brother, Robert of Normandy, to that cruel operation. Stephen was generous and liberal, and displayed his generosity even amid the miseries of civil war. But it was the amiable and attractive character of Henry II., that had the greatest influence in refining the nation. Peaceful, yet brave; just, without severity; and distinguished for talents and noble sentiments, he presented a happy model for their imitation. Learning ventured from the cloisters of the monks,—wandering minstrels circulated the rude traditional poetry of the age, the courtesies of chivalry were more in observance, and the voluminous poems of the Anglo-Norman versifiers, however deficient in the graces of poetry, were eagerly perused, and in such an age must undoubtedly have been instructive. The fabulous British history of Jeffrey of Monmouth was published before Henry's accession; but Boece, whose historical poem still remains, was befriended by that monarch, and names him affectionately as his patron. Richard I. embarked in the crusades with ardour, where his brilliant exploits acquired for him a splendid reputation which has descended even to our own times. These romantic adventures to the Holy Land were of themselves well-fitted to raise the tone of national feeling the knightly qualities of Richard, his encouragement of poetry, and his own poetical efforts in the Provençal tongue, gave that feeling a fresh impulse.

:

It was fortunate that the bonds of unity had been drawn closer, that the people had risen in civilization, and that there was a greater inclination to strengthen the foundations of public freedom, or of their own assumptions as a body, among the nobles, than to arrogate individual independence of the crown, when the distracted government of the weak and treacherous John, and his no less weak and faithless, but more inoffensive son, presented the most favourable opportunities for checking the growth of the royal prerogatives. Other causes, indeed, besides the weakness of these two monarchs, were acting to the same end. The civil war in the time of Stephen,-the misfortunes of Henry II. at the close of his reign,—the exertions of Richard I. to obtain a sum sufficient to defray the expenses of his crusade,—the amount of his ransom,—the loss of Normandy in the time of John,-his mismanagement, and the profusion of Henry III. to his favourites,―the increased expense of defending the foreign dominions after the loss of Normandy,―had greatly diminished the crown's ordinary revenues, and rendered the sovereign more dependant upon the aids which he could obtain from his subjects. The demand for supplies was soon met with the statement of grievances; and the reign of Henry III. is full of importunate requests by the king for assistance, and frequently as preremptory refusals by the great council to grant it. But these were not the only causes which, happily for England, prevented any attempt on the part of the nobles individually at independence. Though the Conqueror granted large estates to his followers, yet by a wise policy he took care that they were divided and situated in different parts of the kingdom. No great territorial power, therefore, could be formed; while, on the other hand. the partial continuance of the county and hundred courts were a still farther restraint upon the local jurisdictions of the feudal lords Had these courts retained all the power which they possessed in Saxon times, it might be amusing to conjecture in what form the constitution would ultimately have been developed. Perhaps, if the king's courts had not

gradually trenched upon their authority, the uncertainty of their decisions, and their defects as courts of justice, might have been favourable to the increase of the baronial jurisdiction, and aristocratic power. As it happened while the county-court especially preserved many of its privileges, and thus formed a bulwark against the spread of feudal relationships, the judicial functions were gradually usurped by the royal tribunals, and a new and more effectual check was imposed upon the rise of territorial jurisdiction.

One of the principal reasons for the decline of the county-courts, as courts for the administration of justice, is undoubtedly to be found in the separation of the ecclesiastical and civil jurisdictions, which took place in the reign of the Conqueror. Previously to the conquest, the clergy sat alongst with the other freeholders; and by their superior knowledge and judicial skill in a great measure kept up the reputation of these tribunals, which rapidly declined after the clergy were withdrawn. But their withdrawal was attended by other pernicious consequences. The clergy gradually assumed powers inconsistent with good government, and removed themselves from the control of the lay jurisdictions. Their ambition rose by concession, and for a long time the ablest of our monarchs struggled unsuccessfully against the Roman see. The admission of a legate into the kingdom, which was strenuously objected to by the Conqueror and William Rufus, was not long resisted. In the reign of Henry I., the question of investitures was agitated, and the demands of the pope for a time evaded. But Henry II. with all his power and popularity, was subjected to much humiliation in his contest with the papacy; and John, after proceeding to extremes, yielded with his usual pusillanimity, nay, actually surrendered his kingdom into the hands of the pope, from whom he again received it to be held as a fief of the holy see. At the same time, it must be noticed, that the claims of ecclesiastical superiority were sooner and more boldly met in England than in many other of the European kingdoms; and that the clergy themselves were generally disposed to foster the spirit of liberty among the people, and not unfrequently appear as the champions of their rights in the deliberations of parliament. It may have been that they found a more obstinate resistance in the sovereign, than among the body of the nation to their encroachments. But they showed the same inclination in the reign of John, even after the pope had absolved him from the oath which he had taken to maintain the great charter; and in the time of Henry III., many of the monks and inferior clergy were zealous adherents of Leicester and the barons.

