item occurs in one year of 35. Ad. for exchange of barley seed. A century earlier, according to the law-book entitled ' Fleta,' which contains various notices on agricul- tural affairs, land often yielded only three times the quantity sown. At a later period, 61 acres in the manor of Hawsted produced 10 quarters of wheat, on an average of three years. The cows belonging to the manor of Hawsted (26 in number) were let to a dairyman for 8/. per annum ; and even the lactage of the ewes was let at l^rf. each for the season. The milk was mixed with that of the cows, and made into cheese. In ' Fleta' directions are given for the collection of manure, the value of which was generally appreciated ; but the fertile properties of the ■ soil were most likely exhausted by taking off successive crops of the sam.e kind. The tenants on many manors were not permitted to fold their flocks on their own enclosures, but were compelled to drive them on the lord's demesne land. On a manor in Norfolk all copyholders were 840 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. obliged to have sheep ia their lord's fold from Pentecost to St. Martin. The tenants who enjoyed the right of foldage were of a superior class. Many of the smalkr tenants had no pasture or meadow land, and could therefore scarcely keep any live stock unless where common rights existed. Under these circumstances they would with difficulty derive the means of a scanty subsistence from their allotments. On the manorial farms the case would be somewhat better. In 1386, the produce of the Hawsted manor farm was 69 qrs. of wheat, .54 qrs. of barley, 1 1 qrs. of pease, 29 qrs. of haras (horses' food), and 65 qrs. of oats. In 138*3 the quantity of land sown with wheat was 66 acres, 2 bushels to an acre ; barley 26 acres, 4 bushels to the acre; pease 25 acres; haras 25 acres ; oats 62 acres, 2 J bushels to the acre. The persons employed on a manorial farm were, the steward, the bailiff, the head harvest-man, carters, ploughmen, plough-drivers, shepherds, swineherds, and deyes ; which last were the lowest order of agricultural labourers. The steward held the manor-courts, and saw that the manorial privi- leges did not become obsolete. He kept accounts of the farming-stock and of the consumption of the family, and the domestics were under his care. The steward's accounts for the manor of Hawsted are regularly audited, and written out in Latin, probably by the auditor, who, it is supposed, was an ecclesiastic. The bailiff was next in authority, and was, in fact, a practical farmer, who superin- tended the cultivation of the demesne. The head harvest-man was, in the manor of Hawsted, annually elected by the tenantry from amongst themselves, and was presented by them to the lord. During the year of his appointment he enjoyed an exemption from various services, and obtained other privileges. He had his meals at the lord's table, if he kept house, and if not, a livery of corn, and a horse was kept for him in the lord's stable. In 1283, when ' Fleta' was written, the plough- driver was accustomed to sleep in the same build- ing with his cattle. Women took part in the lighter labours of husbandry. For winnowing corn and tending the young cattle, as also the geese and poultry belonging to the Hawsted manor-farm, for fourteen weeks, a woman received eight bushels of siligo. It has been already observed, that the labours of the field did not proceed so uninter- ruptedly as at a later period. Except in seed-time, the weeding season, and the hay and corn harvests, there must have been a real lack of occupation. It seems to have been an object to finish harvest in the shortest possible time; and the business of seed-time must have been conducted with equal rapidity. There are items in the Hawsted ac- counts showing that sixty persons were paid for one day, at Id. each, to weed the corn. Harvest was a scene of still greater animation. In one year, 520 persons were hired for one day ; in ano- ther year, 533 ; and in a third, 538 ; and yet the number of acres to be reaped did not exceed 200. The old and young of both sexes must have been a-field. The termination of the harvest was fol- lowed by those festivities which are not yet alto- gether obsolete. A list of the various trades and handicrafts of the time will afford as good an idea of the general state of the useful arts as more detailed notices of the minute operations of each. Before the 50th Edward III. (1376), the "mysteries," or trades of London, who elected the common council of the city, were thirty-two in number, but they were increased by an ordinance of the above year to fort}'-eight, which were as follow : — Grocers, masons, ironmongers, mercers, brewers, leather- dressers, drapers, fletchers, armourers, fishmongers, bakers, butchers, goldsmiths, skinners, cutlers, vintners, girdlers, spurriers, tailors, stainers, plum- bers, saddlers, cloth-measurers, wax-chandlers, Webbers, haberdashers, barbers, tapestry-weavers, braziers, painters, leather-sellers, salters, tanners, joiners, cappers, pouch-makers, pewterers, chand- ler?, hatters, woodmongers, fullers, smiths, pinners, curriers, horners. The incorporation of several of the great city companies took place in this period. Many of them had long subsisted as gilds and fraternities, but now obtained additional powers for regulating their respective crafts. To the goldsmiths, for instance, was assigned the assaying of metals ; to the vintners the gauging of wines; and to the fishmongers the inspection of fish. In 1298 the trades of London got up a pageant in honour of the return of Edward III. from Scotland ; and at all times when the honour and dignity of the city was concerned, they took from this time a most im- portant share in the proceedirigs. In the reign of Edward III. there were but two earls and one bishop amongst the honorary members of the Merchant-Tailors' Company ; but in the following reign there were four royal dukes, ten earls, ten barons, and five bishops enrolled in the company. Edward III. became a member of the fraternity of linen-armourers, a sort of tailors, who made the padding and lining of armour.* A large portion of the trade of the country was transacted at fiiirs and markets. The tradesmen of London had shops in the Cheap, which resem- bled sheds, and many of them had simply stalls ; and travelling occasionally from place to place, they may be considered as having been pedlers as well as tradesmen. The mercers dealt in toys, drugs, spices, and small wares generally; their stocks being of the same miscellaneous description as that which is kept at a village-shop in the pre- sent day. The station of the mercers of London was between Bow Church and Friday-street ; and here, around the old cross of Cheap, they sold their goods at little standings or stalls, surrounded by those belonging to other trades. The scene would resemble a market or fair. The places at which they transacted their business were let at rates varying from \\s. to 28^. per year.t The trade of • Herbert's Hist, of the Livery Comi'auies of London, t Stowe. Chap. IV.] NATIONAL INDUSTRY: A.D. 1216—1399. 841 the modern grocer was preceded by that of the pepperer, which was often in the hands of Lom- bards and Itahans, who dealt also in drugs and spices. The drapers were originally manufacturers of cloth : to drape signified to make cloth. The trade of the fishmonger was divided into two branches, the persons belonging to one of which dealt chiefly or altogether in salted fish, then a common article of diet. The skinners were incor- porated during the present period. They were in the habit of attending the fairs, particularly those of Stamford and Winchester. The goldsmiths were also incorporated about the same time. They existed previously as a gild; and all those who were members of the fraternity had their shops in the street of Cheap; but fraudulent traders set up shops in obscure lanes, where they endea- voured to sell goods of inferior metal. Many of the goldsmiths were foreigners. Tailors were employed in making women's garments. The haberdashers dealt in a great number of articles. The dealers in hats were called haberdashers of hats; and those who sold ribbons, &c., haber- dashers of small wares. They dealt in articles of dress brought from Milan ; and a distinct branch arose out of this trade, the persons engaged in it being called milliners. The vintners were anciently known as the Merchant Vintners of Gascony ; and the retail dealers in wine as the Wine-tunners. The division of employments was most complete in connexion with the woollen manufacture. In the provincial towns, trade was of course con- ducted on a smaller scale than in London. The exchange of commodities was effected to a great extent at the fairs and at the markets, and they gave an air of animation and life which would strongly contrast with the dulness by which they were preceded and followed. In the reign of Edward IIL Colchester contained 359 houses, some built of mud, others of timber, and none having any but latticed windows; and yet there were only about nine towns in England of greater importance. The number of inhabitants was about 3000. In the year 1301 all the moveable pro- perty of the town, including the furniture and clothing of the inhabitants, was worth only 518/. Colchester was the centre of resort for a large district, and the trades carried on in it were the twenty-nine following : — baker, barber, blacksmith, bowyer, brewer, butcher, carpenter, carter, cobbler, cook, dyer, fisherman, fuller, furrier, girdler, glass- seller, glover, linendraper, mercer and spice seller, miller, mustard and vinegar seller, old clothes' seller, tailor, tanner, tiler, weaver, wood-cutter, and wool-comber. The tools of a carpenter at Col- chester consisted of a broad-axe, value 5c/. ; ano- ther 3d.; an adze 2d.; a square Id.; a navegor (probably a spoke-shave) Id.; making the total value of the implements of his art only 1^. The tools and stock of a blacksmith were valued at only a few shillings, the highest sum being 12s. The stock in trade and household goods of a tanner were estimated at 9/. lis. lOd. A mercer's stock was valued at 3/. ; his household property at 21. 9s. The mustard and vinegar seller was a necessary trade when so much meat was eaten in a salted state. Several trades, including those of the brewer, the baker, and the miller appear to have been carried on by women as well as by men.* • Eden's Stale of the Poor, i. 19—24. 842 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. CHAPTER V. THE HISTORY OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND THE FINE ARTS. FTER the detailed account given in the last Book of the va- rious branches of science and learning cultivated in the ele- venth and twelfth cen- turies, a very few ad- ditional remarks will suffice to indicate the state of knowledge in the thirteenth and fourteenth. The study of elegant literature was now nearly altogether abandoned in the passion which everywhere raged for metaphysical disputation. Almost the only writer of this period who can be regarded as be- longing to the same class with the numerous Latin poets of the preceding age, is William the Breton, the author of the epic on the actions of Philip Augustus, to which we have more than once re- ferred. In the University of Paris, and it was doubtless the same elsewhere, from the beginning of the thirteenth century, the ancient classics seem nearly to have ceased to be read ; aaid all that was taught of rhetoric, or even of grammar, consisted of a few lessons from Priscian. The habit of speak- ing Latin correctly and elegantly, which had been so common an accomplishment of the scholars of the last age, was now generally lost : even at the universities, the classic tongue was corrupted into a base jargon, in which frequently all grammar and syntax -were disregarded. This universal revolt from the study of words and of aesthetics to that of thoughts and of things is the most remarkable event in the intellectual history of the species. Undoubtedly all its results were not evil. On the whole, it was most probably the salvation even of that learning and elegant literature which it seemed for a time to have overwhelmed. The excitement of its very novelty awakened the minds of men. Never was there such a ferment of intellectual activity as now sprung up in Europe. The enthusiasm of the crusades seemed to have been succeeded by an enthusiasm of study, which equally impelled its successive inundations of de- votees. In the beginning of the fourteenth century there were thirty thousand students at the Uni- versity of Oxford; and that of Paris could pro- bably boast of the attendance of a still vaster mul- titude. This was something almost like a universal diffusion of education and knowledge. The studies of the former age, exacting as they did a long and laborious course of preparation, and the culture of the taste to the most delicate degree of refine- ment, were essentially unsuited either to produce such a state of things or to satisfy its demands after it was produced ; it required something of a coarser or homelier fabric, something that tasked rather the native vigour of men's minds than their artificial resources and accomplishments, and ap- pealed to passions or senses of a much lower and more common order than those connected with the imagination or the taste. The new studies at once tempted men's curiosity and flattered their vanity ; they seemed to promise a positive accession of knowledge and power, instead of a mere barren intellectual gratification. And they did undoubtedly tend to sharpen and strengthen various faculties which were scarcely at all called into exercise by the old mode of ediication and mental culture. It was no doubt a barbarous mistake to assume that nothing was worth studying except things and notions, — of the three great departments of the in- tellectual world, the physical, the metaphysical, and the imaginative, to overlook altogether the widest and highest — not to speak of the very partial view that was taken of the two others. But essentially defective and perishable also was the opposite system, which left both the latter wholly unregarded. The brief revival of elegant literature in the twelfth century was a premature spring, which could not last. The preliminary processes of vegetation were not sufficiently ad- vanced to sustain any general or enduring efflores- cence; nor was the state of the world such as to call for or admit of any extensive diffusion of the kind of scholarship then cultivated. The probability is, that even if nothing else had taken its place, it would have gradually become feebler in character, as well as confined within a narrower circle of cultivators, till it had altogether evaporated and disappeared. Tlie excitement of the new learning, turbulent and in some respects debasing as it was, saved western Europe from the complete extinction of the light of scholarship and philosophy which would in that case have ensued, and kept alive the spirit of in- tellectual culture, though in tlie mean while impri- soned and limited in its vision, for a happier future time when it should have ampler scope and full freedom of range. Almost the only studies now cultivated by the com- mon herd of students were the Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. Yet it was not tiU after a struggle of Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 843 some length that the supremacy of Aristotle was established in the schools. The most ancient statutes of the University of Paris that have been preserved, those issued by the pope's legate, Robert de Courcon, in 1215, prohibited the reading either of the metaphysical or the physical works of that philosopher, or of any abridgment of them. This, however, it has been remarked, was a mitigation of the treatment these books had met with a few years before, when all the copies of them that could be found were ordered to be thrown into the fire.* Still more lenient was a decree of Pope Gregory IX. in 1231, which only ordered the reading of them to be suspended until they should have under- gone correction. Certain heretical notions in re- ligion, promulgated or suspected to have been entertained by some of the most zealous of the early Aristotelians, had awakened the apprehensions of the church ; but the general orthodoxy of their successors quieted these fears ; and in course of time the avithority of the Stagy rite was imiversally recognised both in theology and in the profane sciences. Some of the most distinguished of the scholastic doctors of this period were natives of Britain. Such, in particular, were Alexander de Hales, styled the Irrefragable, an English Franciscan, who died at Paris in 124.5, and who is famous as the roaster of St. Bonaventura, and the first of the long list of commentators on the Four Books of the Sentences ; the Subtle Doctor, John Duns Scotus, also a Franciscan and the chief glory of that order, who, after teaching with unprecedented popularity and applause at Oxford and Paris, died at Cologne in 1308 at the early age of forty-three, leaving a mass of writings, the very quantity of which would be sufficiently wonderful even if they were not marked by a vigour and penetration of thought which, down to our own day, has excited the admiration of all who have examined them ; and William Occam, the Invincible, another Fran- ciscan, the pupil of Scotus, but afterwards his opponent on the great philosophical question of the origin and nature of Universals or General Terms, which so long divided, and still divides, logicians. Occam, who died at Munich in 1347, was the restorer, and perhaps the most able defender that the middle ages produced, of the doctrine of No- minalism, or the opinion that general notions are merely names, and not real existences, as was con- tended by the Realists. The side taken by Occam was that of the minority in his own day, and for many ages after, and his views accordingly were generally regarded as heterodox in the schools ; but his high merits have been recognised in modern times, when perhaps the greater number of specu- lators have come over to his way of thinking. In the mathematical and physical sciences, Roger Bacon is the great name of the thirteenth century, and indeed the greatest that either his country or Europe can produce for some centuries after this time. He was born at Ilchester about * Crevier, Histoiro de I'Univ. de Paris, J. 313. the year 1214, and died in 1292. His writings that are still preserved, of which the prhicipal is that entitled his Opus Majus (or Greater Work), show that the range of his investigations included theology, grammar, the ancient languages, geo- metry, 'astronomy, chronology, geography, music, optics, mechanics, chemistry, and most of the other branches of experimental philosophy. In all these sciences he had mastered whatever was then known; and his knowledge, though necessarily mixed with mxich error, extended in various direc- tions considerably farther than, but for the evidence of his writings, we should have been warranted in believing that scientific researches had been carried in that age. In optics, for instance, he not only understood the general laws of reflected and re- fracted light, and had at least conceived such an instrument as a telescope, but he makes some advances towards an explanation of the phenomenon of the rainbow. It may be doubted whether what have been sometimes called his inventions and dis- coveries in mechanics and in chemistry were for the greater part more than notions he had formed of the possibility of accomplishing certain results ; but even regarded as mere speculations or con- jectures, many of his statements of what might be done show that he was familiar with mechanical principles, and possessed a considerable acquaint- ance with the powers of natural agents. He appears to have known the effects and composition of gunpowder, which indeed there is other evidence for believing to have been then known in Europe. Bacon's notions on the right method of philosophiz- ing are remarkably enlightened for the times in which he lived ; and his general views upon most subjects evince a penetration and liberality much beyond the spirit of his age. With all his sagacity and freedom from prejudice, indeed, he was a believer both in astrology and alchemy ; but, as it has been observed, these delusions did not then stand in the same predicament as now : they were " irrational only because unproved, and neither impossible nor unworthy of the investigation of a philosopher, in the absence of preceding experi- ments."* Another eminent English cultivator of mathematical science in that age was the celebrated Robert Grostete, or Greathead, Bishop of Lincoln, the friend and patron of Bacon. Grostfete, who died in 1253, is the author of a treatise on the sphere, which had been printed. A third name that deserves to be mentioned along with these is that of Sir Michael Scott, of Balwirie, in Fife, famous in popular tradition as a practitioner of the occult sciences, but whom his writings, of which several are extant and have been printed, prove to have been possessed of acquirements both in science and literature, of wliich few in those times could boast. He is said to have been born about the beginning of the thirteenth century, and to have survived till the year 1290. Like Roger Bacon, Scott was addicted to the study of alchemy and astrology ; but these were in his eyes also parts of • Penny CyclopaiUia, iii. 243. 8U HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. A Tower which formerly stood on the Bridge at Oxford, traditionally known as Eggek Bacon's Study— the " Bacon's mansion " alluded to by Johnson in his " Vanity of Human Wishes." natural philosophy. Among other works, a Trea- tise on Physiognomy and a History of Animals are ascribed to him. He is said to have translated several of the works of Aristotle from the Greek into Latin, at the command of the Emperor Fre- deric II. He is spoken of as having been emi- nently skilled both in astronomy and medicine ; and a contemporary, John Bacon, himself known by the title of Prince of the Averroists, or followers of the Arabian Doctor Averroes, celebrates him as a great theologian.* These instances, however, were rare exceptions to the general rule. Metaphysics and logic, toge- ther with divinity — which was converted into little else than a subject of metaphysical and logical contention — so occupied the crowd of intellectual inquirers, that, except the professional branches of law and medicine, scarcely any other studies were generally attended to. Roger Bacon himself tells us that he knew of only two good mathematicians among his contemporaries — one John of Leyden, who had been a pupil of his own, and another whom he does not name, but who is su])posed to have been John Peckham, a Franciscan iriar, who afterwards became archbishop of Canterbury. Few students of the science, he says, proceeded farther than the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid — the well-known asses' bridge. The study of geometry was still confounded in the popular understanding with the study of magic — a proof that it was a very rare pursuit. In arithmetic, • See an article on Michael Scott in Baylo, although the knowledge of the Arabic numerals had found its way to Europe before the middle of the fourteenth century, they do not appear to have come into general use till a consider- ably later date. Astronomy, however, was suffi- ciently cultivated at the University of Paris to enable some of the members to predict an eclipse of the Sim which happened on tlie 31st of January, 1310.* This science was indebted fur part of the attention it received to the belief that was uni- versally entertained in the influence of the stars over human affairs. And as astrology led to the cultivation and improvement of astronomy, so the other imaginary science of alchemy undoubtedly aided the progress of chemistry and medicine. Besides Roger Bacon and Michael Scott in the thirteenth century, England contributed the names of John Daustein, of Richard, and of Cremer, abbot of Westminster, the disciple and friend of the famous Raymond LuUy, to the list of the writers on alchemy in the fourteenth. Lully himself visited England in the reign of Edward I., on the invitation of the king ; and he affirms in one of his works, that in the secret chamber of St. Katherine in the Tower of London, he performed in the royal presence the experiment of transmuting some crystal into a mass of diamond, or adamant as he calls it, of which Edward, he says, caused some little pillars to be made for the tabernacle of God. It was popularly believed, indeed, at the time, that the English king had been furnished by Lully • Crevier, ii. 224. Chap, v.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 845 with a great quantity of gold for defraying the ex- pense of an expedition he mtended to make to the Holy Land. Edward III, was not less credulous on this subject than his grandfather, as appears by an order which he issued in 1329, in the following terms : — " Know all men, that we have been assured that John of Rous and Master William of Dalby know how to make silver by the art of alchemy ; that they have made it in former times, and still continue to make it ; and, considering that these men, by their art, and by making the pre- cious metal, may be profitable to us and to our kingdom, we have commanded our well-beloved Thomas Gary to apprehend the aforesaid John and William, wherever they can be found, within liberties or without, and bring them to us, together with all the instruments of their art, under safe and sure custody." The earliest English writer on medicine, whose works have been printed, is Gilbert English (or Anglicus), who flourished in the thir- teenth century ; and he was followed in the next century by John de Gaddesden. The practice of medicine had now been taken in a great measure out of the hands of the clergy ; but the art was still in the greater part a mixture of superstition and quackery, although the knowledge of some useful remedies, and perhaps also of a few principles, had been ob- tained from the writings of the Arabic physicians (many of which had been translated into Latin) and from the instructions delivered in the schools of Spain and Italy. The distinction between the physician and the apothecary was now well under- stood. Surgery also began to be followed as a separate branch : some works are still extant, partly printed, partly in manuscript, by John Ardern, or Arden, an eminent English surgeon, who practised at Newark in the fourteenth century. A lively picture of the state of the surgical art at this period is given by a French writer, Guy de Cauliac, in a system of surgery which he published in 1363 : " The practitioners in surgery," he says, " are di- vided into five sects. The first follow Roger and Roland, and the four masters, and apply poultices to all wounds and abscesses; the second follow Brunus and Theodoric, and in the same cases use wine only ; the third follow Saliceto and Lan- franc, and treat wounds with ointments and soft plasters ; the fourth are chiefly Germans, Avho attend the armies, and promiscuously use charms, potions, oil, and wool; the fifth are old women and ignorant people, who have recourse to the saints in all cases." Yet the true method of philosophising, by expe- riment and the collection of facts, was almost as distinctly and emphatically laid down in this age by Roger Bacon, as it was more than three cen- turies afterwards by his illuttrious namesake. Much knowledge, too, must necessarily have been accumulated in various departments by the actual application of this method. Some of the greatest of the modern chemists have bestowed the highest praise on the manner in which the experiments of the alchemists, or hermetic philosophers, as they called themselves, on metals and other natural substances appear to have been conducted. In another field, namely, in that of geography, and the institutions, customs, and general state of dis- tant countries, a great deal of new information must have been acquired from the accounts that were now published by various travellers, especially by Marco Polo, who penetrated as far as to Tar- tary and China, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and by our countryman, Sir John Mande- ville, who also traversed a great part of the East about a hundred years later. Roger Bacon has inserted a very curious epitome of the geographical knowledge of his time in his ' Opus Majus.' About the middle of the thirteenth century, both in England and elsewhere, the Universities began to assume a new form, by the erection of colleges for the residence of their members as separate communities. The zeal for learning that was dis- played in these munificent endowments is the most honourable characteristic of the age. Within the present period the following colleges were founded at Oxford : — University Hall, by William, arch- deacon of Durham, who died in 1249 ; Baliol Col- lege, by John Baliol, the father of King John of Scotland, about 1263; Merton College, by AValter Merton, Bishop of Rochester, in 1268 ; Exeter College, by Walter Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, about 1315; Oriel College, originally called the Hall of the Blessed Virgin of Oxford, by Edward II. and his almoner, Adam de Brom, about 1324; Queen's College; by Robert Eglesfield, chaplain to Queen Philippa, in 1340 ; and New College, in 1379, by the celebrated William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, the munificent founder also of Winchester College. In the University of Cambridge the foundations were, Peter House, by Hugh Balsham, sub-prior and afterwards Bishop of Ely, about 1256 ; Michael College (afterwards incorporated with Trinity College), by Herby de Stanton, Chancellor of the Excheqiier to Edward II., about 1324; University Hall (soon afterwards burnt down), by Richard Badew, Chancellor of the University, in 1326 ; King's Hall (afterwards united to Trinity College), by Edward III.; Clare Hall, a restoration of University Hall, by Eliza- beth de Clare, Countess of Ulster, about 1347 ; Pembroke Hall, or the Hall of Valence and Mary, in the same year, by Mary de St. Paul, widow of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke; Trinity Hall, in 1350, by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich ; Gonvil Hall, about the same time, by Edmond Gonvil, parson of Terrington and Rush- worth, in Norfolk ; and Corpus Christi, or Bennet College, about 1351, by the United Guilds of Cor- pus Christi and St. Mary, in the town of Cam- bridge. The erection of these colleges, besides the accommodations which they afforded in various ways both to teachers and students, gave a perma- nent establishment to the universities which they scarcely before possessed. The original condition of these celebrated seats of learning in regard to all the conveniences of teaching appears to have . 846 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. ^^^■>%M ^*S*^r- The Schooi, of Pythagoras, Cambridge. An ancient Hostel, said to have been used for the residence of Students, before the foundation of Colleges been humble in the extreme. Great disorders and scandals are also said to have arisen, before the several societies were thus assembled each within its own walls, from the intermixture of the students with the townspeople, and their exemption from all discipline. But when the members of the University were counted by tens of thousands, dis- cipline even in the most advantageous circum- stances must have been nearly out of the question. The difficulty would not be lessened by the general character of the persons composing the learned mob, if we may take it from the quaint historian of the University of Oxford. Many of them, Anthony a Wood affirms, were mere " varlets who pretended to be scholars :" he does not scruple to charge them with being habitually guilty of thieving and other enormities ; and he adds, " they lived under no discipline, neither had any tutors, but only for fashion sake would sometimes thrust them- selves into the schools at ordinary lectures, and when they went to perform any mischiefs, then would they be accounted scholars, that so they might free themselves from the jurisdiction of the burghers." To repress the evils of this state of things, the old statutes of the University of Paris, in 121.5, had ordained that no one should be reputed a scholar who had not a certain master. Another of these ancient regulations may be quoted in illustration of the simplicity of the times, and of the small measure of pomp and circumstance that the heads of the commonwealth of learning could then affect. It is ordered that every master reading lectures in the faculty of arts should have his cloak or gown, round, black, and falling as low as the heels, " at least," adds the statute, with amusing naivete, " while it is new." But this famous seminary long continued to take pride in its poverty as one of its most honourable distinc- tions. There is something very noble and afi'ecting in the terms in which the rector and masters of the faculty of arts are found petitioning, in 1362, for a postponement of the hearing of a cause in which they were parties : " We have difficulty," they say, " in finding the money to pay the procurators and advocates, whom it is necessary for us to employ — xoe whose profession it is to possess no ivealth.'^* Yet when funds were wanted for important pur- poses in connexion with learning or science, they were supplied in this age with no stinted liberality. We have seen with what alacrity opulent persons came forward to build and endow colleges, as soon as the expediency of such foundations came to be perceived. In almost all these establishments more or less provision was made for the permanent maintenance of a body of poor scholars, in other words, for the admission of even the humblest classes to a share in the benefits of that learned education whose temples and priesthood were thus planted in the land. It is probable, also, that the same kind of liberality was often shown in other ways. Roger Bacon tells us himself that, in the twenty years in which he had been engaged in liis experiments, he had spent in books and instru- • Crevier, iL 404. