THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE

IN TWELVE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE SEVENTH

[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms. ]

LONDONJOHN C. NIMMO14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W. C. MDCCCLXXXVII

CONTENTS OF VOL. VII

FRAGMENTS AND NOTES OF SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT. 

 SPEECH ON THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY, February 6, 1772 3

 SPEECH ON A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF PROTESTANT DISSENTERS, March 7, 1773 21

 SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL TO REPEAL AND ALTER CERTAIN ACTS RESPECTING RELIGIOUS OPINIONS, UPON THE OCCASION OF A PETITION OF THE UNITARIAN SOCIETY, May 11, 1792 39

 SPEECH RELATIVE TO THE MIDDLESEX ELECTION, February 7, 1771 59

 SPEECH ON A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS, May 8, 1780 69

 SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THE COMMONS IN PARLIAMENT, May 7, 1782 89

 SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL FOR EXPLAINING THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS, March 7, 1771. TOGETHER WITH A LETTER IN VINDICATION OF THAT MEASURE, AND A COPY OF THE PROPOSED BILL 105

 SPEECH ON A BILL FOR THE REPEAL OF THE MARRIAGE ACT, June 15, 1781 129

 SPEECH ON A MOTION FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL TO QUIET THE POSSESSIONS OF THE SUBJECT AGAINST DORMANT CLAIMS OF THE CHURCH, February 17, 1772 137

HINTS FOR AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMA 143

AN ESSAY TOWARDS AN ABRIDGMENT OF THE ENGLISH HISTORY. IN THREE BOOKS. 

 BOOK I. 

CHAP. I. Causes of the Connection between the Romans and Britons. --Cæsar's two Invasions of Britain 159

 II. Some Account of the Ancient Inhabitants of Britain 170

 III. The Reduction of Britain by the Romans 189

 IV. The Fall of the Roman Power in Britain 214

 BOOK II. 

CHAP. I. The Entry and Settlement of the Saxons, and their Conversion to Christianity 227

 II. Establishment of Christianity--of Monastic Institutions --and of their Effects 240

 III. Series of Anglo-Saxon Kings from Ethelbert to Alfred: with the Invasion of the Danes 255

 IV. Reign of King Alfred 261

 V. Succession of Kings from Alfred to Harold 269

 VI. Harold II. --Invasion of the Normans. --Account of that People, and of the State of England at the Time of the Invasion 280

 VII. Of the Laws and Institutions of the Saxons 291

 BOOK III. 

CHAP. I. View of the State of Europe at the Time of the Norman Invasion 327

 II. Reign of William the Conqueror 335

 III. Reign of William the Second, surnamed Rufus 364

 IV. Reign of Henry I 375

 V. Reign of Stephen 386

 VI. Reign of Henry II 394

 VII. Reign of Richard I 425

 VIII. Reign of John 437

 IX. Fragment. --An Essay towards an History of the Laws of England 475

FRAGMENTS AND NOTES

OF

SPEECHES. 

During the period of Mr. Burke's Parliamentary labors, some alterationsin the Acts of Uniformity, and the repeal of the Test and CorporationActs, were agitated at various times in the House of Commons. It appearsfrom the state of his manuscript papers, that he had designed to publishsome of the Speeches which he delivered in those discussions, and withthat view had preserved the following Fragments and detached Notes, which are now given to the public with as much order and connection astheir imperfect condition renders them capable of receiving. TheSpeeches on the Middlesex Election, on shortening the Duration ofParliaments, on the Reform of the Representation in Parliament, on theBill for explaining the Power of Juries in Prosecutions for libels, andon the Repeal of the Marriage Act, were found in the same imperfectstate. 

SPEECH

ON

THE ACTS OF UNIFORMITY

FEBRUARY 6, 1772. 

NOTE. 

The following Speech was occasioned by a petition to the House ofCommons from certain clergymen of the Church of England, and certain ofthe two professions of Civil Law and Physic, and others, praying to berelieved from subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, as required bythe Acts of Uniformity. The persona associated for this purpose weredistinguished at the time by the name of "The Feathers TavernAssociation, " from the place where their meetings were usually held. Their petition was presented on the 6th of February, 1772; and on amotion that it should be brought up, the same was negatived on adivision, in which Mr. Burke voted in the majority, by 217 against 71. 

SPEECH. 

Mr. Speaker, --I should not trouble the House upon this question, if Icould at all acquiesce in many of the arguments, or justify the vote Ishall give upon several of the reasons which have been urged in favor ofit. I should, indeed, be very much concerned, if I were thought to beinfluenced to that vote by those arguments. 

In particular, I do most exceedingly condemn all such arguments asinvolve any kind of reflection on the personal character of thegentlemen who have brought in a petition so decent in the style of it, and so constitutional in the mode. Besides the unimpeachable integrityand piety of many of the promoters of this petition, which render thoseaspersions as idle as they are unjust, such a way of treating thesubject can have no other effect than to turn the attention of the Housefrom the merits of the petition, the only thing properly before us, andwhich we are sufficiently competent to decide upon, to the motives ofthe petitioners, which belong exclusively to the Great Searcher ofHearts. 

We all know that those who loll at their ease in high dignities, whetherof the Church or of the State, are commonly averse to all reformation. It is hard to persuade them that there can be anything amiss inestablishments which by feeling experience they find to be so verycomfortable. It is as true, that, from the same selfish motives, thosewho are struggling upwards are apt to find everything wrong and out oforder. These are truths upon one side and on the other; and neither onthe one side or the other in argument are they worth a single farthing. I wish, therefore, so much had not been said upon these ill-chosen, andworse than ill-chosen, these very invidious topics. 

I wish still more that the dissensions and animosities which had sleptfor a century had not been just now most unseasonably revived. But if wemust be driven, whether we will or not, to recollect these unhappytransactions, let our memory be complete and equitable, let us recollectthe whole of them together. If the Dissenters, as an honorable gentlemanhas described them, have formerly risen from a "whining, canting, snivelling generation, " to be a body dreadful and ruinous to all ourestablishments, let him call to mind the follies, the violences, theoutrages, and persecutions, that conjured up, very blamably, but verynaturally, that same spirit of retaliation. Let him recollect, alongwith the injuries, the services which Dissenters have done to our Churchand to our State. If they have once destroyed, more than once they havesaved them. This is but common justice, which they and all mankind havea right to. 

There are, Mr. Speaker, besides these prejudices and animosities, whichI would have wholly removed from the debate, things more regularly andargumentatively urged against the petition, which, however, do not atall appear to me conclusive. 

First, two honorable gentlemen, one near me, the other, I think, on theother side of the House, assert, that, if you alter her symbols, youdestroy the being of the Church of England. This, for the sake of theliberty of that Church, I must absolutely deny. The Church, like everybody corporate, may alter her laws without changing her identity. As anindependent church, professing fallibility, she has claimed a right ofacting without the consent of any other; as a church, she claims, andhas always exercised, a right of reforming whatever appeared amiss inher doctrine, her discipline, or her rites. She did so, when she shookoff the Papal supremacy in the reign of Henry the Eighth, which was anact of the body of the English Church, as well as of the State (I don'tinquire how obtained). She did so, when she twice changed the Liturgy inthe reign of King Edward, when she then established Articles, which werethemselves a variation from former professions. She did so, when she cutoff three articles from her original forty-two, and reduced them to thepresent thirty-nine; and she certainly would not lose her corporateidentity, nor subvert her fundamental principles, though she were toleave ten of the thirty-nine which remain out of any future confessionof her faith. She would limit her corporate powers, on the contrary, andshe would oppose her fundamental principles, if she were to deny herselfthe prudential exercise of such capacity of reformation. This, therefore, can be no objection to your receiving the petition. 

In the next place, Sir, I am clear, that the Act of Union, reciting andratifying one Scotch and one English act of Parliament, has not renderedany change whatsoever in our Church impossible, but by a dissolution ofthe union between the two kingdoms. 

The honorable gentleman who has last touched upon that point has notgone quite so far as the gentlemen who first insisted upon it. However, as none of them wholly abandon that post, it will not be safe to leaveit behind me unattacked. I believe no one will wish their interpretationof that act to be considered as authentic. What shall we think of thewisdom (to say nothing of the competence) of that legislature whichshould ordain to itself such a fundamental law, at its outset, as todisable itself from executing its own functions, --which should preventit from making any further laws, however wanted, and that, too, on themost interesting subject that belongs to human society, and where shemost frequently wants its interposition, --which should fix thosefundamental laws that are forever to prevent it from adapting itself toits opinions, however clear, or to its own necessities, however urgent?Such an act, Mr. Speaker, would forever put the Church out of its ownpower; it certainly would put it far above the State, and erect it intothat species of independency which it has been the great principle ofour policy to prevent. 

The act never meant, I am sure, any such unnatural restraint on thejoint legislature it was then forming. History shows us what it meant, and all that it could mean with any degree of common sense. 

In the reign of Charles the First a violent and ill-considered attemptwas made unjustly to establish the platform of the government and therites of the Church of England in Scotland, contrary to the genius anddesires of far the majority of that nation. This usurpation excited amost mutinous spirit in that country. It produced that shockingfanatical Covenant (I mean the Covenant of '36) for forcing their ideasof religion on England, and indeed on all mankind. This became theoccasion, at length, of other covenants, and of a Scotch army marchinginto England to fulfil them; and the Parliament of England (for its ownpurposes) adopted their scheme, took their last covenant, and destroyedthe Church of England. The Parliament, in their ordinance of 1648, expressly assign their desire of conforming to the Church of Scotland asa motive for their alteration. 

To prevent such violent enterprises on the one side or on the other, since each Church was going to be disarmed of a legislature wholly andpeculiarly affected to it, and lest this new uniformity in the Stateshould be urged as a reason and ground of ecclesiastical uniformity, theAct of Union provided that presbytery should continue the Scotch, asepiscopacy the English establishment, and that this separate andmutually independent Church-government was to be considered as a part ofthe Union, without aiming at putting the regulation within each Churchout of its own power, without putting both Churches out of the power ofthe State. It could not mean to forbid us to set anything ecclesiasticalin order, but at the expense of tearing up all foundations, andforfeiting the inestimable benefits (for inestimable they are) which wederive from the happy union of the two kingdoms. To suppose otherwise isto suppose that the act intended we could not meddle at all with theChurch, but we must as a preliminary destroy the State. 

Well, then, Sir, this is, I hope, satisfactory. The Act of Union doesnot stand in our way. But, Sir, gentlemen think we are not competent tothe reformation desired, chiefly from our want of theological learning. If we were the legal assembly. . . . 

If ever there was anything to which, from reason, nature, habit, andprinciple, I am totally averse, it is persecution for conscientiousdifference in opinion. If these gentlemen complained justly of anycompulsion upon them on that article, I would hardly wait for theirpetitions; as soon as I knew the evil, I would haste to the cure; Iwould even run before their complaints. 

I will not enter into the abstract merits of our Articles and Liturgy. Perhaps there are some things in them which one would wish had not beenthere. They are not without the marks and characters of human frailty. 

But it is not human frailty and imperfection, and even a considerabledegree of them, that becomes a ground for your alteration; for by noalteration will you get rid of those errors, however you may delightyourselves in varying to infinity the fashion of them. But the groundfor a legislative alteration of a legal establishment is this, and thisonly, --that you find the inclinations of the majority of the people, concurring with your own sense of the intolerable nature of the abuse, are in favor of a change. 

If this be the case in the present instance, certainly you ought to makethe alteration that is proposed, to satisfy your own consciences, and togive content to your people. But if you have no evidence of this nature, it ill becomes your gravity, on the petition of a few gentlemen, tolisten to anything that tends to shake one of the capital pillars of thestate, and alarm the body of your people upon that one ground, in whichevery hope and fear, every interest, passion, prejudice, everythingwhich can affect the human breast, are all involved together. If youmake this a season for religious alterations, depend upon it, you willsoon find it a season of religious tumults and religious wars. 

These gentlemen complain of hardship. No considerable number showsdiscontent; but, in order to give satisfaction to any number ofrespectable men, who come in so decent and constitutional a mode beforeus, let us examine a little what that hardship is. They want to bepreferred clergymen in the Church of England as by law established; buttheir consciences will not suffer them to conform to the doctrines andpractices of that Church: that is, they want to be teachers in a churchto which they do not belong; and it is an odd sort of hardship. Theywant to receive the emoluments appropriated for teaching one set ofdoctrines, whilst they are teaching another. A church, in any legalsense, is only a certain system of religious doctrines and practicesfixed and ascertained by some law, --by the difference of which lawsdifferent churches (as different commonwealths) are made in variousparts of the world; and the establishment is a tax laid by the samesovereign authority for payment of those who so teach and so practise:for no legislature was ever so absurd as to tax its people to supportmen for teaching and acting as they please, but by some prescribed rule. 

The hardship amounts to this, --that the people of England are not taxedtwo shillings in the pound to pay them for teaching, as divine truths, their own particular fancies. For the state has so taxed the people; andby way of relieving these gentlemen, it would be a cruel hardship on thepeople to be compelled to pay, from the sweat of their brow, the mostheavy of all taxes to men, to condemn as heretical the doctrines whichthey repute to be orthodox, and to reprobate as superstitious thepractices which they use as pious and holy. If a man leaves by will anestablishment for preaching, such as Boyle's Lectures, or for charitysermons, or funeral sermons, shall any one complain of an hardship, because he has an excellent sermon upon matrimony, or on the martyrdomof King Charles, or on the Restoration, which I, the trustee of theestablishment, will not pay him for preaching?--S. Jenyns, Origin ofEvil. --Such is the hardship which they complain of under the presentChurch establishment, that they have not the power of taxing the peopleof England for the maintenance of their private opinions. 

The laws of toleration provide for every real grievance that thesegentlemen can rationally complain of Are they hindered from professingtheir belief of what they think to be truth? If they do not like theEstablishment, there are an hundred different modes of Dissent in whichthey may teach. But even if they are so unfortunately circumstanced thatof all that variety none will please them, they have free liberty toassemble a congregation of their own; and if any persons think theirfancies (they may be brilliant imaginations) worth paying for, they areat liberty to maintain them as their clergy: nothing hinders it. But ifthey cannot get an hundred people together who will pay for theirreading a liturgy after their form, with what face can they insist uponthe nation's conforming to their ideas, for no other visible purposethan the enabling them to receive with a good conscience the tenth partof the produce of your lands?

Therefore, beforehand, the Constitution has thought proper to take asecurity that the tax raised on the people shall be applied only tothose who profess such doctrines and follow such a mode of worship asthe legislature, representing the people, has thought most agreeable totheir general sense, --binding, as usual, the minority, not to an assentto the doctrines, but to a payment of the tax. 

But how do you ease and relieve? How do you know, that, in making a newdoor into the Church for these gentlemen, you do not drive ten timestheir number out of it? Supposing the contents and not-contents strictlyequal in numbers and consequence, the possession, to avoid disturbance, ought to carry it. You displease all the clergy of England now actuallyin office, for the chance of obliging a score or two, perhaps, ofgentlemen, who are, or want to be, beneficed clergymen: and do youoblige? Alter your Liturgy, --will it please all even, of those who wish, an alteration? will they agree in what ought to be altered? And after itis altered to the mind of every one, you are no further advanced than ifyou had not taken a single step; because a large body of men will thensay you ought to have no liturgy at all: and then these men, who nowcomplain so bitterly that they are shut out, will themselves bar thedoor against thousands of others. Dissent, not satisfied withtoleration, is not conscience, but ambition. 