On reviewing the history of the period then, to which this introductory chapter relates, it is very obvious that though we meet with much arbitrary conduct, the government was not founded on the principles of a despotic monarchy. The charters, too, which were granted by all the Norman and Plantagenet princes, are so many compacts between the sovereign and the people. If their frequent renewal be a proof of the arbitrary attempts of the government, it indicates also the determination of the people or the barons, to impose effectual checks upon the royal authority. We have seen that for some time after the conquest, the principal object of popular desire was the revival of the old laws of Edward the Confessor; and the charters of William Rufus, Henry I. and Stephen the last more unequivocally than its predecessors-professed

to yield on this head to the loud petitions of the people, which had originated in the hatred of Norman oppression. In the reign of Henry II., whose charter did not contain so broad a renewal of the Confessor's laws, the condition of the English was ameliorated; the two hostile races had coalesced into one nation, and henceforward the cry for the laws of Edward was forgotten in the more rational attempt to extort concessions from the sovereign adapted to the changed relations of society. But after all, the whole of these charters, including Magna Charta itself, did not so much impose new restraints upon the royal prerogative, as declare the state of the law at the time they were respectively promulgated. By the charter of Henry I., for example, the incident of wardship was abandoned, and that of marriage asserted only in a very modified form: whereas in John's charter-commonly called Magna Charta-the former is conceded, and the other extended in a great degree. Such variations are not to be explained by any difference in the character of the monarchs. There is no comparison between the able and politic Henry, and the despised pusillanimous John, yielding to the dictation of the haughty barons. But the apparent anomaly is resolved when we consider that the barons by whom Magna Charta was extorted, had submitted to these feudal burdens, because they were more than compensated by the same incidents which they, in their turn, levied from their vassals after, with the most unsparing cupidity: and that the Great Charter, therefore, only adopted and defined the custom, which circumstances had introduced. Had that charter not contained the provision that every liberty and custom which the king had granted to his tenants, as far as concerned him, should be observed by the clergy and laity towards their tenants, as far as concerned them'-a clause which a party depending upon the popularity of their measures did not dare to omit-we should, in all likelihood, have found the incidents of wardship and marriage of the crown-tenants greatly restricted, if not abolished altogether. There can, indeed, be no question that though Magna Charta contains some provisions in favour of the people, it chiefly consulted the interests of the barons. Its reputation has been acquired by the capacity of adaptation in some of its clauses, to the necessities of a more advanced stage of society; and by its having been the first great example of resistance to monarchical pretension. But the selfish spirit of the feudal oligarchy was displayed by their consenting to the omission in the charter of any restriction on tallage, a tax which weighed upon the people, and an abatement of which was proposed in the original stipulations, which the confederated barons steadfastly insisted upon the proposed reduction of scutage, a burden which pressed upon themselves. The formal recognition, however, of the right of at least a portion of the people to be consulted in the imposition of taxation, was an invaluable concession which could be applied to more beneficial purposes than the support of aristocratical domination. That clause, indeed, was omitted in the four charters of Henry III., though in the first of them, issued not by authority of the great council, but of the barons of the king's party, it was reserved for future consideration. The consideration was not necessary in Henry's reign, for the clause in John's charter remained in full operation; and parliament, acting upon its undoubted right, frequently refused the aids which the king requested Had Henry hesitated to acknowledge that right he would soon have been

forced to the most unqualified admission of its existence-an admission to which Edward I., great and powerful as he was, found it necessary

to submit

I. POLITICAL SERIES.

William the Conqueror.

BORN A. D. 1024.-died a. D. 1087.