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 847 ments no less a sum than two thousand French livres, an amount of silver equal to about six thousand pounds of our present money, and in effective value certainly to many times that sum. He must have been indebted for these large sup- plies to the generosity of rich friends and patrons. Notwithstanding the general neglect of its ele- gancies, and of the habit of speaking it correctly or grammatically, the Latin tongue continued through- out this period to be in England as elsewhere the common language of the learned, and that in which books were generally written that were intended for their perusal. Among this class of works may be included the contemporary chronicles, many of which were compiled in the monasteries, and the authors of almost all of which were churchmen. Matthew Pabis. from a drawing by himself, in a MS. of the " Historia Major." The most eminent English historian of the thir- teenth century is Matthew Paris, who was a Bene- dictine monk of the monastery of St. Alban's, and was also much employed in affairs of state during the reign of Henry ill. He died in 1259; and his principal work, entitled ' Historia Major,' (the Greater History,) begins at the Norman Con- quest and comes down to that year. The portion of it, however, extending to the year 1235 is said to be copied from a work by Roger Windsor, or Wendover, a manuscript of which is in the Cot- tonian Library. Matthew Paris is one of the most spirited and rhetorical of our old Latin his- torians ; and the extraordinary freedom with which he expresses himself, in regard especially to the usurpations of the court of Rome, forms a striking contrast to the almost uniform tone of his monkish brethren. Nor does he show less boldness in animadverting upon the vices and delinquencies of kings and of the great in general. These qualities have in modern times gained him much admiration among writers of one party, and much obloquy from those of another. His work has always been bitterly decried by the Catholics, who at one time, indeed, were accustomed to maintain that much of what appeared in the printed copies of it was the interpolation of its Protestant editors. This charge has now been abandoned ; but an eminent Catholic historian of the present day lias not hesitated to denounce the narrative of the monk of St. Albans as " a romance rather than a history," on the ground of the great discrepancy which he asserts he has found between it and authentic records or contemporary writers, in most instances when he could confront the one with the other.* The ' Historia Major ' has been continued to the death of Henry HL, by William Rishanger, a monk, as it is supposed, of the same abbey.f Among the other contemporary chroniclers of this period who wrote in Latin, the principal are, Thomas Wykes (in Latin, Vicanus or Wicelus), a canon regular of Osney, near Oxford, whose Chronicle extends from the Conquest to 1304; Walter Hemingford, a monk of Gisborough in Yorkshire, the author of a valuable history from the Conquest to 1347 ; Ro- bert de Avesbury, register of the court of the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, whose History of the reign of Edward III. is esteemed for its accuracy, but comes down only to 1356; Nicholas Trivet, prior of a Dominican monastery in London, who wrote a history of national affairs under the title of ' Annals' from 1130 to 1307; Ralph Higden, a monk of St. Wesburg in Chester, whose ' Polychronicon,' which ends in 1357, was translated into English by John de Trevisa, a Cornish divine, before the end of the fourteenth century ; Henry Knighton (or Cnitton, as he himself spells the name), a canon of Leicester, the author of a History from the time of King Edgar to 1395, and also of an account of the Deposition of Richard II. ; and Adam Merimuth, a canon regular of St. Paul's, whose annals commence in 1302 and extend to 1380.t To these may be added various monastic registers, such as those of Mailros, ending in 1270; of Margan, ending in 1232; of Burton, ending in 1263; of Waverley, ending in 1291, &c. John Fordun, the earliest of * Dr. I.insivrd, Hist, of Eng. iii. IGO. Edit, of 1837. + Tlio History of Mattliew Paris was first printed at London in 1571, in folio. The subsequent editions, also, all in folio, are Zurich, 160G; I,oudon, by Dr. W. Wats, 1640; Paris, 1644; and London, 1884. To the latter editions are appended some other historical pieces of the author, under the title of ' Addilamenta.' There also exists, in manuscript, an abridjjment of Matthew Paris's History, drawn up by himself, and generally referred to as tlie ' Historia Minor,' or the 'Chronica,' which last appears to have been the original title. X All these have been published, either separately by Hearue and other editors, or in the collections of Gale and Twysden. See ante, p. 614. 848 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. the Scottish regular chroniclers, also flourished in the fourteenth century. His Scotichronicon brings down the history of Scotland to the year 1385. Latin was also, throughout a great part of this period, the usual language of the law, at least in writing. All the charters of liberties are in Latin. So is every statute down to the year 1275. The first that is in French is the Statute of Westminster the First, passed in that year, the 3rd of Edward L Throughout the remainder of the reign of Edward they are sometimes in Latin, sometimes in French, but more frequently in the former language. The French becomes more frequent in the time of Edward IL, and is almost exclusively used in that of Edward IIL and Richard IL Still there are statutes in Latin in the sixth and eighth years of the last- mentioned king. It is not improbable that, from the accession of Edward I., the practice may have been to draw up every statute in both languages. Of the law treatises, Bracton and Fleta are in Latin ; Britton and the Miroir des Justices, in French. Latin was the language in which not only all the scholastic divines and philosophers wrote, but which was also employed by all writers on geometry, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and the other branches of mathematical and natural science. All the works of Roger Bacon, for ex- ample, are in Latin ; and it is worth noting that, although by no means a writer of classical purity, this distinguished cultivator of science is still one of the most correct writers of his time. He was indeed not a less zealous student of literature than of science, nor less anxious for the improvement of the one than of the other : accustomed himself to read the works of Aristotle in the original Greek, he denounces as mischievous impositions the wretched Latin translations by which alone they were known to the generality of his contemporaries : he warmly recommends the study of grammar and the ancient languages generally ; and deplores the little attention paid to the Oriental tongues in particular, of which he says there were not in his time more than three or four persons in western Europe who knew anything. It is remarkable that the most strenuous effort made within the present period to revive the study of this last-mentioned learning proceeded from another eminent cultivator of natural science, the famous Raymond Lully, half philosopher, half quack, as it has been the fashion to regard him. It was at his instigation that Clement V., in 1311, with the approbation of the Council of Vienne, published a constitution, ordering that professors of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic should be established in the univer- sities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. He had, more than twenty years before, urged the same measure upon Honorius IV., and its adoption then was only prevented by the death of that pope. After all, it is doubtful if the papal ordinance- was ever carried into effect. There were, however, professors of strange, or foreign, languages at Paris a few years after this time, as appears from an epistle of Pope John XXII. to his legate there in 1325, in which the latter is enjoined to keep watch over the said professors, lest they should introduce any dogmas as strange as the languages they taught.* French, which had been the language of the court and of the nobility in England from the Conquest, and in some measure, indeed, from the accession of the Confessor, was now also exten- sively employed in literary compositions. There were at this time two great dialects of the French tongue, which were familiarly distinguished as the Langue d'oc and the Langue d'oyl, from the tM'o words for yes, which were oc in the one, and oj/lj afterwards oij or or/i, in the other. Tlie Langue d'oc was the popular speech of the southern ; the Langue d'oyl, of the northern provinces ; Thoulouse being accounted the capital of the former, Paris of the latter ; and the river Loire forming (though by no means with strict accuracy) the gene- ral line of division.! The French which was brought over to England by the Norman conquer- ors was, of course, a dialect of the Langue d'oyl; and such accordingly our law French always con- tinued to be. But the annexation to the English crown of Poitou and Aquitaine, on the accession of Henry II., immediately established as intimate a connexion between this country and that of the Langue d'oc, as had existed for a century before with that of the Langue d'oyl. The former had already for some time received a literary cultiva- tion, and had been made to flow in song in the com- positions of the troubadours, or professors of the gay science, as the Proven9al poets called themselves. Duke William IX. of Aquitaine, the father of Henry's Queen Eleanor, had himself been one of the most distinguished of these sires of the minstrelsy of modern Europe, from whom sprung alike Dante and his successors, the cultivators of the Lingua volgare of Italy, and the trouveurs, or first metrical writers in the dialect of northern France. It ap- pears, at least, to be most probable (although some eminent authorities have maintained a different opinion) that the latter dialect was not made use of for poetical composition till a considerable time after that of the south had begun to be so employed ; but it is certain that long poems were already written in it before the close of the twelfth century ; • Cievier, Hist, de I'Univ. de Paris, ii. 112 and 227. t The Liinguo d'oc is also often called the Provencal tongue; and to th(! I.Mnsue d'oyl exclusively it has been usual to apply the names of the old French and the Romance, though the latter, at least, really belongs as rightfully to the Langue d'oc, meaning, as it does, nothing more than the Roman or Latin dialect, as the provincial Latin of Gaul was denominated, in contradistinction to the originiil Celtic lan- guage of the people. Both the Langue d'oyl and the Langue d'oc, therefore, were, properly speaking, Romance. They were also equally French in every respsct except one, namely, that it is from the Langue d'oyl, certainly, that the modern French has been principally formed. In the proper sense of this term, however, it is applicable to neither ; the French, or Franks, were a Teutonic people, speuking a purely Teutonic tongue, resembling the German, or more nearly the Flemish ; and this tongue they continued to speak for several centuries after their conquest of Gaul. This old Teutonic French is denominated bv philologists the Franhish or Francic, and it is alto- gether of a different family from the modern French, which has come to be so called only from the accident of the country in which it waj spoken having been conquered by the French or Franks,— tl\e con- querors, as in other cases, in course of time adopting the language of tlis conquered, and besto-vring upon it their own name. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216- -1399. 849 and, various circumstances now contributing to the depression of the Provencjal troubadours, the poets of the Langue d'oyl ere long came to be still more famous than those of the Langue d'oc, and the former to be even generally accounted the idiom the most happily adapted for poetry. Most of these early poets in the language of the north of France were Normans or Englislimen. Yet the Pro- vencal poetry, too, was undoubtedly well known and in high favour in England, especially after the accession of Richard Cceur de Lion. Of the prin- cipal poem attributed to that king,* there are two versions, one (that commonly given) in Provencjal, the other in Norman ; and it is disputed in which dialect it was originally composed. f In speaking of the French literature of this period, it would be unpardonable to omit noticing its most remarkable product, or that at least of all its remains which has the most of an English interest, the Chronicle of the inimitable Sire Jean Froissart. Froissart was a native of Valenciennes, where he appears to have been born about 1337 ; but the four books of his Chronicle, which relate principally to English affairs, though the narrative embraces also the course of events in France, Flanders, Scotland, and other countries, compre- hend the space from 1326 to 1400, or the whole of tlie reigns of our Edward III. and Richard II. Frcjissart, however, is rather of avithority as a painter of manners than as an historian of events ; for his passion for the marvellous and the decorative was so strong that the simple fact, we fear, would have little chance of acceptance with him in any case when it came into competition with a good story. In his own, and in the next age, accordingly, his history was generally reckoned and designated a romance. Caxton, in his ' Boke of the Ordre of Clievalrye or Knighthood,' classes it with the romances of Lancelot and Percival ; and indeed the ' Roman au Chroniques ' seems to have been the title by which it w^as at first commonly known. On the other hand, however, it is fair to remember that a romance was not in those days held to be necessarily a fiction. Froissart's Chronicle . is certainly the truest and most lively picture that any writer has bequeathed to us of the spirit of a particular era ; it shows " the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." In a higher than the literal sense, the most apo- cryphal incidents of this most splendid and imagi- native of gossips are full of truth ; they cast more light upon the actual men and manners that are described, and bring back to life more of the long- buried past than the most careful details of any other historian. The popularity of Froissart's Chronicle has thrown into the shade his other pro- ductions ; but his highest fame in his own day was as a writer of poetry. His greatest poetical work appears to have been a romance entitled ' Me- liader, or the Knight of the Sun of Gold ;' and he • See ante, p. 50'J. t For tlie most complete account of the Anglo-NonnJin poets see a series of papers by M. de )a Rue, in the I'Jtli, 13th, iind 11th vulumes of the Arclia-olofjia. VOL. I. also wrote many shorter pieces, chants royaux, ballads, rondeaux, and pastorals, in what was then called the New Poetry, which, indeed, he cultivated with so much success that he has by some been regarded as its inventor * On his introduction to Richard II., when he paid his last visit to England in 1396, he presented that monarch, as he tells us, with a book beautifully illuminated, engrossed with his own hand, bound in crimson velvet, and em- bellished with silver bosses, clasps, and golden roses, comprehending all the pieces of Amours and Moralities which he had composed in the twenty- four preceding years. Richard, he adds, seemed much pleased, and examined the book in many places; for he was fond of reading as' well as speaking French. But while Latin was thus the language of the learned, and French of the noble, the body of the people kept to the expressive Teutonic speech of their ancestors — the Saxon or English. Notwith- standing the circumstances which even before the Norman conquest, and more especially after that event, operated to establish the partial use of the French tongue, it is certain that French never made any progress towards becoming the verna- cular language of this country. On the contrary, it seems, from the first, to have lost rather than gained ground in the effort to maintain itself in competition with the Saxon, even as a separate speech. Although, however, it neither supplanted the Saxon in the mouths of the general population, nor even, as has been asserted, acquired the predo- minance in the mixture or fluctuation of the two languages, it unquestionably did, in course of time, infuse itself largely into the vocabulary of the old national tongue. But the essential forms and structure of that tongue it does not seem to have at all affected. So much of it as was received into the body of the Saxon was assimilated in the process, and converted into one substance with the soil which it enriched. The Saxon, however, even in its forms, underwent, undoubtedly, a very considerable change in the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. " But that these mutations," says a late able and learned writer, " were a consequence of the Nor- man invasion, or were even accelerated by that event, is wholly incapable of proof; and nothing is supported vipon a firmer principle of rational in- duction, than that the same effects would have ensued if William and his followers had remained in their native soil. The substance of the change is admitted on all hands to consist in the sup- pression of those grammatical intricacies occa- sioned by the inflection of nouns, the seemingly arbitrary distinctions of gender, the government of prepositions, &c. How far this may be considered as the result of an innate law of the language, or some general law in the organization of tliose who spoke it, we may leave for the present undecided ; but that it was in no way dependent upon external circumstances, upon foreign influence or political » Sfe Warton, Hist, of Kiig. Paetry, ii. 173 anil 300. 3b 850 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. disturbances, is established by this undeniable fact~that every branch of the Low German stock, ffom^whence the Anglo-Saxon sprang, displays the same simplification of its grammar. In all these languages there has been a constant tendency to relieve themselves of that precision -which chooses a fresh symbol for every shade of meaning, to lessen the amount of nice distinctions, and detect, as it vi^ere, a royal road to the interchange of opi- nion.* The change here described may be considered as having been the first step in the passage of the Anglo-Saxon into the modern English ; the next was the change tnade in the vocabulary of the lan- guage by the introdviction of numerous terms bor- rowed from the French. Of this latter innovation, however, we find little trace till long after the com- pletion of the former. For nearly two centuries after the Conquest the Saxon seems to have been spoken and written with scarcely any intermixture of Norman, It only, in fact, began to receive such intermixture after it came to be adopted as the speech of that part of the nation which had pre- viously spoken French. And this adoption was plainly the cause, and the sole cause, of the inter- mixture. So long as it remained the language only of those who had been accustomed to speak it from their infancy, and who had never known any other, it might have gradually undergone some change in its internal organization, but it could scarcely acquire any additions from a foreign source. What should have tempted the Saxon peasant to substitute a Norman term, upon any occasion, for the word of the same meaning with which the lan- guage of his ancestors supplied him ? As for things and occasions for which new names were necessary, they must have come comparatively little in his way ; and, when they did, the capabilities of his native tongue were abundantly sufficient to fur- nish him with appropriate forms of expression from its own resources. The corruption of the Saxon by the intermixture of French vocables must have proceeded from those whose original language Avas French, and who were in habits of constant inter- course with French customs, French literature, and every thing else that was French, at the same time that they spoke Saxon. And this supposition is in perfect accordance with the historical fact. So long as the Saxon was the language of only a part of the nation (though that was always infi- nitely the most considerable part in respect of numbers), and the French, as it were, struggled with it for mastery, it remained unadulterated ; — when it became the speech of the whole people, of the higher classes as well as of the lower, then it lost its old Teutonic purity (though only in its vocabulary, not in its forms or its genius), and re- ceived a large alien admixture from the alien lips through which it passed. Whether this was a fortunate circumstance, or the reverse, is another question. It may, however, be observed, that the Saxon, as has just been intimated, had already lost • Preface, by Price, to Warton's Hist, of Eiig. Pottry, p. 110. some of the chief of its original characteristics, and that, if left to its own spontaneous and unassisted development, it would probably have assumed a character resembling rather that of the Dutch or the Flemish than that of the German of the pre- sent day. With the exception of several songs and other short poetical pieces — one of the most remarkable of which is a ballad in celebration of Simon de Montfort's victory at Lewes in 1264 — a few metri- cal chronicles and romances, for the most part translated from the French, constitute the only compositions now remaining that can be said to be written in the English, as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon language, before the end of the reign of Edward I.* The Chronicle of Robert of Glou- cester, being a history of England from the landing of Brutus to t^e accession of Edward I., is a metrical, but anything rather than a poetical, ver- sion of the Latin History of Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is supposed to have been written about the year 1280. The similar performance of Robert Man- nyng, often called Robert de Brunne (from his monastery of Brunne, or Bourn, in Lincolnshire), which was produced about twenty years later, is scarcely of any higher order of merit. It is trans- lated from two French chronicles, one itself a trans- lation from Geoffrey of Monmouth (and the same thatLayamon had already translated into Saxon), by Wace of Jersey, who flourished in the middle of the twelfth century, the other written by Peter Lang- toft, a monk of Bridlington in Yorkshire, who lived not long before Mannyng himself.f The language appears in these works in almost the rudest possible state, though Mannyng's style is somewhat less harsh and confused than that of his predecessor. Some improvement, however, is discernible in the next reign in the devotional poems, dull as they are, of Adam Davy, and still more in the romance entitled ' The Life of Alexander,' which has been improperly attributed to that writer. But of all the writers before Chaucer, the one in whose hands the language seems to have made the most remark- able advance in flexibility and correctness, was Laurence Minot, who flourished in the earlier part of the reign of Edward III., and wrote a series of poetical pieces on the warlike achievements of that king, which have gained for him, from an eloquent modern critic, the title of ' the Tyrtaeus of his age."J Towards the close of the reign of Edward III. * The celebrated romance of the Geste of King Home, generally qimlecl as the earliest English romance, must be considered (whether it be translated or original) as rather a Saxon than an English poem, even in the form in which we now possess it. Its language appears to be of the same date with that of the Saxon translation of Wace's Le llrut, by Layamon, or the paraphrase of the Gospel his- tories, entitled ' Ormuliim,' both of wliich are assigned to the reij;n of Ilenrv II. The romance of SirTristrcm, again, wliich has been sup- posed' to be the production of the Scottish poet Thomas of Ercil- down, or the Ryraer, who lived in the thirteenth century, is now generally considered not to be, in its present form, of that anticjuity. + Hearne published Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle in S vol's. 8vo. Oxford, 1724; and the second part of Manmng's, under the title of "Peter Laugtoft's Chronicle,' 2 vols., 8vo., Oxford, 1725. Man- nyng accordingly is usually quoted under the name of Langtoft. The fust part of Mannyng's Chronicle has nevfjr been printed. X Essav prefixed to Specimens of the British Poets, by T. Camiv bell, Esq." Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS : A.D. 1216—1399. 851 Robert (or, as he ought more probably to be called, William) Laiigland wrote his singular poem en- titled ' The Visions of (that is, concerning) Pierce Plowman,' in a diction and fashion of versification both of which seem to have been intended as imita- tions of a Saxon model. The lines here are con- structed upon the principle, not of rhyme, but of alliteration ; and instead of the introduction of any new words or forms of expression, the aim of the author evidently is to revive as many as possible of those that had become obsolete. In vigour, ani- mation, and general poetical merit, however, Lang- land far excels any of the writers that have yet been named. But he does not distance his predecessors nearly so far as he is himself distanced by his immortal contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, the true father of our English literature. Corapafed with the pro- ductions of this great writer, all that precedes is barbarism. It is curious that at the very time when the author of the ' Visions of Pierce Plow- man' was labouring to reinvigorate the language by the restoration of its lost forms, another mind should have entered upon the work of its renova- tion "by the opposite process, of moulding it to a spirit and manner of expression different, in various respects, from what it had ever before known. Yet it was no doubt the same feeling of dissatisfac- tion with its existing state that prompted the en- deavours of both. The mightier genius, Iwwever, undoubtedly chose the wiser course. To Chaucer our language principally owes the foundations of its still enduring constitution, as well as the whole body of our poetry much of its peculiar and cha- racteristic spirit. He is the father of our literature in a much higher and truer sense than in that of merely standing formally and by accident at its head. It has been made in great part what it is through the example which he set to his succes- sors, and the influence and inspiration of the works which he bequeathed to them. But for two hun- dred years Chaucer had no successor ; in that early morn of his language he produced compositions which the most gifted of his countrymen were scarcely able to appreciate, far less to rival, till after the commencement of altogether a new era of civilization. Nor has there even yet arisen among us any poet, Shakspeare alone excepted, surpassing, in the entire assemblage of his various qualities, this wonderful minstrel of the fourteenth century. Spencer's is a more aerial, Milton's a loftier song ; but the poetry of neither of these displays anything of the rich combination of contrasted excellencies that gives so nmch life and splendour to that of Chaucer — the sportive fancy, painting and gilding everything, with the keen, observant, matter-of-fact spirit that looks through whatever it glances at, — the soaring and creative imagination, with the homely sagacity, and healthy relish for all the realities of things, — the unrivalled tenderness and pathos, with the subtlest humour and the most exviberant merriment, — the wisdom at once and the wit, — the all that is best, in short, both in poetry and in prose, at the same time. The comprehen- siveness and manifold character of Chaucer's genius is evidenced by the very diversity of the springs of inspiration to which he resorted. The Proven9al troubadours, the Norman romancers, the bright array of the stars of the young poetry of Italy, were all sought out by him, and made to yield light to his " golden urn." His works com- prise translations or imitations of his predecessors or contemporaries, the restorers of poetry, in all these languages, and in all the various kinds of composition which they had made famous. No writer has taken a wider range in respect of sub- ject and manner, or has evinced a more triumphant mastery over the whole compass of the lyre. His ' Canterbury Tales' alone, indeed, include nearly every variety of gay and serious poetry : in this crowning work his matured genius revels in the luxuriance of its strength, and seems to rejoice in multiplying proofs of its command over all the resources of its art. Another name is commonly mentioned along with that of Chaucer — " the Moral Gower," as JoirN Gower. his friend Chaucer himself has designated him.* And, in truth, he is more moral than poetical — though he wrote a great quantity of Latin and French verse, as well as English. This is also the age of the birth of Scottish poetry. Two remarkable works in that dialect, the ' Bruce,' by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, and the ' Cronykil ' of Andrew Wynton, Prior of Lochleven, remain, both of which arc pro- ductions of the latter part of the fourteenth century. Barbour displays occasionally considerable poetical spirit. This writer, it may be remarked, calls his language English, as in truth it was ; for the Low- land Scottish is undoubtedly nothing else than a dialect of the Saxon. Of tlie English prose literature of the fourteenth • In the ' Troilus and Creseide.' 852 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Oowi:u'.s Monv:mk.st, St. Saviouii's Chuecii, Sor iinv.vnK. century that has survived, the most remarl<ahle specimens are Trevisa's translation of Higden, mentioned above, and Wycliife's translation of the Scriptures. The Bible is said to have been also trp.nslated by Trevisa. An indenture, dated in 1343, has been referred to as the earliest known legal instrument in English. Although Edward III. ordered the pleadings in courts to be carried on in English in 1362, the earliest instance that occurs of the use of the language in parliamentary proceed- in2;s is in 1388, Gothic architecture, which prevailed throughout the greater part of Europe from the twelftli cen- tury to the sixteenth, presents itself to our inquiries in a constant state of progression. One change is only a transition to another. It is also variously modified by the several countries which adopted it, and considerable differences occur even in the manner of its original transition from the Roman- esque, The thirteenth century is the period of its nearest approach to general uniformity. It then diverges into different national characteristics, which are nowhere more strongly or distinctively marked than in England; and, finally, when a classical style of building is revived, as if by common consent among nations, each arrives at its object by a different jiath. In no country has Gothic architecture produced more numerous or remarkable results than in Great Britain ; for although our later style niay want something of the grace and luxuriance of the Nor- man Gothic, and our religious and other public edifices may not equal the vastness of some of the German cathedrals, yet we possess structures dis- playing architectural combinations peculiarly our own, and pre-eminent in decorative effect and boldness of execution. Gothic must not be considered merely as cUffer- inrj from classical architectuie. It is diametrically opposed to it upon principles no less fixed and consistent than its own. In the two preceding Books we have traced the gradual disappearance of every distinguishing feature of regular architecture as it became applied to new purposes, and its parts formed into new combinations ; and in this state architecture remained, destitute of any real prin- ciple, until the forms necessarily resulting from the Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 853 construction of the Christian Basilica, and the general introduction of vaulted roofs, a])|)ear to have suggested the predominance of the vertical line as the principle of composition. Gothic architecture consists in the perfect deve- lopment of this principle. It was in gradual pro- gress during the last modification of the Roman- esque, and was soon carried to its vitniost extent : the pillars were clustered throughout to assimilate with the lofty and slender shafts supporting the vaulting of the nave ; the capitals reduced, and their salient angles suppressed so as to produce the least possible interruption to the eye in its progress upward. The same tendency was observed in pointing the arch ; and the distinct and deeply-cut mouldings which replaced the ancient archivolt, were calculated to continue the impression produced by the vertical lines of support. The buttress became an important feature both in composition and construction, being spread toward the base, and carried above the Avails, in order to resist the thrust of the main vaulting, through the medium of the flying buttress — the boldest combination of strength and lightness ever imagined. Every horizontal member was reduced to comparative insignificance. In every step of its progress Gothic architecture is based upon this general principle ; but the mo- difications in its subordinate and decorative forms are such as unerringly to distinguish the Gothic of one period from that of another. Three styles arising from such modifications have been discri- minated* in that peculiar to Great Britain, of which two appeared and passed away nearly within the limits of the historical period now under consi- deration,viz. — the Lancet, or Early English Gothic, extending through the reign of Edward I. and the Decorated English extending to nearly the end of the fourteenth century. f I. The early English style, of which Salisbury Cathedral (founded in 1220 by Bishop Poore, on the removal of the see from Old Sarum) is the most complete and extensive example, maintains great simplicity in its composition. Pinnacles are little used, being confined to the principal angles of the edifice ; and the buttresses, with which they were afterwards principally combined, finish with a triangular pediment. Arched pannelling is still used abundantly ; and to this mode of decorating the walls we owe the introduction of niches and canopies, which make an early appearance in the west front of Salisbury, and are still farther ad- vanced in the contemporary facade of Wells. As yet, however, they consist only of a deepened arch surmounted by a pediment, and a corbel, or very small pedestal, for the figure. Detached and banded shafts are a peculiar characteristic of the columns of this period. They are also much used in door- ways, of which the larger sort are planned with a • Rickman. t As the world have a(;ro("il to understand the term Gothic, it has a cood claim (to whatever ol)ieetions it may be open) to be used until a better shall be ifstabiished. Mr. Whewel! has advanced good reasons for its use in a };eneric sense. The term English as ap- plied to a species of Gothic is perfectly definite. deep arch, composed of an immense cluster of mouldings, forming several planes of decoration. NlCHKS. 