You altered the Liturgy for the Directory. This was settled by a set ofmost learned divines and learned laymen: Selden sat amongst them. Didthis please? It was considered upon both sides as a most unchristianimposition. Well, at the Restoration they rejected the Directory, andreformed the Common Prayer, --which, by the way, had been three timesreformed before. Were they then contented? Two thousand (or some greatnumber) of clergy resigned their livings in one day rather than read it:and truly, rather than raise that second idol, I should have adhered tothe Directory, as I now adhere to the Common Prayer. Nor can you contentother men's conscience, real or pretended, by any concessions: followyour own; seek peace and ensue it. You have no symptoms of discontent inthe people to their Establishment. The churches are too small for theircongregations. The livings are too few for their candidates. The spiritof religious controversy has slackened by the nature of things: by actyou may revive it. I will not enter into the question, how much truth ispreferable to peace. Perhaps truth may be far better. But as we havescarcely ever the same certainty in the one that we have in the other, Iwould, unless the truth were evident indeed, hold fast to peace, whichhas in her company charity, the highest of the virtues. 

This business appears in two points of view: 1st, Whether it is a matterof grievance; 2nd, Whether it is within our province to redress it withpropriety and prudence. Whether it comes properly before us on apetition upon matter of grievance I would not inquire too curiously. Iknow, technically speaking, that nothing agreeable to law can beconsidered as a grievance. But an over-attention to the rules of any actdoes sometimes defeat the ends of it; and I think it does so in thisParliamentary act, as much at least as in any other. I know manygentlemen think that the very essence of liberty consists in beinggoverned according to law, as if grievances had nothing real andintrinsic; but I cannot be of that opinion. Grievances may subsist bylaw. Nay, I do not know whether any grievance can be considered asintolerable, until it is established and sanctified by law. If the Actof Toleration were not perfect, if there were a complaint of it, I wouldgladly consent to amend it. But when I heard a complaint of a pressureon religious liberty, to my astonishment I find that there was nocomplaint whatsoever of the insufficiency of the act of King William, nor any attempt to make it more sufficient. The matter, therefore, doesnot concern toleration, but establishment; and it is not the rights ofprivate conscience that are in question, but the propriety of the termswhich are proposed by law as a title to public emoluments: so that thecomplaint is not, that there is not toleration of diversity in opinion, but that diversity in opinion is not rewarded by bishoprics, rectories, and collegiate stalls. When gentlemen complain of the subscription asmatter of grievance, the complaint arises from confounding privatejudgment, whose rights are anterior to law, and the qualifications whichthe law creates for its own magistracies, whether civil or religious. Totake away from men their lives, their liberty, or their property, thosethings for the protection of which society was introduced, is greathardship and intolerable tyranny; but to annex any condition you pleaseto benefits artificially created is the most just, natural, and properthing in the world. When _e nova_ you form an arbitrary benefit, anadvantage, preëminence, or emolument, not by Nature, but institution, you order and modify it with all the power of a creator over hiscreature. Such benefits of institution are royalty, nobility, priesthood, all of which you may limit to birth; you might prescribeeven shape and stature. The Jewish priesthood was hereditary. Founders'kinsmen have a preference in the election of fellows in many colleges ofour universities: the qualifications at All Souls are, that they shouldbe _optime nati, bene vestiti, mediocriter docti_. 

By contending for liberty in the candidate for orders, you take away theliberty of the elector, which is the people, that is, the state. If theycan choose, they may assign a reason for their choice; if they canassign a reason, they may do it in writing, and prescribe it as acondition; they may transfer their authority to their representatives, and enable them to exercise the same. In all human institutions, a greatpart, almost all regulations, are made from the mere necessity of thecase, let the theoretical merits of the question be what they will. Fornothing happened at the Reformation but what will happen in all suchrevolutions. When tyranny is extreme, and abuses of governmentintolerable, men resort to the rights of Nature to shake it off. Whenthey have done so, the very same principle of necessity of human affairsto establish some other authority, which shall preserve the order ofthis new institution, must be obeyed, until they grow intolerable; andyou shall not be suffered to plead original liberty against such aninstitution. See Holland, Switzerland. 

If you will have religion publicly practised and publicly taught, youmust have a power to say what that religion will be which you willprotect and encourage, and to distinguish it by such marks andcharacteristics as you in your wisdom shall think fit. As I said before, your determination may be unwise in this as in other matters; but itcannot be unjust, hard, or oppressive, or contrary to the liberty ofany man, or in the least degree exceeding your province. It is, therefore, as a grievance, fairly none at all, --nothing but what isessential, not only to the order, but to the liberty, of the wholecommunity. 

The petitioners are so sensible of the force of these arguments, thatthey do admit of one subscription, --that is, to the Scripture. I shallnot consider how forcibly this argument militates with their wholeprinciple against subscription as an usurpation on the rights ofProvidence: I content myself with submitting to the consideration of theHouse, that, if that rule were once established, it must have someauthority to enforce the obedience; because, you well know, a lawwithout a sanction will be ridiculous. Somebody must sit in judgment onhis conformity; he must judge on the charge; if he judges, he mustordain execution. These things are necessary consequences one of theother; and then, this judgment is an equal and a superior violation ofprivate judgment; the right of private judgment is violated in a muchgreater degree than it can be by any previous subscription. You comeround again to subscription, as the best and easiest method; men mustjudge of his doctrine, and judge definitively: so that either his testis nugatory, or men must first or last prescribe his publicinterpretation of it. 

If the Church be, as Mr. Locke defines it, _a voluntary society_, &c, then it is essential to this voluntary society to exclude from hervoluntary society any member she thinks fit, or to oppose the entranceof any upon such conditions as she thinks proper. For, otherwise, itwould be a voluntary society acting contrary to her will, which is acontradiction in terms. And this is Mr. Locke's opinion, the advocatefor the largest scheme of ecclesiastical and civil toleration toProtestants (for to Papists he allows no toleration at all). 

They dispute only the extent of the subscription; they therefore tacitlyadmit the equity of the principle itself. Here they do not resort to theoriginal rights of Nature, because it is manifest that those rights giveas large a power of controverting every part of Scripture, or even theauthority of the whole, as they do to the controverting any articleswhatsoever. When a man requires you to sign an assent to Scripture, herequires you to assent to a doctrine as contrary to your naturalunderstanding, and to your rights of free inquiry, as those who requireyour conformity to any one article whatsoever. 

The subscription to Scripture is the most astonishing idea I ever heard, and will amount to just nothing at all. Gentlemen so acute have not, that I have heard, ever thought of answering a plain, obvious question:What is that Scripture to which they are content to subscribe? They donot think that a book becomes of divine authority because it is bound inblue morocco, and is printed by John Baskett and his assigns. The Bibleis a vast collection of different treatises: a man who holds the divineauthority of one may consider the other as merely human. What is hisCanon? The Jewish? St. Jerome's? that of the Thirty-Nine Articles?Luther's? There are some who reject the Canticles; others, six of theEpistles; the Apocalypse has been suspected even as heretical, and wasdoubted of for many ages, and by many great men. As these narrow theCanon, others have enlarged it by admitting St. Barnabas's Epistles, theApostolic Constitutions, to say nothing of many other Gospels. Therefore, to ascertain. Scripture, you must have one article more; andyou must define what that Scripture is which, you mean to teach. Thereare, I believe, very few who, when Scripture is so ascertained, do notsee the absolute necessity of knowing what general doctrine a man drawsfrom it, before he is sent down authorized by the state to teach, it aspure doctrine, and receive a tenth of the produce of our lands. 

The Scripture is no one summary of doctrines regularly digested, inwhich, a man could not mistake his way. It is a most venerable, but mostmultifarious, collection of the records of the divine economy: acollection of an infinite variety, --of cosmogony, theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different books, by different authors, at differentages, for different ends and purposes. It is necessary to sort out whatis intended for example, what only as narrative, --what to be understoodliterally, what figuratively, --where one precept is to be controlled andmodified by another, --what is used directly, and what only as anargument _ad hominem_, --what is temporary, and what of perpetualobligation, --what appropriated to one state and to one set of men, andwhat the general duty of all Christians. If we do not get some securityfor this, we not only permit, but we actually pay for, all the dangerousfanaticism which, can be produced to corrupt our people, and to derangethe public worship of the country. We owe the best we can (notinfallibility, but prudence) to the subject, --first sound doctrine, thenability to use it. 

SPEECH

ON

A BILL FOR THE RELIEF OF PROTESTANT DISSENTERS. 

MARCH 17, 1773. 

NOTE. 

This speech is given partly from the manuscript papers of Mr. Burke, andpartly from a very imperfect short-hand note taken at the time by amember of the House of Commons. The bill under discussion was opposed bypetitions from several congregations calling themselves "ProtestantDissenters, " who appear to have been principally composed of the peoplewho are generally known under the denomination of "Methodists, " andparticularly by a petition from a congregation of that descriptionresiding in the town of Chatham. 

SPEECH. 

I assure you, Sir, that the honorable gentleman who spoke last but oneneed not be in the least fear that I should make a war of particles uponhis opinion, whether the Church of England _should, would_, or _ought_to be alarmed. I am very clear that this House has no one reason in theworld to think she is alarmed by the bill brought before you. It issomething extraordinary that the only symptom of alarm in the Church ofEngland should appear in the petition of some Dissenters, with whom, Ibelieve very few in this House are yet acquainted, and of whom you knowno more than that you are assured by the honorable gentleman that theyare not Mahometans. Of the Church we know they are not, by the name thatthey assume. They are, then, Dissenters. The first symptom of an alarm, comes from some Dissenters assembled round the lines of Chatham: theselines become the security of the Church of England! The honorablegentleman, in speaking of the lines of Chatham, tells us that they servenot only for the security of the wooden walls of England, but for thedefence of the Church of England. I suspect the wooden walls of Englandsecure the lines of Chatham, rather than the lines of Chatham secure thewooden walls of England. 

Sir, the Church of England, if only defended by this miserable petitionupon your table, must, I am afraid, upon the principles of truefortification, be soon destroyed. But, fortunately, her walls, bulwarks, and bastions are constructed of other materials than of stubble andstraw, --are built up with the strong and stable matter of the gospel ofliberty, and founded on a true, constitutional, legal establishment. But, Sir, she has other securities: she has the security of her owndoctrines; she has the security of the piety, the sanctity, of her ownprofessors, --their learning is a bulwark to defend her; she has thesecurity of the two universities, not shook in any single battlement, inany single pinnacle. 

But the honorable gentleman has mentioned, indeed, principles whichastonish me rather more than ever. The honorable gentleman thinks thatthe Dissenters enjoy a large share of liberty under a connivance; and hethinks that the establishing toleration by law is an attack uponChristianity. 

The first of these is a contradiction in terms. Liberty under aconnivance! Connivance is a relaxation from slavery, not a definition ofliberty. What is connivance, but a state under which all slaves live? IfI was to describe slavery, I would say, with those who _hate_ it, it isliving under will, not under law; if as it is stated by its advocates, Iwould say, that, like earthquakes, like thunder, or other wars theelements make upon mankind, it happens rarely, it occasionally comes nowand then upon people, who, upon ordinary occasions, enjoy the same legalgovernment of liberty. Take it under the description of those who wouldsoften those features, the state of slavery and connivance is the samething. If the liberty enjoyed be a liberty not of toleration, but ofconnivance, the only question is, whether establishing such by law is anattack upon Christianity. Toleration an attack upon Christianity! What, then! are we come to this pass, to suppose that nothing can supportChristianity but the principles of persecution? Is that, then, the ideaof establishment? Is it, then, the idea of Christianity itself, that itought to have establishments, that it ought to have laws againstDissenters, but the breach of which laws is to be connived at? What apicture of toleration! what a picture of laws, of establishments! what apicture of religious and civil liberty! I am persuaded the honorablegentleman, does not see it in this light. But these very terms becomethe strongest reasons for my support of the bill: for I am persuadedthat toleration, so far from being an attack upon Christianity, becomesthe best and surest support that possibly can be given, to it. TheChristian religion itself arose without establishment, --it arose evenwithout toleration; and whilst its own principles were not tolerated, itconquered all the powers of darkness, it conquered all the powers of theworld. The moment it began to depart from these principles, it convertedthe establishment into tyranny; it subverted its foundations from thatvery hour. Zealous as I am for the principle of an establishment, sojust an abhorrence do I conceive against whatever may shake it. I knownothing but the supposed necessity of persecution that can make anestablishment disgusting. I would have toleration a part ofestablishment, as a principle favorable to Christianity, and as a partof Christianity. 

All seem agreed that the law, as it stands, inflicting penalties onall-religious teachers and on schoolmasters who do not sign theThirty-Nine Articles of Religion, ought not to be executed. We are allagreed that _the law is not good_: for that, I presume, is undoubtedlythe idea of a law that ought not to be executed. The question, therefore, is, whether in a well-constituted commonwealth, which wedesire ours to be thought, and I trust intend that it should be, whetherin such a commonwealth it is wise to retain those laws which it is notproper to execute. A penal law not ordinarily put in execution seems tome to be a very absurd and a very dangerous thing. For if its principlebe right, if the object of its prohibitions and penalties be a realevil, then you do in effect permit that very evil, which not only thereason of the thing, but your very law, declares ought not to bepermitted; and thus it reflects exceedingly on the wisdom, andconsequently derogates not a little from the authority, of a legislaturewho can at once forbid and suffer, and in the same breath promulgatepenalty and indemnity to the same persons and for the very same actions. But if the object of the law be no moral or political evil, then youought not to hold even a terror to those whom you ought certainly not topunish: for if it is not right to hurt, it is neither right nor wise tomenace. Such laws, therefore, as they must be defective either injustice or wisdom or both, so they cannot exist without a considerabledegree of danger. Take them which way you will, they are pressed withugly alternatives. 

1st. All penal laws are either upon popular prosecution, or on the partof the crown. Now if they may be roused from their sleep, whenever aminister thinks proper, as instruments of oppression, then they put vastbodies of men into a state of slavery and court dependence; since theirliberty of conscience and their power of executing their functionsdepend entirely on his will. I would have no man derive his means ofcontinuing any function, or his being restrained from it, but from thelaws only: they should be his only superior and sovereign lords. 

2nd. They put statesmen and magistrates into an habit of playing fastand loose with the laws, straining or relaxing them as may best suittheir political purposes, --and in that light tend to corrupt theexecutive power through all its offices. 

3rd. If they are taken up on popular actions, their operation in thatlight also is exceedingly evil. They become the instruments of privatemalice, private avarice, and not of public regulation; they nourish theworst of men to the prejudice of the best, punishing tender consciences, and rewarding informers. 

Shall we, as the honorable gentleman tells us we may with perfectsecurity, trust to the manners of the age? I am well pleased with thegeneral manners of the times; but the desultory execution of penal laws, the thing I condemn, does not depend on the manners of the times. Iwould, however, have the laws tuned in unison with the manners. Verydissonant are a gentle country and cruel laws; very dissonant, that yourreason is furious, but your passions moderate, and that you are alwaysequitable except in your courts of justice. 

I will beg leave to state to the House one argument which has been muchrelied upon: that the Dissenters are not unanimous upon this business;that many persons are alarmed; that it will create a disunion among theDissenters. 