THE witan had assembled in London immediately on the news of the defeat and death of Harold, and by unanimous choice placed the etheling Edgar, the grandson of Edmond Ironside, on the throne. Had real union marked the counsels of the Anglo-Saxon chieftains, their country might yet have spurned from its soil the foot of the Norman invader, for an armed force that filled seven hundred ships was still in the channel, waiting only a convenient opportunity to take the Normans in their rear,' and the country was still full of men who only wanted leaders to renew the array of Hastings against the further progress of the enemy. William's victory also had been dearly purchased, and the slowness and caution of his movements sufficiently indicated the sense he entertained of the magnitude and difficulty of the enterprise yet before him. But secret dissatisfaction prevailed among the English nobility; and among the disaffected towards the new order of things were Edwin and Morcar, the military commanders of Mercia and Northumberland, who drew off their forces to their respective provinces, and awaited the issue of their country's fate in a state of inactivity. The defection of these two powerful earls left the capital almost defenceless; but William now preferred a more cautious line of policy than the desperate game he had so lately played might have indicated. Instead of instantly laying siege to the metropolis, he passed the Thames into Berkshire, and encamped at Wallingford. By this movement he placed himself betwixt the capi. tal and any forces which the earls of Mercia and Northumberland might have been at last prevailed on to send to its relief; it also afforded him time for negotiation with any party that might be disposed to offer it. The people of Kent had already proffered fealty to him, on condition of their province remaining as free after the conquest as it had been before it; and their example was soon followed by various powerful individuals. Stigand, the metropolitan bishop, whose influence had mainly contributed to the election of Edgar, was among the first to discover the utter hopelessness of the cause, and to swear fealty to the Norman;" Edwin and Morcar soon afterwards presented themselves for the like purpose; and finally a deputation from the citizens of London, and the clergy of the kingdom, made offer of the crown to the Conqueror William, at first affected to receive the proposal that he should assume the title of king of England with indifference and even dislike; but his Normans easily prevailed upon him to dismiss his scruples, and the ap

• Guil. Pictav. 201. Ord. Vital. 500.

Chron. Will. Thorn. p 1786

See an array of authorities quoted by I ingard on the disputed question as to Stigand's conduct at this crisis, vol 1. p. 355.

proaching Christmas-day was fixed for the coronation. Westminster abbey was the place appointed for the ceremony. It was prepared and decorated, to use the language of the Saxon chronicle, "as when, with the free suffrages of the best men of England, the king of their choice came and presented himself, there to receive the investment of the power which they had confided to him." But the best and noblest adornment of a coronation, a free and loyal people, was wanting on the present occasion; and before the new sovereign dared to present himself among his English subjects, he ordered the streets to be lined and the abbey surrounded with bands of his Norman soldiery. The ceremony was performed by Aldred, archbishop of York, for Stigand had already fallen into disgrace. That prelate put the question to the English, the bishop of Constance to the Normans, whether they were willing that William should be their sovereign. The English expressed their assent with loud shouts, which the Norman soldiery without mistook for the signal of tumult in the assembly; and thirsting for plunder, the foreign troops immediately began to fire the city and attack the inhabiIt was in the midst of the fearful tumult thus occasioned that William received investiture of the crown of England from the hands of Aldred, assisted by a band of trembling priests of both nations. The service was completed with precipitation; but the Conqueror took the usual oath of the Saxon kings, with this addition, that he would govern his new subjects as well and justly as they had been governed by the best of his predecessors on the English throne."

tants.

William had hitherto been called the Bastard:' from this period he received the name of the Conqueror,' a term which in that age did not necessarily involve the idea of a subjugated people, but was often employed to denote a person who had vindicated for himself a just right. Neither was the term 'bastard' of such opprobrious import at that time as it has since become. William gave it to himself in many of his letters.6 The first policy of the new sovereign was liberal and wise; he distinguished his coronation by magnificent largesses; admonished his barons to treat the natives with moderation and equity; affixed severe punishment to every species of insult, rapine, and assault; and exhorted his English and Norman subjects generally to mutual good will and inter-alliance. To the etheling Edgar also he behaved with great generosity and show of affection, admitting him into the number of his intimate friends, and investing him with an estate not unfitting the descendant of an ancient race of kings. Still he found it necessary to place his chief reliance on the attachment of his own Normans, whose presence in his newly-acquired territory he could only secure by grants of land to be holden by the tenure of military service. For this purpose the royal demesnes were freely sacrificed; and we have the unsuspicious testimony of one of the sons of the Conqueror, that when these failed, the English were dispossessed in great numbers to make room for Norman holders of the soil. One alone amongst all the warriors in the

7

The Norman historians clearly allow that William took the throne by election not by conquest. Guil. Pict. puts the question "whether they would consent," "an consentirent eum sibi dominum coronari,” p. 205.—Ord. Vi al. has it, "whether they would grant," an concederent Gulielmum regnare super se." p. 503.

Chron. Lamb, ad. ann 1066.-Ord. Vi al. 503.

6

Speim. Archaiol. 77.

Ricardus Nigellus, Richard Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century.