1. Early Euf-Ush, from Salisbury Cathedral. 2. Decorated Eujjlish— York. 3. Decorated English— York. and inclosing a double entrance. These entrances are not always arched, but sometimes turned into a form peculiar to the period, being a square head with small rounded haunches. This sort of open- ing is also common in smaller doorways and in domestic architecture. Segmental arches, as in the triforium of the south transept at York, and a depressed arch with a knee, are also very generally in use where a high pitch might be inconvenient. The latter occurs in the doorway to the south tran- sept of Westminster Abbey. The windows of this style, in its early stage, are tall and narrow, without any division or tracery, but generally combined in groups of two, three, five, or seven openings ; thus, as in the beautiful example of the north transept of York, opening the whole compartment of the building in a manner analogous to the spacious windows shortly after- wards introduced. This simple form was not long maintained ; and the enlargement of the windows, their division into tAvo or more lights within a single external arch, and the introduction of tracery, form a second division in the early English architecture. An early double window occurs in fae south transept of York, founded in 1227 ; but in Westminster Abbey, begun by Henry III., in 1245, the plain lancet window is nearly laid aside, the openings being for the most part divided by a shaft, and the head of the arch occupied by a feathered circle. In the triforium of the same building the tracery is to be observed coinciding with the mouldings of the arch, differing in this respect from the earlier 854 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. examples of York and Salisbury, where the opeiimgs are all merely independent quatrefoils, pierced through the blank space in the spandrils of the arches, — a certain indication of an early date. Tracery in circles, varied only by multiplying its parts, may be followed down to the end of this period, when the increased breadth of the window, and the number of its subdivisions, led to a more minute and complicated manner of laying out the space above the springing of the arch. With regard to the decorations of this period, the trefoil and quatrefoil were introduced and freely used in its earliest stage ; but the most cha- racteristic ornament, and one almost peculiar to the English Gothic, is the indentation known as the dog's tooth. This was soon improved into a sort of pyramidal four-leaved flower, in which shape it is used in the most extraordinary profusion, as in the south transept of York, where it not only fills most of the hollow mouldings inside and out, but follows the line of the pediments, the angles of the buttresses, and even the shafts which decorate the window-jambs. It appears to have been laid aside about the middle of the thirteenth century — being used more sparingly in the north transept, and not occurring in any part of Westminster Abbey. The Early English foliage is more easily understood from prints than from description. A trefoil leaf of peculiar character enters largely into its compo- sition. It is always deeply cut, and in capitals turns over, so as frequently to resemble a volute. One great characteristic of this period is, the care- ful manner in which all the decorations are exe- cuted. There is much of the other styles (as Mr. Rickman observes), which appears to be the copy by an inferior hand of better workmanship else- where : this is remarkably the case in -Perpendi- cular work, but is hardly anywhere to be found in the early English style. The first step was made during this period Early Enolish Capitals — York Cathedral. Pecobated Enolish Capitai.s — York Catlieclra toward Ihat magnificent style of roofing peculiar to the English Gothic, by the addition of interme- diate ribs to the arches and cross-springers of the early vaulting. In the continental Gothic the vaulting seldom advances beyond these simple ele- ments — a circumstance which gives an appearance of baldness and want of consistency to some of its most splendid examples. This early improvement in the style of vaulting may be connected with the introduction of polygonal chapter-houses, in which it branches out in a rich cluster of moulded ribs from a central column. That of Lincoln is one of the earliest examples, exhibiting the lancet-window and the toothed ornament. It was followed by many others, particularly those of Westminster, Salisbury, York, Southwell, and Wells : the last- mentioned, however, is of a later style. The com- plete quadrangular cloister is another improvement made at this date, of which Salisbury remains among the earliest and most perfect examples. In the general arrangement of the greater churches of this period, the suppression of the apsis must be noticed as one of the points in whicli the English style already diverged from that of the continent, where the apsis was always retained. It was caused probably by the innovation of add- ing the lady chapel to the eastern extremity of the building. Parish churches are numerous in the early Eng- lish style. It is probable that many of those erected before the Conquest may have fallen into decay, and been replaced about this time. The ancient plan of a nave and chancel without side ailes is still retained in those of the smaller class. We must not quit this style without noticing the spire, which was introduced at a very early date. In fact, an example remains at Sleaford, in Lin- colnshire, which evidently belongs to the transition. In its first form the spire retains something of its original character of a pointed roof, rising immedi- ately from the projecting cornice of the tower ; but though this form runs occasionally far into the succeeding style, a more graceful mode of construc- tion was soon adopted by placing the spire within the parapet of the tower, and grouping it with the l)innacles at the angles, as in that of Chichester Cathedral, which may be assigned to this period, though perhaps completed somewhat later.* The spire of Old St. Paul's, rising to the height of 520 feet, was added to that structure as early as 1222.t It was, however, of timber, covered with lead. II. The reign of Edward II. brings with it the Decorated English style, of which the most striking characteristics are furnished by the tracery of the windows. The great east and west windows were introduced into churches at this period — another striking deviation from the continental Gothic, in which the decoration of the west front is centred in its lofty and gorgeous portals, and wheel-windows. This latter form is comparatively rare in English churches ; and, where it does occur, is confined to • Rickman. t Slowe. Chap. V.] LITEHATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 855 9 10 Progressive Examplks of Windows in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. I. Early English.— 1. From the Lady Chapel, Winchester. 2. York. 3. North Trsinsept, York. 4. Westminster Abbey. 5. Chapter House, York, transition to II. Decorated English. — 6. Exeter,— Geometrical Tracery. 7. Kirton Church, Lincolnshire, — Flowing Tracery. 8. Badgewortli Church, Gloucestershire, — Example of the Ball-Flower Decoration. 9, 10. Choir, York, transition to the Perpendicular, the transepts, as in the cathedrals of York and Lincoln, which afford fine examples both of the Early and Decorated styles. The earliest style of tracery at this epoch is that known by the name of Geometrical, from its formation in regular figures, trefoils, quatrefoils, &c., instead of a com- bination of circles alone, though the latter figure is by no means abandoned, and frequently forms the leading line in the head of the window. Of this description are the windows of Exeter Cathedral, the work of the early part of the fourteenth cen- tury ; but they are not without a mixture of com- pound curves, harmonizing the abrupt junction of the more formal geometrical shapes, in a manner which forms a natural transition to the flowing and ramified tracery of the time of Edward III. This latter style is displayed in its ultimate form in the magnificent nave and west front of York Cathedral, 856 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. completed about 1330. But its reign was short, and, if considered as analogous to the Goihique jlamboyant of Normandy, it must be admitted to have been but imperfectly developed in this coun- try; and it presents varieties which it is not always easy to reconcile or assimilate. It speedily passed into a transition ending in the Perpendi- cular style, in which the English Gothic finally diverged from that of the continent. The peculi- arities of the latter style are strongly infused into the choir of York Cathedral, begun as early as 1361, though not completed till the beginning of the fifteenth century. The other characteristics of the Decorated Eng- lish may perhaps be best understood by a com- parison with those of the preceding period. The buttresses are now finished by pinnacles, and their gradations marked by pediments highly enriched with crockets. In the early part of this style the Pinnacles. 1. Early Ens^lish, from Wells Cathedral. 2. Decorated English, St. Mary's, Oxford. 3. Decorated English, York. Eart.t ExoLisn Cornicks asd Cap.s or Rlttrf.esf'(. 1. Salisbury Cathedral. 2. Southwell Minster. pediment is greatly increased in height and deco- rated with tracery ; but, at a later period, the pre- valence of the flowing line effects another revolu- tion in its shape and proportion, and it is lowered and curved into the furm of an ogee. During this transition the two pediments were frequently used one ■within the other, as in the abbey gateway at Bury St. Edmunds. The shafts of the piers are no longer detached from the main columns, but are worked in the same stone, the whole forming an integral clus- tered pillar. The capitals are more varied than in the earlier style, and the form of the abacus alters from a circle to an octagon. The arch mouldings become bolder, and, in the latter part of the style, are often continued uninterruptedly down the column alternating wilh the shafts. Shafts are still used in the decoration of doors and windows, but in the composition of ornamental pannelling they begin to be superseded by slender buttresses and pinnacles. Niches make great progress early in this style, being much increased in size and importance. The screen to the west front of Exeter Cathedral, composed entirely of niches and tabernacles, is the work of Bishop Grandisson in 1330. In another stage of improvement, the canopies were thrown out beyond the face of the building, terminated with lofty finials, and de- corated with clusters of pinnacles. The cornices of this period are composed with a hollow moulding, in which large flowers, grotesque heads, and other forms are placed at intervals. Open parapets came at this time into use, but were gradually superseded by battlements, either plain or pierced with tracery, as the building is more or less decorated. The foliage of this period is extremely rich and in a more natural style than the stiff", curled forms of the Early English. The ornament called " the ball flower " is altogether peculiar to this style. It is described by Rickman as " a small round bud of three or four leaves, which open just enough to show a ball in the centre." It is sometimes used in the same profusion as the toothed ornament in the Early English, and is a no less certain indica- tion of the period to which it belongs. The vault- ing contiimes to advance in decoration. At E.xeter the spandrils of the roof have three intermediate ribs on each side, between the cross sprinuers, forming a pendentive of great richness of effect, though without complication. In the nnve of Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 857 York, the mouldings begin to be crossed and inter- laced, a system which, in the choir of Gloucester, vaulted by Abbot Boyfield at the very close of the period, is carried to the point of confusion. The choir of Tewkesbury is an excellent specimen of tliis age and of the first step in the transition to fan-tracery. The two styles occupying the present period contributed greatly to our national monuments of ecclesiastical architecture. Salisbury is, indeed, the only cathedral built entirely and uniformly in the early English Gothic, but important additions were made in that style to several others. The presbytery at Winchester is to be noticed as one of the earliest examples of unmixed Gothic, being the work of Godfrey de Lucy, who held that see from 1189 to 1205. The transepts at York have already been mentioned incidentally. They are further deserving of attention as exhibiting two gradations of the style, the south having been begun at an early period and continued by Arch- bishop Grey in 1227, and the north being the work of John le Romayne about the middle of the century. To these examples may be added the pres- bytery of Ely and the nave and choir of Lichfield, both erected about 1235; the nave and choir of AVells, dedicated by Bishop Joscelin about 1240; and the nave of Durham, erected by Prior Melson- by between 1242 and 1290. Of Westminster Abbey, the eastern part only was completed by Henry III., and its subsequent continuations, on a uniform design, furnish an interesting study of the progressive changes in detail. In Scotland, the Early English style prevails in the cathedrals of Glasgow and Aberdeen, in the magnificent ruins of Elgin, and the abbey of Holyrood. Of the Decorated English style there are early examples in the ruins of Croyland and Tintern, and in Exeter Cathedral, already noticed. The nave of York was the work of forty years, and was completed in 1330. The south isle of Gloucester Cathedral, remarkable for the peculiar tracery of its windows and the profusion of the " ball-flower," dates from 1320. A great part of the cathedral of Bristol, including the tower, was erected between 1320 and 13G3. The choir of Lincoln, 1324, is one of the most magnificent works of the age, but ratlic.r peculiar in style, and retaining in an unusual degree some characteristics of an earlier date. The chapel of St. Stephen, at Westminster, begun in 1330, was remarkable as a complete work of the period, and also for the transcendent splendour of its decorations. The unrivalled lantern of Ely was begun in 1328; the nave of the cathedral of Beverley, the choir of that of Rippon, and the cast end of that of Carlisle, all date between 1330 and 1370, during the period when ramified tracery was in its greatest perfection. The great window in the last surpasses every other English example in the same style. Tlie choir of York has been already referred to : the central tower is of the same date and character, and was erected by Walter Skiriaw in 1372. The choir of St. Nicolas at Aberdeen, the College Church at Edinburgh, and the celebrated Abbey of Melrose, may be cited as beautiful examples of this style in Scotland. The High Church of Edinburgh is of the same period, but modern alterations have left little of its original character visible. The spires of this period are numerous and magnificent. Among them stands that of Salis- bury, added to the structure in 1331, pre-eminent in height and graceful proportions : that of St. Mary's, Oxford, 1340, is remarkable for the rich clustered group formed by tlie surrounding pin- nacles. Many spires of this date are lighted by a graduated series of windows, crowned by the high pediment peculiar to the style, as at Newark and St. Mary's, Stamford. None of these examples are crocketted, though the angles of that of Salis- bury are thickly studded with knobs; but the crocketted spire became common before the end of the period. Parish churches in the Decorated English style are numerous and splendid, particularly in Lincoln- sliire, where ecclesiastical architecture appears to have flourished in an especial manner during the fourteenth century. The foregoing list of examples might be greatly increased, but instead of extending a catalogue of names, we have endeavoured to comprise every- thing that can interest the general reader in a pro- gressive series of examples selected from the buildings best known and most easily referred to* There is little to record respecting castellated and domestic architecture during the Early Eng- lish period. Castle building had received a check at the accession of Henry II. by the enactment that no subject should fortify his residence without a license from the crown. Of domestic architec- ture there are fewer remains of the thirteenth cen- tury than of any other period since the Conquest, and those few (to use Walpole's words) still imply the dangers of society rather than its sweets. Ad- ditions, bespeaking some advance in refinement, began indeed to collect round the sullen keeps of the Norman era; and we fihd a precept from Henry III. for ihe erection of an apartment within the castle of Guildford for the use of his daughter- in-law, Eleanor of Castile, consisting of a chamber with a raised hearth and chimney, a wardrobe, and other conveniences, and an oratory ; and it is par- ticularly specified that the windows are to be glazed. But witli the reign of Edward I. a new era commences, and the castles raised by that mo- narch for the security of his new dominion in Wales are among the first which combine the fortress and the palace in an integral structure. Conway Castle includes two courts within the body of the building, the great hall (thenceforward indispensable in every royal and iroble habitation) occupying one side of the lower area. The separate apartments of the king and queen are to be dis- tinguislied both at Conway and Caernarvon. lu * See Britton's Cathedrals and Architectural Antiquities — Storer's Cathedrals— Carter's Antiquities— Halfpenny's York— and the publications of the Antiquarian Society, 858 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. the former, tradition points out the " Queen's Oriel," a room with some pretensions to elegance, opening upon a terrace, and commanding a beauti- ful view of the surrounding scenery. Still the domestic conveniences of the buildings of this age by no means keep pace with their increased extent ; and the room in which Edward II. was born, at Caernarvon, is a confined cell, dark and mis- shapen. From these innovations in the plan of construct- ing castles, new architectural features are naturally developed, of which the most striking is the group- ing of the numerous and variously-shaped towers, those flanking the gateway being usually con- spicuous by their size and lofty propordon. The grand and picturesque combinations of which this style of building is susceptible were not overlooked by the architects of a later date, and the castellated outline, especially in the gateways, was retained in our baronial residences long after every essential point belonging to a fortress was given up. Strength, however, was still an object in the majestic structures of the fourteenth century, among which it may be sufficient to cite the castles of Alnwick, Raby, Bolton, and Warwick. In the last, Guy's Tower, the work of Thomas Beau- ToWiiK, Warwick Castlk, champ. Earl of "Warwick, in the reign of Richard II., is perhaps one of the latest constructed with Norman solidity and for the real purposes of de- fence. The magnificent hall and other buildings constituting the upper ward of Kenilworth were begun by John of Gaunt in the same reign. Wind- sor is also of this period. It had always been a royal residence, but was rebuilt and enlarged by Edward III. to the extent of at least the whole upper ward as it now exists, though its original features have long been obliterated. It must not be omitted that the architect of this proud pile was William of Wykeham, afterwards the munificent Bishop of Winchester. The machecoulis, a contrivance for casting mis- siles on the head of an assaulting enemy by pro- jecting the parapets upon corbel stones with open- ings between, is an innovation of the time of Edward I. It was used in its boldest form in gateways, as in that of Lancaster Castle, and was retained as a picturesque ornament long after it ceased to be of use. The gradual improvement of domestic architec- ture at a period when security was not to be disregarded, combined probably with the jealous restrictions imposed upon the erection of domestic fortresses, produced, towards the close of the thirteenth century, the embattled and moated house. Stokesay, or Stoke Castle, in Shropshire, may be described * as the type of a very numerous class of manor-houses in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Laurence de Lodelow had license to embattle this house in 1291, and with this date the architectural details are perfectly consistent. The building is a parallelogram, inclosing a court of 130 feet by 70, and is protected by a moat. The house and offices, wdth the entrance tower and gateway, occupy three sides of the court ; the fourth is inclosed by a wall only. The hall, 54 feet long and 32 wide, is lighted by four arched windows on one side, and three on the other. It has no chimney, and the massive rafters of the high-pitched roof are blackened with the smoke from the hearth in the centre. The hall commu- nicates at one end with the great chamber, and at the other with the offices. A large polygonal tower, rising at one of the angles, and surmounted by an embattled parapet with loop-holes, gives a castellated appearance to the edifice. This tower contains three large rooms, in as many stories, communicating by a spiral stair. A similar tower at the opposite angle appears to have been left in- complete : it is planned in smaller divisions belong- ing to the offices. Markenfield Hall, in Yorkshire, is a building of the same class, and of nearly the same date ; embattled, but not, properly speaking, fortified, and without any towers except a stair- case turret. The mere domestic style of this period is very simple, consisting of plain gabled outlines, com- bined, when the extent of the building renders combination necessary, without much attempt at general effect. Northborough Hall, in Northamp- tonshire, is a quadrangular house of this descrip- tion ; it is nevertheless executed with much archi- tectural luxury. The decorations are elegant and • Sec Britton's Architfctural Antiquities, vol. iv. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 859 highly finished ; and the free use of the ball-flower places it in the first half of the fourteenth century. Another example of later date remains near the cathedral at Lincoln, and is remarkable for a very early pendant oriel, a form which figures so con- spicuously in the architecture of the next century. It was soon carried to perfection, and a highly en- riched specimen survives in the palace erected in the same city by John of Gaunt about 1390. House oi' the Fouuteemiii Centuey, at Linxoln. The Roof, Chimney Shafts, and Square Windows, ave Modern. Little change took place in the principles of domestic architecture in the north ;* but the forta- lices of this period, both in Scotland and on the border, are marked by the introduction of over- hanging turrets at the angles, seldom seen in the castellated buildings of England. Great alterations took place during the Early English period in the style of sepvilchral monu- ments, which must thenceforward be considered under the head of xYrchitecture. The first change was the general adoption of the altar-tomb, a flat, raised table, on which the recumbent effigy is placed. This form soon became general even when there was no effigy. The altar- tomb of William Longspee, Earl of Salisbury, in the cathedral at that place, is one of the earliest : he died in 1226. f Both the tomb and effigy are of wood, painted and gilt. The effigy of William de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, at Westminster, who died in 1 296, is also of wood, • Seep. f>24. + The altai-tomb of King John is mucli later tlian the cll'igv.— See p. 315. but plated with copper, and enamelled in colours ; an art supposed to have been introduced about this time from Constantinople. The sides of these tombs are pannelled and filled up with shields of arms, a mode of decoration never afterwards laid aside ; but niches, containing effigies of the family of the deceased, were added before the end of the thirteenth century, and afterwards carried to a high pitch of decoration. The flat grave-stone, with the inscription deeply cut and filled with metal, was also introduced very early in the thirteenth century, so that the coffin en dos d'dne became generally superseded. The next great feature in monumental architec- ture is the canopy, probably suggested by the catafalque., still used in funeral ceremonies abroad, and sometimes on extraordinary occasions in our own country. This being united with the altar- tomb, in which the body was deposited above ground, the mode of sepulture (as King observes) became a sort of perpetual lying in state. The most magnificent of these canopied tombs are detached; many more are engaged in the walls. They continued in vogue long enough to survive the style which gave them birth, and were executed with all the luxury of art until the seventeenth century, varying in their details with the march of architecture. The monument of Walter Grey, Tomb or Archbishop Grky.— York Catlicdral. 860 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Archbishop of York, who died in 1225, and those of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, at West- minster (1334), and Hugh le Despenser, Earl of Gloucester, in Tewkesbury Abbey (1359), may be cited as progressive examples of this species of architecture in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The higher branch of sculpture advanced greatly during the thirteenth century. Monumental effigies of this period are numerous and interesting. Tomb of Aymer dk Valenck.— Westminster Abbey. Among the earliest works of this class the figure of Lord de Ros, in the Temple church, displays both grace and spirit. Basso-relievo was also cultivated. It is often introduced upon fiat sur- faces, as in the spandrils of the arches at Wor- cester and the Chapter House of Salisbury, and before the middle of the centurv the sculptures on the front of Wells Cathedral, representing the his- tory of the Old and New Testament, were executed. These sculptures possess sufficient merit to have excited the admiration of Flaxman, who pronounces especially upon the relievo representing the creation JIONIMEXT OP Hi:OH IK DeSPENREK, EaUI, of Gl-OUCESTlin, AND HIS Countess. — Tewkesbury Cathedral. of Eve, that among many compositions on this subject by Giotto, Buonamico, Buffalmacco, Glii- berti, and Michel Angclo, this is certainly the oldest, and not inferior to many others. He further observes of these sculptures in general, that though, owing to the disadvantages under which such works were produced in that age, they are necessarily ill- drawn and deficient in principle, " yet in pai ts there is a beautiful simplicity, an irresistible senti- ment, and sometimes a grace excelling more modern productions." He argues, from the contemporary state of the arts in Italy, that these sculptures ai'e Chap, v.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 861 entirely due to native artists.* There is certainly no reason to suppose that foreigners ^vere employed upon any work of importance in England until a later period, when the tomb of Henry III. and the shrine of Edward the Confessor are known to have been executed by Italian hands. With regard to the statues of Eleanor of Castile, on the crosses erected to her memory, Flaxman, after praising their simplicity and delicacy, observes that they partake of the grace particularly cultivated in the school of Nicolo Pisano, and might possibly be executed by some of the travelling pupils from his school. Be this as it rnay, sculpture by no means maintained the same high tone during the fourteenth century ; and though we have many effigies of the greatest value as portraits, which their strong cha- racter of individuality warrants them to be, none are compara1)le to those of Queen Eleanor as works of art. But tlie works of this period are very unequal. There is no comparison between the graceful iveepers on the tomb of Aymer de Valence and those on the later monument of Ed- ward III.; and it is impossible to avoid the con- clusion that the superior skill of foreigners was occasionally employed. The state of painting during this period, offers little to detain us. Numerous records are, indeed, extantt relative to the painting of the palace of ^Vestminster and otlier royal houses during the reign of Henry HI., who seems to have been a liberal patron of the art ; but the works of the period, as far as we have the means of judging, are not worthy of much investigation on the score of merit; neither do they possess the interest attached to the early efforts, perhaps equally im- perfect, of Italy, since they led to no parallel results, and contribute nothing to the history of the art. The reader may, however, be curious to know upon what subjects the painters employed by this king exercised their pencils; and we learn from tliese documents that they executed the figures of our Lord and the Four Evangelists, with St. Edmund • and St. Edward, in the chapel at Woodstock ; the Last Judgment, for that of St. Stephen, in the palace of Westminster; the History of Antioch (conjectured to be some feat of the Crusades), for the room called the Antioch Chamber, in the same palace; and the History of Alexander, fjr the queen's chamber in Nottingham Castle. The painthigs executed in St. Stephen's Chapel, after its restoration by Edward III., survived till tlie final destruction of that building by fire. The ornamental parts of this work (for the details of which the reader is referred to the publication by the Society of Antiquaries) furnished the most complete example which Time had spared of the extent to which polychromatic decoration v.'as carried at this period ; but those portions appertain- ing to the higher branches displayed no proficiency in any of the principles of art, though the school of (xiotto was already flourishing in Italy under his • See Walpole's Anecdotes of Paiatlnj, ■f l''laxm:iu's Lectures. successors. We must not, however, pass without notice the curious portrait of Richard II., preserved in the Jerusalem Chamber at Westminster. In its style it is merely an enlargement of the miniature painting which was cultivated at this period with great success. Numerous manuscripts are extant, illustrated by compositions displaying the most brilliant colours and the utmost delicacy of exe- cution, whatever their deficiencies may be in other respects. Several specimens from a metrical his- tory of Richard II. have been given in the fore- going pages of this work, and will convey the best idea that mere lines can afford of this branch of the fine arts at the end of the fourteenth century. In the above-mentioned records we have the first notice of painting on glass, in the form of precepts for glazing three windows in St. John's Chapel, in the Tower of London, with a little Virgin Mary holding the Child, a Trinity, and a St. John the Apostle, and for executing the history of Dives and Lazarus in glass at Nottingham Castle. The style of executing such works at this period was in small medallions of different forms, inlaid upon a sort of mosaic ground in various patterns and the most brilliant colours. Windows of this date were sometimes surrounded by elaborate borders, and may be further distinguished by the predominance of a rich deep blue. Tiiis style was continued to the end of the thirteenth century. In that which succeeded the compartments are still small, but of more simple forms, among which a pointed egg shape is common, and they are often filled by a single figure. The ground is no longer disposed in mosaic, but drawn with beautiful scroll or ara- besque work. In the middle of the fourteenth century, and during the period of the zenith of the Decorated English style, figures of larger size were repre- sented, occupying the whole breadth of the light, standing in a niche, decorated with canopies, columns, and buttresses. These figures generally relate to benefactors of the church, and their names and deeds are recorded by inscriptions, and illus- trated by their armorial bearings. The west window of York Cathedral is glazed in this style, and the indenture entered into with the artist, of which the particulars are preserved,* fixes the date of its execution to the year 1338. Robert, a glazier, contracted to glaze and paint the said window at the rate of sixpence per foot for plain, and twelve pence for coloured glass. The history of JMiglish Music, so far as it can be traced by any ancient musical compositions ex- tant, does not commence within the period at which we are now arrived. The art, indeed, as has been already shown, appears to have been generally cul- tivated in this country from a very early date ; but wff are strongly inclined to suspect that for many • Sno Hritton's Hist, of Yi)rk Cathedrul, .