When any Dissenters, or any body of people, come here with a petition, it is not the number of people, but the reasonableness of the request, that should weigh with the House. A body of Dissenters come to thisHouse, and say, "Tolerate us: we desire neither the parochial advantageof tithes, nor dignities, nor the stalls of your cathedrals: no! let thevenerable orders of the hierarchy exist with all their advantages. " Andshall I tell them, "I reject your just and reasonable petition, notbecause it shakes the Church, but because there are others, while youlie grovelling upon the earth, that will kick and bite you"? Judge whichof these descriptions of men comes with a fair request: that which says, "Sir, I desire liberty for my own, because I trespass on no man'sconscience, "--or the other, which says, "I desire that these men shouldnot be suffered to act according to their consciences, though I amtolerated to act according to mine. But I sign a body of Articles, whichis my title to toleration; I sign no more, because more are against myconscience. But I desire that you will not tolerate these men, becausethey will not go so far as I, though I desire to be tolerated, who willnot go as far as you. No, imprison them, if they come within five milesof a corporate town, because they do not believe what I do in point ofdoctrines. " Shall I not say to these men, _Arrangez-vous, canaille?_You, who are not the predominant power, will not give to others therelaxation under which you are yourself suffered to live. I have as highan opinion of the doctrines of the Church as you. I receive themimplicitly, or I put my own explanation on them, or take that whichseems to me to come best recommended by authority. There are those ofthe Dissenters who think more rigidly of the doctrine of the Articlesrelative to Predestination than others do. They sign the Articlerelative to it _ex animo_, and literally. Others allow a latitude ofconstruction. These two parties are in the Church, as well as among theDissenters; yet in the Church we live quietly under the same roof. I donot see why, as long as Providence gives us no further light into thisgreat mystery, we should not leave things as the Divine Wisdom has leftthem. But suppose all these things to me to be clear, (which Providence, however, seems to have left obscure, ) yet, whilst Dissenters claim atoleration in things which, seeming clear to me, are obscure to them, without entering into the merit of the Articles, with what face canthese men say, "Tolerate us, but do not tolerate them"? Toleration isgood for all, or it is good for none. 

The discussion this day is not between establishment on one hand andtoleration on the other, but between those who, being toleratedthemselves, refuse toleration to others. That power should be puffed upwith pride, that authority should degenerate into rigor, if notlaudable, is but too natural. But this proceeding of theirs is muchbeyond the usual allowance to human weakness: it not only is shocking toour reason, but it provokes our indignation. _Quid domini facient, audent cum talia fures?_ It is not the proud prelate thundering in hisCommission Court, but a pack of manumitted slaves, with the lash of thebeadle flagrant on their backs, and their legs still galled with theirfetters, that would drive their brethren into that prison-house fromwhence they have just been permitted to escape. If, instead of puzzlingthemselves in the depths of the Divine counsels, they would turn, to themild morality of the Gospel, they would read their owncondemnation:--"O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debtbecause thou desiredst me: shouldest not thou also have compassion onthy fellow-servant, even as I had pity on thee?"

In my opinion, Sir, a magistrate, whenever he goes to put any restraintupon religious freedom, can only do it upon this ground, --that theperson dissenting does not dissent from the scruples of ill-informedconscience, but from a party ground of dissension, in order to raise afaction in the state. We give, with regard to rites and ceremonies, anindulgence to tender consciences. But if dissent is at all punished inany country, if at all it can be punished upon any pretence, it is upona presumption, not that a man is supposed to differ conscientiously fromthe establishment, but that he resists truth for the sake offaction, --that he abets diversity of opinions in religion to distractthe state, and to destroy the peace of his country. This is the onlyplausible, --for there is no true ground of persecution. As the lawsstand, therefore, let us see how we have thought fit to act. 

If there is any one thing within the competency of a magistrate withregard to religion, it is this: that he has a right to direct theexterior ceremonies of religion; that, whilst interior religion iswithin the jurisdiction of God alone, the external part, bodily action, is within the province of the chief governor. Hooker, and all the greatlights of the Church, have constantly argued this to be a part withinthe province of the civil magistrate. But look at the Act of Tolerationof William and Mary: there you will see the civil magistrate has notonly dispensed with those things which are more particularly within hisprovince, with those things which faction might be supposed to take upfor the sake of making visible and external divisions and raising astandard of revolt, but has also from sound politic considerationsrelaxed on those points which are confessedly without his province. 

The honorable gentleman, speaking of the heathens, certainly could notmean to recommend anything that is derived from that impure source. Buthe has praised the tolerating spirit of the heathens. Well! but thehonorable gentleman will recollect that heathens, that polytheists, mustpermit a number of divinities. It is the very essence of itsconstitution. But was it ever heard that polytheism tolerated a dissentfrom a polytheistic establishment, --the belief of one God only? Never!never! Sir, they constantly carried on persecution against thatdoctrine. I will not give heathens the glory of a doctrine which Iconsider the best part of Christianity. The honorable gentleman mustrecollect the Roman law, that was clearly against the introduction ofany foreign rites in matters of religion. You have it at large in Livy, how they persecuted in the first introduction the rites of Bacchus; andeven before Christ, to say nothing of their subsequent persecutions, they persecuted the Druids and others. Heathenism, therefore, as inother respects erroneous, was erroneous in point of persecution. I donot say every heathen who persecuted was therefore an impious man: Ionly say he was mistaken, as such a man is now. But, says the honorablegentleman, they did not persecute Epicureans. No: the Epicureans had noquarrel with their religious establishment, nor desired any religion forthemselves. It would have been very extraordinary, if irreligiousheathens had desired either a religious establishment or toleration. But, says the honorable gentleman, the Epicureans entered, as others, into the temples. They did so; they defied all subscription; they defiedall sorts of conformity; there was no subscription to which they werenot ready to set their hands, no ceremonies they refused to practise;they made it a principle of their irreligion outwardly to conform to anyreligion. These atheists eluded all that you could do: so will allfreethinkers forever. Then you suffer, or the weakness of your law hassuffered, those great dangerous animals to escape notice, whilst youhave nets that entangle the poor fluttering silken wings of a tenderconscience. 

The honorable gentleman insists much upon this circumstance ofobjection, --namely, the division amongst the Dissenters. Why, Sir, theDissenters, by the nature of the term, are open to have a division amongthemselves. They are Dissenters because they differ from the Church ofEngland: not that they agree among themselves. There are Presbyterians, there are Independents, --some that do not agree to infant baptism, others that do not agree to the baptism of adults, or any baptism. Allthese are, however, tolerated under the acts of King William, andsubsequent acts; and their diversity of sentiments with one another didnot and could not furnish an argument against their toleration, whentheir difference with ourselves furnished none. 

But, says the honorable gentleman, if you suffer them to go on, theywill shake the fundamental principles of Christianity. Let it beconsidered, that this argument goes as strongly against connivance, which you allow, as against toleration, which you reject. The gentlemansets out with a principle of perfect liberty, or, as he describes it, connivance. But, for fear of dangerous opinions, you leave it in yourpower to vex a man who has not held any one dangerous opinionwhatsoever. If one man is a professed atheist, another man the bestChristian, but dissents from two of the Thirty-Nine Articles, I may letescape the atheist, because I know him to be an atheist, because I am, perhaps, so inclined myself, and because I may connive where I thinkproper; but the conscientious Dissenter, on account of his attachment tothat general religion which perhaps I hate, I shall take care to punish, because I may punish when I think proper. Therefore, connivance being anengine of private malice or private favor, not of good government, --anengine which totally fails of suppressing atheism, but oppressesconscience, --I say that principle becomes, not serviceable, butdangerous to Christianity; that it is not toleration, but contrary toit, even contrary to peace; that the penal system to which it belongs isa dangerous principle in the economy either of religion or government. The honorable gentleman (and in him I comprehend all those who opposethe bill) bestowed in support of their side of the question as muchargument as it could bear, and much more of learning and decoration thanit deserved. He thinks connivance consistent, but legal tolerationinconsistent, with the interests of Christianity. Perhaps I would go asfar as that honorable gentleman, if I thought toleration inconsistentwith those interests. God forbid! I may be mistaken, but I taketoleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I wouldsacrifice: I would keep them both: it is not necessary I shouldsacrifice either. I do not like the idea of tolerating the doctrines ofEpicurus: but nothing in the world propagates them so much as theoppression of the poor, of the honest and candid disciples of thereligion we profess in common, --I mean revealed religion; nothing soonermakes them take a short cut out of the bondage of sectarian vexationinto open and direct infidelity than tormenting men for everydifference. My opinion is, that, in establishing the Christian religionwherever you find it, curiosity or research is its best security; and inthis way a man is a great deal better justified in saying, Tolerate allkinds of consciences, than in imitating the heathens, whom the honorablegentleman quotes, in tolerating those who have none. I am not over-fondof calling for the secular arm upon these misguided or misguiding men;but if ever it ought to be raised, it ought surely to be raised againstthese very men, not against others, whose liberty of religion you make apretext for proceedings which drive them into the bondage of impiety. What figure do I make in saying, I do not attack the works of theseatheistical writers, but I will keep a rod hanging over theconscientious man, their bitterest enemy, because these atheists maytake advantage of the liberty of their foes to introduce irreligion? Thebest book that ever, perhaps, has been written against these people isthat in which the author has collected in a body the whole of theinfidel code, and has brought the writers into one body to cut them alloff together. This was done by a Dissenter, who never did subscribe theThirty-Nine Articles, --Dr. Leland. But if, after all this, danger is tobe apprehended, if you are really fearful that Christianity willindirectly suffer by this liberty, you have my free consent: godirectly, and by the straight way, and not by a circuit in which, inyour road you may destroy your friends; point your arms against thesemen who do the mischief you fear promoting; point your arms against menwho, not contented with endeavoring to turn your eyes from the blaze andeffulgence of light by which life and immortality is so gloriouslydemonstrated by the Gospel, would even extinguish that faint glimmeringof Nature, that only comfort supplied to ignorant man before this greatillumination, --them, who, by attacking even the possibility of allrevelation, arraign all the dispensations of Providence to man. Theseare the wicked Dissenters you ought to fear; these are the peopleagainst whom you ought to aim the shaft of the law; these are the men towhom, arrayed in all the terrors of government, I would say, You shallnot degrade us into brutes! These men, these factious men, as thehonorable gentleman properly called them, are the just objects ofvengeance, not the conscientious Dissenter, --these men, who would takeaway whatever ennobles the rank or consoles the misfortunes of humannature, by breaking off that connection of observances, of affections, of hopes and fears, which bind us to the Divinity, and constitute theglorious and distinguishing prerogative of humanity, that of being areligious creature: against these I would have the laws rise in alltheir majesty of terrors, to fulminate such vain and impious wretches, and to awe them into impotence by the only dread they can fear orbelieve, to learn that eternal lesson, _Discite justitiam moniti, et nontemnere Divos_!

At the same time that I would cut up the very root of atheism, I wouldrespect all conscience, --all conscience that is really such, and whichperhaps its very tenderness proves to be sincere. I wish to see theEstablished Church of England great and powerful; I wish to see herfoundations laid low and deep, that she may crush the giant powers ofrebellious darkness; I would have her head raised up to that heaven towhich she conducts us. I would have her open wide her hospitable gatesby a noble and liberal comprehension, but I would have no breaches inher wall; I would have her cherish all those who are within, and pityall those who are without; I would have her a common blessing to theworld, an example, if not an instructor, to those who have not thehappiness to belong to her; I would have her give a lesson of peace tomankind, that a vexed and wandering generation might be taught to seekfor repose and toleration in the maternal bosom of Christian charity, and not in the harlot lap of infidelity and indifference. Nothing hasdriven people more into that house of seduction than the mutual hatredof Christian congregations. Long may we enjoy our church under a learnedand edifying episcopacy! But episcopacy may fail, and religion exist. The most horrid and cruel blow that can be offered to civil society isthrough atheism. Do not promote diversity; when you have it, bear it;have as many sorts of religion as you find in your country; there is areasonable worship in them all. The others, the infidels, are outlaws ofthe constitution, not of this country, but of the human race. They arenever, never to be supported, never to be tolerated. Under thesystematic attacks of these people, I see some of the props of goodgovernment already begin to fail; I see propagated principles which willnot leave to religion even a toleration. I see myself sinking every dayunder the attacks of these wretched people. How shall I arm myselfagainst them? By uniting all those in affection, who are united in thebelief of the great principles of the Godhead that made and sustains theworld. They who hold revelation give double assurance to their country. Even the man who does not hold revelation, yet who wishes that it wereproved to him, who observes a pious silence with regard to it, such aman, though not a Christian, is governed by religious principles. Lethim be tolerated in this country. Let it be but a serious religion, natural or revealed, take what you can get. Cherish, blow up theslightest spark: one day it may be a pure and holy flame. By thisproceeding you form an alliance offensive and defensive against thosegreat ministers of darkness in the world who are endeavoring to shakeall the works of God established in order and beauty. 

Perhaps I am carried too far; but it is in the road into which thehonorable gentleman has led me. The honorable gentleman would have usfight this confederacy of the powers of darkness with the single arm ofthe Church of England, --would have us not only fight against infidelity, but fight at the same time with all the faith in the world except ourown. In the moment we make a front against the common enemy, we have tocombat with all those who are the natural friends of our cause. Strongas we are, we are not equal to this. The cause of the Church of Englandis included in that of religion, not that of religion in the Church ofEngland. I will stand up at all times for the rights of conscience, asit is such, --not for its particular modes against its generalprinciples. One may be right, another mistaken; but if I have morestrength than my brother, it shall be employed to support, not tooppress his weakness; if I have more light, it shall be used to guide, not to dazzle him. . . . 

SPEECH

ON A

MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS BY THE RIGHT HON. C. J. FOX, MAY 11, 1793, FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN

A BILL TO REPEAL AND ALTER CERTAIN ACTS RESPECTING RELIGIOUS OPINIONS, UPON THE OCCASION OF

A PETITION OF THE UNITARIAN SOCIETY

I never govern myself, no rational man ever did govern himself, byabstractions and universals. I do not put abstract ideas wholly out ofany question; because I well know that under that name I should dismissprinciples, and that without the guide and light of sound, well-understood principles, all reasonings in politics, as in everythingelse, would be only a confused jumble of particular facts and details, without the means of drawing out any sort of theoretical or practicalconclusion. A statesman differs from a professor in an university: thelatter has only the general view of society; the former, the statesman, has a number of circumstances to combine with those general ideas, andto take into his consideration. Circumstances are infinite, areinfinitely combined, are variable and transient: he who does not takethem into consideration is not erroneous, but stark mad; _dat operam utcum ratione insaniat_; he is metaphysically mad. A statesman, neverlosing sight of principles, is to be guided by circumstances; andjudging contrary to the exigencies of the moment, he may ruin hiscountry forever. 

I go on this ground, --that government, representing the society, has ageneral superintending control over all the actions and over all thepublicly propagated doctrines of men, without which it never couldprovide adequately for all the wants of society: but then it is to usethis power with an equitable discretion, the only bond of sovereignauthority. For it is not, perhaps, so much by the assumption of unlawfulpowers as by the unwise or unwarrantable use of those which are mostlegal, that governments oppose their true end and object: for there issuch a thing as tyranny, as well as usurpation. You can hardly state tome a case to which legislature is the most confessedly competent, inwhich, if the rules of benignity and prudence are not observed, the mostmischievous and oppressive things may not be done. So that, after all, it is a moral and virtuous discretion, and not any abstract theory ofright, which keeps governments faithful to their ends. Crude, unconnected truths are in the world of practice what falsehoods are intheory. A reasonable, prudent, provident, and moderate coercion may be ameans of preventing acts of extreme ferocity and rigor: for bypropagating excessive and extravagant doctrines, such extravagantdisorders take place as require the most perilous and fierce correctionsto oppose them. 

