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 THE 
 
 PICTORIAL 
 
 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
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 WNIVERSI 
 
 Of 
 
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 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 
 
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 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 
 
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