^iipemlix. 862 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. ages it was practised almost invariably as a mere accessary to poetry, or in union with the church service. And here we may, in passing, express our belief that, with the ancients. Music was rarely separated from her sister art, — a fact which, if admitted, will render more probable some of the otherwise incredible stories of the power of har- mony handed down to us from remote ages. From a passage in Bede, referred to in the la.st Book, and indeed from other statements, it ap- pears, that among the Anglo-Saxons an essential qualification for admission into the upper classes of society was a certain degree of skill on the harp ; that is, we suppose, a power of accom- panying on that instrument the musical delivery of the popular poems of the day. By the laws of Wales, a harp — or, as we presume, a prac- tical knowledge of the instrument — was one of the three qualifications necessary to constitute a gentleman :* none but the king, his musicians, and. freemen, was allowed to possess a harp ; and he who played on it was legally a gentleman. According to Giraldus Cambrensis, the people of York, and those beyond the Humber, sang in two parts, treble and base. He also tells us that the Welsh practised vocal harmony in many parts; but perhaps he mistook some such rude chorus as we now occasionally meet with at numerously- at- tended, festive entertainments, for singing har- moniously in several parts. The -ancient national habits that have been de- • Leges Wallicffi, p. 301, Hand Oroan oh Dui.ci.vier. and Violin. Pvoyr.V MS. 14 E iii. scribed continued to be kept up in later ages. " In the statutes of New College, Oxford, given about the year 1 380, the founder orders his scholars, for their recreation on festival days in the hall after dinner and supper, to entertain themselves with songs, and other diversions consistent with de- cency."* A manuscript roll of the officers of Edward III.'s household contains a list of per- formers on the trumpet, oboe, clarion, dulcimer, tabret, violin, flute, &c. To these may be added several instruments mentioned by Chaucer in his ' Canterbury Tales ' and ' House of Fame.' The same poet, too, in ' The Romaunt of the Rose,' speaks of a lady's singing, in language which implies mvich vocal ability and great practical knowledge : — " Well eoud she siii-j, and lustily. None lialfe so well and semilj,+ And cothe make in song sucli refraiuinij.t It sate § her wondir well to sing. * Warton's Hist. Eiig. Poet. ■* Seemingly. X Refrain, the burden of a song, or return to the firpt part. \ Became. Her voice full clear was, and full swete ; She V as not ude, ne yet unmete, But cou'.he* inoui^he for soche doing As longith unto karoUing.'' Yet no remains are to be found, up to the fifteenth century, of what can properly be called a British musical composition ; not so much as a simple melody ; for the intonations of the church at that period exhibit nothing that comes under the de- nomination of air, at least in the modern sense of the term : and after much research, we are satisfied of the correctness of what is asserted by one of the most eminent of our musical antiquaries, that, pre- valent as dancirg was in this country from the earliest times, no appearance can be discovered of the notation, or the name, of even an English dance-tune before the year HOO.f * Sellinger's (or St. Leger's) Round ' may be traced back to nearly the reign of Henry VIII. ; nothing beyond. This is the more remarkable because there were some good English writers on music during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whose works • Knew. t Sir J. Hawkins, Hist, of Music. Chap. V.] LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND FINE ARTS: A.D. 1216—1399. 863 Ha.nd-I3ei,ls. Rovnl MS. 15 D iii. are to be found in manuscript in the British. Museum, the Bodleian, and other libraries. Of these works we shall only notice one, entitled ' De Speculatione Musices,' by Walter Odington, pre- served in Corpus College, Cambridge. This excellent but almost unknown author, was a monk of Evesham during the early part of the thirteenth century, and is mentioned by Stephens, the trans- lator and continuator of Dugdale's Monasticon, as " a man of facetious wit, who used at spare hours to divert himself with the decent and com- mendable diversion of music, to render himself the more cheerful for other duties." Odington was the author of other learned productions besides this.* Of his present Treatise it has been said, and justly, that if all other musical tracts, from the time of Boethius to that of Franco, were destroyed, we should sustain little loss were the MS. of Odington saved. Not one specimen, however, of the invention of his countrymen, either in melody or harmony, is given by this Benedictine monk ; and we must patiently wait till we advance into the fifteenth century ere we shall be enabled to name a single composition, even of the most trivial kind, from the pen of a British musician. • See Tunner, Moreri, &c. 864 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. CHAPTER VI. THE HISTORY OF MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. ROM the account that lias been given of the interior decorations and furniture of English pa- laces and houses during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it appears that the practice of painting the walls and ceilings of chambers existed previously to the reign of Henry III. During the reign of that monarch and his immediate successors, the fashion seems, from the frequency of the royal orders concerning it, to have obtained considerably, and almost if not entirely to have superseded the more costly and laboriously- executed hangings of needle-work, of which in several instances the paintings are directed to be made in imitation. The principal subjects were selected from the Holy Scriptures, or from the nu- merous lays and fabliaux of the thirteenth century, and the incidents were surmounted by scrolls in- scribed with the text or the legend as it might be. The well-known " Painted Chamber" at West- minster obtained its name from this style of deco- ration. The remaining part of its curious pictures executed during the reign of Edward I. was de- stroyed on the enlargement of the old House of Commons ; but, fortunately, not before accurate drawings had been made of them by the late Mr. Charles Stothard. In the romance of ' Arthur of Little Britain,' written in the reign of Edward II., we read of a chamber in which there was no manner of history nor battle " since God first made mankind," but in that chamber it was portrayed with gold azure and other fresh colours, as quickly (to the life) adorned that it was wonder to be- hold. As early as the reign of Henry III. we read of the painted glass windows in domestic buildings ; and from the above-mentioned romance we learn that, in the fourteenth century, they were made \\ ith lattices to open and shut. Strutt has engraved a beau- tiful specimen of the chairs of the time of Henry III., from a MS. copy of Matthew Paris.* He has also given one of the latest specimens of the square- backed chairs of the thirteenth century,t at the • llorda An7el-Cynnan, pi. 86. \ lliid. pi. 39; aiiil S.iotts and P^s^times of rco[ile of England, plates 39, 40, 42, and 45. close of which they began to be fashioned after the pointed style of architecture then just introduced. One of the most interesting specimens now exist- ing is the coronation chair, called St. Edward's, Chaik, Royal 31S. 14 E iii. preserved in Westminster Abbey, and in which all our sovereigns from Edward II. inclusive (with the exception perhaps of Mary) have been crowned. The use of tressels for tables appears to have been introduced during the fourteenth century. In the beautiful French work on furniture, &c., by i:^ Libhauy Chair, IIkadino Tahlk, and Ukadiso Di;?k. Koyal MS. 15 U iii. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399 Ued. Royal MS. 14 E iii. M. Willemin, there is an ornamental specimen from a MS. copy of the ' Roman de Lancelot du Lac,' in the Royal Library at Paris. An elegant bedstead, chair, and reading-desk of the fourteenth century are also given in that work, which deserves to be better known in England. We have a splendid description of a bedstead in the romance of ' Arthur' before mentioned. One which stood in the midst of the chamber sur- mounted in beauty all others ; for the " uttcr- brases" thereof were of green jasper, with great bars of gold set full of precious stones, and the crampons of fine silver bordered with gold; the posts were of ivory with pomels of coral, and the staves closed in buckram covered with crimson satin. The sheets were of silk, with a rich cover- ing of ermine and other cloths of gold, and four square pillows wrought amongst the Saracens. The curtains were of green pendal (silk), orna- mented with gold and azure ; and round about the bed there lay on the floor carpets of silk " poynted and embroidered with images of gold" (one of the earliest notices of carpets) ;* and at the head of the bed stood an image of fine gold, having a bow of ivory in his left hand, and an arrow of fine silver in his right. Another bed in the same romance is described as being furnished with a rich quilt wrought with cotton, covered with crimson sendal, stitched with threads of gold, and sheets of white silk, and over all a rich fur of ermines. In front of this bed there stood a bench with great " brases"(arms) of ivory. Our readers must take into consideration that this is from a romance, but it nevertheless is a descrip- tion founded upon facts, and exaggerated only with regard to the materials. We learn from it, in con- junction with the pictorial representations of the period, that the bedsteads of that day resembled the modern crib used for children in England, and • Matthew Paris tells us that EleanorofCastile.wifeof Edward I., followed tlie example of Sinchiiis, Bishop cf Toledo, wlio, in 1255, covered his floor with tapestry, at which there was much sneering. \ VOL. 1. ' Bed. Royal MS, 15 D iii. for every body in Germany, being a sort of long box, the sides or railing of which was called the outer bras. The posts at the corners sometimes only rose a little above this railing, and were sur- mounted with panels, at others they supported a tester.* But the wills of our sovereigns and chief nobility prove that, during the fourteenth century, the beds of personages of distinction were magni- ficent enough almost to relieve the romancer of the suspicion of exaggeration. Agnes, Countess of Pembroke, in 1367, gives to her daughter a bed, "with the furniture of her father's arms.'' Wil- liam Lord Ferrers of Groby, in 1368, leaves to his son his green bed, with his arms thereon, and to his daughter his " white bed and all the furniture, with the arms of Ferrers and Uflbrd thereon." Edward the Black Prince, in 1316, bequeaths to his confessor. Sir Robert de Walsham, a large bed of red camora, with his arms embroidered at each corner, also embroidered with the arms of Here- ford; and to M. Alayne Cheyne "our bed of camora, powdered with blue eagles." His widow, in 1385, gives "to my dear son the king (Richard IL) my new bed of red velvet, embroidered with ostricli feathers of silver, and heads of leopards of ' gold, with boughs and leaves issuing out of their mouths." Beds of black satin, of blue, red, and white silk, and of black velvet, all more or less richly embroidered with gold, silver, and colours, are mentioned in the wills of Edmond Earl of March, 1380; Richard Earl of Arundel, 1392; and John Duke of Lancaster, 1397. Chaucer, in his Dream (v. 255), says — Of downe of pure dove's white I wol give him a feather bed. Rayed with gold and right wel clad In fine black sattin d'oiitremerc. And many a pillow, and every bere Of cloth of R.iynes, to slepe on soft Cloth of Raynes (Rennes in Britanny) was much •In the will of Lady Neville, 1385, we find mention of a coverlet or counterpane (" couvrelitz "), and a tester of double worsted ; al.so of It white couvrciit and tester, powdered with popinjays. 3c 866 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. esteemed during the middle ages, and is mentioned us early as the twelfth century. It was used for sheets, and seems to have been linen of very fine maimfacture. Clocks that struck and chimed the hour al'e mentioned as early as the close of the thirteenth century, as part of the furniture of a mansion, by the authors of the ' Roman de la Rose' : — " F.t puU fiiit sohner ses orloges P;ir SI'S salles pt par scs loges A roes trop subtilk'ments De pardurable mouvements." The word clock, however, was used to signify the bell only till the time of Henry VIII., the French word horloge being used for the entire machine before that period. A cupboard of plate in the thirteenth century is described as consisting of a cup of gold covered, six quart standing pots of silver, twenty-four silver bowls with covers, a bason, ewer, and chasoir of silver.* The wills of Sir John Devereux, 1385, of Sir William de Walworth (the celebrated lord mayor of London, who also died in 1385), and of Alice de Nerford, Baroness Neville, of Essex, 1394, contain repeated notices of silver and silver-gilt plate, consisting of dishes, chargers, basons, ewers, salt-cellars, and spoons. Sir William leaves a dozen silver spoons to his brother Thomas Walworth, twelve dishes and twelve salt cellars, two chargers, two basons, with a silver lavatory, and six pieces of plate with two covers. In Lady Neville's will mention is made of silver spice-plates and hanaps (hanapes), with covers or lids to them. Hanaps are also mentioned amongst the articles of plate in the inventory of Charles V., of France. f Some of these hanaps were splendidly chased, and orna- mented with eagles, herons, &c. ; and one is de- scribed as " a hanap with a leopard ;" the figure of one being probably upon the " couvercle." In the same will, napkins and towels (" towailles"), manufactured at Paris and Dinant, are mentioned amongst the household linen. A pair of knives, with sheaths of silver, ena- melled, and a fork of crystal, are mentioned in the wardrobe accounts of Edward I. ; and forks are said to have been used in Italy as early as 1330, but they were not introduced at tables here till the seventeenth century. The one above mentioned, from the very material of which it was made, must evidently have been an object of curiosity rather than an article for use. Five-screens, with feet and stands, occur in 1383; and fire-dogs, or andirons, are mentioned in the wardrobe accounts of Edward I. The civil costume in England in the reign of • Matt. Paris, 269. j The word hanapcr lias generally been explained as rrieaning a SasSef with handles, and derived fiom hand-hamper. It is evident, from the document now quoted, that in the fourteenth century the term w as ai)plied to vessels of silver ; and we think the true deriva- tion of the word to be from the Saxon and German word finnd and ffpf.—ihii latter signifyinif a bowl, bason, or poringer (nop in Dutch, and nappo in Italian) ; and that having a lid (^couvtrde') to it as well as handles, it» appearance would be that of a soup-bason. Henry III. does not appear to have differed essen- tially from that worn during the reign of Richard and John. The tunic, with sleeves tight to the wrist, the chaiisses, or tight pantaloons, with shoes or short boots, the toes being long and pointed, form the ordinary dress of the middle classes. Caps of singular and varied shapes are more fre- quently met with, but the cowl or the coif is the general head-gear of the traveller. A large cloak with sleeves, and a capuchon or cowl attached to it is mentioned as a garment for foul weatlier, under the name of " super-totus," or over-all, and a similar, if not the same, habit, called a balan- drana, is amongst others forbidden to be worn ])y the monks of St. Benedict at this period. Robes and mantles continued to distinguish the higher orders, and the materials of which they were com- posed appear to have been of the most costly de- scription. Velvet is mentioned by Matthew Paris under its Latin name of villosa (from whence the French villuse and r^elours), and two very splendid sorts of gold and silk stuff manufactured at Baldeck and in the Cyclades were introduced here about this period. The first, called cloth of Baldekiup, was used to form the vestments in which William de Valence was arrayed when knighted by Henry in 1247, and the second gave its name to a super- tunic, or surcoat, which opened up the front to the waist, and was called, after it, Cyclas, or Ciclaton. The whimsical fashion of indenting, escalopping, and otherwise cutting the edges of garments, which had provoked a legislative prohibition as early as the reign of Henry II., appears to have raged more than ever towards the close of Henry III.'s reign. William de Loris, who died in 1260, describes the dress of Mirth in his ' Roman de la Rose,' as being — " En maint lien incissi'e Kt decoppee par cointissc f* and robes so " slyttered," as Chaucer describes them, were thence called cointises. The nobles who attended at the marriage of Henry's daughter with Alexander, king of Scotland, in 1251, "were attired," says Matthew Paris, " in vestments of silk, commonly called cointises." Mantles lined with ermine are first mentioned during this reign : two are ordered for Henry and his queen ; and Matthew Paris mentions the doubled or lined winter garments of the king and his courtiers. As an exterior ornament, however, furs do not make their appearance till the reign of Edward I. In the Ilarleian MS., 926, is an initial letter in which is represented the coronation of that monarch, and his mantle of state is not only lined with ermine but has the broad cape or collar of the same fur which has ever since been worn bv sovereign princes. * That is, tastefully, or with fanciful elegance. The old French verb se cointiser, is rendered so parcr comme unc coquette, and the substantives feminine, cointise, cointerie—gcntiUcssc, mamiieres elegantes, polies. Landais, Dictlonnaire General, &c. Paris, 1834. Quintcux and gtiinteuse signifies uhimsical or fantastical, and Chaucer translates the line thus : " All to slyttered for qticintisc " — cut Into slits or pieces for whim's sake, or in a fantastical manner. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1390. 867 Ladies' Head-dresses. Royal MS, 15 D ii. The principal change in the female dress of this period took place in the fashion of wearing the hair, which, instead of being plaited as previously, was turned up behind, and entirely enclosed in a caul of net-work composed of gold, silver, or silk thread, over which was worn the peplum or veil ; and sometimes, in addition, a round hat or cap. Garlands, or chaplets of goldsmith's work, were also worn by the nobility over or without the caul ; and wreaths of natural flowers formed a still more elegant summer head-dress, attainable by all classes. The wimple or headkerchief continued to cover the grey hairs of age, and give a conventual appearance to the costume of the matron and the widow. This piece of attire was increased in size and rendered still more unbecoming, towards the close of Henry's reign, by the introduction of a neckcloth called the gorget. Jean de Meun, the continuator of Lorris's ' Roman de la Rose,* de- scribes it in the reign of Edward I., as being wrapped two or three times round the neck, and Ladies' Costumk, 'miE of Edward I. Sloane MS. 3983. then fastened with a great quantity of pins, on either side of the face, higher than the ears. " Par Dieu !" he exclaims, " 1 have often thought in my heart, when I have seen a lady so closely tied up, that her neckcloth was nailed to her chin, or that she had the pins hooked into her flesh." In the Sloane MS., 3983, are some figures perfectly illustrating this tirade of the poet. The extravagance and foppery which disgusted Matthew Paris during the reign of Henry III., was partially checked by the personal example of Edward I., who despised " the foreign aid of orna- ment." and answ^ered those who inquired his rea- son for not wearing richer apparel, that " it was absurd to suppose he could be more estimable in fine than in simple clothing." He never wore his crown after the day of his coronation, " saying, merrily, that crowns do rather onerate than honour princes."* Buttons, very closely set from the wrist almost to the elbow of the sleeve of the under tunic, form the most remarkable distinction of the civil dress of Edward's reign. The fashion is par- ticularly alluded to in a MS. poem written before ISOOf:— " Botones azavd (azure) everilke ane From liis clboth to his hande." and it is represented in the illuminations and efligies of the time. Gloves were more generally worn ; 'and the hair appears to hang in Avaved locks lower than the ears, and to have been curled with great precision. The ladies are cruelly attacked by the poets of the day on account of their whimsical head-tires and extravagantly long trains. By one writer they are compared to peacocks and pies, having " long tails that trail in the dirt," a thousand times longer than those of such birds. The authors of the ' Roman de la Rose' indulge also in invectives against certain head-dresses, which, however, are not very clearly described, and have been impro- perly considered to mean the horned head-dresfc of a much later date. The figures already alluded to in the Sloane MS., 3983, and the heads in a royal MS., marked 15 D ii., will better illustrate the female costume of this period than pages of de- scription. The pernicious system of tight lacing already alluded to under the reign of Henry I., is continually mentioned in works of this date. The damsels in ' The Lay of Sir Launfal,' are described as being " Liicios moult estreitmeut." Their kirtles were of light blue silk ; their mantles of green velvet, richly embroidered with gold, and furred with " gris and gros" (i. e. the finest grey fur and vair distinguished from the m^Vtevair), their heads attired with kerchiefs well cut, and rich gold wire, and surmounted by coronets, each adorned with more than sixty precious gems. A eirdle of beaten cold, embellished with emeralds and rubies, is mentioned m another poem as W'orn by a lady " about her middle small." * Camden, Remains, p. 250. The original aiitliority is John of London, who wrote a 'Cummemoratio,' addressed to Edward's widow, Queen Margaret, and now ia the Cotton collection, marked Nero, D U. t Cotton MS. Julius V. 868 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. Male Cosiumk, time of Edwakd II. Royal MS. E iii. Sloane MS. 346. The reign of Edward II. presents us with tlic party-coloured habits so fashionable during the two following centuries, and the sleeves of the sur- coat, or super-tunic, terminating at the elbow in tippets or lappets, which became long narrow streamers reaching to the ground in the reign of Edward III. They arc visible in the effigy of Effiov Of Edwaiid II — Gloucester Calliedral. Edward IT. in Gloucester Cathedral. An approach is made also to the picturesque chaperon or hood of the close of the fourteenth century, by the curious fashion, apparently, of twisting or folding the capu- chon or cowl into fanciful shapes, and bearing it, little more than balanced, seemingly, on the head, HiiAD-DKESsES, TIME OF EowAiiD II. Royal MS, 14 K iii. as the women of the Pays de Basque wear their scarlet hoods in summer, to this day. The ladies wore it so as well as the men, and, we may pre- sume, secured it by pins to the hair ; but the mode of fastening is not apparent in the illuminations. In one of the accompanying examples a female is seen with an apron, which Chaucer afterwards calls a barme, or lap-cloth. I"£.MALE DaEss, TIME OF Edwabd II. Sloaiie MS. 3-16. The close of the thirteenth century is chiefly re- markable in the history of costume, as presenting us with some particular distinctions in the attire of the legal classes. Lawyers were originally priests, and consequently wore the tonsure ; but, on the clergy being forbidden to meddle with secular affairs, the lay lawyers discontinued the practice of shaving the head, and wore the cuif for distinction's sake. It was first made of linen, and afterwards of white silk : its shape is the same as that of the coif worn by travellers and huntsmen in the reign of Henry III., and has a very undignified and un- becoming appearance, resembling an exceedingly scanty child's nightcap tied under the cb.in. Some judicial personages wear caps and capes of fur, Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 121G— 1399. 869 and have a peculiarly shaped collar of the latter, or of some white stuff round the neck of their long priest-like robes. The fur lining of the robe is generally either white lambskin or vair. The ecclesiastical costume in England was at this time so sumptuous as to excite the admiration and avarice of Innocent IV. Some of the sacerdotal habits were nearly covered with gold and precious stones, and others elaborately embroidered with figures of animals and flowers : their shape will be best undestood from our engravings. The mitre Cardinal's Il-vr. Royal MS. 16 G vi. had assumed its modern form by tlie reign of Edward I. The red hat is said to have been given to the cardinals by Pope Innocent VI. at the council of Lyons, in 1245; and De Curbio says they first wore it in 1246, at the interview between the pope and Louis JX. of France. Its shape at the commencement of the fourteenth century may be seen in the subjoined cut. The reign of Edward III. presents us with an entire change of costume. The long robes and tunics, the cyclases and cointises of the preceding reigns vanished altogether. A close-fitting gar- ment called a cote bardie, buttoned down tl;e front, and confined over the hips (which it barely co- vered) by a splendid girdle, w-as the general habit of the male nobility. It was composed of the richest materials, magnificently embroidered, some- times party-coloured, the sleeves occasionally ter- minating at the elbow, from which depended the Male Costu.me, tijie of Edwaud III. Eoyiil JIS. 19 D ii,, and Strutt. long white tippets or streamers before mentioned. In such cases the sleeve of an under garment is visible, ornamented with a close row of buttons from the wrist upwards, as in Edward L's time. A mantle exceedingly long, lined with silk or furs, and fastened upon the right shoulder by four or five large buttons, was worn over this cote upon state occasions, the edges indented, or cut in the form of leaves in the most elaborate and sometimes a very elegant manner. A monk of Glastonbury named Dowglas, in a work of which there is a MS. in the Harleian collection, informs us, that the Englishmen in tliis reign " haunted so much unto the folly of strangers, that every year they changed them in diverse shapes and disguisings of clothing — now long, now large, — now wide, now strait, — and every day clothings new and destitute and di- vest of all honesty of old array or good usages ; and another time to short clothes, and so strait waisted, with full sleeves and tippets of surcoats and of hoods over long and large, all so )iagged and knib on every side, and all so shattered and also buttoned, that they seemed more like to tormentors in their clothing and also in their shoeing and other array than they seemed to be like men." The extravagance of these fashions induced the commons to present a complaint on the subject in parliament, a.d. 1363; and various restrictions were promulgated in a sumptuary law passed on that occasion. Long hose frequently of two colours, and pointed shoes of clotli of gold richly embroi- dered, with a capuchon or cowl attached to a cape, having a long tail behind, and being closely buttoned up to the chin in front, completed the strange ha- biliment. Lang beards came again into fashion during this reign; and on the door of St. Peter's church at Siangate were fastened one day the following lines, which had been made by the Scots in ridicule of their southern enemies : — " Longbeiids heitiless, Peyuteil hoods witless, Gay cotes graceless, Maketh Engloiule thriftless." Beaver hats are spoken of about this time, proba- bly manufactured in Flanders, as in the next reign we find Chaucer mentioning " a Flaundrish beaver hat." They are sometimes worn over the capu- chon. The knight's chapeau, as still borne on coats of arms, is seen in some illuminations, and various other caps, some of which are for the first time decorated with a single feather worn straight up in front ; but its occurrence is so rare, and in such particular instances, that we are inclined to believe it worn, not as a fashion, but as a royal badge — Edward III. and all his sons bearing an ostrich feather differenced in the blazoning for distinction's sake ; the quill of the king's feather being gold, that of the prince's argent, and the Duke of Lan- caster's ermine. The Duke of Somerset, son of the Duke of Lancaster, wore the feather with the quill blazoned compony argent and azure.* • This unfortunate fact jmts the interesting legend of the Bohe- mian plume (^the supposed origin of the " Prince ol Wales' 870 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book IV. 1 Female Costume, time op Edward III. Eoyal MS. 19 D ii. The ladies in this reign are said to have surpassed " the men in all manner of arraies and curious clothing." Like them, they wore the cote hardie, TojiB or William of Windsor and Blanch de la Tour. Westminster Abbey. with the long white tippets streaming from the elbows ;* but the most characteristic dress of this feathers") into extreme peril, even without tlie additioual evidence of the seal i.l' John to prove that the crest of Bohemia w,is an entire wiug or pinion, or as it is represented on the tombs of the Bohemian tnunarchs at Prague, two wiujjs endorsed. • Vida Royal MS. 11> D ii. period is a sort of sideless gown with very full skirts, worn over the kirtle in such a manner as to give the appearance of a jacket to that portion of it which is visible. This gown is generally bordered with fur or velvet, and sometimes has a kind of stomacher of the same materials, ornamented with jewels, thereby increasing the illusion ; but it is almost impossible to give the reader an idea of this garment by description, and we must therefore refer him to the annexed engraving, from the effigy of Blanch de la Tour, daughter of Edward III., in Westminster Abbey, and others from illu- minations of the period. We have not been able to ascertain the name allotted to this most peculiar habit. Knighton tells us, that at tournaments the ladies rode in party-coloured tunics, with short hoods and liripipes (that is, the tippets, or long tails of the hoods,) wrapped about their heads like cords. Their girdlea were richly decorated with gold and silver, and they wore small swords, " commonly called daggers," stuck through pouches before them — a fashion observable amongst the beaux of the opposite sex at this time. Mourning habits are first distinguished on the monuments and in the illuminations of this reign. Sometimes the mourners are clothed entirely in black. On the tomb of Sir Roger de Kerdeston, who died a.d. 1337, his relations are seen v,-earing the mourning-cloak over their ordinary coloured clothes. , i MovKNiKo IlAmTS.— From the Tomb of Sir Kogcr de Ki.idtauH. Richard II. set his subjects an exam})le of foppery which they required very little inducement to imitate. Knighton assures ua that all distinc- tion of ranks and classes was soon lost in the gene- ral extravagance and rage for magnificent clotliing that now prevailed. Chaucer, in his ' Parsons's Tale,' and the author of the ' Eulogium,' cited by Camden, both inveigh loudly and in the same strain against the inordinate waste and excessive cost of tlie apparel of all classes down to the menial servants, whom Harding describes as arrayed in silk, satin, damask, and green and scarlet cloth. The old fashion of cutting the edges of garments into the Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399. 871 shape of leaves and other devices was carried now to the greatest extreme. Letters and mottoes were embroidered upon the gowns or mantles ; and the sleeves of the former were so long and wide, that they trailed upon the ground, and are scarcely dis- tinguished in some instances from the ample folds of the main portion of the garment. Jackets inde- cently short were also worn by many, as though rejoicing only in extremes; and Chaucer's Parson bitterly reprobates the party-coloured hose which Mat.f, C )^;iME, riMv; of Kichai;i> II. Royal JI3. 