It is not morally true that we are bound to establish in every countrythat form of religion which in _our_ minds is most agreeable to truth, and conduces most to the eternal happiness of mankind. In the samemanner, it is not true that we are, against the conviction of our ownjudgment, to establish a system of opinions and practices directlycontrary to those ends, only because some majority of the people, toldby the head, may prefer it. No conscientious man would willinglyestablish what he knew to be false and mischievous in religion, or inanything else. No wise man, on the contrary, would tyrannically set uphis own sense so as to reprobate that of the great prevailing body ofthe community, and pay no regard to the established opinions andprejudices of mankind, or refuse to them the means of securing areligious instruction suitable to these prejudices. A great deal dependson the state in which you find men. . . . 

An alliance between Church and State in a Christian commonwealth is, inmy opinion, an idle and a fanciful speculation. An alliance is betweentwo things that are in their nature distinct and independent, such asbetween two sovereign states. But in a Christian commonwealth the Churchand the State are one and the, same thing, being different integralparts of the same whole. For the Church has been always divided into twoparts, the clergy and the laity, --of which the laity is as much anessential integral part, and has as much its duties and privileges, asthe clerical member, and in the rule, order, and government of theChurch has its share. Religion is so far, in my opinion, from being outof the province or the duty of a Christian magistrate, that it is, andit ought to be, not only his care, but the principal thing in his care;because it is one of the great bonds of human society, and its objectthe supreme good, the ultimate end and object of man himself. Themagistrate, who is a man, and charged with the concerns of men, and towhom very specially nothing human is remote and indifferent, has a rightand a duty to watch over it with an unceasing vigilance, to protect, topromote, to forward it by every rational, just, and prudent means. It isprincipally his duty to prevent the abuses which grow out of everystrong and efficient principle that actuates the human mind. Asreligion is one of the bonds of society, he ought not to suffer it to bemade the pretext of destroying its peace, order, liberty, and itssecurity. Above all, he ought strictly to look to it, when men begin toform new combinations, to be distinguished by new names, and especiallywhen they mingle a political system with their religious opinions, trueor false, plausible or implausible. 

It is the interest, and it is the duty, and because it is the interestand the duty, it is the right of government to attend much to opinions;because, as opinions soon combine with passions, even when they do notproduce them, they have much influence on actions. Factions are formedupon opinions, which factions become in effect bodies corporate in thestate; nay, factions generate opinions, in order to become a centre ofunion, and to furnish watchwords to parties; and this may make itexpedient for government to forbid things in themselves innocent andneutral. I am not fond of defining with precision what the ultimaterights of the sovereign supreme power, in providing for the safety ofthe commonwealth, may be, or may not extend to. It will signify verylittle what my notions or what their own notions on the subject may be;because, according to the exigence, they will take, in fact, the stepswhich seem to them necessary for the preservation of the whole: for asself-preservation in individuals is the first law of Nature, the samewill prevail in societies, who will, right or wrong, make that an objectparamount to all other rights whatsoever. There are ways and means bywhich a good man would not even save the commonwealth. . . . All thingsfounded on the idea of danger ought in a great degree to be temporary. All policy is very suspicious that sacrifices any part to the ideal goodof the whole. The object of the state is (as far as may be) thehappiness of the whole. Whatever makes multitudes of men utterlymiserable can never answer that object; indeed, it contradicts it whollyand entirely; and the happiness or misery of mankind, estimated by theirfeelings and sentiments, and not by any theories of their rights, is, and ought to be, the standard for the conduct of legislators towards thepeople. This naturally and necessarily conducts us to the peculiar andcharacteristic situation of a people, and to a knowledge of theiropinions, prejudices, habits, and all the circumstances that diversifyand color life. The first question a good statesman would ask himself, therefore, would be, How and in what circumstances do you find thesociety? and to act upon them. 

To the other laws relating to other sects I have nothing to say: I onlylook to the petition which has given rise to this proceeding. I confinemyself to that, because in my opinion its merits have little or norelation to that of the other laws which the right honorable gentlemanhas with so much ability blended with it. With the Catholics, with thePresbyterians, with the Anabaptists, with the Independents, with theQuakers, I have nothing at all to do. They are in _possession_, --a greattitle in all human affairs. The tenor and spirit of our laws, whetherthey were restraining or whether they were relaxing, have hitherto takenanother course. The spirit of our laws has applied their penalty ortheir relief to the supposed abuse to be repressed or the grievance tobe relieved; and the provision for a Catholic and a Quaker has beentotally different, according to his exigence: you did not give aCatholic liberty to be freed from an oath, or a Quaker power of sayingmass with impunity. You have done this, because you never have laid itdown as an universal proposition, as a maxim, that nothing relative toreligion was your concern, but the direct contrary; and therefore youhave always examined whether there was a grievance. It has been so atall times: the legislature, whether right or wrong, went no other way towork but by circumstances, times, and necessities. My mind marches thesame road; my school is the practice and usage of Parliament. 

Old religious factions are volcanoes burnt out; on the lava and ashesand squalid scoriæ of old eruptions grow the peaceful olive, thecheering vine, and the sustaining corn. Such was the first, such thesecond condition of Vesuvius. But when a now fire bursts out, a face ofdesolations comes on, not to be rectified in ages. Therefore, when mencome before us, and rise up like an exhalation from the ground, theycome in a questionable shape, and we must _exorcise_ them, and trywhether their intents be wicked or charitable, whether they bring airsfrom heaven or blasts from hell. This is the first time that our recordsof Parliament have heard, or our experience or history given us anaccount of any religious congregation or association known by the namewhich these petitioners have assumed. We are now to see by what people, of what character, and under what temporary circumstances, this businessis brought before you. We are to see whether there be any and whatmixture of political dogmas and political practices with their religioustenets, of what nature they are, and how far they are at presentpractically separable from them. This faction (the authors of thepetition) are not confined to a _theological_ sect, but are also a_political_ faction. 1st, As theological, we are to show that they donot aim at the quiet enjoyment of their own liberty, but are_associated_ for the express purpose of proselytism. In proof of thisfirst proposition, read their primary association. 2nd, That theirpurpose of proselytism is to collect a multitude sufficient by force andviolence to overturn the Church. In proof of the second proposition, seethe letter of Priestley to Mr. Pitt, and extracts from his works. 3rd, That the designs against the Church are concurrent with a design tosubvert the State. In proof of the third proposition, read theadvertisement of the Unitarian Society for celebrating the 14th of July. 4th, On what _model_ they intend to build, --that it is the _French_. Inproof of the fourth proposition, read the correspondence of theRevolution Society with the clubs of France, read Priestley's adherenceto their opinions. 5th, What the _French_ is with regard to religioustoleration, and with regard to, 1. Religion, --2. Civil happiness, --3. Virtue, order, and real liberty, --4. Commercial opulence, --5. Nationaldefence. In proof of the fifth proposition, read the representation ofthe French minister of the Home Department, and the report of thecommittee upon it. 

Formerly, when the superiority of two parties contending for dogmas andan establishment was the question, we knew in such a contest the wholeof the evil. We knew, for instance, that Calvinism would prevailaccording to the Westminster Catechism with regard to _tenets_. We knewthat Presbytery would prevail in _church government_. But we do notknow what opinions would prevail, if the present Dissenters shouldbecome masters. They will not tell us their present opinions; and oneprinciple of modern Dissent is, not to discover them. Next, as theirreligion, is in a continual fluctuation, and is so by principle and inprofession, it is impossible for us to know what it will be. If religiononly related to the individual, and was a question between God and theconscience, it would not be wise, nor in my opinion equitable, for humanauthority to step in. But when religion is embodied into faction, andfactions have objects to pursue, it will and must, more or less, becomea question of power between them. If even, when embodied intocongregations, they limited their principle to their own congregations, and were satisfied themselves to abstain from what they thoughtunlawful, it would be cruel, in my opinion, to molest them in thattenet, and a consequent practice. But we know that they not onlyentertain these opinions, but entertain them with a zeal for propagatingthem by force, and employing the power of law and place to destroyestablishments, if ever they should come to power sufficient to effecttheir purpose: that is, in other words, they declare they wouldpersecute the heads of our Church; and the question is, whether youshould keep them within the bounds of toleration, or subject yourself totheir persecution. 

A bad and very censurable practice it is to warp doubtful and ambiguousexpressions to a perverted sense, which makes the charge not the crimeof others, but the construction of your own malice; nor is it allowed todraw conclusions from allowed premises, which those who lay down thepremises utterly deny, and disown as their conclusions. For this, though it may possibly be good logic, cannot by any possibilitywhatsoever be a fair or charitable representation of any man or any setof men. It may show the erroneous nature of principles, but it arguesnothing as to dispositions and intentions. Far be such a mode from me! Amean and unworthy jealousy it would be to do anything upon, the merespeculative apprehension of what men will do. But let us pass by _our_opinions concerning the danger of the Church. What do the gentlementhemselves think of that danger? They from, whom the danger isapprehended, what do they declare to be their own designs? What do theyconceive to be their own forces? And what do they proclaim to be theirmeans? Their designs they declare to be to destroy the EstablishedChurch; and not to set up a new one of their own. See Priestley. If theyshould find the State stick to the Church, the question is, whether theylove the constitution in _State_ so well as that they would not destroythe constitution of the State in order to destroy that of the Church. Most certainly they do not. 

The foundations on which obedience to governments is founded are not tobe constantly discussed. That we are here supposes the discussionalready made and the dispute settled. We must assume the rights of whatrepresents the public to control the individual, to make his will andhis acts to submit to their will, until some intolerable grievance shallmake us know that it does not answer its end, and will submit neither toreformation nor restraint. Otherwise we should dispute all the points ofmorality, before we can punish a murderer, robber, and adulterer; weshould analyze all society. Dangers by being despised grow great; sothey do by absurd provision against them. _Stulti est dixisse, Nonputâram_. Whether an early discovery of evil designs, an earlydeclaration, and an early precaution against them be more wise than tostifle all inquiry about them, for fear they should declare themselvesmore early than otherwise they would, and therefore precipitate theevil, --all this depends on the reality of the danger. Is it only anunbookish jealousy, as Shakspeare calls it? It is a question of fact. Does a design against the Constitution of this country exist? If itdoes, and if it is carried on with increasing vigor and activity by arestless faction, and if it receives countenance by the most ardent andenthusiastic applauses of its object in the great council of thiskingdom, by men of the first parts which this kingdom produces, perhapsby the first it has ever produced, can I think that there is no danger?If there be danger, must there be no precaution at all against it? Ifyou ask whether I think the danger urgent and immediate, I answer, ThankGod, I do not. The body of the people is yet sound, the Constitution isin their hearts, while wicked men are endeavoring to put another intotheir heads. But if I see the very same beginnings which have commonlyended in great calamities, I ought to act as if they might produce thevery same effects. Early and provident fear is the mother of safety;because in that state of things the mind is firm and collected, and thejudgment unembarrassed. But when the fear and the evil feared come ontogether, and press at once upon us, deliberation itself is ruinous, which saves upon all other occasions; because, when perils are instant, it delays decision: the man is in a flutter, and in a hurry, and hisjudgment is gone, --as the judgment of the deposed King of France and hisministers was gone, if the latter did not premeditately betray him. Hewas just come from his usual amusement of hunting, when the head of thecolumn of treason and assassination was arrived at his house. Let notthe king, let not the Prince of Wales, be surprised in this manner. Letnot both Houses of Parliament be led in triumph along with him, and havelaw dictated to them, by the Constitutional, the Revolution, and theUnitarian Societies. These insect reptiles, whilst they go on onlycaballing and toasting, only fill us with disgust; if they get abovetheir natural size, and increase the quantity whilst they keep thequality of their venom, they become objects of the greatest terror. Aspider in his natural size is only a spider, ugly and loathsome; and hisflimsy net is only fit for catching flies. But, good God! suppose aspider as large as an ox, and that he spread cables about us, all thewilds of Africa would not produce anything so dreadful:--

 Quale portentum neque militaris Daunia in latis alit esculetis, Nec Jubæ tellus generat, leonum Arida nutrix. 

Think of them who dare menace in the way they do in their present state, what would they do, if they had power commensurate to their malice? Godforbid I ever should have a despotic master!--but if I must, my choiceis made. I will have Louis the Sixteenth rather than Monsieur Bailly, orBrissot, or Chabot, --rather George the Third, or George the Fourth, than. Dr. Priestley, or Dr. Kippis, --persons who would not load atyrannous power by the poisoned taunts of a vulgar, low-bred insolence. I hope we have still spirit enough to keep us from the one or the other. The contumelies of tyranny are the worst parts of it. 

But if the danger be existing in reality, and silently maturing itselfto our destruction, what! is it not better to take _treason_ unpreparedthan that _treason_ should come by surprise upon us and take usunprepared? If we must have a conflict, let us have it with all ourforces fresh about us, with our government in full function and fullstrength, our troops uncorrupted, our revenues in the legal hands, ourarsenals filled and possessed by government, --and not wait till theconspirators met to commemorate the 14th of July shall seize on theTower of London and the magazines it contains, murder the governor, andthe mayor of London, seize upon the king's person, drive out the Houseof Lords, occupy your gallery, and thence, as from an high tribunal, dictate to you. The degree of danger is not only from the circumstanceswhich threaten, but from the value of the objects which are threatened. A small danger menacing an inestimable object is of more importance thanthe greatest perils which regard one that is indifferent to us. Thewhole question of the danger depends upon facts. The first fact is, whether those who sway in France at present confine themselves to theregulation of their internal affairs, --or whether upon system theynourish cabals in all other countries, to extend their power byproducing revolutions similar to their own. 2. The next is, whether wehave any cabals formed or forming within these kingdoms, to coöperatewith them for the destruction of our Constitution. On the solution ofthese two questions, joined with our opinion of the value of the objectto be affected by their machinations, the justness of our alarm and thenecessity of our vigilance must depend. Every private conspiracy, everyopen attack upon the laws, is dangerous. One robbery is an alarm to allproperty; else I am sure we exceed measure in our punishment. Asrobberies increase in number and audacity, the alarm increases. Thesewretches are at war with us upon principle. They hold this government tobe an usurpation. See the language of the Department. 

The whole question is on the _reality_ of the danger. Is it such adanger as would justify that fear _qui cadere potest in hominemconstantem et non metuentem_? This is the fear which the principles ofjurisprudence declare to be a lawful and justifiable fear. When a manthreatens my life openly and publicly, I may demand from him securitiesof the peace. When every act of a man's life manifests such a designstronger than by words, even though he does not make such a declaration, I am justified in being on my guard. They are of opinion that they arealready one fifth of the kingdom. If so, their force is naturally notcontemptible. To say that in all contests the decision will of course bein favor of the greater number is by no means true in fact. For, first, the greater number is generally composed of men of sluggish tempers, slow to act, and unwilling to attempt, and, by being in possession, areso disposed to peace that they are unwilling to take early and vigorousmeasures for their defence, and they are almost always caughtunprepared:--

 Nec coïere pares: alter vergentibus annis In senium, longoque togæ tranquillior usu. Dedidicit jam pace ducem;. . . Nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori Credere fortunæ: stat magni nominis umbra. [1]

A smaller number, more expedite, awakened, active, vigorous, andcourageous, who make amends for what they want in weight by theirsuperabundance of velocity, will create an acting power of the greatestpossible strength. When men are furiously and fanatically fond of anobject, they will prefer it, as is well known, to their own peace, totheir own property, and to their own lives: and can there be a doubt, insuch a case, that they would prefer it to the peace of their country? Isit to be doubted, that, if they have not strength enough at home, theywill call in foreign force to aid them?