20 13 vi., and Harleian MS. 1319. were generally attached to them. The short jacket when itself of two colours is, we presume, the habit alluded to by the name of courtepie — an ap- pellation it retained even when composed of one colour only. The shoes had enormously long-piked toes, sometimes crooking upward in the Polish fashion, and called " Crackowes," probably from the city of Cracow, in Poland, whence the fashion may have been imported by the foUow^ers of Richard's queen, Anne, whose grandfather had in- corporated the kingdom of Poland with that of Bohemia. The author of the ' Eulogium,' before- mentioned, says they fastened the toes to their Fkmale Costume, TnrE of llicnATin II. Eoyal MS. 16 G v., and Harleian MS. 4379. knees with chains of silver ; but this curious custom has not been illustrated by any pictorial repre- sentation that we have yet met with. Hats and caps of various singular shapes are worn. One can, a tall mufi-looking affair, is seen frequently in illuminations of this date. It is worn by the Duke of Lancaster in the illumina- tions of the Harleian manuscript history of Richard II., in French verse, of which an account has been given in a former page,* and is painted black, but of what material does not appear. The hoods, of which many specimens are portrayed in the same manuscript, are still of a most inexplicable shape. They appear more like a bundle of cloth upon the head tlian a regular article of apiparel : some are decorated by a single featlier. The gowns, in the same miniatures, exactly answer to the description of the author of the ' Eulogium' — " a garment reach- ing to the heels, close before, and strutting out at the sides ; so that at the back they make men seem like women." Beards seem to have come again into fashion, and were worn forked as in the old Anglo-Saxon time. The hair was worn long, and carefully curled. The ecclesiastical costume preserved its sump- tuous character to the end of this period. From a record in the Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer's Office, in the Exchequer, we find that the mitre of Alexander de Neville, Archbishop of York, in the time of Richard II., was pledged to Sir W. Walworth, Lord Mayor of London, for the sum of 193/. Qs. 8c/., and was valued at ten marks more than that sum " at least ;" — a tolerable proof of its magnificence. The armour of the reign of Henry III. is gene- rally to be recognised by the admixture of plate with the variou.s sorts of mail worn from the time of the Conquest. It is confined, however, to caps for the knees and protections for the shoidders and elbows. In some instances, but rarely as yet, greaves are seen, but the hands and feet are still covered by mail. The quilted or padded armour of silk, buckram, &c., which we have before spoken of, came still more into use, and, from its style of ornament, was called pourpoint or coun- terpoint. Chain-mail, properly so called, is sup- posed to have been introduced during this reign i'rom Asia, where it is worn to this day ; but it is not clear to us that it had not been known to the Anglo-Saxons and Danes, as we have already remarked under that period. From the commence- ment of the thirteenth century, however, there is no doubt of its use in Europe ; and the inter- lacing of the rings themselves, in lieu of stitching them either flat, or in layers one over the other, upon leather or cloth, was a decided improvement on the clumsy hauberk of the early Norman era. Over the shirt of chain was worn the surcoat, bliaus, or cyclas, of silk or rich stuffs, and occasion- ally perhaps emblazoned. -f It descended to the • See ante, p. 798. t The fashion of emblazoning the surcoat did not however become general till the reign of Kdward I. 872 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV middle of the leg, and the edges were frequently indented or escalloped, like the cointise and other civil garments we have previously described. Of this period are some military figures on the exterior of Wells Cathedral, and also the drawings in Matthew Paris's ' Lives of the Two Oilas.' A very heavy and ugly-shaped helmet, of a barrel form, with an aperture for siglit cut in the transverse bar of a cross, covered the head entirely and rested on the shoulders. Skull-caps of various forms, with and without nasals, were worn by men-at-arms, esquires, &c. In Matthew Paris's 'Lives of the Two Offas,' written and illumi- nated about this period, the archers are seen in mail-jackets or haubergeons, with sleeves reaching to the elbow, over which are vests of leather, defended by four circular iron plates. Round targets and iron mauls, or martels de fer, appear to have been used by knights even in this reign (the effigy of one is to be seen in Great Malvern church, Worcestershire) ; but the emblazoned shield, tlie sword, and the lance, were the most general ap- pointments of knighthood. The rowelled spur is first met with during this reign, but it is not common till that of Edward I., who, simple and unostentatious as he was in his private or civil attire, and regardless of personal finery upon most occasions, nevertheless seems to have encouraged a taste for splendour and display amongst his com- panions in his favourite pursuit of arms. Armour op the Pbrioi>, kShibited in the Effigy of John of Ei.THAM. — From his Tomb in Westminster Abbey. The armorial bearings of the knight were now fully emblazoned on his banner, shield, surcoat, and the housings of his horse. His war-helmet, improved in shape, was surmounted by the heraldic crest, and additionally adorned by a kerchief or scarf, cut and slashed like the fashionable tunics of the previous reign, and like them, and for the same reason, called a cointise. To tlie offensive weapons we find added the falchion, a peculiarly- shaped broad-bladed sword ; the cstoc, a small stabbing-sword ; the ondas or anelace, a broad dagger tapering to a fine point ; the coukl or coiitdas (whence cutlas) ; the mace, and perhaps the cimetc^r ; both the latter being of Oriental origin. The mail-gloves are aboiit this time first divided into fingers ; and in instances where the sleeves of the hauberk terminate at the wrist, leather gaunt- lets are worn, but not yet defended by plate. Flat shields of the triangular or heater form now appear. The banner is oblong ; and the pennon, a triangular standard, is mentioned. It was gene- rally charged with the crest, badge, or war-cry of the knight ; the banner being distinguished by the arms only. The general military costume of this period, with the shape of the banner, may be seen in the drawing of the Conqueror on making a grant of land to his nephew, the Duke of Brittany, copied in a preceding page,* The original document from which Mr. Kenich copied this drawing is preserved in the College of Arms; although representing William the Conqueror and his great officers, it is the work of some illumination of the thirteenth century. Towards the close of the reign of Edward I. a curious ornament of the military dress appears in the form of a pair of plates fastened to the shoulders, sometimes square, sometimes oblong, and occasionally, but more rarely, round ; embla- zoned like the shield and the surcoat with the arms of the wearer, or with a plain St. George's cross. They were called, from their situation and appearance, ailettes, or little wings. They came generally into fashion, and afterwards disappeared altogether during the reign of Edward IL ; the principal alterations in which consisted of the increa:^e of plate-armour, not only greaves for the front of the legs, but brassarts and vanbraces, or avanl bras, being worn on the arms. Two round plates also, called, from their position, mamallares, were fastened on the breast over the surcoat or cyclas, and from them depended chains to which the helmet and the sword of the knight were attached ; the helmet being now worn rarely except during the actual shock of battle, when it was placed over the usual head-piece called a bascinet, the successor of the old chapel de fer, whicli, with its nasal, disappears in this reign. The surcoat was sometimes mucli shorter in front than behind ; and tlie hauberk, instead of having a hood of mail attached to it, now termi- • .See ante, p. 5C6. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399. 873 nated at the collar, a neck-guard of chain, called the camail, being fastened to the edge of the basci- net, and falling down upon the shoulders over the surcoat, leaving a shield-shaped opening for tlie face. A vizor was occasionally attached to the bascinet, in which case the helmet was dispensed with. The pole-axe was wielded by leaders, and several scythe-bladed weapons, varieties of the bill and the guisarm, are seen in illummations of the period. During the reign of Edward III. plate-armour began to supersede the chain-m.ail on almost every part of the body. The legs and arms were soon entirely defended by plate, gussets of mail being only worn under the arm and at the bend of it. The feet were guarded by pointed shoes of over- lapping steel plates called sollerets, and the leathern gauntlets were similarly cased with steel and provided with steel tops. On the knuckles were placed small spikes, knobs, or other orna- ments, called gads or gadlings. Those on the gauntlets of Edward the Black Prince, preserved at Canterbury, are made in the form of lions. A breast-plate, called a plastron, kept the chain-shirt, divested of its sleeves, from pressing on the chest, or a pair of plates for back and breast rendered the shirt of mail altogether unnecessary, and a short apron of chain hung merely from the waist over the hips. The surcoat was gradually dis- carded for an upper garment called a jupon or guipon (a name sometimes given to the under one of leather, which supported either the breast-plate or the hauberk), made of velvet, and richly em- broidered with the arms of the wearer. It fitted the body tightly, and was confined over the hips by a magnificent belt, to which on the right side was attached a dagger, and on the left a sword. In the reign of Richard II., little alteration, if any, was made to the military costume of the close of that of Edward III. The most remarkable feature is the moveable vizor which was attached to the bascinet, now always worn in war, the more ponderous helmet, with its crest and wreath, being used only for the joust and the tournament. The shape of this said vizor may be best understood from an engraving; an orignal vizored bascinet of this time is in the Tower of London, and another at Goodrich Court (the only two known in Eng- land).* In tlie Musee d'Artillerie, at Paris, two more are preserved ; a fifth is said to be in the Hotel de Ville at Chartres. There is one in the Chateau d'Ambras in the Tyrol ; and a vizor only, without the bascinet, in the collection at the Low- enburg, Hesse Cassel. In many effigies and illuminations of the reigns of Edward III. and Richard II., the cuisses or thigh-pieces of the knights are covered with pour- pointed work; and Chaucer's Sir Thopas wore jambeaux or jambs of " cuir-bouly," a preparation of leather much used in the fourteenth century, not • See an interesting specimen of the military costume of this reign in the cawed figure of St. George at Dijon, an engravin;,' from a beautiful east of which is in the Archteologia, vol. xxv. The jiiiion is very peculiar, being full and plaited, and buttoned at the vrists and in front. only for armour, but for effigies and various works of art. The shield, which was triangular through- out the reign of Edward III., began, about the close of Richard II., to be rounded off at the St. Gkoboe at Dijon. bottom ; and a niche was made in it on one side or at top, called the bouche, or mouth, which served as a rest for the lance.* The shield of Jolin of Gaunt, which was suspended over his tomb in old St. Paul's, and burnt at the conflagration of that building, is engraved in Dugdale's ' History' and Bolton's ' Elements of Armories.' It is of the form afterwards used in the reign of Henry lY., and the bouche is at the top. By the latter writer it is described thus : — " It is very convex towards the bearer, whether by warping through age or as made of purpose. It hath in dimension more than three quarters of a yard of length, and above half a yard in breadth ; next to the body is a canvass glewed to a board, upon that board are broad thin axicles, slices or plates of horn nailed fast, and again over them twenty and six pieces of • Vide figure of St, George before mentioned. 874 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV the like, all meeting or centring about a round plate of the same in the navel of the shield ; and over all is a leather closed fast to them with glue or other holding stuff, upon which his armories SiiiELij OF Jo;i>{ OF Gaunt. were painted, but now they, with the leather itself, have very lately and very lewdly been utterly spoiled." The engraving represents the leather as torn up and curling away from the shield, so as to show the nature of its fabrication. We have already had occasion to notice the pro- bability that the use of fire-arms in war was intro- duced as early as the reign of Edward III.* The lines in which the Scottish poet Barbour speaks of the "novelties" first seen by his countrymen in one of their encounters with the English, in 1327, are as follow : — Twa noweltyes tliat day they saw, That forwith Scolhind had been uane, Tymmeris (limbres, i.e- crests) for liehnctys war the taao.f The totliyr crakys were of -war. We have also mentioned the story told by the Italian writer Giovanni Villani, about the employ- ment of cannons by Edward at the battle of Crecy. In the fifth volume of the Archeeologia is an en- graving of an ancient cannon raised from the Goodwin Sands, and supposed, from a coat of arms on it, to have been made about 1,370. If so, it is only necessary to compare it with the ancient English cannon preserved in the Tower, and said to have been used at Crecy, to be assured of the falsity of the assertion respecting the latter. In a copy of Froissart of the fifteenth century, Bib. Reg. Plut. X. H. 294, although nearly a hundred years later than the battle, we have a representa- tion of the mode in which cannon were mounted previously to the invention of the modern gun- carriage. * See ante, p. 763. t By this we also perceive that crests upon helmets were i\\\ then unknown in Scotland, though worn for thirty or forty years pre- viously in England. A, Ancient Cannon raised from the Godwin Sands, and supposed, from a coat of arms which It bears, to have been made about the year 1370. See Archseologia, Vol. 5. B, Chamber for loading. C, Spanish Cannon of the same date. D, Chamber for loading'. E, F, Earliest forms of English Cannon, from examples in the Tower of London. Mounting of a Cannon.— From Froissart. Royal MS. Plut. X. II 294. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399. 875 Social life in England during this period as- sumed, in some respects, a refinement and splen- dour to which it had been hitherto a stranger. Chivalry, which had been partially introduced into the country by the Norman invasion, and carried to a considerable height under the lion-hearted Richard, appears to have experienced a check during the troubled and disastrous reigns of John and Henry III. It is said, indeed, that the latter established a round table, in imitation of the fa- bulous King Arthur, the knights belonging to which exercised themselves in joustings, and dined at a circular board, on a footing of equality and good fellowship ; and that the citizens of London, emulating the knights and nobles, were wont to display their skill in horsemanship by running at the quintain, while a peacock was the reward of the victor. But it was under the energetic rule of Edward I., and more es- pecially under that of Edward III., that the chivalrous spirit attained its highest exaltation, and the singular system of institvitions and manners that arose out of it, its most complete and brilliant development. The reign of this last monarch, indeed, may be termed the noon of English chi- valry, although it may be questioned whether it is most indebted for the strong light of knightly renown, in which it stands out from the ages before and after it, to Edward himself, and his high-minded queen, and his gallant son, — the very miiTor of knighthood, — or to the pen of Froissart, by which its gallant exploits and gorgeous solem- nities have been so faithfully and so eloquently chronicled. Amidst the heroic daring which the chivalrous spirit cherished, and the generous deeds it occa- sionally inspired, our admiration is continually interrupted by the whimsical extravagances, and sometimes by the revolting atrocities, of which chivalry was the fruitful parent. The courage of the knight became frequently exaggerated into the most frantic daring ; courtesy towards the female sex assumed the character of an idolatrous fanati- cism, and liberality that of a reckless profusion that cared neither for the end nor the object of its largesses. The fantastic spirit of the system was introduced into the most serious affairs. Knights, even when engaged in a national contest, fought less upon public considerations than to uphold the jenown of their mistresses ; and it was the fashion among them to subject themselves to some absurd penance, until a specified deed of arms was achieved. Thus, in one of Edward III.'s expedi- tions against France, the knights who joined the army, we are told by Froissart, wore a patch on one eye, under a vow that it should not be removed until they had performed exploits worthy of their mistresses. Of the mad heedlessness with which, on other occasions, the boasted knightly virtue of liberality w'as displayed, a single instance may serve for an illustration. When Alexander III. of Scotland, accompanied by a hundred knights, repaired to London, to attend the coronation of Edward I., he and his knights, as soon as they alighted, let loose their richly- caparisoned steeds, to be scrambled for by the multitude ; and five of the great English nobles, not to be outdone in generosity by the strangers, immediately followed the example.* We are not to suppose that the sovereigns who during this period were the most distinguished protectors and ornaments of chivalry, were wholly under the control of the spirit which they thus fostered. They were not, of course, exempted from the influence of the spirit of their age, and therefore they were most anxious to be accounted true knights, as well as wise rulers ; but they had sagacity and dexterity to seize upon the ruling feeling, and turn it to the support of their schemes of policy and ambition. Such especially was the case with Edward III. He saw in chivalry the instrument most suited to the temper and circum- stances of the age, and that, therefore, by which his vast designs could be best accomplished. Every showy tournament he proclaimed increased the number and spirit of his supporters, and added to his real strength. His great opponent, Philip of Valois, adopted the same course, and a rivalry in these splendid pageantries was the consequence. Edward established what was called a round table at "Windsor, two hundred feet in diameter, which was maintained at the expense of a hundred pounds weekly ; the French king, in reprisal, established one similar at Paris, by the attractions of which he intercepted sundry German and Italian knights who were coming to England. Edward then insti- tuted the since illustrious Order of the Garter ; and Philip increased the number and splendour of his jousts and tournaments. It was thus that national and royal rivalry contributed to the extension and aggrandizement of the chivalric system: it was • H. Knyghton. K2;iouT9 PREPAMNo TO CoMBAT. Royal MS. 14 E iii. 876 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. now the arbiter of kingdoms, and therefore all its forms, however puerile, became objects of the highest public importance.* The " passages of arms," as the sportive en- counters of chivalry were termed, were of various de- scriptions. Sometimes a baron proclaimed a joust or tournament to be held before his castle, which was furnished with permanent lists for the purpose. Sometimes a certain number of knights leagued together to answer all comers ; and sometimes a single knight, especially venturous and hardy, would enter the lists with a general challenge, and encounter every foe in succession, until he con- quered all, or was himself overcome. Frequently a simple joust was tried by two knights, who chal- lenged each other to a trial of skill in all love and • M. Westminster. — Froissart. courtesy, with headless or sharpened lances ; in this case one, three, or more covn-ses were run, till one party yielded, or was disabled. And some- times, when surpassing skill was to be displayed, or when additional danger was sought to give a zest to the conflict, a place was selected for the combat where a career of the lance was the least part of the hazard, — a rough plot of ground, or a narrow bridge, with a river or fosse beneath, into which a false step would plunge the unwary com- batant. A singular course of this nature was run on the bridge of London, during the reign of Richard II., between a Scottish and an Enghsh knight, in consequence of a formal challenge after the battle of Otterburne.* Little remains to be added to the description * Froissart. Eniohts Jousting. Royal MS. 14 E iii. given in the last Book of the nature and general forms of the tournament. The display, however, both of expense and of taste, was greater now than in the preceding period. The lists were now magnificently decorated; they were surrounded by gay pavilions belonging to the knights who intended to take part in the combat, which Mere dis- tinguished by the rich armour and honoured ban- ners of their respective owners ; and the scaffolds erected for the accommodation of the ladies and nobles were hung with tapestry, and embroidery of gold and silver. The spectacle regularly com- menced with the jousts, which were performed, on those occasions, with headless lances, and each knight endeavoured, in his rapid career, to strike his adversary full on the vizor or crest. This was a difficult mark to hit, but when accomplished, it seldom failed to unseat the firmest rider. To avoid such defeat, some knights adopted the practice of fastening the helmet to the cuirass by a single lace so that it might give way at the slightest touch of the spear ; but this, Froissart states, was condemned by John of Gaunt as an unfair expe- dient. To lose a stirrup in the shock of encounter was equal to a defeat ; to be unhorsed, whether in joust or tournay, was an additional ignominy. In the furious melee of the general combat, those who threw their antagonists to the earth, or mastered their weapons, were also sometimes obliged to drag them to the extremity of the lists ; and when this K.su:;i;s CoMD.vTiNo. Iloyal MS. 14 K iii. K.NiQHTS Jousting. Eoval MS. 14 E iii. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399. 877 was accomplished, the discomfited knights had to remain prisoners, and take no further share in the battle. In this way, both parties fought until so many on one side were disabled or captured as to make further contention hopeless. As might be expected, these sports, even in their gentlest forms, were plentifully accompanied with wounds and bruises; a death-wound was sometimes unwarily dealt, and a dismounted knight was occasionally smothered in his armour ; but when the excite- ment of conflict rose to its height, aggravated, too, as it was in many cases by party or national enmities, then the two-handed sword or heavy battle axe descended with the same fury as on the plains of France or Syria, and the lists assumed the character of a battle-field on which deadly ene- mies were contending. The king, or the person presiding, however, had always the power to still the confusion at the wildest. He threw down his warder, and cried " Ho !" — and in an instant the fiercest strife Avas suspended; the mailed com- batants stood as motionless as statues of bronze. Froissart gives us the description of a tourna- ment held at London, in 1389, during the reign of Richard II. Heralds were sent to every country in Europe where chivalry Avas honoured, to pro- claim the time and the occasion ; and brave knights were invited, to splinter a lance, or wield a sword, in honour of their mistresses. Knights and nobles from far and near assembled at the inspiring sum- mons ; so that London was thronged with warriors of every climate and language. Smithfield (at that time without the city walls), in which the lists were erected, was surrounded with temporary chambers and pavilions, constructed for the ac- commodation of the king and the princes, the queen and the maidens of her court : and when the solemnity was about to commence, sixty horses richly accoutred were led to the lists by squires, accompanied by heralds and minstrels ; after which sixty ladies followed on palfreys, each lady leading an armed knight by a chain of silver. The first day, the gam.es commenced, as usual, with encoun- ters of the lance ; and at evening, when the trials had closed, the two combatants who had most highly signalized their skill, received, as prizes, a golden crown, and a rich girdle adorned with pre- cious stones ; after which, the night was spent in feasting and dancing. On the next morning, and for five successive days, the more serious competitions of the tournament followed ; and still, as evening came, the same joyous festivities succeeded — the actors thus realizing all that their pagan ancestors had hoped for from the fighting and feasting para- dise of Odin. But the appetites of the noble assembly for blows and beeves had not yet been satiated. The immense cavalcade now rose, and passed on to Windsor, where the same jousts, com- bats, and banquets were renewed for several days more ; after which, the foreign knights departed to their own homes. The ordeal combats, which were so closely con- nected with chivalry, appear, during the reign of Richard II., to have increased in frequency. Re- gulations for these judicial duels were settled by the king's uncles. By these regulations, the king was to find the field upon which the combat was Ordeal Combat oe Duel. Iloyal MS. 14 E iii. to be fought; the lists were to be erected on ground sixty paces in length, and forty in breadth, hard, firm, and level, with one gate to the east, and another to the west ; and the whole was to be in- closed by a paling so high, that a horse could not leap over it. The nature of these duels, as well as the spirit of the age, will be best illustrated by the account of a singular combat of this nature, which is detailed by Holinshed. A knight accused a squire of treason, wliich the latter denied, and craved the purgation of combat ; and accordingly the trial was held in presence of the king, the Duke of liancaster, and the nobles. The appellant first entered the field of battle, and waited for the accused, who, after being thrice summoned by the herald-at-arms, entered the lists at the third call. The sealed indenture containing the knight's charge was then opened, and read, and a denial formally returned; after which, nothing remained but an im- mediate appeal to arms. Tiie oaths of battle were therefore administered, and the accuser and ac- cused solemnly swore that " they dealt with no witchcraft, nor art magic, whereby they might ob- tain the victory of tlieir adversary ; nor had about them any herb, or stone, or other kind of experi- ment, with which magicians use to triumph over their enemies." The combatants then betook themselves to prayer, after which they rose, and joined battle at the given signal, first with spears, then with swords, and finally with daggers. After a long and cruel fight, the knight managed to beat down and disarm his enemy ; but just when he was about to throw himself upon the body of the vanquished, to deprive him of life, the sweat within his barred helmet flowed into his eyes, and fo completely blinded him, that he fell wide of the mark. The squire, finding what had happened, contrived to raise his battered limbs from the ground, and threw himself upon his enemy, when, 878 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. [Book IV. at this perilous juncture, the king ordered the pair to be plucked asunder, which was immediately done by the attendants of the lists. The knight, as soon as he got upon his legs, prayed earnestly to be replaced in his former position, with the squire above him ; for " he thanked God he was well, and mistrusted not to obtain the victory ;" but this request was refused by the king, although pleaded repeatedly, and with vehemence, and backed by the offer of goodly sums of money. In the meantime, the squire, exhausted with wounds and toil, swooned away, and fell from his chair ; his harness was speedily doffed, and means were used for his recovery ; but as soon as he had opened his eyes, and began to breathe, the perti- nacious knight advanced, and, after calling him traitor and perjured, summoned him to commence the battle anew. But the squire's hist combat had been fought. He was unable to answer, perhaps even to understand, the reproach of his antagonist ; and he died the same night. No better proof could be required of his guilt by the most scrupulous judges of that age; and thus svas the affair terminated " to the great rejoicing of the common people," says the old chronicler, " and discouragement of traitors." The ostentatious splendovir and recklessness of expense which the chivalrous spirit tended to encourage, was not confined to mere courtly parades, and tournaments, and solemn festivals. On the contrary, it seems to have pervaded every department of domestic as well as public and ont-door life. We still find in fashion during the present period the same unwieldy retinues that encumbered the march of Henry II. and his nobles ; and if these trains of attendants were now somewhat superior in point of elegance and splen- dour to those of preceding ages, they were still productive of many evils. Each man strove to outdo his neighbour; and a writer of the time, the Monk of Malmsbury, bitterly complains of the unhappy rivalry in prodigality which such a spirit had produced, when he tells us that the squire endeavoured to outshine the knight, the knight the baron, the baron the earl, and the earl the king. All this was nothing more than the natural result of such an excited and artificial state of life. Unfortunately, too, the semblance of an excuse was still afforded for large and well- armed trains in the journeyings of the rich and powerful, from the fact that England was still tra- versed by strong bands of robbers, that plundered not only peaceful bishops and cardinal?, but well- accompanied earls, and even ])owerful princes.* But still stronger motives for these throngs of fol- lowers were to be found in the restlessness and ambition of the nobility, constantly seeking to supplant each other when not engaged in a common contest with the crown. Such regiments and armies of retainers, of course, demanded plentiful supplies and an unbounded hospitality; and in- stances are furnished of the household expendi- • M. Paris.— ir. Kiij-ghton.— S. Walsingham. ture of these periods that almost stagger belief. Richard II., we are told, entertained ten thousand persons daily at his tables. The rich and power- ful Thomas Earl of Lancaster, grandson of Henry III., in the beginning of the fourteenth century, expended in one year about twenty-two thousand pounds of silver in this open style of house- keeping ; of wine alone there were consumed, during the course of that year by his household, three hundred and seventy-one pipes. In the article of meats and drinks, the common people seem to have still adhered to the plain fashions of their ancestors : the old dishes, what- ever they were, as yet sufficed them, with copious draughts of ale, cider, and mead ; and quantity, not quality, was the main essential of a banquet. Very difierent, however, was the case with the nobles. The solemn feastings of chivalry seem gradually to have crept into the every-day life of the great, so that the comparative abstinence for which their Norman ancestors were distinguished had given place to inordinate extravagance. At- tempts to restrain this extravagance were repeat- edly made in the reigns of Edvvard II. and III., by sumptuary laws ; the very repetition of which, however, proves that they were generally disre- garded. The records of some of the great feasts of this period exhibit astounding bills of fare. At the marriage banquet of Richard Earl of Corn- wall, in 1243, thirty thousand dishes vv'ere served up ;* and in the following century, at the installa- tion feast of the abbot of St. Augustine, no less than three thousand dishes honoured the promotion of the fortunate ecclesiastict The meals were still nominally only two a day ; but this limitation mat- tered little, when the greater part of the day was devoted to these two meals. Intermeats also appear to have been introduced during this period. These were delicate and light dishes, served up at the in- tervals of the meal, intended probably as provo- catives to the more substantial courses that followed. J Wines also, as they were technically called, formed a sort of connecting link between the two daily meals. These wines were light refections of fine cakes and difierent kinds of wine, that were taken at any hour of the day, or upon the arrival of a visitor, but more especially at bed-time.§ Cookery had now also increased into a most complicated and artificial system, though we are not sufficiently acquainted with the details to speak of them with certainty. Many dishes are now mentioned for the first time, comjiosed of materials sufficiently heterogeneous according to the present taste, |] and so excessively seasoned that they were said to be " Imrning with wildfire ;" while others, that were required to please the eye as well as the palate, were gaily painted, and turreted with paper. In seasoning these inflammable dainties, the cooks made abundant use of ginger, grein dc Paris, cloves, c^nd liquorice. We also find that jellies, tarts, and rich cakes, formed a copious accompa- « M. Paris. t AV. Thorn. t Rylpy's Placita Pari. { Froissart. || Striitt's Angel Cynnan. Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399. 879 niment of evei7 banquet. The wines used at this period were either compounded or pure : of the former were hippocras, pigment, and claret ; the latter were chiefly the imported wines of France, Spain, Greece, and Sj-ria.* A style of life such as this required vigorous di- gestion, and out-door sports, accordingly, were still eagerly followed by all classes. Fleet steeds, high- roaring hawks, good hounds, and bright armour, still occupied the cares of the great and wealthy ; and as so many of the restrictions in hunting had been abolished, that seductive sport was also largely followed by the commons. The priesthood also continued to be so strongly attached to " venerie," that, in the reign of Richard II., every clergyman was prohibited from keeping a dog for hunting who had not a benefice of the annual amount of ten pounds ; and, in the reign of Edward III., the Bishop of Ely actvially excommunicated certain persons who had stolen one of his hawks during the period of divine service. We find, from the illuminated manuscripts of this period, that even ladies both hunted in com- pany with gentlemen, and formed hunting parties of their own, in which they pursued the deer, mounted astride on fleet horses, and brought down the game with their arrows. Sometimes, indeed, ladies went much further than this, riding, we are told, from castle to castle, and from tov.n to town, with poniards at their girdles and javelins in their hands, in quest of adventures.f Fal- conry still continued to be the most cherished sport; and the prices at which hawks were pur- chased, as well as the penalties enacted against those who should steal them, show the estimation in which they were held. Edward III. himself appears to have been an enthusiastic hawker. In one of his expeditions to France he carried with him thirty falconers ; and, during the campaign, • Stnitt's Angel Cynnan. + H. Knyghton. Playixg at Dhaughts. Harlelan MS. 4431. he appears to have hawked and fought alternately with equal ardour. The wolf, it may be observed, was still to be found in England, as appears by various evidences. When we pass from these active exercises to the in-door amusements of the nobility and gentry of this period, we find that most of the games of the former period were still in use ; and some games are also mentioned of which we do not read in earlier times. That of cross and pile is said to have been introduced at court by Edward II.