Would you deny them _what is reasonable_, for fear they should?Certainly not. It would be barbarous to pretend to look into the mindsof men. I would go further: it would not be just even to traceconsequences from principles which, though evident to me, were denied bythem. Let them disband as a faction, and let them act as individuals, and when I see them with no other views than to enjoy their ownconscience in peace, I, for one, shall most cheerfully vote for theirrelief. 

A tender conscience, of all things, ought to be tenderly handled; for ifyou do not, you injure not only the conscience, but the whole moralframe and constitution is injured, recurring at times to remorse, andseeking refuge only in making the conscience callous. But the conscienceof faction, --the conscience of sedition, --the conscience of conspiracy, war, and confusion. . . . 

Whether anything be proper to be denied, which is right in itself, because it may lead to the demand of others which it is improper togrant? Abstractedly speaking, there can be no doubt that this questionought to be decided in the negative. But as no moral questions are everabstract questions, this, before I judge upon any abstract proposition, must be embodied in circumstances; for, since things are right or wrong, morally speaking, only by their relation and connection with otherthings, this very question of what it is politically right to grantdepends upon this relation to its effects. It is the direct office ofwisdom to look to the consequences of the acts we do: if it be not this, it is worth nothing, it is out of place and of function, and a downrightfool is as capable of government as Charles Fox. A man desires a sword:why should he be refused? A sword is a means of defence, and defence isthe natural right of man, --nay, the first of all his rights, and whichcomprehends them all. But if I know that the sword desired is to beemployed to cut my own throat, common sense, and my own self-defence, dictate to me to keep out of his hands this natural right of the sword. But whether this denial be wise or foolish, just or unjust, prudent orcowardly, depends entirely on the state of the man's means. A man mayhave very ill dispositions, and yet be so very weak as to make allprecaution foolish. See whether this be the case of these Dissenters, asto their designs, as to their means, numbers, activity, zeal, foreignassistance. 

The first question, to be decided, when we talk of the Church's being indanger from any particular measure, is, whether the danger to the Churchis a public evil: for to those who think that the national ChurchEstablishment is itself a national grievance, to desire them to forwardor to resist any measure, upon account of its conducing to the safety ofthe Church or averting its danger, would be to the last degree absurd. If you have reason to think thus of it, take the reformation instantlyinto your own hands, whilst you are yet cool, and can do it in measureand proportion, and not under the influence of election tests andpopular fury. But here I assume that by far the greater number of thosewho compose the House are of opinion that this national ChurchEstablishment is a great national benefit, a great public blessing, andthat its existence or its non-existence of course is a thing by no meansindifferent to the public welfare: then to them its danger or its safetymust enter deeply into every question which has a relation to it. It isnot because ungrounded alarms have been given that there never can exista real danger: perhaps the worst effect of an ungrounded alarm is tomake people insensible to the approach of a real peril. Quakerism isstrict, methodical, in its nature highly aristocratical, and so regularthat it has brought the whole community to the condition of one family;but it does not actually interfere with the government. The principle ofyour petitioners is no passive conscientious dissent, on account of anover-scrupulous habit of mind: the dissent on their part is fundamental, goes to the very root; and it is at issue not upon this rite or thatceremony, on this or that school opinion, but upon this one question ofan Establishment, as unchristian, unlawful, contrary to the Gospel andto natural right, Popish and idolatrous. These are the principlesviolently and fanatically held and pursued, --taught to their children, who are sworn at the altar like Hannibal. The war is with theEstablishment itself, --no quarter, no compromise. As a party, they areinfinitely mischievous: see the declarations of Priestley andPrice, --declarations, you will say, of _hot_ men. Likely enough: but whoare the _cool_ men who have disclaimed them? Not one, --no, not one. Which of them has ever told you that they do not mean to _destroy theChurch_, if ever it should be in their power? Which of them has told youthat this would not be the first and favorite use of any power theyshould get? Not one, --no, not one. Declarations of hot men! The dangeris thence, that they are under the _conduct_ of hot men: _falsos inamore odia non fingere_. 

They say they are well affected to the State, and mean only to destroythe Church. If this be the utmost of their meaning, you must firstconsider whether you wish your Church Establishment to be destroyed. Ifyou do, you had much better do it now in temper, in a grave, moderate, and parliamentary way. But if you think otherwise, and that you think itto be an invaluable blessing, a way fully sufficient to nourish a manly, rational, solid, and at the same time humble piety, --if you find it wellfitted to the frame and pattern of your civil constitution, --if you findit a barrier against fanaticism, infidelity, and atheism, --if you findthat it furnishes support to the human mind in the afflictions anddistresses of the world, consolation in sickness, pain, poverty, anddeath, --if it dignifies our nature with the hope of immortality, leavesinquiry free, whilst it preserves an authority to teach, where authorityonly can teach, _communia altaria, æque ac patriam, diligite, colite, fovete_. 

In the discussion of this subject which took place in the year 1790, Mr. Burke declared his intention, in case the motion for repealing the TestActs had been agreed to, of proposing to substitute the following testin the room of what was intended to be repealed:--

"I, _A. B. _, do, in the presence of God, sincerely profess and believethat a religious establishment in this state is not contrary to the lawof God, or disagreeable to the law of Nature, or to the true principlesof the Christian religion, or that it is noxious to the community; and Ido sincerely promise and engage, before God, that I never will, by anyconspiracy, contrivance, or political device whatever, attempt, or abetothers in any attempt, to subvert the constitution of the Church ofEngland, as the same is now by law established, and that I will notemploy any power or influence which I may derive from any officecorporate, or any other office which I hold or shall hold under hisMajesty, his heirs and successors, to destroy and subvert the same, orto cause members to be elected into any corporation or into Parliament, give my vote in the election of any member or members of Parliament, orinto any office, for or on account of their attachment to any other ordifferent religious opinions or establishments, or with any hope thatthey may promote the same to the prejudice of the Established Church, but will dutifully and peaceably content myself with my private libertyof conscience, as the same is allowed by law. So help me God. "

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Lucan, I. 129 to 135. 

SPEECH

ON

THE MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 7, 1771, RELATIVE TO

THE MIDDLESEX ELECTION. 

NOTE. 

The motion supported in the following Speech, which was for leave tobring in a bill to ascertain the rights of the electors in respect tothe eligibility of persons to serve in Parliament, was rejected by amajority of 167 against 103. 

SPEECH. 

In every complicated constitution (and every free constitution iscomplicated) cases will arise when the several orders of the state willclash with one another, and disputes will arise about the limits oftheir several rights and privileges. It may be almost impossible toreconcile them. . . . 

Carry the principle on by which you expelled Mr. Wilkes, there is not aman in the House, hardly a man in the nation, who may not bedisqualified. That this House should have no power of expulsion is anhard saying: that this House should have a general discretionary powerof disqualification is a dangerous saying. That the people should notchoose their own representative is a saying that shakes theConstitution: that this House should name the representative is a sayingwhich, followed by practice, subverts the Constitution. They have theright of electing; you have a right of expelling: they of choosing; youof judging, and only of judging, of the choice. What bounds shall be setto the freedom of that choice? Their right is prior to ours: we alloriginate there. They are the mortal enemies of the House of Commons whowould persuade them to think or to act as if they were a self-originatedmagistracy, independent of the people, and unconnected with theiropinions and feelings. Under a pretence of exalting the dignity, theyundermine the very foundations of this House. When the question is asked_here_, What disturbs the people? whence all this clamor? we apply tothe Treasury bench, and they tell us it is from the efforts oflibellers, and the wickedness of the people: a worn-out ministerialpretence. If abroad the people are deceived by popular, within we aredeluded by ministerial cant. 

The question amounts to this: Whether you mean to be a legal tribunal, or an arbitrary and despotic assembly? I see and I feel the delicacy anddifficulty of the ground upon which we stand in this question. I couldwish, indeed, that they who advise the crown had not left Parliament inthis very ungraceful distress, in which they can neither retract withdignity nor persist with justice. Another Parliament might havesatisfied the people without lowering themselves. But our situation isnot in our own choice: our conduct in that situation is all that is inour own option. The substance of the question is, to put bounds to yourown power by the rules and principles of law. This is, I am sensible, adifficult thing to the corrupt, grasping, and ambitious part of humannature. But the very difficulty argues and enforces the necessity of it. First, because the greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse. Since the Revolution, at least, the power of the nation has all flowedwith a full tide into the House of Commons. Secondly, because the Houseof Commons, as it is the most powerful, is the most corruptible part ofthe whole Constitution. Our public wounds cannot be concealed; to becured, they must be laid open. The public does think we are a corruptbody. In our _legislative capacity_, we are, in most instances, esteemed a very wise body; in our judicial, we have no credit, nocharacter at all. Our judgments stink in the nostrils of the people. They think us to be not only without virtue, but without shame. Therefore the greatness of our power, and the great and just opinion ofour corruptibility and our corruption, render it necessary to fix somebound, to plant some landmark, which we are never to exceed. This iswhat the bill proposes. 

First, on this head, I lay it down as a fundamental rule in the law andConstitution of this country, that this House has not by itself alone alegislative authority in any case whatsoever. I know that the contrarywas the doctrine of the usurping House of Commons, which threw down thefences and bulwarks of law, which annihilated first the lords, then thecrown, then its constituents. But the first thing that was done on therestoration of the Constitution was to settle this point. Secondly, Ilay it down as a rule, that the power of occasional incapacitation, ondiscretionary grounds, is a legislative power. In order to establishthis principle, if it should not be sufficiently proved by being stated, tell me what are the criteria, the characteristics, by which youdistinguish between a legislative and a juridical act. It will benecessary to state, shortly, the difference between a legislative and ajuridical act. 

A legislative act has no reference to any rule but these two, --originaljustice, and discretionary application. Therefore it can giverights, --rights where no rights existed before; and it can take awayrights where they were before established. For the law, which binds allothers, does not and cannot bind the law-maker: he, and he alone, isabove the law. But a judge, a person exercising a judicial capacity, isneither to apply to original justice nor to a discretionary applicationof it. He goes to justice and discretion only at second hand, andthrough the medium of some superiors. He is to work neither upon hisopinion of the one nor of the other, but upon a fixed rule, of which hehas not the making, but singly and solely the _application_ to the case. 

The power assumed by the House neither is nor can be judicial powerexercised according to known law. The properties of law are, first, thatit should be known; secondly, that it should be fixed, and notoccasional. First, this power cannot be according to the first propertyof law; because no man does or can know it, nor do you yourselves knowupon what grounds you will vote the incapacity of any man. No man inWestminster Hall, or in any court upon earth, will say that is law, uponwhich, if a man going to his counsel should say to him, "What is mytenure in law of this estate?" he would answer, "Truly, Sir, I know not;the court has no rule but its own discretion; they will determine. " Itis not a fixed law; because you profess you vary it according to theoccasion, exercise it according to your discretion, no man can call forit as a right. It is argued, that the incapacity is not originallyvoted, but a consequence of a power of expulsion. But if you expel, notupon legal, but upon arbitrary, that is, upon discretionary grounds, andthe incapacity is _ex vi termini_ and inclusively comprehended in theexpulsion, is not the incapacity voted in the expulsion? Are they notconvertible terms? And if incapacity is voted to be inherent inexpulsion, if expulsion be arbitrary, incapacity is arbitrary also. Ihave therefore shown that the power of incapacitation is a legislativepower; I have shown that legislative power does not belong to the Houseof Commons; and therefore it follows that the House of Commons has not apower of incapacitation. 

I know not the origin of the House of Commons, but am very sure that itdid not create itself; the electors were prior to the elected, whoserights originated either from the people at large, or from some otherform of legislature, which never could intend for the chosen a power ofsuperseding the choosers. 

If you have not a power of declaring an incapacity simply by the mereact of declaring it, it is evident to the most ordinary reason youcannot have a right of expulsion, inferring, or rather including, anincapacity. For as the law, when it gives any direct right, gives alsoas necessary incidents all the means of acquiring the possession of thatright, so, where it does not give a right directly, it refuses all themeans by which such a right may by any mediums be exercised, or ineffect be indirectly acquired. Else it is very obvious that theintention of the law in refusing that right might be entirelyfrustrated, and the whole power of the legislature baffled. If there beno certain, invariable rule of eligibility, it were better to getsimplicity, if certainty is not to be had, and to resolve all thefranchises of the subject into this one short proposition, --the will andpleasure of the House of Commons. 

The argument drawn from the courts of law applying the principles of lawto new cases as they emerge is altogether frivolous, inapplicable, andarises from a total ignorance of the bounds between civil and criminaljurisdiction, and of the separate maxims that govern these twoprovinces of law, that are eternally separate. Undoubtedly the courts oflaw, where a new case comes before them, as they do every hour, then, that there may be no defect in justice, call in similar principles, andthe example of the nearest determination, and do everything to draw thelaw to as near a conformity to general equity and right reason as theycan bring it with its being a fixed principle. _Boni judicis estampliare justitiam_, --that is, to make open and liberal justice. But incriminal matters this parity of reason and these analogies ever havebeen and ever ought to be shunned. 

Whatever is incident to a court of judicature is necessary to the Houseof Commons as judging in elections. But a power of making incapacitiesis not necessary to a court of judicature: therefore a power of makingincapacities is not necessary to the House of Commons. 

Incapacity, declared by whatever authority, stands upon two principles:first, an incapacity arising from the supposed incongruity of two dutiesin the commonwealth; secondly, an incapacity arising from unfitness byinfirmity of nature or the criminality of conduct. As to the first classof incapacities, they have no _hardship_ annexed to them. The persons soincapacitated are paid by one dignity for what they abandon in another, and for the most part the situation arises from their own choice. But asto the second, arising from an unfitness not fixed by Nature, butsuperinduced by some positive acts, or arising from honorable motives, such as an occasional personal disability, of all things it ought to bedefined by the fixed rule of law, what Lord Coke calls the goldenmetwand of the law, and not by the crooked cord of discretion. Whateveris general is better borne. We take our common lot with men of the samedescription. But to be selected and marked out by a particular brand ofunworthiness among our fellow-citizens is a lot of all others thehardest to be borne, and consequently is of all others that act winchought only to be trusted to the legislature, as not only _legislative_in its nature, but of all parts of legislature the most odious. Thequestion is over, if this is shown not to be a legislative act. 

But what is very usual and natural is, to corrupt judicature intolegislature. On this point it is proper to inquire whether a court ofjudicature which decides without appeal has it as a necessary incidentof such judicature, that whatever it decides is _de jure_ law. Nobodywill, I hope, assert this; because the direct consequence would be theentire extinction of the difference between true and false judgments. For if the judgment makes the law, and not the law directs the judgment, it is impossible there should be such a thing as an illegal judgmentgiven. 