* Persons playing at draughts are represented in some of the illuminations. We have already men- tioned the game of chess as forming a common amusement among the higher classes. The game, as far as we can judge from the figures in the ancient paintings, appears to have been played nearly in the same manner as at present. Besides a square chess-board, however, like that commonly in use, we sometimes see one of a circular form. The chess-men were somewhat different in form, and also in name; the queen being called the fevee ; the rook, or castle, the rock ; and the bishop, the alfin. Circular Chess-Board, Cotton MS. and Strutt. The Figures show the places tf Ihe pieces : 1. The Kins;. — 2. The Queen, or Fevee.— 3. The Castle. Rook, cr Rock. — I. The Knight.— 5. The Bishop, or Allin.— 6. The Pawns, The jester was now a regular appendage of a princely or noble household : his office was to divert the jaded spirit of his lord by jests either intellectual or practical, and to keep the banquet in a roar by his wit, as well as by the jingling of his bells and the grotesque display of his cap and bauble. The castles also continued to be visited by crowds of jugglers, whose wonderful feats were still attributed, even by the wisest and most learned, to infernal agency, — by tumblers who ex- hibited their agility and skill, — by rope-dancers and buffoons, — and by minstrels and glee-singers. The inferior animals, as before, were pressed into the service of these strolling exhibitors ; and the high-born spectators were still delighted with such exhibitions as horses dancing on tight-ropes, or * Antiquit. Repert., torn. ii. 880 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. oxen riding upon horses and holding trumpets to their mouths. Mummings also formed a particular amusement of this period.* These seem to have been a coarse and primitive kind of masquerade, where the actors, if we may judge from the old illu- minations, more frequently applied themselves to mimic certain of the brute creation, than to support fictitious human characters. At the inter- meats between the courses of great public ban- quets we also find that pageants were sometimes introduced for the amusement of the guests. In these exhibitions ships were brought forward filled • M, Talis.— FioisBait.—Suinte I'alayc. with mariners, or towers garrisoned by armed men, while the actors proceeded, with the help of this scenery, to represent some allegorical lesson or historical incident. Theatrical amusements were still frequented ; but the age that produced such a genius as Chaucer could offer nothing better to the stage than such miracles and mysteries as have been noticed in a former Chapter. These strange representations, as far as their fragments have survived, are calculated to give us no favour- able idea either of the taste or the piety of our ancestors. Although founded upon scriptural or religious history, they yet appear to have been stuffed with such egregious buffoonery that they MuMMEBS. Bodleian MS. can only be likened to the sayings and doings of Punch and his associates. Dancing constituted an indispensable accomplishment of a gallant knight, and generally followed the banquet and the tour- nament. The great popular exercise of this period was that of archery, the cultivation of which, to the exclusion even of all other sports, was enjoined by various legislative enactments or royal ordinances. By a law of the thirteenth century, every person having an annual income of more than one hundred pence, was obliged to furnish himself with a serviceable bow and arrows. In the reign of Edward 111. proclamation was made that all per- sons should practise archery on the holidays during the hours not occupied by divine service ; and the games of quoits, hand-ball, foot-ball, stick-ball, canibuca, and cock-fighting, were at the same time strictly prohibited. The villages were furnished with pricks, butts, and rovers, for the competition of the people in archery ; and at these trials of skill, in later times at least, as appears from a statute of Henry VIII., no man was allowed to shoot at a mark less distant than eleven score feet.* But it Avould seem, notwithstanding the surpassing dexterity of the English bowmen, that they did not like to play with bows and arrows upon compulsion, — there was something too grave and formal in the sport of shooting according to the statute, — and, when it could be safely done, * t>taU33Ilen.VIII. c. 9. they escaped from the village butts, to more spon- taneous and stirring amusements. As archery required such long practice, the young were fur- nished with bows according to their age and strength. Those of the yeomen for real service were required to be of the height of the bearer. The arrows were generally a yard in length, notched at the extremity to fit the string, and fleched with the feathers of the goose, the eagle, and sometimes the peacock. The cross-bow does not appear to have been much encouraged in England. The mummings and masqueradings, which were in such high favour with the great, appear to have also been attractive to the common people. Ed- ward III., in the sixth year of his reign, is said to have issued an ordinance against vagrants who exhibited scandalous masquerades in low ale- houses, and to have directed that such persons should be whipped out of London. But the Feast of Fools, which was enacted by the populace at large, and which Avas the most singular of all these exhibitions, reqviires a more particular notice. Its celebration, which took place at Christmas, some- what resembled the Saturnalia of Ancient Rome. It was a season of universal license among the commonalty, in which all orders and authorities were reversed ; the churl became a pope, the buf- foon a cardinal, and the lowest of the mob were converted into priests and right reverend abbots. In this wild merriment they took possession of the Chap. VI.] MANNERS AND CUSTOMS: A.D. 1216—1399. 881 churches, and parodied every part of the sacred service, singing masses composed of obscene songs, and preaching sermons full of all manner of lewd- ness and buffoonery. Such, especially upon the continent, was the manner in which this sacred festival was commemorated ; while the church, in the pride of its power and security, felt no alarm whatever at these popular ebullitions, and therefore seldom took steps to prevent them. In England the Festival of Fools does not appear to have been attended with such wild excesses as prevailed in the continental observance of it, and it was soon put down, either by the authority of the church or the good sense of the people. A part of it, how- ever, long survived, under the designation of the Dance of Fools. This exhibition, which was also held at Christmas, consisted of a set of drolleries sufficiently profane, the actors who figured in the pageant being dressed, in all respects, like the court- fool, a personage who, as he occupied the highest place of his order, became naturally the model to all the fools of England. From this root also sprang the Abbots of Unrea- son and Lords of Misrule — a class of personages that will fall to be mentioned under a later period. We shall, however, at present notice very briefly the institution of the Boy-Bishop, another of these fooleries, which appears to have been peculiar to England, and to have been known, at least, so early as the fourteenth century. In this ridiculous farce, the boys belonging to the choirs of the col- legiate churches, on tlie arrival of the feast of St. Nicholas or of the Holy Innocents (and often on both occasions), dressed themselves in full pon- tificals, and obtained possession of the sacred build- ing, while one of their number for the time became their prelate, and was adorned with mitre and crozier. The urchins then proceeded to mimic the devotional services of their clerical superiors : they prayed, chanted, and performed mass; and the'Boy-iSishop, from the altar or the pulpit, deli- vered a sermon to the crowd that assembled to wit- ness the sport, and received from them contributions of money at the conclusion of the service. After this profane parody, the whole choir sallied into the streets headed by their juvenile prelate, dancing and singing from house to house, scattering clerical benedictions among the people, and receiving offer- ings in their progress. So far, indeed, was this mummery encouraged by the heads of the church, that proper dresses for the pageant were kept in most of those churches where the ceremony was performed ; and it maintained its groimd until it was suppressed by an edict of Henry Till. Mary, his daughter, endeavoured to revive the festival ; but, after her death, it was entirely anni- hilated. Even in the present day, the curious eye can trace certain modifications of these sports, in Tomb of the lioY-liisHup. — Salisbury. Height about three feet and a half. the Christmas festivities of children ; and Warton supposes, with some probability, that the ad mon- tcm of the Eton scholars originated in the pro- cession of the Boy-Bishop. 3d 882 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. CHAPTER VII. HISTORY OF THE CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. HE institutions and J the social condition of England had both be- gun before the close of the present period dis- tinctly to show the rude outline of the pe- culiar form and cha- racter into which they have since settled. The system impressed upon the country at the Conquest had in great part passed away, and a new order of things had taken its place. The government was now no longer that either of the king alone, as it may be said to have been in the time of the Conqueror and his sons, orojf the king and the barons merely, as it afterwards came to be. In profession and design at least, it was, from the accession of Edward I., a government of king, lords, and commons, as it still is. Not the exact constitution, certainly, but yet what we may call the principle of the constitution, of each house of the legislature had also come to be nearly the same as it is at present. The House of Lords now consisted of the greater barons only. The custom of summoning to that assembly all the immediate tenants of the crown, if it ever existed, had certainly become obsolete before the end of the reign of Henry III. After the complete esta- blisliment of the House of Commons, the lesser barons were undoubtedly held to be commoners, as their representatives, the great body of the landed gentry, are at this day. If it could be clearly shown that it ever was. otherwise, — that at any time the entire body of the tenants of the crown sat as lords of parliament, — the remarkable con- currence of tlie date from which it is on all hands admitted that they did so no longer with that usually assigned to the origin of the House of Commons, would go far to make it probable that that house really did take its beginning at the period in question. In any case, it seems likely enough that the lower house of the Norman parlia- ment may have been originally the house of the lesser barons, whether they sat in it at first per- sonally or by representation. All that we know is, that from the time at least when all the freeholders in each county were associf^ted in this matter with the immediate tenants of the crown, the House of Commons was a representative body. From this time, also, as we have said, if not before, the House of Lords consisted of the greater barons only. From the reign also of Henry III. barons by tenure ceased to be the only description of barons. There is an instance-- on record of a barony being created by writ, — that is, simply by the king's svimmons to parliament, — in the year 1265, the 49th of that king, the same in which we have the first recorded writs to the sheriffs for the election of covmty and borough representatives. It is generally supposed, however, that this mode of creating baronies is of earlier introduction. Ed- ward III. introduced another mode, namely, by creation in parliament, or, as it has been called, by statute, although it has been doubted whether the consent of the lords and commons was actually in such cases either given or asked. Finally, the usual modern form of creation by letters patent was introduced by Richard II., the first instance of a barony so conferred having been in 1387, the tenth year of that king, when Sir John de Beau- champ of Holt was made Baron Beauchamp of Kidderminster. All the existing ranks of the peerage, also, with the exception of that of viscount, had been now introduced. The first English duke was the Black Prince, who was created Duke of Cornwall, in 1337, the eleventh year of his father's reign; the first marquess was Robert deVere Earl of Oxford, who was created Marquess of Dublin for life, by Richard II. in 1386. The most re- markable feature by which the composition of the upper house of parliament at this period was dis- tinguished from its composition in modern times was the nvmierical preponderance of the spiritual over the temporal peers, and that it retained in some degree till the abolition of the old religion in the sixteenth century. The constitution, on the whole, may now be shortly described as being an immature or imper- fectly established system of liberty. It was a free constitution, to a great extent, in form and theory, but with much of the spirit and substance of the old despotism still remaining in its practice. To quote the words of a distinguished writer, — " Although the restraining hand of parliament was continually growing more effectual, and the notions of legal right acquiring more precision, from the 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 security to the work, Chap. VIL] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1216—1399. 883 and trusting that posterity 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 would recoil from those barriers which were then daily pushed aside with impunity."* The state of the country during the present period, in regard to security and order, still be- tokened considerable barbarism, both of manners and of institutions. The most distinct and in- disputable testimony to the great prevalence of rapine and violence is that which is borne by some of the acts passed by the legislature with the view of remedying the evil. Of these one of the most remarkable has been shortly noticed in a former chapter, the Statute of Winchester, passed in 1285, the 13th of Edward I. The preamble of this statute begins by averring that, " from day to day, robberies, murders, burnings, and theft be more often used than they have been heretofore," a state- ment which may at least be taken as evidence that these crimes were very frequent at the time when the statute was enacted. It goes on to recite that, owing to the partiality of jurors, who would rather suffer strangers to be robbed than have the offen- ders punished when they were of the same county with themselves, great difficulty was found in obtaining the conviction of felons. In consequence, it is ordered, among other regulations, that the hundred shall be answerable for robberies ; that in all walled towns the gates shall be shut from sun- setting until the sun-rising ; that no man shall lodge during the night in the suburbs of towns unless his host will answer for him ; and that every stranger found in the streets from sunset to sunrise should immediately be apprehended by the watch. This is the picture of a state of society in which the general prevalence of crime destroyed at once all feeling of security and all freedom of movement. Every stranger who made his appear- ance in a town, we see, was treated as a suspected person ; unless he could find an inhabitant to be his surety, he was to be at once either thrust forth or taken into custody. The next clause of the act is equally illustrative of the insecurity of the rural districts, and especially of the public roads. It directs that every highway leading from one market town to another shall be cleared for two hundred feet on each side of every ditch, tree, or bush, in which a man may lurk to do hurt ; and if a park be near a highway, it is ordered to be removed to the same distance, or at least to be care- fully defended by a wall ^ otherwise, so that it may not serve as a harbour from which malefactors may issue forth to attack the traveller. Finally, it , is commanded that every man shall provide him- self with armour according to his station, the richest with a hauberk, a breastplate of iron, a sword, a knife, and a horse, the poorest with bows and arrows at the least, that when offenders resist • Middle Ages, iii. 218. being arrested, all the town and the towns near may follow them with hue and cry, " and so hue and cry shall be made from town to town, until that they be taken and delivered to the sheriff." This last provision," as Mr. Hallam remarks, " indi- cates that the robbers plundered the country in formidable bands." The old Saxon law of frank- pledge, it may be observed, was kept up, in form at least, till a later date than this ; there is a statute directing the mode of taking the view of frank- pledge, which is generally assigned to the seven- teenth or eighteenth year of Edward II. j* but that ancient system had probably, long ere now, been found unsuitable to the changed circumstances of the country. Its spirit, also, which left the main- tainance of order and the repression of crime in a great measure in the hands of the people them- selves, was wholly opposed to the temper of the Norman institutions and government, which tended to concentrate all power and authority in the crown, and regarded any popular interference in the admi- nistration of the law with extreme jealousy and aversion. The contest of the two principles is to be discerned in various passages of the legislation of the present period on matters of police. It may be illustrated, for example, by the history of the county magistrates called justices of the peace. These were orighially called conservators of the peace, and were elected by the votes of the free- holders till the accession of Edward III.; when, in the midst of the revolution that placed the new king upon the throne, a clause was introduced into an act of parliament,! giving the right of appoint- ing them to the crown. Their authority was afterwards gradually enlarged by succ/.ssive sta- tutes, till at last, in 1360,t they were invested with the power of trying felonies ; and then, instead of conservators, wardens, or keepers of the peace, " they acquired," says Blackstone, " the more honourable appellation of justices." It appears, however^ from the rolls of parliament, that, ever since their appointment had been assumed by the crown, they had been the objects of popular odium, and every act or royal ordinance by which their powers were subsequently enlarged, seems to have excited much dissatisfaction and remonstrance. Meanwhile the state of the country did not improve under the new system. The preamble of an ordi- nance passed in 1378§ gives us the following remarkable description of the lawlessness and violence which prevailed : — " Our sovereign lord the king hath perceived, as well by many com- plaints made to him as by the perfect knowledge (that is, the notoriety) of the thing, that as well divers of his liege people in sundry parts of the realm, as also the people of Wales in the county of Hereford, and the people of the county of Chester, with the counties adjoining to Chestershire, some of them claiming to have right to divers lands, tenements, and other possessions, and some espying * statutes of the Realm, Record Com, edit. i. 246. t lEitw. III. St. 2,0. 16. t By the statute 34 Kdw. III. c. 1. § Called the 2 Uioh. II. st. 1, c. 6. 884 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. women and damsels unmarried, and some desiring to make maintenance in their marches, do gather them together to a great number of men of arms and arcliers, to tlie manner of war, and confederate themselves by oath and other confederacy, not having consideration to God, nor to the laws of holy church, nor of the land, nor of right, nor justice, but, refusing and setting apart all process of the law, do ride in great routs in divers parts of England, and take possession and set them in divers manors, lands, and other possessions of their own authority, and hold the same long with force, doing many manner apparelments of war ; and in some places do ravish women and damsels, and bring them into strange countries, where please them ; and in some places lying in wait with such routs, do beat and maim, murder and slay the people for to have their wives and their goods, and the same women and goods retain to their own use ; and some time take the king's liege people in their houses, and bring and hold them as prisoners, and at the last put them to fine and ransom, as it were in a land of war ; and some time come before the justices in their sessions in such guise with great force, whereby the justices be afraid and not hardy to do tlie law ; and do many other rioi^s and lior- rible offences, whereby the realm in divers parts is put in great trouble, to the great mischief and grievance of the people, and the hurt of the king's majesty, and against the king's crown." To repress these daring outrages power was now given to the magistrates, as soon as they were credibly certified of any such " assemblies, routs, or ridings of offenders, baratours, and other such rioters," " to assert thenj incontinent, without tarrying for in- dictments, or other process of the law, by their body, and especially the chieftains and leaders of such routs, and send them to the next gaol, with the cause of tlieir arrest clearly and distinctly put in writing, there to abide in prison in sure keeping, till the coming of the justices into the country, withovit being delivered in the mean time by main- prise, bail, or in other manner." The remedy here would seem to have scarcely gone beyond the ne- cessity of the case ; but the dislike that was enter- tained to the functionaries entrusted with the administration of the new law was too strong for even the sense of that necessity to overcome. Next year we find the Commons petitioning against it as " a horrible grievous ordinance, 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 taken without due course of law." " So sensitive," observes Mr. Hallam, " was their jealousy of arbi- trary imprisonment, that they preferred enduring riot and robbery to chastising them by any means that might afford a precedent to oppression, or weaken men's reverence for Magna Charta."* The real feeling, however, probably was an aversion to the magistrates nominated by the crown. In con- • Mid. Ages, iii. 253. sequence of this petition of the Commons, the ordinance was " utterly repealed and annulled."* As yet, it is to be remembered, the government and the law had been little known or felt in their proper character of the great protecting powers of society ; the notion of them that was by far most familiar to men's minds was that of mighty engines of oppression, which, indeed, they had principally been. Every attempt accordingly to arm them with additional force was naturally regarded with much apprehension and jealousy. Jt was not merely in the hands of the crown that the law was turned to purposes of tyranny and plunder. It is especially deserving of notice that at this time it was actually employed as one of their most com- mon instruments by s])oliators and disturbers of all classes, as if such had been its proper use. One of the offences against which statute after statute was passed, was that called maintenance ; which was really nothing else than the confede- rating to do wrong, not by the defiance or evasion, but through the aid and under the direct authority, of the law. " Conspirators," says an ordinance of the 33rd of Edward I., " be they that do confeder, or bind themselves, by oath, covotiant, or other alliance, that every of them shall aid and bear the other, falsely and maliciously to indict or cause to indict, or falsely to move or maintain pleas ; and also such as cause children within age to appeal men of felony, whereby they are imprisoned and sore grieved ; and such as retain men in the country with liveries or fees for to maintain their malicious enterprizes." That all these descriptions of con- spiracy were pursued systematically and on a great scale, the language of other statutes sufficiently attests. Thus, in the 4 Edw. III. c. 2, it is affirmed, that " divers people of the realm, as well great men as other, have made alliances, confede- racies, and conspiracies, to maintain parties, pleas, and quarrels, whereby divers have been wrongfully disinherited, and some ransomed and destroyed, and some, for fear to be maimed and beaten, durst not sue for their right nor complain, nor the jurors of inquests give their verdicts, to the great hurt of the people, and slander of the law and common right." In many cases, these confederated ruffians were openly protected by some powerful baron, whose livery they wore. " We be informed," says the 20 Edw. III. c. 5, "that many bearers and maintainors of quarrels and parties in the country be maintained and borne by lords, whereby they he more encouraged to offend, and by pro- curement, covine (covenant), and maintenance of such bearers in the country, many people be disin- herited, and some delayed and disturbed of their right, and some not guilty convict and condemned, or otherwise oppressed, in the undoing of their estate, and in the notorious destruction of our people." Some of the modes in which this sys- tem of confederation was carried on are more pre- cisely explained in the 1 Rich. II. c. 7, where it • 13 V the 2 Rich. 11. st. 2, c 2. Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 121G— 1399. 885 is asserted that " divers people of small revenue of land, rent, or other possessions, do make great retinue of people, as well of esquires as of other, in many parts of the realm, giving to them hats and other liveries, of one suit by year, taking of them the value of the same livery, or percase the double value, by such covenant and assurance, that every of them shall maintain other in all quarrels, be they reasonable or unreasonable, to the great mis- chief and oppression of the people;" and in c. 9, which records the complaints made to the king, " that many people, as well great as small, having right and true title, as well to lands, tenements, and rents, as in other personal actions, be wrong- fully delayed of their right and actions, by means that the occupiers or defendants, to be maintained and sustained in their wrong, do commonly make gifts and feoffments of their lands and tenements which be in debate, and of their other goods and chattels, to lords and other great men of the realm, against whom the said pursuants, for great menace that is made to them, cannot nor dare not make their pursuits ; and that, on the other part, often- times many people do disseise other of their tene- ments, and anon, after the disseisin done, they make divers alienations and feoffments, sometimes to lords and great men of the realm to have maintenance, and sometimes to many persons of whose names the disseisees can have no knowledge, to the in- tent to defer and delay by such frauds the said disseisees, and the other demandants and their heirs, of their recovery, to the great hindrance and oppression of the people." But many of these retainers of the great lords were accustomed to follow still more daring courses. In 1349 (the 22 of Edward III.)> the Rolls of Parliament record the prayer of the commons, that, " whereas it is notorious how robbers 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. " " Highway robbery," observes Mr. Hallam, " was, from tlie earliest times, a sort of national crime. Capital punishments, though very frequent, 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 tradition ; — men, who, like some of their betters, have been per- mitted to redeem, by a few acts of generosity, the just ignominy of extensive crimes. These, in- deed, were the heroes of vulgar applause j but when such a judge as Sir John Fortescue could exult tliat 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 thoroughly these sentiments had pervaded the public mind."* * Mid. A^es, iii. 249. The passage from Fortescue is In his ' Dif- ference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy,' p. 99. It is tire remark of another modern writer, that the number of old statutes against going armed and wearing liveries, are a proof that the people of this country were formerly much more irascible and vindictive than they are at present; and that the law-books also sliow that many crimes were then prevalent of which we now hardly ever hear. He particularly mentions maiming and mutilation, the obtaining of deeds by violence or duresse, and the various abuses of the powers of the law which have been already adverted to. " Notwithstanding the general inclination to decry everything modern, I cannot but imagine," he very sensibly concludes, " that the inhabitants of this country are, in the eighteenth century, infinitely more virtuous than they were in the thirteenth ; and that the improve- ments of the mind and regard for social duties have gone hand in hand with the improvements by learning and commerce ; nor have I any doubt but that, if anything like a regular government con- tinues in this island, succeeding ages will not only be more refined and polished, but consist of still more deserving members of society."* A great social revolution was gradually effected in England in tlie course of the present period by the general transformation of the villains into free- men. The subject is one, in some parts of it, of much obscurity, and the few facts upon which we have to proceed in considering it leave us to form most of our conclusions from theory and con- jecture. Mr. Hallam has advanced the opinion that there was really no difference between the conditions of the villain in gross and the villain regardant, and that the distinction between them was merely formal or technical, affecting only the mode of pleading. He also adopts the notion that tenants in villenage have been inaccurately con- founded with villains, and that these two classes were altogether distinct. f We confess we strongly doubt the correctness of both the one and the other of these positions. ^V'e conceive the dis- tinction between the villain regardant and the villain in gross to have been of the most material character, and the tenant in villenage to have been merely the villain regardant under a new name. Notwithstanding some expressions in the law-books of dubious import, we cannot account otherwise than upon this supposition for the general course, as far as it is known, of the history of the ancient villenage, and more especially for the facts that are now to be mentioned. The villain regardant appears to have been really a tenant of his lord, though holding both by base and uncertain services ; and his lord, what- ever other rights he might have over him, had no power, we apprehend, to dispossess him of his tenure so long as he performed tlie services required of him. If he was said by the law to be a tenant at the will of his lord, that expression, apparently, was conformable merely to the original theory of his condition. In one sense, a tenant bound to , • Hnvvlogton, on the statutes, p. 118, t Middle Ages, iii. 256, 25?. 886 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. [Book IV. uncertain services might really be considered as sitting at will ; for his lord, in order to turn him out, had only to demand from him such services as he would rather resign his holding than render. But this purely arbitrary power, although it might remain imlimited in the legal expression, would soon come to be restrained in its actual exercise within certain well understood bounds ; and in this, as in other respects, the will of the lord would, in point of fact, mean only his will exercised accord- ing to the custom of the manor. If it had ever been otherwise, the complete establishment of this understanding would be the first step taken in the improvement of the villain's condition. The next would be the confinement of his services, not only within certain customary limits in regard to their general description or character, but yet more strictly to a clearly defined amount, which would have nearly all the precision of a money payment, and would soon come to be exacted with as little either of excess or of abatement as is usual in the case of a modern rent. The practice of entering tlie amount of service upon the roll of the court- baron would naturally follow, which would at once give to tenure by vi lien age all the stability and independence of any other kind of tenure. Mean- while the condition of the tenant was improving in another way with the rise in the value of land; and this . change in his circumstances would gra- dually raise him, in many instances, above the personal performance of whatever there was de- grading in the services he owed to his lord ; he would perform his services by a hired substitute ; until at length it would be found for the interest of both parties that they should be commuted for a fixed money-rent. It is hardly necessary to ob- serve, that the same progressive movement of society which brought about this change would also naturally and inevitably elevate the villain in other respects above whatever was base or servile in his original condition, — above the practical operation, more especially, of every old figment of the law which made him in any sense the property of his lord, or gave the latter any rights over him incon- sistent with the new position to which he had advanced. This was a result which no mere law could resist. The villain having thus acquired the free disposal of liis person and property, would be a villain no longer in anything but in name ; even that would be changed, and he would be called, not a villain, but a tenant in villenage. It does not appear that any other account can be given of the origin of tenure in villenage but this. It has been said that freemen might hold land by villain tenure; and we may be certain that after that mode of tenure began to outgrow its original servile character in the manner that has been explained, persons who had not been born villains would not be scared by its mere name from the acquisition of estates under it by purchase or otherwise. It is generally admitted that what are now called copy- hold estates are the same estates that were formerly said to be held by villain tenure. In fact, accord- ing to the view that has been given, there is no difference between the present tenure by copyhold and the ancient tenure by villenage, excepting merely that in the former, as it now exists, we have the completion of the process of gradual change which, as we have shown, was in all probability going on from the earliest stage in the history of the latter. A copyhold estate is now, for all prac- tical purposes, as much a property as a freehold estate ; but its legal incidents, though reduced to mere formalities or fictions, are still very expres- sively significant of its true origin. The mode of alienating a copyhold, for instance, still is for the copyholder first to make a surrender of his land into the hands of his lord, who thereupon admits the purchaser as his tenant ; and the new tenant, like his predecessor, is still affirmed to hold the land " at the will of the lord." The tenants in villenage appear to have been making progress in tlirowing off the original servile or nominally pre- carious character of their tenure, at least from the commencement of the present period, and in the course of it they no doubt effected a considerable advance in substantial stability and independence ; but the decisions of the courts, as well as the letter of the law, probably continued to be adverse to their pretensions down to its close. It is said to have been not till the reign of Edward IV. that the judges expressly declared the right of the copy- holder to bring his action of trespass against the lord for dispossession. While the villain regardant was thus rising into the copyhold proprietor, the villain in gross was also undergoing a corresponding transformation, and becoming a free labourer. We have not much evidence of the manner in which this cliange was effected, but the most distinct intimations of its having to a large extent taken place in the course of the thirteenth, and more especially in that of the fourteenth century. Some of them were no doubt emancipated by their masters ; the liberation of their slaves is said to have been an act of piety to which persons on their death-bed used to be strongly urged by the clergy ; but the majority of the villains in gross appear to have shaken off the fetters of their thraldom by their own act, — in other words, by effecting their escape from the power of those who held them in bondage. The law, as we have already had occasion to notice, held a villain to be free after a residence in any walled town for a year and a day. This provi- sion, there is reason to believe, was the means of enabling many villains to acquire their liberty. But many more seem to have merely fled to another part of the country, the distance of which placed them out of the reach of their masters. What is certain, at all events, is, that by the middle of the fourteenth century a large body of free labourers had grown up in England. The most distinct evidence to that fact is afforded by the fiimous ordinance, commonly called the Statute of Labourers, passed in 1349 (the 23rd of Edward III), which proceeds upon the averment that Chap. VII.] CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE: A.D. 1216—1399. 887 because a great part of the people, and especially of workmen and servants, had lately died of the pestilence, " many, seeing the necessity of masters, and great scarcity of servants, will not serve unless they may receive excessive wages, and some rather willing to beg in idleness than by labour to get their living." Those whom the statute binds to serve when required at certain specified rates of wages are afterwards thus described : — " Every man and woman of our realm of England, of what condition he be, free or bond, able in body, and within the age of three score years, not living in merchandise, nor exercising any craft, nor having of his own whereof he may live, nor proper land about whose tillage he may himself occupy, and not serving any other. " From the rest of the ordinance and the statute by which it was followed iip two years afterwards (the 25 Edw. III. st. 2), it appears that this class of labourers who were not bondsmen included carters, ploughmen, drivers of the plough, shepherds, swineherds, deyes, reapers, mowers, threshers, and other labourers in husbandry; carpenters, masons, tilers, "and other workmen of houses;" plasterers, "and other workers of mud-walls;" cordwainers and shoemakers ; goldsmiths, sadlers, horsesmiths, spurriers, tanners, curriers, tawers of leather, tailors, and others. So that in every branch of industry, whether carried on in town or in country, there would appear by this time to have been numbers of working people who were not in a state of villenage. A statute passed in 1317 (the 1st Rich. 11. c. 6) affords us some information as to the courses taken both by villains in gross and villains regardant in the great struggle to effect their emancipation, in which they were now engaged. The act professes to be passed " at the grievous complaint of tlie lords and commons of the realm, as well men of holy church as other, made in the jiarlia- ment, of that that in many seigniories and parts of the realm of England, the villains and land- tenants in villenage, who owe services and customs to their said lords, have now late withdrawn, and do daily withdraw their services and customs due to their said lords, by comfort and procurement of other their counsellors, maintainers, and abettors in the country, which hath taken hire and profit, of the said villains and land-tenants, by colour of certain exemplifications made out of the book of Domesday, aiid, by their evil interpretations of the same, they affirm them to be quite and utterly dis- charged of all manner servage, due as well of their body as of their said tenures, and will not suffer any distress or other justice to be made upon them ; but do menace the ministers of their lords of life and member, and, which more is, gather themselves together in great routs, and agree by such confe- deracy that every one shall aid other to resist their lords with strong hand; and much other harm they do, &c." Here we have apparently the villains in gross and the villains regardant (for such we take to be the meaning of the expression, " the villains and land-tenants in villenage,") associating together to resist partly by an appeal to the law, partly by force, the claims of their lords to the services due " of their bodies" by the former and " of their tenures" by the latter. Differently situated as they were in some respects, they wisely felt that their cause for the present was the same. The abolition of slavery was one of the demands made by the insurgents in the rebellion of 1381, which proves that the class of villains in gross was by no means then extinct. This great popular outbreak was probably little favourable in its im- mediate consequences to the condition of these unhappy persons. As soon as it was suppressed the king is represented as addressing the villains of Essex in terms manifesting a sufficient deter- mination that they should derive no benefit from their baffled attempt. " Rustics ye have been and are," he told them, according to Walsingham, " and in bondage shall ye remain, not such as ye have hereto(ore known, but in a condition incom- parably more vile." Various severe laws affecting the poorer classes were also passed in the course of the following ten or twelve years. Among others, by the statute 12 Rich. II. c. 3, it was ordained that " no servant nor labourer, be he man or woman, shall depart at the end of his term out of the hundred where he is dwelling to serve or dwell elsewhere, or by colour to go from thence in pil- grimage, unless he bring a letter patent containing the cause of his going, and the time of his return, if he ought to return, under the king's seal;" and, by chap. 5, that all persons who had beea employed in any labour or service of husbandrv till the age of twelve, shovdd from thencefortli abide at the same labour, and be incapable of being put to any mystery or handicraft. The commons a few years afterwards even went the length of petitioning (though their demands were negatived by the king) that the old law which pro- tected villains after a residence of a year and a day, in towns, should be repealed ; and that, " for the honour of all the freemen in the kingdom," villains might not be allowed to put their children to school, in order to advance them by the church. But these anxious endeavours to keep down the people testify how greatly their fears had been excited ; and the salutary impression thus made upon them, of the formidable character of the popular strength, could not fail, ere long, to operate to tlie advantage of the portion of the community that had been hitherto so much despised and oppressed. From this time little mention is made of villenage ; no efforts appear to have been interposed by the law to retard its decay ; and it seems to have steadily and somewhat rapidly moved on towards its entire extinction. INDEX. PICTORIAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND-VOLUME L Abakis's embassy to Athens, AcHAius, king of the Scoti, Acorns beaten down for swine, Acre, Siege of, 300,000 Christians perish at, Adelais, affianced wife of Prince Richard, . , or Alice, queen of Henry I., . -, queen of Louis VII., PAGE 15 217 . 277 495, 49G 477, 478 41G, 428 . 446 442 . 301 369 . 44-47 Adkian IV., Pope, an Enghshman, ^LFRiC, his Saxon Homilies, Agatha, the mother of Edgar Atheling, Agricola, CnsDus Julius, a Roman general. Agriculture, . . 106, 276, 596-599, 838-840 Alan, lord of Richmond, .... 406 , of Galloway, commotions after his death, 700 Alb AN, St, first British martyr, . . .74 Albemarle, William de Mandeville, earl of, . 4S3-48j Alberic, bishop of Ostia, .... 426 Albert, archbishop of York, rebuilds the cathedral, 310 Albiney, William d', defends Rochester Castle, . 530 Albinn, name for Scotland used by Gaels, . 21 Albinus, Clodius, governor of Britain, . . 49 Albion, son of Neptune, ... 8 , the early name of England, . .21 Alchemy, its influence on medical science, . 844, 845 Alcuin, Flaccus, a prelate of the 8th century, . 307 Aldebic, William of, an adherent of count of Aumale, 400 Aldred, an early English historian, . ' . 542 . , archbishop of York, . 204, 360, 369 Alexander, archdeacon of Salisbury, . 426, 428, 430 . I., king of Scotland, \ . 538, 539 II., son of William the Lion, 530, 546, 700-702 III., son of Alexander II., III., Pope, 702-707 446 174-176 184-188 Alfere, eolderman of Mercia, Alfred, brother of Edward the Confessor, ■ the Great, youngest son of Ethelwulf — 153-168, 246, 2G6, 305 Alfbic, earl of Mercia, a traitor, . . 176-178 Algar, son of Earl Leofric, . . . 194 Algitha, queen of Harold, king of England, . 208 Alice, Princess, sister of ]?iulip II. of Fi-ance, . 509 Allan, the Breton, ..... 374 Allectus, a Briton, kills the Emperor Carausius, 53 Allen, Mr, quoted, . 533, 534, 537, 638, 580 Almaine, Henry d', son of Richard, king of Rome, 688 Alxieric, Master of the English Templars, . 528 Alphege, archbishop of Canterbury, . . 179 Alred, archbishop of York, . . . 204 Alton, Battle of, .... 688 Alwin, bishop of Winchester, . . , 188 Alwtn, of East-Anglia, a powerful noble, . 174 Ambbosius, Aurelius, head of a Roman party, . 57 Anagni, John of, cardinal and papal legate, . 478 Andredswold, the, or forest of Andreade, . 142, 162 Angles, the, or Anglo-Saxons, . . . 139, 142 Anglesey, Island of, anciently called Mona, . 43, 61 Anglo-Saxon king, his arms and accoutrements, 156 — language — 139, 140, 165-167, 182, 293-500, Gil, 612 Anjou, Geofi'rey Plantagenet, earl of, 417, 418, 434, 436 Anne, of Bohemia, queen of Richard II., . . 790 Annius, or Nanki, his fabled History of England, 8 Anselm, abbot of Becco, . . . 406, 550-552 , chaplain to Richard I., . . 502 Antoninus, Pius, reign, and Portrait of, . 47, 48 Ai'uldgre, William, confessor of Richard II., . 787 Architecture, . 4, 167, 307-318, G14-633, 854-860 Abdern, or Abden, John, an English surgeon, . 845 Arianism in Britain, . . . . 74 Aristotle, his supposed mention of Ireland, . 14 Armies, ancient British, ... 37 Armorica, peopled by the Cymry, . .' . 8 Armour, defensive, not used by the Britons, . 36 , suits of, banners, &c., . G39, 640, 872-877 AiiTHUR, fable of his Round Table, . . 23 , nephew of Richard I., . 506, 507, 515-520 Aetois, Count d', uncle of Philip 111. of France, . 712 • ; Robert otj brother-in-law of Philip of France, 758 Arts, the Fine, disquisitions on, . 118, 289, 603, 842 Arun, the river, in Sussex, . . . 103, 142 Arundel Castle, View of, . . . 428, 429 Arundel, Edmund Fitzalan, earl of, . . 739 , Richard Fitzalan, earl of, . . 795 , Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, . 795 AssEH, the monk, a friend of liing Alfred, 158, 161, 165, 166 Assize, Grand, great importance of, . . 573 Aston, or Ashenden, Berkshire, signal victory at, 154 Astronomical instrument, Celtic, found in Ireland, 122, 123 Athelney, Isle of, fastness of Alfred in 878, 158, 166 Athelstane, King, grandson of Alfred, 168-170, 297 ,Athelwold, a courtier of Edgar, . . . 173 Athole, Patrick, earl of, . . . 701 AuDiiER, or Ohtheee, a learned foreigner, . 166 Augustine and forty monks arrive in England, 145, 230-233 Augustus, improvements in Britain by, . 105 Austria, Leopold, duke of, . . ' . 499, 503, 504 Avebury, Druidical temple of, . . . 68 AviENus, Festus, his narrative of Carthaginian voyage, 14 AvisA, wife of King John, . . . 517 Avon, river, in Hampshire, .... 142 AvRANCHES, Hugh d', surnamed the Wolf, . 376, 385 Axe-heads, called Celts, of tin and copper, . . 104 843 . 483 502 724, 755, 756, 759 -, Joycelin, excommunicated by a Becket, Bacon, Roger, the philosopher, Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, • — de Bethnne, a priest, . Baliol, Edward, king of Scotland, -, John, nearest relative of Al exan der 1 1 1. 707-7 15,7 24 452 789 139 166, 167 147, 176 785 736-738 735, 851 63-65 . 362 Ball, John, executed as a traitor, Baltic, arms and costume of tribes on shores of, , observations of early navigators on the, Bamborough, View of the Rock and Ciistle, &c., Bampton, Thomas de, commissioner of the pole-tax, Bannockburn, Battle of. See Robert Bruce, Barbour, John, a Scottish historian and poet. Bards of Celtic nations, . Barking, William I. keeps his court here. Barbe, Luke de, a knight and a poet, . . 419 Bakrington, quoted, . 577, 812, 814, 816, 820 Barrows, ancient and Roman British, . 130, 131, 133 Basilica of St Paul at Rome, View of, after fire in 1823, 311 Battle Abbey, founded by William I., View of, &c., 358, 359 Bayeux Tapestry, detailed account of, &c., . 19(j-215 Beauvais, Bishop of, a relative of Philip II., 513, 526 Becket, Thomas a, primate of England, 444-456, 5o2-5o5 's crown. View of, . . . . 556 Bede, the Venerable, quoted, 18-23, 229, 234, 290, 291, 305 Belesme, Robert de, earl of Shrewsbury, . 408-410 Belgse, doubtful if a German or Celtic race, 10, 27 Belgic colonies in South Britain, Celtic, . .11 Belknape, Sir Robert, chief-justice of Common Pleas, 785 Bells, their introduction among the Anglo-Saxons, . 316 Benedictine monks, institution of; Portrait of one, 559, 560 Beoen, assassinated by S«ej'n, his cousin, . 189, 193 Beorhtkic, or Briutric, king of Wessex, . 150 Beowulf and Hkothqar, account of, . . 300 Berengaria, daughter of king of Navarre, 493-495, 502 Berkeley Castle, View of; Edward II. murdered here, 745 Berkelevt, Lord; demands a jury-trial, . 755 Bernicia, kingdom of, in Durham, . . , 142 Bebold, a butcher of Rouen, . . . 415 Bertha, wife of Ethelbert of Kent, . . . 145 Beiitkam, Prof. C, published a JIS. by a Roman general, 76 Betiiam, Sir W., antiquary, quoted, 9, 11, 15-17, 22, 122 Bible, translations of the, . . . 808 BiENFAiT, Richard de, justiciary of England, . 381 BissET, William, banished into England, . 701 Blois, Charles de, claims the duchy of Brittany, 7C0, 769 , Henry de, cardinal, abbot of Glastonbury, . 615 , Peter, traveller and author, 472, 480, 50G, 606, 644 BoADicEA, widow of King Prasutagus, . 43, 44 Bocland, ..... 248 BtETiiius' Be Consolatione Philosophic, 296, 301, 302 BonADiN, the Arabian historian, quoted, . . 500 Bohemia, John de Luxembourg, king of, . 768 Boniface VIII., Pope, . . . 719, 724 Born, Bertrand de, a bard as well as warrior, 471-475, 513 Bosham, Harold's journey to, . . . 197 Boulogne, Reynaud, earl of, . . . 526 BouRBON,^ John, duke of, . . . 776 Bouvines, Battle of, . . . . . 526 BovEs, Hugh de, head of a band of marauders, . 530 Bbaouse, William de, a nobleman, . . . 522 Buembeu, Sir Nicholas, lord mayor of London, 792 Brenville, Battle of, . . . . . 413 Bbeteuil, Eustace of, . . . . 414 , W. de, treasurer to William Rufus, 402-405 Bretwalda, or Britwalda, an ancient title, . 144, 145 Brice, St ; on this festival, English massacre Danes, 177, 178 Bricks, known to the Anglo-Saxons, . . 315 Bridgehani, treaty of, . . . . 707, 712 BriJgenorth, castle of, in Shropshire, . . 442 Bui HTBic, brother of Edric, . . . 179 Bristol, slave-trade carried on at this town in 11th century, 270 Britain, early history of, &c., 1, 8, 11, 25-33, 118, 144 Britannia, its derivation ; earliest figure of, . 11,48 Brithnoth, Earl, of Danish descent, . . 176 British Islands, original population and history, 1, 118 Brito, Gulielmns, quoted, . . . 641 .-, Richard, one of the murderers of Becket, 455, 456 Britons, the, . 1-25, 27-57, 77, 91, 93, 98-142 Beittany, Conan le Petit, duke of, . 443, 444, 452 , John de Montfort, duke of, . .784 Brittox, his opinion of ' peine forte et dure,' quoted, 814 Broc, Ranulf de ; invectives against Becket, . 454 • , Robert de, excommunicated by Becket, . 454 Beoxlev, abbot of, .... 509 Bruce, David, son of the great Robert, 751, 755-774 , Edward, brother of the great King Robert, 737-739 , Nigel, younger brother of Robert Bruce, 729 , Robert de, a follower of the Conqueror, . 375 , , king of Scotland, 715, 716, 724, 727-751 , — , lord of Annandale, 685, 707, 715, 727 , Thomas and Alexander, . . 729, 730 Bruis, Robert de, chief-justice of King's Bench, . 812 Brutus and his Trojan colony, . . . 8, 11 Brython, a colony from Llydaw, Bretagne, . . 9 Bualth, Prince Llewellyn slain here, . . 698 Buchan, John Comyn, earl of, . . . 735 Burgh, Hubert de, regent of England, 520, 673-677 Burgundians, their code of written law, . . 145 BuRK, Lord William, taken prisoner by the Scots, 738 BuELEY, Sir Sunon, a friend of the Black Prince, 785, 793 Butler, Edmund, justiciary of Ireland, . .738 Caer Bran, circular stoqe-wall and fortress, . 100 . — — Caradoc, British camp on hill in Shropshire, . 41 Din, or Dinas, Welsh names for forts, . 99, 100 . ■ Morus, a circular intrenchment at Ccllan, . 99 Caernarvon Castle, View of, . . . 699 CjESxn, C. Julius, . ' . . 25-37, 105, 135 's narrative of his British expeditions ; chief observations, &c., 27-36, 59-77, 99, 102, 104, 119, 125 Calais, town, harbour, and vicinity of, 27, 30, 768-770 CtJedonia, the ancient name of North Britain, . 17, 23 Caledonians, the, . . . G, 9, 46-48 Camalodunum, taken by the Romans, . 40, 43 Cambridge, university of, first institution of, . 606 Camden, questions account of Trojan population, 8, 11, 137 Camville, Richard de, .... 495 Cannon, specimen of ancient, . . . 874 Canon Law, six books on, , . . 803 Canterbury, Battles at, &c., 30-33, 77, 142, 309, 558, 615 Cantii, a British tribe settled in Kent, . 27-33, 77 Canute, son of the king of Denmark, . 37 1 , 886, 387 the Great, 179-184 52, 53 39-42 41 53 411 . 398 68 97 14 Caracalla, son of Severus, Caractacus, a British general, Caradoc, supposed British name of Caractacu-S Carausius, a famous British general, Cardiff Castle, View of, as it appeared in 1775, Carlisle, View of this city, .... Carnac, a great Druidical temple in Brittany, . Carrighhill, subterranean chamber at, Carthaginians, their voyages to Britain and Ireland, Carthusians, when introduced into England, 559, 560 Cashel, Psalter of, . . . . . 303 Cassiterides, or Scilly Islands, . . . 93, 104 Cassivellauxus, chief of confederated Britons, 30-33 Castles, construction of strong, in England, . 615 Catterthuns, White and Black, two strong hill-forts, 99 Catus, a Roman procurator, . . .43 Catjliac, Guy de, quoted, . . . 845 Cavalrv, British and Roman, . . 36, 38 Caw, king of Strathclyde, . . 217, 218, 289 Ceawlin, king of Wessex, . . . 145 Celestine III., Pope, .... 513 Celts, warlike implements of the, . . .36 Ceorl, defeats the Danes at Wenbury, . 152 Ceudic, founder of the kingdom of Wessex, . 142 Ceylon, its villages compared to British, &c., 8, 9, 33, 34 Chalmers, his derivation of Picts, . . .18 Chamberlain, his office, .... 569 Chambers, subterranean, . . . 97, 98 Chancellor, office of the, . . . 569 Chancery, account of the Court of, . . 574,818 Chariots, British war ; their form, &c., . . 34-36 Charlemagne, the emperor, . . 150, 266 Charles IV., king of France, . . . 742, 757 v., king of France, . 773-779,783,784 VI., king of France, . . . 791, 792 the Bald, king of the Franks, . 152, 153 Charters ; confirmation of the Great Charter, &c., 812, 818 Chaucer, Geoffrey, - . . . . 851 Chester, Gherbaud, earl of, . . . 875, 376 Chevy Chase (Otterburne), Battle of, . . 793 Chippenham, a strong town of the Saxons, . 158 Christiana, second sister of Edgar Atheling^ . 406 Christianity, introduction into Britain, 73, 74, 145,231, 233 Chroniclers, list of, in 13th and 14th centuries, . 847 Cheysantus, lieutenant of Theodosius, . 54 Chun Castle, Plan and description of, . 99, 100 Churches, pagan temples turned into, . . 232, 233 890 INDEX. PAGE CicEBO, Marcus Tullius ; his epistles quoted, . 105 , Quintus, serves under Caesar in Britain, 105 Cingalese village, .... 34 Cistercians ; Illustration of a monk, . 659, 560 Civil and Military Transactions — 26-58, 138-223, 358-546, 671-800 Civilisation, progress of, . . 5, 6, 13, 34 Clabe, Roger, earl of, , . . '. 448 Clarendon, Constitutions of, . . 449, 665-557 Clas Merddin, a name of Britain, ... 8 Claudian the poet, quoted, ... 19 Claudius, the Emperor, .... 39-43 Clermont, counsellor of Charles, dauphin of France, 774 CoiFi, high -priest of the Anglo-Saxon paganism, . 235 Coiner at work, ..... 594 Coins and Medals, ancient British, 4, 26, 63, 110-112, 125, 160-152, 167, 180, 271, 837, 838 Coins of early Norman kings, . . . 694, 695 CoLECHUBCH, Peter of, architect, . . . 615 CoLUMBA, St, born in Donegal, 228, 229, 244, 290 CoLUMBANus, St, preacher of Christianity, 289, 290 CoMiNE, Robert de, . . . , 370 CoMius, a steady adherent of Caesar, . . 26-33 Commerce, regulations respecting, &c., . 824-836 Commons, House of. (See Parliament.) , rights of, in Anglo-Saxon times, . 351 CoMNENA, Anna, quoted, . . . 640 CoMYN, John, stabbed by Bruce, &c., . 085, 724-728 CoNAN, a powerful burgess, . . . 396 CoNFLANs, John de, killed by Stephen Marcel, . 774 CoNEAD, marquis of Montferrat, . . 490-500 Constable of England, office of the, . . 568 Constance, of Castile, wife of Louis VII., . 444, 446 CoNSTANTiNE II., king of Scotland, . 218, 219 III., assumed the cowl, . . 219 • IV., slain in battle, . . . 220 , king of the Picts, . . - 217 — — , namesake of the great emperor, . 55 the Great, Profile of, . , 53 CoNSTANTius, Chlorus, a Roman emperor, . . 53 Constitution, Government, and Laws, 7 6, 82, 84, 246, 662, 809 CoNVEESANO, "WilUam, count of, . . 408 Coracles, British, delineation of these light boats, . 66 CoEBoiL, William, archbishop of Canterburj', . 422 Cornwall, its independence, &c., . . 142, 152 '■ — , the Constantine Tolman, a large stone, . 101 CoBNWALL, Richard, earl of, . 675, 680, 683, 688 Coronation-chair in Westminster Abbey, . . 219 Corraniad, the, from Pwj'll Settle, on the Humber, 9 CosPATEic, goveraor of Northumberland, 372, 376, 379 Costume, 92, 104, 144, 166, 159, 174, 630, 637, 860-872 CouECY, Robert de, slain in battle, . . 443 Coubtenay, William, bishop of London, . 780 CouTANCE, Geoffrey of, . . . . 394 Crecy, Battle of, gained by the Black Prince, . 765-768 Ceispin, William, count of Evreux, . . 413 Croydon, this monastery burnt, with 900 volumes, " 010 Croyland, Abbey of, founded by king of Mercia, 310, 377 Crusades, general passion for, . . 400j 401 Culdees, of Scotland, opposed to St Augustine, &c., 229, 244 CuLEN, king of Scotland, . . . 219, 220 CuLLUM, Sir T., extracts from, about husbandry, 838, 839 Cultivation, or farming, among Anglo-Saxons, 276, et seq. Cuthbert, St, . . . . 158, 169, 290 Cymry, the, . . . . 8, 22, 23, 216, 219 Cyvelioch, Owen, leader of clans of Powisland, . 451 Dalriada, a district of north-east of Ireland, 18, 217-222 Dagworth, Sir Thomas, an English general, . 768 Damfront, citizens appoint Pi'ince Henry governor of, 398 Danelagh, or Dane-law, . 167-168, 176, 371 Danes, the, a Scandinavian race, . . . 138 Danish warriors ; their arms, costume, &c., . 151-156 Darent Church, heads of windows at, . . 316 David, prince of North Wales, . . . 697-699 , son of Malcolm III., 423, 425, 426, 538, 540, 541 Defrobani, supposed to be Tabrobane, or Ceylon, 9 Deira, kingdom of, founded about 650, . . 142 paoe Deities, Gaulish, . . , . .09 Denmark and Jutland, early population of, . 140 Derbyshire, lead-mines worked by Romans in, . 117 Deemond Mac Mueeogh, king of Leinster, 429, 400-405 Despenceb, Hugh, a favourite of Edward II,, . 740-744 Des Roches, Peter, regent of England, . 075-077 Devizes, Castle of, . . . . 427, 433 DiODOEUs SicuLus, quotcd, , . .15 Dionysius Pcriegetes, gives names to Ehgland & Ireland, 21 Divitiacus, prince of the JEdui, Domesday-book, contents of, &c., Dominican friars. Illustration of, &c., Donald III., king of Scotland, . -— IV., king of Scotland, VI. (Bane), king of Scotland, 65 391, 578-580 803, 804 218 . 219 538 13 Donoughmore, the round tower of, Douglas, Earl, commander at battle of Chevy Chase, 793 , Lord James, . 730, 736-741, 749-751, 755 , Sir Archibald, regent of Scotland, . 756 • , Sir Wm., first noble who joined AVallace, 715, 710 Dover, View of Port and Castle, &c., . 26, 27, 189, 190 Deeux Beueee, marries a relative of WDliam I., . 374 Druids, . 25, 20, 43, 59-01, 64, 83, 101, 119-123 Duff, succeeded Indulf on the Scottish throne, . 219 Du GuEscLiN, constable of France, . . 779, 783 Duke or Dux, a Roman military dignity, . 90, 882 Dunbar Castle, View of the ruins, . . 714 DuNTJAN, illegitimate son of Malcolm II L, . . 638 Dunfermline Abbey, View of, . . . 752 DuNSTAN, St, abbot of Glastonbury, . 170-176, 240-244 Duntocher Bridge, on the line of Graham's Dyke, . 48 Duplin-moor, victory gained here by Edward Baliol, 775 Durham Cathedral, View of the nave of, . . 621 , View of, &c., .... 372, 373 Durst, a victorious Pictish king, . . .216 Eadbald, king of Kent, marries his father's widow, 145, 233 Eadbuegha, daughter of the king of Mercia, . 150 Eadmee, bishop of St Andrews, in Scotland, . 639 Eanred, king of Northumbria, . . . 151 Earl's Barton, View of the church, . . 315 East-Anglia, kingdom of, . . . 142, 150 Edgar Atheling, grandson of Edmund Ironside — 181, 360-362, 369-372, 379, 380, 398, 411 , King, brother of King Edwy, . 171-174 , , son of Malcolm III., . „ . 538 Edgitha, daughter of King Edgar, . . .175 Edilfeid, king of Northumbria, . 145, 146, 233, 234 Editha, daughter of Earl Godwin, 187, 191, 193, 203, 366 Edmund Atheling, succeeds his brother Athelstane, 170 • , brother of Edmund I., . . . 711 • , liing, sumamed Ironside, . 180, ISl, 195 • , second son of Henry III., . . . 680 Ednotii, an English nobleman, . . . 305 Edred, brother of Edmund the Atheling, . . 170 Edric, a man of talent, a favourite of Ethelred, 178, 179 , surnamed the Forester, . . • 302, 865, 375 Edward Atheling, son of Edmund Ironside, . 195 I., king of England, . 080-730, 781, 837 ■ II., king of England, 723, 720, 730-746, 837 III., king of England, . . 742-781, 837 , the Black Prince, . . 753, 705-780 • the Confessor, . . 180, 184, 203 the Elder, king of Wessex, . .108 the Martyr, .... 174, 175 Edwin, king of Northumbria, . 140, 147, 234, 235 , son of Algar, 208, 360, 361, 368, 309, 375, 376 Edwy, lung of the Anglo-Saxons, . . 171, 172 Egbert, archbishop of York, . . . 206, 307 , king of W^essex, . . . 150-152 Eleanor, queen of Edward I., . 680, 690, 692, 693 Louis VII., of France- 438-440, 468, 475, 482, 486, 493, 494, 518 ■ , wife of Alfonso the Good, king of Castile, 480 Elfric, or JElfric, archbishop of Canterbury, 244, 300 Elfrid a, wife of King Edgar, . . . 173-175 Elgiva, the Beautiful, wife of King Edwy, . 171, 172 Ella, or JElla, founder of kingdom of Sussex, 142, 145 INDEX. PAGE Ellandum, or Elyndome, in Wiltshire, . .150 Ellis, Sir Henry, introduction to Domesday-book, 580 Ely, fortified camp at, . . . 376-378 Emma, queen of Ethelred, 177, 180, 181, 184-188,190-192 Engravings, List of. See beginning of volume. Enrique, Don, count of Trastamara, . 776-778 Eratosthenes, Ireland unknown to, . . 14 Ercenwine, founder of the kingdom of Essex, . 142 Ekic, founder of the kingdom of Kent, . . 142 Erin, properly Eire, pronounced lar, . . 16 EsPEC, "Walter, present at battle of Northallerton, 424 Essex, Henry de, hereditary standard-bearer, . 443 Essex, Saxons land, and found this kingdom, 142, 163, 164 Ethelbald, son of Ethelwulf, . . , 153 Ethelbert, brother and successor of Ethelbald, 153 ^, king of Kent, . . 145,203,231,232 Ethelfleda, daughter of Alfred, . 162, 168 Ethelnoth, archbishop of Canterbftry, . 185 Ethelred, a noble, husband of Ethelfleda, 162, 163, 168 I., succeeds his brother Ethelbert, 163, 154 • II., surnamed the Unready, . . 173-180 Ethelwald, the brother of King Alfred, . . . 168 Ethelwold, abbot of Abingdon, . . 301 Ethelvfulf, king of Wessex, . . 152-154 Etymologies and derivations of names of places, &c. — 11, 16, 17, 19, 61, 77, 92, 99, 138, 142, 144 Eu, "William, count of, has his eyes torn out, . 400 EuDES, of Champaign, grants of King William to, 374 Eustace, count of Boulogne, . 189> 190, 365, 395 , Prince, eldest son of Stephen, . 431, 437 Evesham, View of Ruins of Monastery, &c., . 686 Exe, river ; a Danish fleet destroyed here, . . 157 Exeter, city of, . . . . 157, 351, 366 Eynsford, "William de, excommunicated by Becket, 448 Palaise, castle of, Prince Arthur confined here, Falku-k, first Battle of, . Fatimites, their splencLid library, Pay, Sir Godemar du, a great Norman baron. Pel Ynis, a name of Britain, in the "Welsh Triads, Perquhabd, earl of Stratheam, Perrand, earl of Flanders, Ferrers, Earl, revolts against Henry II., Feudal system, institution and form of, \ • tenure. 518 718 603 7G4 643 625, 626 470 563, et seq. 254 699, 560 215 . 409 443 Fishing, at an early period after the Conquest, Pitz-Ernest, Robert, slain at Battle of Hastings, Fitz-Hamon, Robert, a baron of Henry I., . FiTz- John, Eustace, slain at invasion of "Wales, Fitz-Nicholas, Ralph, sent to the Emir al Nassir, 522, 523 FiTZ-OsBERT, "William, surnamed Longbeard, . 612 FiTz-RoBEBT, "William, son of Duke Robert, 412-417 Pitz-Stephen, captain of the Blanche-Nqf, . 414, 416 ■ , "William, describes London ; quoted — 589, 642, 668 FiTZDRSE, Reginald, a murderer of a Becket, FiTzwALTEB, Robert, general of the barons, Planders, Baldmn, earl of, -, first earl of Flanders, Guy, count of, Philip, eaii of, . Robert, earl of, father-in-law of Canute, Fleta, quoted, Folcland, Poliot, Gilbert, bishop of London, . Fonts, Norman-English, Porest, New, description of, Forres, ancient obelisk at, near Cruden, Franciscan friars ; Illustration of one, Franks, the, of Teutonic descent, Fraser, Sir Simon, died as a traitor, Frederic II., king of the Two Sicilies, Freemen, description of, French language, early, termed the * Romance,' Frithric, abbot of St Alban's, . Froissart, the chronicler, . Fbontinus, Julius, subdued the Silures, 465, 456 628, 631 412, 413 153, 191 720-724 . 468 386 . 817 248- 448, 470, 471 . 552, 653 387-389, 401 . 221 . 803, 804 . 138 . 729,766 . 680 661 . 188 361 749, 849 44 Ptjlk, earl of Anjou, 412, 413, 416, 417 Pullanham, now Pulham-on-the-Thames, Furniture, Specimens ot^ 891 PAGE 161 634, 864 Gael, its orthography uncertain, . . 18 Galdric, lOng Henry's chaplain, . . . 412 Galleys of the Romans, . . .30, 31, 162-165 Gamel, son of Quetel of Meaux, . . . 374 Gardens and orchards of the Anglo-Saxons, . 283 Gaul, Caesar's conquest of, . . . .25 Gaulish hut, as sculptured on the Antonine column, 98 Gauls, the ; their trade with Britain, &c., 25, 60, 101-104 Gaviston, Sir Piers, a knight of Gascony, . 730-734 Geoffrey, a son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, . 442, 443 , bishop of Coutance, . . 381 , natural son of Henry 11., 479, 481, 485, 507 of Monmouth, an English chronicler, 8, 11 , Prince, son of Henry II., 452, 468, 470-476 Gerard, a foreigner, persecuted for his religion, . 657 Gerberoy, Castle of, besieged by the Conqueror, 384 Germanic tribes, their contests with the Romans, . 26 Germanus, bishop of Auxerre, ... 57 Gekontius, and other British chiefs, treachery of, . 55 Gifford, Henry, an adherent of Henry I., . 405 Walter, archbishop of York, . 408, 688 Gilbert, English, or Anglicus, a writer on medicine, 845 Gildas, an ancient British historian, 56, 228, 289, 347, 348 Gildhall, the German, .... 