But instead of standing upon this ground, they introduce anotherquestion wholly foreign to it: Whether it ought not to be submitted toas if it were law? And then the question is, --By the Constitution ofthis country, what degree of submission is due to the authoritative actsof a limited power? This question of submission, determine it how youplease, has nothing to do in this discussion and in this House. Here itis not, how long the people are bound to tolerate the illegality of ourjudgments, but whether we have a right to substitute our occasionalopinion in the place of law, so as to deprive the citizen of hisfranchise. . . . 

SPEECH

ON

A BILL FOR SHORTENING THE DURATION OF PARLIAMENTS. 

MAY 8, 1780. 

It is always to be lamented, when men are driven to search into thefoundations of the commonwealth. It is certainly necessary to resort tothe theory of your government, whenever you propose any alteration inthe frame of it, --whether that alteration means the revival of someformer antiquated and forsaken constitution of state, or theintroduction of some new improvement in the commonwealth. The object ofour deliberation is, to promote the good purposes for which electionshave been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thoughtfrequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but atrifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of theConstitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedyis to be suited to your disease, your present disease, and to your wholedisease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weaklyand delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, who believes that itcan make any sort of approach to perfection. There is not, there neverwas, a principle of government under heaven, that does not, in the verypursuit of the good it proposes, naturally and inevitably lead into someinconvenience which makes it absolutely necessary to counterwork andweaken the application of that first principle itself, and to abandonsomething of the extent of the advantage you proposed by it, in orderto prevent also the inconveniences which have arisen from the instrumentof all the good you had in view. 

To govern according to the sense and agreeably to the interests of thepeople is a great and glorious object of government. This object cannotbe obtained but through the medium of popular election; and popularelection is a mighty evil. It is such and so great an evil, that, thoughthere are few nations whose monarchs were not originally elective, veryfew are now elected. They are the distempers of elections that havedestroyed all free states. To cure these distempers is difficult, if notimpossible; the only thing, therefore, left to save the commonwealth is, to prevent their return too frequently. The objects in view are, to haveParliaments as frequent as they can be without distracting them in theprosecution of public business: on one hand, to secure their dependenceupon the people; on the other, to give them that quiet in their mindsand that ease in their fortunes as to enable them to perform the mostarduous and most painful duty in the world with spirit, with efficiency, with independency, and with experience, as real public counsellors, notas the canvassers at a perpetual election. It is wise to compass as manygood ends as possibly you can, and, seeing there are inconveniences onboth sides, with benefits on both, to give up a part of the benefit tosoften the inconvenience. The perfect cure is impracticable; because thedisorder is dear to those from whom alone the cure can possibly bederived. The utmost to be done is to palliate, to mitigate, to respite, to put off the evil day of the Constitution to its latest possiblehour, --and may it be a very late one!

This bill, I fear, would precipitate one of two consequences, --I knownot which most likely, or which most dangerous: either that the crown, by its constant, stated power, influence, and revenue, would wear outall opposition in elections, or that a violent and furious popularspirit would arise. I must see, to satisfy me, the remedies; I must see, from their operation in the cure of the old evil, and in the cure ofthose new evils which are inseparable from all remedies, how theybalance each other, and what is the total result. The excellence ofmathematics and metaphysics is, to have but one thing before you; but heforms the best judgment in all moral disquisitions who has the greatestnumber and variety of considerations in one view before him, and cantake them in with the best possible consideration of the middle resultsof all. 

We of the opposition, who are not friends to the bill, give this pledgeat least of our integrity and sincerity to the people, --that in oursituation of systematic opposition to the present ministers, in whichall our hope of rendering it effectual depends upon popular interest andfavor, we will not flatter them by a surrender of our uninfluencedjudgment and opinion; we give a security, that, if ever we should be inanother situation, no flattery to any other sort of power and influencewould induce us to act against the true interests of the people. 

All are agreed that Parliaments should not be perpetual; the onlyquestion is, What is the most convenient time for their duration?--onwhich there are three opinions. We are agreed, too, that the term oughtnot to be chosen most likely in its operation to spread corruption, andto augment the already overgrown influence of the crown. On theseprinciples I mean to debate the question. It is easy to pretend a zealfor liberty. Those who think themselves not likely to be incumbered withthe performance of their promises, either from their known inability ortotal indifference about the performance, never fail to entertain themost lofty ideas. They are certainly the most specious; and they costthem neither reflection to frame, nor pains to modify, nor management tosupport. The task is of another nature to those who mean to promisenothing that it is not in their intention, or may possibly be in theirpower to perform, --to those who are bound and principled no more todelude the understandings than to violate the liberty of theirfellow-subjects. Faithful watchmen we ought to be over the rights andprivileges of the people. But our duty, if we are qualified for it as weought, is to give them information, and not to receive it from them: weare not to go to school to them, to learn the principles of law andgovernment. In doing so, we should not dutifully serve, but we shouldbasely and scandalously betray the people, who are not capable of thisservice by nature, nor in any instance called to it by the Constitution. I reverentially look up to the opinion of the people, and with an awethat is almost superstitious. I should be ashamed to show my face beforethem, if I changed my ground as they cried up or cried down men orthings or opinions, --if I wavered and shifted about with every change, and joined in it or opposed as best answered any low interest orpassion, --if I held them up hopes which I knew I never intended, orpromised what I well knew I could not perform. Of all these things theyare perfect sovereign judges without appeal; but as to the detail ofparticular measures, or to any general schemes of policy, they haveneither enough of speculation in the closet nor of experience inbusiness to decide upon it. They can well see whether we are tools of acourt or their honest servants. Of that they can well judge, --and I wishthat they always exercised their judgment; but of the particular meritsof a measure I have other standards. . . . 

That the frequency of elections proposed by this bill has a tendency toincrease the power and consideration of the electors, not lessencorruptibility, I do most readily allow: so far it is desirable. This iswhat it has: I will tell you now what it has not. 1st. It has no sort oftendency to increase their integrity and public spirit, unless anincrease of power has an operation upon voters in elections, that it hasin no other situation in the world, and upon no other part of mankind. 2nd. This bill has no tendency to limit the quantity of influence in thecrown, to render its operation more difficult, or to counteract thatoperation which it cannot prevent in any way whatsoever. It has its fullweight, its full range, and its uncontrolled operation on the electorsexactly as it had before. 3rd. Nor, thirdly, does it abate the interestor inclination of ministers to apply that influence to the electors: onthe contrary, it renders it much more necessary to them, if they seek tohave a majority in Parliament, to increase the means of that influence, and redouble their diligence, and to sharpen dexterity in theapplication. The whole effect of the bill is, therefore, the removingthe application of some part of the influence from the elected to theelectors, and further to strengthen and extend a court interest alreadygreat and powerful in boroughs: here to fix their magazines and placesof arms, and thus to make them the principal, not the secondary, theatreof their manœuvres for securing a determined majority in Parliament. 

I believe nobody will deny that the electors are corruptible. They aremen, --it is saying nothing worse of them; many of them are but illinformed in their minds, many feeble in their circumstances, easilyoverreached, easily seduced. If they are many, the wages of corruptionare the lower; and would to God it were not rather a contemptible andhypocritical adulation than a charitable sentiment, to say that there isalready no debauchery, no corruption, no bribery, no perjury, no blindfury and interested faction among the electors in many parts of thiskingdom!--nor is it surprising, or at all blamable, in that class ofprivate men, when they see their neighbors aggrandized, and themselvespoor and virtuous without that _éclat_ or dignity which attends men inhigher situations. 

But admit it were true that the great mass of the electors were too vastan object for court influence to grasp or extend to, and that in despairthey must abandon it; he must be very ignorant of the state of everypopular interest, who does not know that in all the corporations, allthe open boroughs, indeed in every district of the kingdom, there issome leading man, some agitator, some wealthy merchant or considerablemanufacturer, some active attorney, some popular preacher, somemoney-lender, _&c. , &c. , _ who is followed by the whole flock. This isthe style of all free countries. 

 Multum in Fabiâ valet hic, valet ille Velinâ; Cuilibet hic fasces dabit, eripietque curule. 

These spirits, each of which informs and governs his own little orb, areneither so many, nor so little powerful, nor so incorruptible, but thata minister may, as he does frequently, find means of gaining them, andthrough, them all their followers. To establish, therefore, a verygeneral influence among electors will no more be found an impracticableproject than to gain an undue influence over members of Parliament. Therefore I am apprehensive that this bill, though it shifts the placeof the disorder, does by no means relieve the Constitution. I wentthrough almost every contested election in the beginning of thisParliament, and acted as a manager in very many of them; by which, though as at a school of pretty severe and rugged discipline, I came tohave some degree of instruction concerning the means by whichParliamentary interests are in general procured and supported. 

Theory, I know, would suppose that every general election is to therepresentative a day of judgment, in which he appears before hisconstituents to account for the use of the talent with which theyintrusted him, and for the improvement he has made of it for the publicadvantage. It would be so, if every corruptible representative were tofind an enlightened and incorruptible constituent. But the practice andknowledge of the world will not suffer us to be ignorant that theConstitution on paper is one thing, and in fact and experience isanother. We must know that the candidate, instead of trusting at hiselection to the testimony of his behavior in Parliament, must bring thetestimony of a large sum of money, the capacity of liberal expense inentertainments, the power of serving and obliging the rulers ofcorporations, of winning over the popular leaders of political clubs, associations, and neighborhoods. It is ten thousand times more necessaryto show himself a man of power than a man of integrity, in almost allthe elections with which I have been acquainted. Elections, therefore, become a matter of heavy expense; and if contests are frequent, to manythey will become a matter of an expense totally ruinous, which nofortunes can bear, but least of all the landed fortunes, incumbered asthey often, indeed as they mostly are, with debts, with portions, withjointures, and tied up in the hands of the possessor by the limitationsof settlement. It is a material, it is in my opinion a lastingconsideration, in all the questions concerning election. Let no onethink the charges of elections a trivial matter. 

The charge, therefore, of elections ought never to be lost sight of in aquestion concerning their frequency; because the grand object you seekis independence. Independence of mind will ever be more or lessinfluenced by independence of fortune; and if every three years theexhausting sluices of entertainments, drinkings, open houses, to saynothing of bribery, are to be periodically drawn up and renewed, --ifgovernment favors, for which now, in some shape or other, the whole raceof men are candidates, are to be called for upon every occasion, I seethat private fortunes will be washed away, and every, even to the least, trace of independence borne down by the torrent. I do not seriouslythink this Constitution, even to the wrecks of it, could survive fivetriennial elections. If you are to fight the battle, you must put onthe armor of the ministry, you must call in the public to the aid ofprivate money. The expense of the last election has been computed (and Iam persuaded that it has not been overrated) at 1, 500, 000_l. _, --threeshillings in the pound more in [than?] the land-tax. About the close ofthe last Parliament and the beginning of this, several agents forboroughs went about, and I remember well that it was in every one oftheir mouths, "Sir, your election will cost you three thousand pounds, if you are independent; but if the ministry supports you, it may be donefor two, and perhaps for less. " And, indeed, the thing spoke itself. Where a living was to be got for one, a commission in the army foranother, a lift in the navy for a third, and custom-house officesscattered about without measure or number, who doubts but money may besaved? The Treasury may even add money: but, indeed, it is superfluous. A gentleman of two thousand a year, who meets another of the samefortune, fights with equal arms; but if to one of the candidates you adda thousand a year in places for himself, and a power of giving away asmuch among others, one must, or there is no truth in arithmeticaldemonstration, ruin his adversary, if he is to meet him and to fightwith him every third year. It will be said I do not allow for theoperation of character: but I do; and I know it will have its weight inmost elections, --perhaps it may be decisive in some; but there are fewin which it will prevent great expenses. The destruction of independentfortunes will be the consequence on the part of the candidate. What willbe the consequence of triennial corruption, triennial drunkenness, triennial idleness, triennial lawsuits, litigations, prosecutions, triennial frenzy, --of society dissolved, industry interrupted, ruined, --of those personal hatreds that will never be suffered tosoften, those animosities and feuds which will be rendered immortal, those quarrels which are never to be appeased, --morals vitiated andgangrened to the vitals? I think no stable and useful advantages wereever made by the money got at elections by the voter, but all he gets isdoubly lost to the public: it is money given to diminish the generalstock of the community, which is in the industry of the subject. I amsure that it is a good while before he or his family settle again totheir business. Their heads will never cool; the temptations ofelections will be forever glittering before their eyes. They will allgrow politicians; every one, quitting his business, will choose toenrich himself by his vote. They will all take the gauging-rod; newplaces will be made for them; they will run to the custom-house quay;their looms and ploughs will be deserted. 

So was Rome destroyed by the disorders of continual elections, thoughthose of Rome were sober disorders. They had nothing but faction, bribery, bread, and stage-plays, to debauch them: we have theinflammation of liquor superadded, a fury hotter than any of them. Therethe contest was only between citizen and citizen: here you have thecontests of ambitious citizens of one side supported by the crown tooppose to the efforts (let it be so) of private and unsupported ambitionon the other. Yet Rome was destroyed by the frequency and charge ofelections, and the monstrous expense of an unremitted courtship to thepeople. I think, therefore, the independent candidate and elector mayeach be destroyed by it, the whole body of the community be an infinitesufferer, and a vicious ministry the only gainer. 

Gentlemen, I know, feel the weight of this argument; they agree, thatthis would be the consequence of more frequent elections, if things wereto continue as they are. But they think the greatness and frequency ofthe evil would itself be, a remedy for it, --that, sitting but for ashort time, the member would not find it worth while to make such vastexpenses, while the fear of their constituents will hold them the moreeffectually to their duty. 

To this I answer, that experience is full against them. This is no newthing; we have had triennial Parliaments; at no period of time wereseats more eagerly contested. The expenses of elections ran higher, taking the state of all charges, than they do now. The expense ofentertainments was such, that an act, equally, severe and ineffectual, was made against it; every monument of the time bears witness of theexpense, and most of the acts against corruption in elections were thenmade; all the writers talked of it and lamented it. Will any one thinkthat a corporation will be contented with a bowl of punch or a piece ofbeef the less, because elections are every three, instead of every sevenyears? Will they change their wine for ale, because they are to get moreale three years hence? Don't think it. Will they make fewer demands forthe advantages o£ patronage in favors and offices, because their memberis brought more under their power? We have not only our own historicalexperience in England upon this subject, but we have the experiencecoexisting with us in Ireland, where, since their Parliament has beenshortened, the expense of elections has been so far from being lowered, that it has been very near doubled. Formerly they sat for the king'slife; the ordinary charge of a seat in Parliament was then fifteenhundred pounds. They now sit eight years, four sessions; it is nowtwenty-five hundred pounds, and upwards. The spirit of _emulation_ hasalso been extremely increased, and all who are acquainted with the toneof that country have no doubt that the spirit is still growing, that newcandidates will take the field, that the contests will be more violent, and the expenses of elections larger than ever. 

It never can be otherwise. A seat in this House, for good purposes, forbad purposes, for no purposes at all, (except the mere considerationderived from being concerned in the public counsels, ) will ever be afirst-rate object of ambition in England. Ambition is no exactcalculator. Avarice itself does not calculate strictly, when it games. One thing is certain, --that in this political game the great lottery ofpower is that into which men will purchase with millions of chancesagainst them. In Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where thehead itself are so insecure that scarcely any have died in their bedsfor ages, so that the bowstring is the natural death of bashaws, yet inno country is power and distinction (precarious enough, God knows, inall) sought for with such boundless avidity, --as if the value of placewas enhanced by the danger and insecurity of its tenure. Nothing willever make a seat in this House not an object of desire to numbers by anymeans or at any charge, but the depriving it of all power and alldignity. This would do it. This is the true and only nostrum for thatpurpose. But an House of Commons without power and without dignity, either in itself or in its members, is no House of Commons for thepurposes of this Constitution. 

But they will be afraid to act ill, if they know that the day of theiraccount is always near. I wish it were true; but it is not: here againwe have experience, and experience is against us. The distemper of thisage is a poverty of spirit and of genius: it is trifling, it is futile, worse than ignorant, superficially taught, with the politics and moralsof girls at a boarding-school rather than of men and statesmen: but itis not yet desperately wicked, or so scandalously venal as in formertimes. Did not a triennial Parliament give up the national dignity, approve the peace of Utrecht, and almost give up everything else, intaking every step to defeat the Protestant succession? Was not theConstitution saved by those who had no election at all to go to, theLords, because the court applied to electors, and by various meanscarried them from their true interests, so that the Tory ministry had amajority without an application to a single member? Now as to theconduct of the members, it was then far from pure and independent. Bribery was infinitely more flagrant. A predecessor of yours, Mr. Speaker, put the question of his own expulsion for bribery. Sir WilliamMusgrave was a wise man, a grave man, an independent man, a man of goodfortune and good family; however, he carried on, while in opposition, atraffic, a shameful traffic, with the ministry. Bishop Burnet knew ofsix thousand pounds which he had received at one payment. I believe thepayment of sums in hard money, plain, naked bribery, is rare amongst us. It was then far from uncommon. 

A triennial was near ruining, a septennial Parliament saved yourConstitution; nor, perhaps, have you ever known a more flourishingperiod, for the union of national prosperity, dignity, and liberty, than the sixty years you have passed under that constitution ofParliament. 

The shortness of time in which they are to reap the profits of iniquityis far from checking the avidity of corrupt men; it renders theminfinitely more ravenous. They rush violently and precipitately on theirobject; they lose all regard to decorum. The moments of profits areprecious; never are men so wicked as during a general mortality. It wasso in the great plague at Athens, every symptom of which (and this itsworse symptom amongst the rest) is so finely related by a greathistorian of antiquity. It was so in the plague of London in 1665. Itappears in soldiers, sailors, &c. Whoever would contrive to render thelife of man much shorter than it is would, I am satisfied, find thesurest receipt for increasing the wickedness of our nature. 

Thus, in my opinion, the shortness of a triennial sitting would have thefollowing ill effects: It would make the member more shamelessly andshockingly corrupt; it would increase his dependence on those who couldbest support him at his election; it would wrack and tear to pieces thefortunes of those who stood upon their own fortunes and their privateinterest; it would make the electors infinitely more venal; and it wouldmake the whole body of the people, who are, whether they have votes ornot, concerned in elections, more lawless, more idle, more debauched; itwould utterly destroy the sobriety, the industry, the integrity, thesimplicity of all the people, and undermine, I am much afraid, thedeepest and best-laid foundations of the commonwealth. 

Those who have spoken and written upon this subject without doors donot so much deny the probable existence of these inconveniences in theirmeasure as they trust for their prevention to remedies of various sortswhich they propose. First, a place bill. But if this will not do, asthey fear it will not, then, they say, We will have a rotation, and acertain number of you shall be rendered incapable of being elected forten years. Then for the electors, they shall ballot. The members ofParliament also shall decide by ballot. A fifth project is the change ofthe present legal representation of the kingdom. On all this I shallobserve, that it will be very unsuitable to your wisdom to adopt theproject of a bill to which there are objections insuperable by anythingin the bill itself, upon the hope that those objections may be removedby subsequent projects, every one of which is full of difficulties ofits own, and which are all of them very essential alterations in theConstitution. This seems very irregular and unusual. If anything shouldmake this a very doubtful measure, what can make it more so than that inthe opinion of its advocates it would aggravate all our oldinconveniences in such a manner as to require a total alteration in theConstitution of the kingdom? If the remedies are proper in triennial, they will not be less so in septennial elections. Let us try themfirst, --see how the House relishes them, --see how they will operate inthe nation, --and then, having felt your way, and prepared against theseinconveniences. . . . 

The honorable gentleman sees that I respect the principle upon which hegoes, as well as his intentions and his abilities. He will believe thatI do not differ from him wantonly and on trivial grounds. He is verysure that it was not his embracing one way which determined me to takethe other. _I_ have not in newspapers, to derogate from his fair famewith the nation, printed the first rude sketch of his bill withungenerous and invidious comments. _I_ have not, in conversationsindustriously circulated about the town, and talked on the benches ofthis House, attributed his conduct to motives low and unworthy, and asgroundless as they are injurious. _I_ do not affect to be frightenedwith this proposition, as if some hideous spectre had started from hell, which was to be sent back again by every form of exorcism and every kindof incantation. _I_ invoke no Acheron to overwhelm him in the whirlpoolsof its muddy gulf. _I_ do not tell the respectable mover and seconder, by a perversion of their sense and expressions, that their propositionhalts between the ridiculous and the dangerous. _I_ am not one of thosewho start up, three at a time, and fall upon and strike at him with somuch eagerness that our daggers hack one another in his sides. Myhonorable friend has not brought down a spirited imp of chivalry to winthe first achievement and blazon of arms on his milk-white shield in afield listed against him, --nor brought out the generous offspring oflions, and said to them, --"Not against that side of the forest! bewareof that!--here is the prey, where you are to fasten your paws!"--andseasoning his unpractised jaws with blood, tell him, --"This is the milkfor which you are to thirst hereafter!" _We_ furnish at his expense noholiday, --nor suspend hell, that a crafty Ixion may have rest from hiswheel, --nor give the common adversary (if he be a common adversary)reason to say, --"I would have put in my word to oppose, but theeagerness of your allies in your social war was such that I could notbreak in upon you. " I hope he sees and feels, and that every member seesand feels along with him, the difference between amicable dissent andcivil discord. 

SPEECH

ON A

MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 7, 1782, FOR

A COMMITTEE TO INQUIRE INTO THE STATE OF THE REPRESENTATION OF THECOMMONS IN PARLIAMENT. 

Mr. Speaker, --We have now discovered, at the close of the eighteenthcentury, that the Constitution of England, which for a series of ageshad been the proud distinction of this country, always the admirationand sometimes the envy of the wise and learned in every othernation, --we have discovered that this boasted Constitution, in the mostboasted part of it, is a gross imposition upon the understanding ofmankind, an insult to their feelings, and acting by contrivancesdestructive to the best and most valuable interests of the people. Ourpolitical architects have taken a survey of the fabric of the BritishConstitution. It is singular that they report nothing against the crown, nothing against the lords: but in the House of Commons everything isunsound; it is ruinous in every part; it is infested by the dry rot, andready to tumble about our ears without their immediate help. You know bythe faults they find what are their ideas of the alteration. As allgovernment stands upon opinion, they know that the way utterly todestroy it is to remove that opinion, to take away all reverence, allconfidence from it; and then, at the first blast of public discontentand popular tumult, it tumbles to the ground. 

In considering this question, they who oppose it oppose it on differentgrounds. One is in the nature of a previous question: that somealterations may be expedient, but that this is not the time for makingthem. The other is, that no essential alterations are at all wanting, and that neither _now_ nor at _any_ time is it prudent or safe to bemeddling with the fundamental principles and ancient tried usages of ourConstitution, --that our representation is as nearly perfect as thenecessary imperfection of human affairs and of human creatures willsuffer it to be, --and that it is a subject of prudent and honest use andthankful enjoyment, and not of captious criticism and rash experiment. 

On the other side there are two parties, who proceed on two grounds, inmy opinion, as they state them, utterly irreconcilable. The one isjuridical, the other political. The one is in the nature of a claim ofright, on the supposed rights of man as man: this party desire thedecision of a suit. The other ground, as far as I can divine what itdirectly means, is, that the representation is not so politically framedas to answer the theory of its institution. As to the claim of _right_, the meanest petitioner, the most gross and ignorant, is as good as thebest: in some respects his claim is more favorable, on account of hisignorance; his weakness, his poverty, and distress only add to histitles; he sues _in forma pauperis_; he ought to be a favorite of thecourt. But when the _other_ ground is taken, when the question ispolitical, when a new constitution is to be made on a sound theory ofgovernment, then the presumptuous pride of didactic ignorance is to beexcluded from the counsel in this high and arduous matter, which oftenbids defiance to the experience of the wisest. The first claims apersonal representation; the latter rejects it with scorn and fervor. The language of the first party is plain and intelligible; they whoplead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short ofpersonal representation, because all _natural_ rights must be the rightsof individuals, as by _nature_ there is no such thing as politic orcorporate personality: all these ideas are mere fictions of law, theyare creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, andnothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural andpersonal representation are essentially and eternally at variance withthose who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculousto talk to them of the British Constitution upon any or upon all of itsbases: for they lay it down, that every man ought to govern, himself, and that, where he cannot go, himself, he must send his representative;that all other government is usurpation, and is so far from having aclaim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, toresist it. Nine tenths of the reformers argue thus, --that is, on thenatural right. 

It is impossible not to make some reflection on the nature of thisclaim, or avoid a comparison between the extent of the principle and thepresent object of the demand. If this claim be founded, it is clear towhat it goes. The House of Commons, in that light, undoubtedly, is norepresentative of the people, as a collection of individuals. Nobodypretends it, nobody can justify such an assertion. When you come toexamine into this claim of right, founded on the right ofself-government in each individual, you find the thing demandedinfinitely short of the principle of the demand. What! _one third_ onlyof the legislature, and of the government no share at all? What sort oftreaty of partition is this for those who have an inherent right to thewhole? Give them all they ask, and your grant is still a cheat: for howcomes only a third to be their younger-children's fortune in thissettlement? How came they neither to have the choice of kings, or lords, or judges, or generals, or admirals, or bishops, or priests, orministers, or justices of peace? Why, what have you to answer in favorof the prior rights of the crown and peerage but this: Our Constitutionis a prescriptive constitution; it is a constitution whose soleauthority is, that it has existed time out of mind? It is settled inthese _two_ portions against one, legislatively, --and in the whole ofthe judicature, the whole of the federal capacity, of the executive, theprudential, and the financial administration, in one alone. Nor was yourHouse of Lords and the prerogatives of the crown settled on anyadjudication in favor of natural rights: for they could never be sopartitioned. Your king, your lords, your judges, your juries, grand andlittle, all are prescriptive; and what proves it is the disputes, notyet concluded, and never near becoming so, when any of them firstoriginated. Prescription is the most solid of all titles, not only toproperty, but, which is to secure that property, to government. Theyharmonize with each other, and give mutual aid to one another. It isaccompanied with another ground of authority in the constitution of thehuman mind, presumption. It is a presumption in favor of any settledscheme of government against any untried project, that a nation has longexisted and flourished under it. It is a better presumption even of the_choice_ of a nation, --far better than any sudden and temporaryarrangement by actual election. Because a nation is not an idea only oflocal extent and individual momentary aggregation, but it is an idea ofcontinuity which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space. Andthis is a choice not of one day or one set of people, not a tumultuaryand giddy choice; it is a deliberate election of ages and ofgenerations; it is a constitution, made by what is ten thousand timesbetter than choice; it is made by the peculiar circumstances, occasions, tempers, dispositions, and moral, civil, and social habitudes of thepeople, which, disclose themselves only in a long space of time. It is avestment which accommodates itself to the body. Nor is prescription ofgovernment formed upon blind, unmeaning prejudices. For man is a mostunwise and a most wise being. The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but thespecies is wise, and, when time is given to it, as a species, it almostalways acts right. 

The reason for the crown as it is, for the lords as they are, is myreason for the commons as they are, the electors as they are. Now if thecrown, and the lords, and the judicatures are all prescriptive, so isthe House of Commons of the very same origin, and of no other. We andour electors have their powers and privileges both made andcircumscribed by prescription, as much to the full as the other parts;and as such we have always claimed them, and on no other title. TheHouse of Commons is a legislative body corporate by prescription, notmade upon any given theory, but existing prescriptively, --just like therest. This proscription has made it essentially what it is, an aggregatecollection of three parts, knights, citizens, burgesses. The questionis, whether this has been always so, since the House of Commons hastaken its present shape and circumstances, and has been an essentialoperative part of the Constitution, --which, I take it, it has been forat least five hundred years. 

This I resolve to myself in the affirmative: and then another questionarises:--Whether this House stands firm upon its ancient foundations, and is not, by time and accidents, so declined from its perpendicular asto want the hand of the wise and experienced architects of the day toset it upright again, and to prop and buttress it up forduration;--whether it continues true to the principles upon which it hashitherto stood;--whether this be _de facto_ the constitution of theHouse of Commons, as it has been since the time that the House ofCommons has without dispute become a necessary and an efficient part ofthe British Constitution. To ask whether a thing which has always beenthe same stands to its usual principle seems to me to be perfectlyabsurd: for how do you know the principles, but from the construction?and if that remains the same, the principles remain the same. It is truethat to say your Constitution is what it has been is no sufficientdefence for those who say it is a bad constitution. It is an answer tothose who say that it is a degenerate constitution. To those who say itis a bad one, I answer, Look to its effects. In all moral machinery, themoral results are its test. 

On what grounds do we go to restore our Constitution to what it has beenat some given period, or to reform and reconstruct it upon principlesmore conformable to a sound theory of government? A prescriptivegovernment, such as ours, never was the work of any legislator, neverwas made upon any foregone theory. It seems to me a preposterous way ofreasoning, and a perfect confusion of ideas, to take the theories whichlearned and speculative men have made from that government, and then, supposing it made on those theories which were made from it, to accusethe government as not corresponding with them. I do not vilify theoryand speculation: no, because that would be to vilify reason itself, _Neque decipitur ratio, neque decipit unquam_. No, --whenever I speakagainst theory, I mean always a weak, erroneous, fallacious, unfounded, or imperfect theory; and one of the ways of discovering that it is afalse theory is by comparing it with practice. This is the truetouchstone of all theories which regard man and the affairs ofmen, --Does it suit his nature in general?--does it suit his nature asmodified by his habits?

The more frequently this affair is discussed, the stronger the caseappears to the sense and the feelings of mankind. I have no more doubtthan I entertain of my existence, that this very thing, which is statedas an horrible thing, is the means of the preservation of ourConstitution whilst it lasts, --of curing it of many of the disorderswhich, attending every species of institution, would attend theprinciple of an exact local representation, or a representation on theprinciple of numbers. If you reject personal representation, you arepushed upon expedience; and, then what they wish us to do is, to prefertheir speculations on that subject to the happy experience of thiscountry, of a growing liberty and a growing prosperity for five hundredyears. Whatever respect I have for their talents, this, for one, I willnot do. Then what is the standard of expedience? Expedience is thatwhich is good for the community, and good for every individual in it. Now this expedience is the _desideratum_, to be sought either withoutthe experience of means or with that experience. If without, as in caseof the fabrication of a new commonwealth, I will hear the learnedarguing what promises to be expedient; but if we are to judge of acommonwealth actually existing, the first thing I inquire is, What hasbeen _found_ expedient or inexpedient? And I will not take their_promise_ rather than the _performance_ of the Constitution. 