834 GiovACCHiNO, a celebrated seer, . . 492 Gibaldus Cambbensis, quoted, . . 12, 586, 695 GisLEBERT,-professor of theology, . . 606 Glanville, Ranulph de, 471, 484, 485, 568, 573, 574 Glass, used by Anglo-Saxons, . . 310, 325 Glastonbury Abbey ; Illustration of, &c., . 170-242 Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, earl of, 683, 686-688 , Richard de Clare, earl of, . . 683 , Robert, earl of, . . 416, 423-435 , Thomas Plantagenet, duke of, 791-795 Godwin and Edmund, sons of Harold, . . 365-367 , Earl, originally a cow-herd, . 184-194 Goths, the, . . . . . 138 Gouedon, Adam, a warlike baron, . . 687, 688 Goubney, T., and W. Ogi.e, murder Edward II., 745, 755 GowEB, John ; Portrait of, . . . 851, 852 Gbantmesnil, Alberic de, . . . 383, 568 , Hugh de, earl of Norfolk, . 370, 394 , Yvo de, . . . . 408 Gray, John de, archbishop of Canterbury, 521, 623, 659 Geegoby VII., Hildebrand, Pope, . 206, 207, 649 IX., Pope, . . . .803 . the Great, . . . . 145, 230 Gbiffith, king of "Wales, . . . 194, 195 Gbig, or Geegoby, a powerful king of Scotland, 219 Gbimbald, an eminent scholar, . . . 305 Grisogono, plan of the church of, . . 312 Gbostete, Robert, a cultivator of mathematics, . 843 Gbymbald, abbot of St Alban's, . . 604 Gualo, the pope's legate, . . . 631, 671 GuiDo's improved scale of musical notation, . 633 Guienne, William, earl of Poictiers, . . 401 GuizoT, M., quoted, . 246, 256, 355, 563, 675 GuNDULPH, bishop of Rochester, . . 572,615 GuRDUN, Bertrand de, shot King Richard, . 614 GuBTH, brother of Harold IL, 188, 191, 194, 212, 215 GuTHBUN, a Danish king, . . . 157-164 Gut, count of Ponthieu, takes Harold prisoner, . 197 Gwyddyl, the, settle in Scotland, . . 9 Gwynned, Owen, Icing of the Welsh, . 443, 451 Haco, king of Norway, . -, nephew of Harold, . 704, 705 197, 199 Hadbian, a Roman emperor ; Profile of, &c., . 47 Hailes, Lord, quoted, . . . 708, 709 Hainault, Count of, entertains Queen Isabella, . 742 Hales, Sir JJobert, treasurer of England, . 787 Halfden, or Halfdane, divides Northumbrian territory, 157 Halidon Hill, Battle of, . . . . 766 Hallam, Mr, observations, &c., 674, 676, 803, 810, 811, 885 Habclay, Sir Andrew, . . . .741 Hardicanute, son of Canute by Queen Emma, 184-186 Hardington's mission to the Emir al Nassir, . 522 Haedrada, Harold, king of Norway, . . 208, 209 Hare Stone, Cornwall, . . . .97 Harold Harefoot, king of England, . . 184-186 II., king of England, . .188,191-215 . , son of the king of Denmark, . . 371,386 Hasting, a northern sea-king or viking, . 162-165 Hastings, Battle of, . . . . 213-215 , in Sussex, View of, &c., . . 210, 212 Hawking, ..... 342 Hay, earl of Errol, of a Norman family, . . 220 Hebrides, the residence of sea-kings, . . 170 Helie de St Saen, a Norman nobleman, . . 412 , lord of La Fleche, ... 401 Hemingford (properly Hemingburgh), Walter, . 620 Hengham, Sir Ralph de, grand justiciary, . 694 Hengist and Horsa, Saxon pirates, . 57, 58, 140-142 Henrtt I., son of William I., . 383, 396-419, 664, 665 ■ II., son of Geoffrey of Anjou — 434-458, 466-480, 554, 667, 668 III., the reign of, . . 671-688, 837 IV., surnamed Bolingbroke. See vol. II., 791-800 . VI., emperor of Germany, " 503, 609, 610, 513 , bishop of Winchester, 421, 427, 430-435, 442 , count of Champagne, . . . 500 ■ , eldest son of Henry II., 446, 452, 453, 467-474, 543 , son of David, king of Scotland, . 423, 425, 541 , son of Richard, king of the Romans, . 688 Heptarchy, the, tributary to Egbert of Wessex, 150, 151 Heraldry, its rise, ..... 641 Hereford, Humphrey Bohun, earl of, . 719, 721, 722 , Roger Fitz-Osborn, earl of, . 380, 382 ■ , William Fitz-Osborn, earl of, . 375, 380 Herefordshire Beacon, View of, . . . 100 Hereward, lord of Born, in Lincolnshire, . 376-378 Herman, bishop of Winton and Shireburn, . 604 Herodotus, quoted, . . . 13-15, 19 Hexham, St Andrew's Chm-ch at, . . 310 Hibernia, its derivation and meaning, . .17 Highlanders, Scottish ; their descent, . . 18 HiMiLco, an ancient Carthaginian navigatoi-, . 14 History, evidences of genuine, ... 4 Holinshed, Raphael, the historian, quoted, 8, 567, 368, 525 IIolkot, Robert, an author of the 14th century, . 611 Holland, William, earl of, . . . 525 Holywood, Dumfriesshire, Druidical circle, . . 61 Horses, ancient British, nmch prized at Rome, . 36, 106 Hospitallers, Knights, the, . . . 491, 495 Hoveden, quoted, . . . 500, 583 HuBBA, a Danish king, slain with his followers, . 159 Hugh de Montgomerv, earl of Shrewsbury, . 400 , nephew of Aubert le Riband, . . 383 Hungerford, Sir Thomas, . . . 780 Hunting, practised by Anglo-Saxons & Normans, 341-343,647 Huntingdon, David, earl of, afterwards David I., . 470 — , Henry of, ... 589, 590 , John Holland, earl of, . . 791 Huts, Gaulish, . . . . , 98 Hyperboreans, island of the, . .. .15 Iceni, the, . . . . .40, 43,44 Ida, founder of the kingdom of Bernieia, . . 142 Idel river, Nottinghamshire, Battle on its banks, 146 lernis, name of Ireland in the Orphic poem, . 14 Illustrations, List of. See beginning of volume. India, embassy of Sighelm to, . . . 266, 267 Indulf, a Scottish king, . . . .219 Industry, history of the national, 91-117, 262, 584, 824 Infantry, main strength of the British armies, , 36, 39 Ingulphus, quoted, . . 187, 257, 578, 609, 613 Ini, laws of, . . . . . . 203 Innocent II., Pope, .... 422 Institutions and Customs, .... 6 Inverury, Battle of, gained by Bruce, . . 735 lona ; View of iNIonastery, &c., . 220, 221, 229, 244, 290 Ireland, its primitive Celtic population, &c. — 12-18, 217-223, 229, 459-467, 546 PAOE Ireland, Robert -de Vere, duke of, . . 791, 792 Isaac, emperor of Cypi'us, . . . 495 Isabella, queen of Edward II., . 732, 742-755 ^, wife of Hugh, count de la Marche, . 517,674 Japhetic or Caucasic population of Europe, . 10 Jarrow, View of, at mouth of the river Tyne, . 291 Jerusalem, city of; View, .... 499 Jews, the, in England, . 266, 476, 604, 505, 523, 684 Joan, daughter of Henry II., . . 490, 491, 494 , sister of King Richard, . . . 513 JoFFRiD, abbot of Croyland, . . . 606 John L of France, son of Philip VI., . . 771-776 , king of England, 478,479,482,486,506-511,514-533 Judith, daughter of Charles the Bald, . .153 , niece of William I., . . 379, 381, 382 Juliana, illegitimate daughter of Henry I., , . 414 Jury, trial by, established, . . . 672 Justiciary, chief, office of the, . . . 668 Justus, bishop of Rochestei', . . . 233, 234 Jutes, the, a Saxon tribe, . . . 139-145 Keith, Sir William, governor of Berwick, . . 756 Kenilworth, castle of, residence of De Montforts, 686, 687 Kenilworth, Dictum de, . . . 687, 688 Kenneth III. son of Malcolm I., . 218-220,633 . IV., called the Grim, . 220, 221, 533 Mac Alpin, or Kenneth II., . 217, 218 Kent, Cantium, 10, 27-33, 57, 58, 77, 141, 142, 145, 160 Kent, Edmund Plantagenet, earl of, . 751, 752 Kildrummie Castle ; View of the ruins, &c., . 727, 729 King's Bench, Chief-justice of the, ^ . . 812 Kingston, St Mary's Chapel at, . . . 175 Kits Coty House, a cromlech, near Aylesford, Kent, 63 Knowles, Sir Robert, .... 779 Knyghton, an English historian of the 14th century, 520 Lacy, Gilbert de, a Norman baron, . . 374, 424 '-, Hugh de, earl of Ulster, . . 467, 523 , Walter de, . . . 381, 400, 424 , AValter de, earl of Meath, . . . 523 Lamberton, William de, bishop of St Andrews, 728, 729 Lancaster, Henry Plantagenet, duke of, . 763, 769 • -, Henry Plantagenet, earl of, . 751, 752 -, John of Gaunt, 776-783, 786, 791, 794, 796 , Thomas Plantagenet, eari of, 733, 734, 740, 741 Lanfranc, abbot of Caen, . .381, 392, 396, 547 Langland, aijthor of the Visions of Pierce Plowman, 851 Langton, Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury — 521, 522, 526, 675 . 731 6,7 166, 283 . 791 779 145, 233, 234 466, 466 — , Walter de, bishop of Lichfield, Language, evidence of origin of a people. Lanterns of horn, invention of King Alfi-ed, Latimer, John, a Carmelite friar, . • , Lord, thrown into prison, Laurentius, archbishop of Canterbury, Lawrence, archbishop of Dublin, . Laws and government of British, until Saxon conquest, 76-90 religion, evidences of truth of history, . 5 of the Anglo-Saxons, . . 146, 167, 203, 244 Lea, river, Hertfordshire ; Danes erect a fortress hei'e, 1 64 Lead-mines of British Islands, . 26, 92, 106, 117, 269 Leeds, View of the Castle of, . . . 740 Legion, Roman ; cavalry, equipment, kc, . 37, 38 Legislation, Saxon, .... 256, ei seq. Leicester, Robert le Bossu, carl of, . . 460 , Robert Blanchmains, earl of, . 498, 509 , Simon de Montfort, eari of, . 681-687 Leofric, Earl, a supporter of Harold Harefoot — 184, 188, 190, 194 Leofwine, son of Eari Godwin, . 188,191,193,216 Lewes Priory, View of the ruins ; Battle here, 684, 685 Leyden, John of, a mathematician of 13th century, 844 Lhuyd, Humphrey, a AVelsh antiquary, . . 16, 21 Lime, in Kent ; the Roman station Lemannce, . 90 Lincoln, View of; ancient Roman arches, &c., 116, 430 Lincoln's-inn, description of its foundation, . . 819 LiNDESAY, Alexander de, a follower of Wallace, 715, 716 Lindisfarne, or Holy Island ; View of Abbey, 116, 147 Lisbon, adventures of fieet of King Richard at, . 487 Literature, Science, and Fine Arts, 118, 289, 003, 842 LiULF, a Saxon noble, .... 384, 385 Livr, the Roman historian, quoted, . . 35 Llewei-lyn, Prince ; description of Welsh, &c., 69.5-698 Lloegrwys, a people of Gascony, migrated to Britain, 9 Lodbroke's daughters embroider a magical banner, 159 Lollius Urbictjs's expedition into Caledonia, . 47" Lombards, or Longobardi; their laws, . . ' 145 London, Londinhan, in the Roman period, &c., 43, 44, 54, 86, 163, 104, 309, 435, 585, 589, 615, 684, 685, 687, 688, 743, 810. LoxGCHAMP, William, lord-chancellor and justiciary of England, . . . 485, 505, 506-608, 511 LoKN, Lord of, endeavours to take Bruce prisoner, 729 Lorsch, portico at, .... 312, 813 LosixGA, Herbert, bishop of Thetford, . 604, 615 Lothians, the, . . . . . 216, 221 Louis IV., named d'Outremer, king of France, . 169 . VI. of France, receives Wm. Fitz-Robert, 412, 417 VII., of France, 439, 440, 442, 444-446, 452, 467-544 . - VIII., king of France, . 531-533, 672-675 IX., king of France, . 075, 676, 684, 689, 690 LucAN, describes the Druids, . . .61 Lucretius, the poet, .... 105 Lucy, Richard de, a courtier of King Henry II., 452, 470 LuLLY, Raymond, a philosopher and alchemist, 844, 848 Lundin, Sir Richard, joins standard of Wallace, 715, 716 Macbeth, king of Scotland, . . 194, 221, 222 ]MacDowal, Duncan, defeats Bruce's brothers, . 729 Macintosh, Sir James, quoted, . . 168 Macpherson, James, quoted, . • 13» ^'91> o92 IMadden, Sir F. ; account of illuminated MS., . 632 Madoo, a brave leader of the Welsh, . . 711 Madox, an English antiquary, quoted, 567, el seq., 809 Magna Charta ; Specimen of original copies, 528, 576, 577 Magnus, king of Norway and Denmark, . . 188 Maine, people of, revolt against William, 379, 383, 401 Malachi, king of Ireland, death of, . . 429 Malcolm I., king of Scotland, . . . 219, 633 II., king of Scotland, . . .221 • III., suriiamed Caenmore, king of Scotland — 194, 222, 369, 371, 372, 378, 379, 398, 399, 533-537 Malcolm IV., king of Scotland, . 442, 445, 542, 543 Malet, William, a Norman general, . . 370 Mallet, Robert de, a Norman baron, . . 408 Malmshury, Abbey of, . . . . 615 MALM.SBUUY, William of, quoted, . . 589, 632, 637 Malpedir, Earl, assa-ssinates Duncan of Scotland, 538 Malwood Keep, a hunting-seat in the New Forest, 401 Mandetille, Sir John, an English traveller, . 845 , AVilliam de. See Albemarle, earl of. MA.NDUBBATIUS, princc of the Trinobantes, . 33 Manleon, Savaric do, leader of a foreign band, 530 Manners and customs of early races, 5, 125, 323, 634, 864 Manny, Sir Walter, a brave English general, 701, 762, 709 Mantes, city of, taken and burnt by WilHam I., . 389 Manuscripts, illumhiated. Gospel of St John, . 169 Marcel, Stephen, provost of merchants of France, 774 Marcellinus, Ammianus, mention of the Scots, &c., 19, 03 March, Roger, earl of, .... 791 Marche, Count de la, robbed of his wife, 517, 518, 674 Marcus, and afterwards Gratian, elected emperors, 55 Mare, Sir Peter de la, speaker of the Commons, . 780 Mareschal, AVilliam, . . . 506, 515 Margaret, daughter of Louis, king of France, 446, 470 , queen of Malcolm Caenmore, 369, 399, 537 Marjory, queen of Robert Bruce, . . 729, 738 Marquess, the first English, was Robert de Vere, 882 Marr, Donald, earl of, regent of Scotland, . . 755 Marseilles, a tin emporium of the Cassiteridcs, 26, 93 Marshall, or ]Mareschall, office of the, . . 569 Matilda, daughter of Fulk, earl of Anjou, . 412, 413 , eldest daughter of Henry II. ; from her is descended the present royal family of Great Britain, 480 Matilda, or Maud, queen of King Stephen, 421, 426, 438 Matilda, or Maud, the Good, queen of Henry I. — 406, 407, 413 , Queen, married to the earl of Anjou — 417, 418, 421-426, 428-435, 452 , queen of Henry V. of Germany, ■ . 412,416 .-, queen of William I., . S66, 370, 384, 386 -" " ■ . 520 405 54 502 16 126 36 409, 413 . 538 233, 234 531, 532 . 313 Maulac, Peter do, esquire of Kirg John, Maurice, bishop of London, Maximus, provincial emperor in Britain, Maynard, governor of Goritz, . Mazanderan, pillar-temples of, Meata; and Caledonians, Mela, Pomponius, quoted, . Mellent, Robert de, relative of Henry I., -, Walleran, earl of. Mellitcs, bishop of the East-Saxons, . Melun, Viscount de, Mentz Cathedral ; its style of architecture, Mercer, John, taken prisoner by John Pliilpot, 783 Merks, Thomas, bishop of Carlisle, . . 799 Mersey, Isle of, Essex ; blockade of, . . 1 63 Merton, Walter de, chancellor of England, . 688 Meschines, Renouf, first earl of Cumberland, . 375 Milesians, same as Scots, a Scythian colony, , 15 Millar, Professor, quoted, . . . 250 Mills ; hand-mills and water-mills before the Conquest, 600 Mines, notices of the English, . . 92,117,600-602 -Mistletoe, the, sacred among the Druids, . . 03 Moinmor, Battle of, fought 1115, . . 459 Mold, in Flintshire, gold breastplate found in cairn at, 128 Mona, Island of, resort of Druids and Britons, . 43, 61 Monasteries; exhibiting Norman architecture, G14:, et seq. Money, form and value of, among Anglo-Saxons, 271, et seq. Montacute, a Norman general under WilUam I., 375 * , Lord, assists Edward III., . . 753 MoNTFORT, familv of, earls of Leicester, . 568 , John de, claims Brittany, 760-702, 768, 769 ^, Robert de, accuses earl of Essex of treason, 443 , Simon de, son of great earl of Leicester, 686-688 Montoomeuy, Arnulf de, a Norman baron, . 408 , Roger de, . . . 394, 395 MooKE, Mr, quoted, . . .14, 16, 20, 23 Moray, Randolph, earl of, 729, 736, 737, 739, 749, 755 , Sir Andrew, of Bothwell, joins Wallace, 715, 716 Morini, a Gallic tribe near Calais, . . .27 MoRTAiGNE, Earl of, imprisoned for life, . 410 Mortimer, Earl of, cuts off Llewellyn's head, . 698 . -, Hugh de, master of castle of Bridgenorth, 442 Roger, Lord, . 738, 741-743, 745, 748-755 IMoBviLLE, Hugh de, one of Becket's murderers, 455, 456 Mowbray, Philip de, defeated by Bruce atlnverury, 735-738 ■ , Roger de, revolts against Henry, 470 229 85 459 469 MuNGO, St, or Kentigern, a bishop in Strathclyde, Municipia, Roman division of cities, Murtach, king of Ireland, death of, Murtoch O'Lochlin, king of Ireland, Mythology of Scandinavia and Teutonic tribes, 138, 140 Nantes, inhabitants of, offer their city to Geoffrey, 443 National industry, history of the. See Industry. Navigation, some tribes more addicted to, than others, 6, 831 Nero, the emperor, . • • .44 Nevil, Lord, deprived of his employments, . 779 Neville, Sir Ralph, defeated by Su- James Douglas, 739 Nev.'buboh, AVilliam of, quoted, . . . 693 Newcastle-upon-Tyne ; View of, . _ . 383, 536 Nicolas, an agent or solicitor in ecclesiastical causes, 539 Nigel, bishop of Ely, .... 427-429 NiNiAN, bishop of Whitheni, in Wigtonshire, 229 , a monk ; his history of the Britons, . 289 Nomenclature, its durahiUty, «&c., . . 7 Norfolk, Ralph de Gael, earl of, . . 380-383 , Roger B., earl of, marshal of England, 719-722 , Thomas INIowbray, duke of, . 795, 796 Norham Castle, on the Tweed ; View of its ruins, 540, 641 Normans, origin of the, .... 138 Northallerton, Elfer-itin, great Battle of, . 424-426 Northmen, or Norse tribes, the most celebrated of, 9, 138 894 INDEX. Northumberland, Morcar, earl of — 200, 208, 360, 361, 368, 369, 375, 378, 389, 392, 393 Northumberland, Eobert de Mowbray, earl of, 400 Northumbria, . . . 142, 146, 150, 163, 165, 176 Norwegians, the, of Scandinavian origin, . 138 Nottingham Castle ; View of ISIortimer's Hole, . 754 Oaks, grove of, . . . . . 62 O'Brien, Mr, quoted, . . . .15 Occam, William, styled the Invincible, a monk, . 843 O'Connor, the Irish antiquary, quoted, . . 22 Odin, or Wodin, king of Scandinavia, . 138, 224-228 Odo, archbishop of Canterbury, . . .172 . , bishop of Bayeux, 212, 214, 381, 385, 386,393,394,395 , earl of Holderness, .... 400 Offa, lung of Mercia and Bretwalda, . . 265, 266 Ogle, Wm., and T. Goubnet, murder Edward II., 745 Ohthere, his voyage to the North Seas, . 267 Okeley, Surrey, defeat of the Dapes at, . .152 Olaf, king of Norway, .... 386 Olave, king of Norway, . . . 176,177 Oligarchies, Roman, .... 85 Omfreville, Robert d', a follower of the Conqueror, 375 Ordericus Vitalis, the historian, 575, 583, 684, 613, 614 Ordgar, earl of Devonshire, . . .173 Obleton, Adam, bishop of Hereford, . . 743 Orm, or Ohmin; his Homihes, . . . 301 Orosius, epitomised by King Alfred, . . 302 Orpheus, story of, in Anglo-Saxon, by King Alfred, 296 OsBEORN, brother of the king of Denmark, 371, 372, 386 Osbebne, son of Earl Siward, slain at Dunsinane, 194 Osburgha, wife of King Ethelwulf, . . 153, 154 Ostorius, Scapula, Roman praetor in Britain, 40-42 Oswald, bishop of Salisbury ; his church-service, . 549 Otterbourne, Battle of; View of the Field, . ' 793 Ottoboni, the pope's legate in England, . . 688 Oxford, Castle of; View of the Tower, . 432, 435, 682 , University of, earhest mention of, . - . 306 Paganism, Roman and heathen temples in Britain, 72 Painting, early historical, .... 631 Palgrave, Sir F., quoted, 87, 248-257, 350, 351, 672, 575 Pandulph, the pope's legate, . . . 524 Paper, made of cotton, in use in 12th century, . 611 Paris, besieged by the Danes, . . .162 Paris, Matthew, the English historian, . 522, 576, 847 Parliament, forms of holding, &c., . . 780, 809, 810 , statutes of, . 675, 721, 733, 812-817, 820 Pascal II., Pope, .... 551, 5^52 Patrick, St, converted the Irish to Christianity, . 229 Pearls, British, .... 26, 106, 107 Peckham, John, a mathematician of 13th century, 844 Pedro IV., suniamed the Cruel, . .776, 777 Pelagius, an Irish monk, .... 124 Pembroke, Aylmer de Valence, earl of, . 728, 729 , R. de Clare, surnamed Strongbow, 461-466 , William Marshall, earl of, 527, 671, 673-675 People, history of the condition of the, 135, 346, 658, 882 Perche, Marie, countess of, ... 414 Percy, Bishop, quoted, . . . . 9, 10, 22 , Henry, surnamed Hotspur, . . . 793 Perrers, Alice, a favourite of Edward III., . 779, 783 Persia, its connection with Britain, . . .36 Peter, of Capua, the pope's legate, . . 513 , surnamed the Hermit, preaches the Crusades, 400, 624 Pevensey Castle, ruins of, &c., . . . . 392-394 Philip I., of France, . . 383, 884, 388, 389, 397, 399 II., of France, . 476-478, 486, 490, 491, 493, 495, 497, 500, 508, 609, 611, 513, 516-527, 531 III., of France, surnamed le Bel, 711-713, 721, 723 . VI., of Valois, of France, 757,762,764-767,769-771 Philippa, queen of Edward III. ; her Portrait, 751, 768, 770 Philosophy, ancient, . . . . 62, 64 . Philfot, John, an alderman of London, . 783 Phcenicians, first colonisers of Britain, 9, 14-16, 77, 91-101 Picts, anciently Gwyddyl Fficti, 9, 18, 19, 22, 216, 218, 229 Pigs ; the Anglo-Saxons possessed herds of swine, 277 Pilgrims, and pilgrimages to Rome, &c., 182, 265, 266 PiNKERTON, J., his views of Gothic and Celtic nations, 10 Piperel, or Peverel, William, . . 424 Pisans, the, supporters of Guy of Lusignan, . 499 Pliny's Natural History, quoted, . 63, 92, 117, 127 Plutarch, quoted, . . . . .14 Poictiers, Battle of, gained by the Black Prince, 772, 773 Poictiers, Richard de, quoted, . . . 473 , William of, . . 363, 364, 584, 585, 613 Political Divisions, .... 76-81 Poll-tax, causes much disturbance in England, 784, et scq. Polo, Marco, his travels in Tatary and China, . 845 Pont, Robert, abbot of, his deputation to Ricliard, 509 Pontefract Castle, built by Gilbert do Lacy, . 374 Pontefract, Robert de, an adherent of Duke Robert, 408 Population ; physical characteristics of nations, . 6, 6 Portsmouth ; the Romans build a fortress here, . 90 Potteries of the Gauls and Britons, . . . 103 Pritchabd, Dr, opinion of Celtic and Teutonic languages, 11 Prydain, Inys, name of Britain, ... 8 Pbydain, son of Aedd the Great, . . 11 Ptolemy's mention of Ireland and Britain, 14, 20, 138 PucELLE, Girard la, an eminent English scholar, . 610 PuDSEY, Hugh, bishop of Durham, . . 485, 505 Pynsaint, Carmarthenshire, Roman mines at, . 117 Quintain, an ancient English sport ; View of, 649 Ralph, surnamed Le Flambard, . 396, 406-410, 549 Ramsey Abbey, description of, . . . 313 Ranulph, or Ralph, earl of Worcester, . . 190 Reading Abbey ; View of the ruins of, . . 418,419 Redvers, Richard de, a powerful Norman baron, . 409 Redevald, king of East-Anglia, . 145, 146, 233 Rees-ap-Gryffitiis, king of South Wales, . 451 Reeves, Mr, quoted, . . . 818-822 Reginald, of St Augustine's, Canterburj', . 559 Religion — Druidism ; introduction of Christianitv, &c. — 69-75, 224-245, 647-56'l, 801-808 Revenue, account of the royal, . . 580-683 Reynaud, earl of Boulogne, . . . 626 Richard, half-brother of Prince William, . . 414 . I., king of England, . 452, 468, 470-514 II., king of England; his Portrait, 780-800, 838 - — — — , natural son of Robert of Normandy, . 401 • of Cirencester, a Benedictine, . . 76 , second son of William I., . . 387 Ricliborough, in Kent, site of Roman station Rutupce, 90 Richmond, in Yorkshire ; View of, . . 374 Richmond, John de Dreux, earl of, . 734, 735 Roads in Britain, constructed by the Romans, . 117 Robert, archbishop of Canterbury, . 189, 193, 196 , eldest son of the Conqueror, 383, 384, 389, 393-411 ■ II., nephew of David Bruce, . 774, 791, 794 Rochester Castle ; View of the Keep, &c., ^ . 395 Cathedral ; View of the west front, . 620 RoDERic, invests Dublin, . . . 465, 466 Rodolphus, Glaber, quoted, . . . 636 Roger, bishop of Salisbury, . 421, 426-428, 615 ■ , of Hoveden, quoted, . . 450, 476 Roman and Greek writers ; their opinion of the early history of Britain, .... 4 Roman roads, the, . . . . 49, 117 Romance language, the origin of the French, . 188 Romans, the, invade Britain, 26-33, 48, 51, 72, 90, 117, 658 Rome, its early connections with Britain, 145, 163, 165 Romney Marsh, Rosamond, the Fair, her romantic history, Rouen, Walter, archbishop of, . Rougemont Castle, Exeter ; View of. Round Table, Iting Arthur's, Towers, Irish, Ruding, Mr, quoted, Runic Odes, admirably imitated by Gray, Runnymead, View of, . Sacse, emigrate from Scythia to Europe, Sackville, Nigellus de, rector of Harrow, St Alban's, Verulamium, 162, 359 481, 482 506-508 . 367 23 , 12-17 695 . 300 529 . 138 454 . 33,43 INDEX. 895 PAGE St Andrew's, See of, . . . . 639 St Clair, Hubert de, saves the life of Henry II., . 442 St Edmundsbury ; View of, &c., . . 527 St Gilles, Raymond de, earl of Toulouse, . 444, 445 St Michael, Mount of, in Normandy ; View of, . 397 St Pieeke, Eustace de, a rich burgess of Calais, 7G9 St Stephen, Church of, at Caen ; View of, . 390, 391 Saladin, Sultan ; his wars with the Crusaders, 495-501 Salerno, liing Richard's visit to, . . 488 Salisbury, Cathedral of, rebuilt by Bishop Roger, 426, 615 Salisbury, John of, quoted, . . 607-610, 633 , William Longspear, earl of, . 525, 626 Salt, procured by evaporation, . . . 600 Sammes, Aylett, a writer of 17th century, . . 9 Samotiies, liing, and the fabled giants of Britain, 118 Sandwich, first landing of Caesar betwixt "Walmer and, 28 Sarum, Castle of ; View of the ruins, . . 427 Savoy Palace, the ; View of the ruins, . 786, 787 Saxon language, literature, &c. — 292-301, 304,323, 332, 333, 337, 341^346, 571, 611-614 Saxons, the. See also Saxon Kings — 53, 90, 138-145, 152, 153, 156-158, 165, 166, 288 Scalds and Bards of the Scandinavians and Celts, 228, 229 Scandinavia, superstitious mythology of, &c., 138, 224-228 ScHiLTER, his opinion of Celtic and Teutonic languages, 10 Science, progress of, . . . 118, 289, 603, 842 Scilly Islands, resorted to by the Phoenicians, . 92, 93 Scotland, history of religion in, ^ . . 244 Scots, the ; then- origin, >&,c., . . 18-20, 52-56 Sculpture of the Anglo-Saxons, . . . 318 Scutage, levied by Henry II., . . . 444 Sebert, king of Essex, converted to Christianity, . 233 Segrave, John de, governor of Scotland, . 725 Selsey, Isle of, .... . 142 Seneschal, or Dapifer Regis, office of the, . 568 Serpent, Druidical worship of the, . . .68 Seton, Christopher, a follower of Bruce, . 729 Severn, river. Victory of Alfred on banks of, &c., 163,. 164 Severus, the emperor ; his invasion of Britain, . 49-52 Sheep, Anglo-Saxons valued wool more than flesh of, 277 Ship, form of a Saxon, .... 266 Sibilla, Lady, wife of Alexander I. of Scotland, 538 Sibylla, daughter of the count of Conversano, 408, 410 , daughter of the earl of Anjou, . 412,413 SiDONius, says early Saxons delighted in a sea-life, 140 Sighelm, bishop of Shireburn, . . . 267 Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire, , . . .67 Silures, the ; Caractacus their commander, . 6, 41, 42 Sinclair, bishop of Dunkeld, sumamed King's Bishop, 739 SiWAKD, Earl, of Danish origin, "^ i88, 190, 194, 195 Slaves ; children of Angles sold, ' ., 176, 230, 269, 270 Sluys, naval Victory gained here by.Edward III., . 759 Snowdon, View of, ... . 698 Somerled, thane of Argyle, . . 642, 543 Somersetshire, Saxons of, bravely assist King Alfred, 156, 158 Sovereigns, contemporary, . . , 357, 670 Spain, high state of learning in, &c., . 522, 604 Spalatro, golden gate of Diocletian at, . 308, 309 Speed, John, an antiquary, quoted, . 488, 484 Sports, Field, rural or popular, . 647-657, 876-881 Stamford-bridge, Battle between Hardrada and Harold, 209 ' Standard, Battle of the ; Scots defeated, . 424-426, 541 Standisii, Ralph, one of the esquires of Richard II., 788 Statutes. See Parliament. Stephen, count of Aumale, nephew of the Conqueror, 400 , nephew of Henry I., . . 416, 420-438 , of Tours, seneschal of Anjou, . . 482 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, . 204, 360, 361 Stilicho, aids the Britons against Saxon incursions, 64, 55 Stu-ling Castle, View of, . . . .717 Stonehenge, great temple of the Druids at, . 68, 101 Stour, river, near Canterbury, . . .30 Strabo, his account of Britain and Ireland, . 14, 93 Stratford, John, archbishop of Canterbury, . 759 Strathclyde, or Reged, . . .23, 217-220 Straw, Jack, a priest, .... 785-789 Stuteville, Robert de, imprisoned for life, . 410 -, William de, a follower of King John, 516 Sudbury, Simon, a?ia«Tibold, archbishop of Canterbury, 787 Suetonius, Paulinus, quoted, . 26, 29, 36, 43, 44, 61 Suffolk, Michael de la Pole, earl of, . . 791, 792 Sun, Druidical worship of the, . . .68 Surrey, earl of, succeeds his father in 1089, . 406, 408 , John Plantagenet, earl of, . 686, 694, 715, 717 , William de Warren, earl of, . 374, 381 Sussex, or kingdom of the South Saxons, . 142 Sweden, site of capital of the ancient chief Wodin, . 138 SwEYN EsTRiDSEN, king of Denmark, 208, 371, 372, 386 , prince of Denmark, . . . 176-180 , second son of Earl Godwin, . 189-193 Swords, made anciently of a mixture of copper and tin, 91 Sylvius, Bonus, or Coil the Good, a British writer, 124 Tacitus, the historian, quoted — 6, 9, 16, 33, 43-47, 61, 72, 76, 106, 124, 223, 246, 352 Taillefer, a gigantic follower of Duke William, . 213 Tancred, grandson of the great Ruggiero, . 489-493 Tax, Roman, on pasture-ground, &c., . 89, 253 Templars, Knights, . 444, 446, 491, 495, 561, 746, 747 Tenchebray, a strong fortress in Normandy, . 410 Teutonic language, origin of the, &c., . 10, 11, 138 Thames, ford of the river, at Conway Stakes, . 32, 142 Thanet, Isle of, . . . . 58, 141 Theobald, abbot of Becco, . 430, 435, 440, 448 , earl of Blois, .... 413 Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, . , 304 Theodosian Code, . . . . .87 Theodosius, a distinguished general, . . 64 , the Great, son of the preceding, . 54 Theowes, a lower order among the Saxons, . 249 Thor, his mighty ' hammer,' . . . 140 Thule, the ultima, of ancient poets and geogi-aphers, 124 Thuekhill's host invades Ethelred's dominions, . 179 Thurstan, abbot of Glastonbury, . 382, 424, 549 Tiernsteign, View of the Castle and Town of, . 603 Tilbury, Gervase of, quoted, . . 580, 581, 683 TiLLEUiL, Humphrey, warden of Hastings Castle, 370 Tin of the Cassiterides, . . 26, 91, 92, 104, 106 ToGODUMNus, son of Cunobelinus ; slain in battle, 39 ToLAND, John, quoted, . . . .10 ToNSTAiN, sumamed the Fair, . . . 213 TosTiG, son of Earl Godwin, 188, 191, 194, 195, 200, 208, 209 Toulouse, earldom of, claimed by Henry II., . 444, 445 Tower of London, . . . . .361 Town or City, British, .... 99 Township, Town, derivation of the word, . 351,352 Tracy, William, one of the murderers of a Becket, 455, 466 Trade. See Industry. Tradition, testimony of, . . . . 4, 5 Trajan's Column at Rome ; Illustrations from, . 38, 39 Treasurer, office of the, .... 569 Tresilian, chief-justice of England, . . 792 Triads ; Welsh poetical histories of Britain, . 8, 304 Tribute, Roman, imposed on a conquered people, . 89 Trinobantes, a people of Essex and Middlesex, 33, 77 Trojans, said to have first peopled Britain, . . 8 Trussel, Sir William, speaker of parliament, . 744 TuRGOT, confessor of Queen Margaret of Scotland, 537-539 Tublogh O'Connor, king of Connaught, . . 459 Turner, estimates population from Domesday -book, 350 Turnham, Robert de, governor of Cyprus, . 495 Tyler, Wat, or Walter the, . . . 785-788 Tybbel, Sir Walter, accidentally shot WyiiamRufus — 402, 403 Tysilio, a Welsh priest, . . . 8 Ulf, Norman bishop of Dorchester, . .189 Ulphus, horn of, ... . 318 Ulster, Richard de Burgh, earl of, . . 738 Umpbaville, Gilbert de, earl of Angus, . 709 Universities of Europe ; institution of, . 605, G06, 845 Urban II., Pope, ..... 551 Usher, James, archbishop of Annagh, . 22 Vallancey, Charles, an investigator of Irish antiquities, 15 Valois, Charles de, brother of Philip III. of France, 712 896 INDEX. PAGE Vates, or Augurs, the chief poets of antiquity, . 63-65 Veneti, inhabitants of Vannes, in Brittany, . 25, 102 Vebe, Alberie, Iving Stephen's counsel, . 427, 428 Vektue, Georg'e, his observations on painting, . 631 Verulamium, or St Alban's, . . . 33, 43 . Vespasian, a Roman^ general under Emperor Claudius, 40 Vexin, le, a territory between i-ivers Epte and Oise, 388 ViCTOK lY., anti-pope, .... 446 Vfdomar, viscount of Limoges, . . 514 ViENNE, John de, lord-admiral of France, . . 791 Villains, or Villeins, .... 660, 666 ViNESAUF, an English historian, quoted, 497, 600, 502 ViKGiL, quoted, .... 63, 84 Visigoths, the possessions and wars of, . . 142 ViTALis, Ordericus, a historian of the 12th century, 423 Vivian, Cardinal, liis character of Henry II., . 479 VoiiUSENUS, Caius,first explorer of south shore of Britain, 27 Von Aetaveldt, a brewer of Ghent, . 763, 790 , Philip, a Flemish general, . 790 Von Savignt, ..... 564 VoBTiGEHN, the British king, . .57, 58, 140-142 Vortimee, Iving, son of Vortigern, . . 141 Wachtee, John George, a learned German antiquary, 10 Walchee DE LoERAiNE, bishop of Durham, . 384,385 Wales, formerly possessed by a different race, 22, 216 Wallace, Wm., the Scottish champion, 715-719, 724-726 Wallingford, an English historian, quoted, . 533 Wallingford, View of the Thames at, . . 436, 437 Walsingham, Thomas of, quoted, . . 832, 887 Walter, Hubert, lord-chancellor, 502, 511, 515, 657-559 Waltheof, earl of Huntingdon, . 371,375,379-382 786 783 741 396 734 795 Walwoeth, John, lord-mayor of London, , William, a citizen of London, . Ward, Sir Simon, .... Wabenne, Reginald de, an adherent of William IT., Warwick Castle, Guy's Tower, View of, Warvtick, Thomas de Beauchamp, earl of, . Wassail-bowl, the, presented by Rowena to Vortigern, 141 Wearmouth, Monastery of, instituted byBishop Benedict, 310 PAGE Wearwell, Abbey of, , . . . 188, 191 Welsh, or Cymry, . . 19, 22, 23, 194, 195, 399, 451 Wessex, kingdom of, . 142, 150, 152, 154, 157, 158, 160 Westminster Abbey ; Illustration of, 202, 203, 314, 316, 361 Westminster, Matthew of, . . . . 592 WniTAKER, his derivation of Brittania, or Britain, 11, 20 Wight, Isle of, .... 42,158,193 Wilfrid, Bishop, glazes windows of York Cathedral, 310 WiLKiNS ; his collection of Saxon laws, . . 266 William, a Norman, bishop of London, . 189, 193 I., the Conqueror — 191, 196, 197, 201, 205-215, 358-391, 566 I., king of Scotland — 452, 453, 468, 470, 471, 485, 643-546 II,, surnamed Rufus, . 383, 389, 392-404 ■ — — , Prince, son of Henry I., . . 412-416 , surnamed Longsword, . . 480, 481 the Good, king of Sicily, history of, . 489 Wilton, Battle of, fought against the Danes, . 157 WiMUND, a piratical adventurer, . . 541, 642 Winchester, View of the City of, . . 363 Wisiieaet, R., bishop of Glasgow, 715, 716, 728, 729, 738 Witenagemot, manner of holding a, kc, . 251-2.53, 360 WiTLAF, king of Jlercia ; charter to Abbey of Croyland, 320 AVoad, Isatis tinctoria, used in staining skin, &c., 104 Wodin, of the Scandinavians. See Odin, . . 138 Wolves' heads, a tribute paid by Welsh kings to Edgar, 173 Wood-engravings. See List prefixed to this volume. Woodstock, ruins of the Royal Manor-house of, 481, 482 Woollen cloths, manufacture of, &c., . 125, 601, 602 WuLFNOTH, Earl, flies with 20 of Ethelred's ships, &c,, 179 WuLFREDA, a nun, carried off by King Edgar, . 173 Wulfstan, an ancient navigator, . . . 167 , or Lupus ; his Homilies, . . 301 188,191,389,392 Wulnoth, son of Godwin, Wulstan, bi.shop of Winchester, Wxcliffe, J., a famous divine, 648, 649^ 780,807,808 Wynton, Andrew, a Scottish author of 14th century, 851 York, metropolitan see and city of, 208, 310, 368, 369, 662 ^">t, ^ ^^«* EdfDburgh! Printed by W. and R. Chambert. Z- HOME USE CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT MAIN LIBRARY This book lis due on the last date stamped below. 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk. Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. 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