. . . . But no, this was not the cause of the discontents. I went throughmost of the northern parts, --the Yorkshire election was then raging; theyear before, through most of the western counties, --Bath, Bristol, Gloucester: not one word, either in the towns or country, on the subjectof representation; much on the receipt tax, something on Mr. Fox'sambition; much greater apprehension of danger from thence than from wantof representation. One would think that the ballast of the ship wasshifted with us, and that our Constitution had the gunwale under water. But can you fairly and distinctly point out what one evil or grievancehas happened which you can refer to the representative not following theopinion of his constituents? What one symptom do we find of thisinequality? But it is not an arithmetical inequality with which we oughtto trouble ourselves. If there be a moral, a political equality, this isthe _desideratum_ in our Constitution, and in every constitution in theworld. Moral inequality is as between places and between classes. Now, I ask, what advantage do you find that the places which abound inrepresentation possess over others in which it is more scanty, insecurity for freedom, in security for justice, or in any one of thosemeans of procuring temporal prosperity and eternal happiness the endsfor which society was formed? Are the local interests of Cornwall andWiltshire, for instance, their roads, canals, their prisons, theirpolice, better than Yorkshire, Warwickshire, or Staffordshire? Warwickhas members: is Warwick or Stafford more opulent, happy, or free thanNewcastle, or than Birmingham? Is Wiltshire the pampered favorite, whilst Yorkshire, like the child of the bondwoman, is turned out to thedesert? This is like the unhappy persons who live, if they can be saidto live, in the statical chair, --who are ever feeling their pulse, andwho do not judge of health by the aptitude of the body to perform itsfunctions, but by their ideas of what ought to be the true balancebetween the several secretions. Is a committee of Cornwall, &c, thronged, and the others deserted? No. You have an equal representation, because you have men equally interested in the prosperity of the whole, who are involved in the general interest and the general sympathy; and, perhaps, these places furnishing a superfluity of public agents andadministrators, (whether in strictness they are representatives or not Ido not mean to inquire, but they are agents and administrators, ) theywill stand clearer of local interests, passions, prejudices, and cabalsthan the others, and therefore preserve the balance of the parts, andwith a more general view and a more steady hand than the rest. . . . 

In every political proposal we must not leave out of the question thepolitical views and object of the proposer; and these we discover, notby what he says, but by the principles he lays down. "I mean, " says he, "a moderate and temperate reform: that is, I mean to do as little goodas possible. " If the Constitution be what you represent it, and there beno danger in the change, you do wrong not to make the reformcommensurate to the abuse. Fine reformer, indeed! generous donor! Whatis the cause of this parsimony of the liberty which you dole out to thepeople? Why all this limitation in giving blessings and benefits tomankind? You admit that there is an extreme in liberty, which may beinfinitely noxious to those who are to receive it, and which in the endwill leave them no liberty at all. I think so, too. They know it, andthey feel it. The question is, then, What is the standard of thatextreme? What that gentleman, and the associations, or some parts oftheir phalanxes, think proper? Then our liberties are in their pleasure;it depends on their arbitrary will how far I shall be free. I will havenone of that freedom. If, therefore, the standard of moderation besought for, I will seek for it. Where? Not in their fancies, nor in myown: I will seek for it where I know it is to be found, --in theConstitution I actually enjoy. Here it says to an encroachingprerogative, --"Your sceptre has its length; you cannot add an hair toyour head, or a gem to your crown, but what an eternal law has given toit. " Here it says to an overweening peerage, --"Your pride finds banksthat it cannot overflow": here to a tumultuous and giddy people, --"Thereis a bound to the raging of the sea. " Our Constitution is like ourisland, which uses and restrains its subject sea; in vain the wavesroar. In that Constitution, I know, and exultingly I feel, both that Iam free, and that I am not free dangerously to myself or to others. Iknow that no power on earth, acting as I ought to do, can touch my life, my liberty, or my property. I have that inward and dignifiedconsciousness of my own security and independence, which constitutes, and is the only thing which, does constitute, the proud and comfortablesentiment of freedom in the human breast. I know, too, and I bless Godfor, my safe mediocrity: I know, that, if I possessed all the talents ofthe gentlemen on the side of the House I sit, and on the other, Icannot, by royal favor, or by popular delusion, or by oligarchicalcabal, elevate myself above a certain very limited point, so as toendanger my own fall, or the ruin of my country. I know there is anorder that keeps things fast in their place: it is made to us, and weare made to it. Why not ask another wife, other children, another body, another mind?

The great object of most of these reformers is, to prepare thedestruction of the Constitution, by disgracing and discrediting theHouse of Commons. For they think, (prudently, in my opinion, ) that, ifthey can persuade the nation that the House of Commons is so constitutedas not to secure the public liberty, not to have a proper connectionwith the public interests, so constituted as not either actually orvirtually to be the representative of the people, it will be easy toprove that a government composed of a monarchy, an oligarchy chosen bythe crown, and such a House of Commons, whatever good can be in such asystem, can by no means be a system of free government. 

The Constitution of England is never to have a quietus; it is to becontinually vilified, attacked, reproached, resisted; instead of beingthe hope and sure anchor in all storms, instead of being the means ofredress to all grievances, itself is the grand grievance of the nation, our shame instead of our glory. If the only specific plan proposed, individual personal representation, is directly rejected by the personwho is looked on as the great support of this business, then the onlyway of considering it is a question of convenience. An honorablegentleman prefers the individual to the present. He therefore himselfsees no middle term whatsoever, and therefore prefers, of what he sees, the individual: this is the only thing distinct and sensible that hasbeen advocated. He has, then, a scheme, which is the individualrepresentation, --he is not at a loss, not inconsistent, --which schemethe other right honorable gentleman reprobates. Now what does this goto, but to lead directly to anarchy? For to discredit the onlygovernment which he either possesses or can project, what is this but todestroy all government? and this is anarchy. My right honorable friend, in supporting this motion, disgraces his friends and justifies hisenemies in order to blacken the Constitution of his country, even ofthat House of Commons which supported him. There is a difference betweena moral or political exposure of a public evil relative to theadministration of government, whether in men or systems, and adeclaration of defects, real or supposed, in the fundamentalconstitution of your country. The first may be cured in the individualby the motives of religion, virtue, honor, fear, shame, or interest. Menmay be made to abandon also false systems, by exposing their absurdityor mischievous tendency to their own better thoughts, or to the contemptor indignation of the public; and after all, if they should exist, andexist uncorrected, they only disgrace individuals as fugitive opinions. But it is quite otherwise with the frame and constitution of the state:if that is disgraced, patriotism is destroyed in its very source. No manhas ever willingly obeyed, much less was desirous of defending with hisblood, a mischievous and absurd scheme of government. Our first, ourdearest, most comprehensive relation, our country, is gone. 

It suggests melancholy reflections, in consequence of the strange coursewe have long held, that we are now no longer quarrelling about thecharacter, or about the conduct of men, or the tenor of measures, but weare grown out of humor with the English Constitution itself: this isbecome the object of the animosity of Englishmen. This Constitution informer days used to be the admiration and the envy of the world: it wasthe pattern for politicians, the theme of the eloquent, the meditationof the philosopher, in every part of the world. As to Englishmen, it wastheir pride, their consolation. By it they lived, for it they were readyto die. Its defects, if it had any, were partly covered by partiality, and partly borne by prudence. Now all its excellencies are forgot, itsfaults are now forcibly dragged into day, exaggerated by every artificeof representation. It is despised and rejected of men, and every deviceand invention of ingenuity or idleness set up in opposition or inpreference to it. It is to this humor, and it is to the measures growingout of it, that I set myself (I hope not alone) in the most determinedopposition. Never before did we at any time in this country meet uponthe theory of our frame of government, to sit in judgment on theConstitution of our country, to call it as a delinquent before us, andto accuse it of every defect and every vice, --to see whether it, anobject of our veneration, even our adoration, did or did not accord witha preconceived scheme in the minds of certain gentlemen. Cast your eyeson the journals of Parliament. It is for fear of losing the inestimabletreasure we have that I do not venture to game it out of my hands forthe vain hope of improving it. I look with filial reverence on theConstitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces, and put itinto the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with the puddle oftheir compounds, into youth and vigor. On the contrary, I will driveaway such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and with lenientarts extend a parent's breath. 

SPEECH

ON

A MOTION, MADE BY THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM DOWDESWELL, MARCH 7, 1771, FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN

A BILL FOR EXPLAINING THE POWERS OF JURIES IN PROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS. 

TOGETHER WITH

A LETTER IN VINDICATION OF THAT MEASURE, AND

A COPY OF THE PROPOSED BILL. 

I have always understood that a superintendence over the doctrines aswell as the proceedings of the courts of justice was a principal objectof the constitution of this House, --that you were to watch at once overthe lawyer and the law, --that there should be an orthodox faith, as wellas proper works: and I have always looked with a degree of reverence andadmiration on this mode of superintendence. For, being totallydisengaged from the detail of juridical practice, we come somethingperhaps the better qualified, and certainly much the better disposed, toassert the genuine principle of the laws, in which we can, as a body, have no other than an enlarged and a public interest. We have no commoncause of a professional attachment or professional emulations to biasour minds; we have no foregone opinions which from obstinacy and falsepoint of honor we think ourselves at all events obliged to support. Sothat, with our own minds perfectly disengaged from the exercise, we maysuperintend the execution of the national justice, which from thiscircumstance is better secured to the people than in any other countryunder heaven it can be. As our situation puts us in a proper condition, our power enables us to execute this trust. We may, when we see cause ofcomplaint, administer a remedy: it is in our choice by an address toremove an improper judge, by impeachment before the peers to pursue todestruction a corrupt judge, or by bill to assert, to explain, toenforce, or to reform the law, just as the occasion and necessity of thecase shall guide us. We stand in a situation very honorable to ourselvesand very useful to our country, if we do not abuse or abandon the trustthat is placed in us. 

The question now before you is upon the power of juries in prosecutingfor libels. There are four opinions:--1. That the doctrine as held bythe courts is proper and constitutional, and therefore should not bealtered; 2. That it is neither proper nor constitutional, but that itwill be rendered worse by your interference; 3. That it is wrong, butthat the only remedy is a bill of retrospect; 4. The opinion of thosewho bring in the bill, that the thing is wrong, but that it is enough todirect the judgment of the court in future. 

The bill brought in is for the purpose of asserting and securing a greatobject in the juridical constitution of this kingdom, which, from a longseries of practices and opinions in our judges, has _in one point_, andin one very essential point, deviated from the true principle. 

It is the very ancient privilege of the people of England, that theyshall be tried, except in the known exceptions, not by judges appointedby the crown, but by their own fellow-subjects, the peers of that countycourt at which they owe their suit and service; and out of thisprinciple the trial by juries has grown. This principle has not, that Ican find, been contested in any case by any authority whatsoever; butthere is one case in which, without directly contesting the principle, the whole substance, energy, and virtue of the privilege is taken outof it, --that is, in the case of a trial by indictment or information fora libel. The doctrine in that case, laid down by several judges, amountsto this: that the jury have no competence, where a libel is alleged, except to find the gross corporeal facts of the writing and thepublication, together with the identity of the things and persons towhich it refers; but that the intent and the tendency of the work, inwhich intent and tendency the whole criminality consists, is the soleand exclusive province of the judge. Thus having reduced the jury to thecognizance of facts not in themselves presumptively criminal, butactions neutral and indifferent, the whole matter in which the subjecthas any concern or interest is taken out of the hands of the jury: andif the jury take more upon themselves, what they so take is contrary totheir duty; it is no _moral_, but a merely _natural_ power, --the same bywhich they may do any other improper act, the same by which they mayeven prejudice themselves with regard to any other part of the issuebefore them. Such is the matter, as it now stands in possession of yourhighest criminal courts, handed down to them from very respectable legalancestors. If this can once be established in this case, the applicationin principle to other cases will be easy, and the practice will run upona descent, until the progress of an encroaching jurisdiction (for it isin its nature to encroach, when once it has passed its limits) coming toconfine the juries, case after case, to the corporeal fact, and to thatalone, and excluding the intention of mind, the only source of merit anddemerit, of reward or punishment, juries become a dead letter in theConstitution. 

For which reason it is high time to take this matter into theconsideration of Parliament: and for that purpose it will be necessaryto examine, first, whether there is anything in the peculiar nature ofthis crime that makes it necessary to exclude the jury from consideringthe intention in it, more than in others. So far from it, that I take itto be much less so from the analogy of other criminal cases, where nosuch restraint is ordinarily put upon them. The act of homicide is_primâ facie_ criminal; the intention is afterwards to appear, for thejury to acquit or condemn. In burglary do they insist that the jury havenothing to do but to find the taking of goods, and that, if they do, they must necessarily find the party guilty, and leave the rest to thejudge, and that they have nothing to do with the word _felonicè_ in theindictment?

The next point is, to consider it as a question of constitutionalpolicy: that is, whether the decision of the question of libel ought tobe left to the judges as a presumption of law, rather than to the juryas matter of popular judgment, --as the malice in the case of murder, thefelony in the case of stealing. If the intent and tendency are notmatters within the province of popular judgment, but legal and technicalconclusions formed upon general principles of law, let us see what theyare. Certainly they are most unfavorable, indeed totally adverse, to theConstitution of this country. 

Here we must have recourse to analogies; for we cannot argue on ruledcases one way or the other. See the history. The old books, deficient ingeneral in crown cases, furnish us with little on this head. As to thecrime, in the very early Saxon law I see an offence of this species, called folk-leasing, made a capital offence, but no very precisedefinition of the crime, and no trial at all. See the statute of 3rdEdward I. Cap. 84. The law of libels could not have arrived at a veryearly period in this country. It is no wonder that we find no vestige ofany constitution from authority, or of any deductions from legalscience, in our old books and records, upon that subject. The statute of_Scandalum Magnatum_ is the oldest that I know, and this goes but alittle way in this sort of learning. Libelling is not the crime of anilliterate people. When they were thought no mean clerks who could readand write, when he who could read and write was presumptively a personin holy orders, libels could not be general or dangerous; and scandalsmerely _oral_ could _spread_ little and must _perish_ soon. It iswriting, it is printing more emphatically, that imps calumny with thoseeagle-wings on which, as the poet says, "immortal slanders fly. " By thepress they spread, they last, they leave the sting in the wound. Printing was not known in England much earlier than the reign of Henrythe Seventh, and in the third year of that reign the court ofStar-Chamber was established. The press and its enemy are nearly coeval. As no positive law against libels existed, they fell under theindefinite class of misdemeanors. For the trial of misdemeanors thatcourt was instituted. Their tendency to produce riots and disorders wasa main part of the charge, and was laid in order to give the courtjurisdiction chiefly against libels. The offence was new. Learning oftheir own upon the subject they had none; and they were obliged toresort to the only emporium where it was to be had, the Roman law. Afterthe Star-Chamber was abolished in the 10th of Charles I. , its authorityindeed ceased, but its maxims subsisted and survived it. The spirit ofthe Star-Chamber has transmigrated and lived again; and Westminster Hallwas obliged to borrow from the Star-Chamber, for the same reasons as theStar-Chamber had borrowed from the Roman Forum, because they had no law, statute, or tradition of their own. Thus the Roman law took possessionof our courts, --I mean its doctrine, not its sanctions: the severity ofcapital punishment was omitted, all the rest remained. The grounds ofthese laws are just and equitable. Undoubtedly the good fame of everyman ought to be under the protection of the laws, as well as his lifeand liberty and property. Good fame is an outwork that defends them alland renders them all valuable. The law forbids you to revenge; when itties up the hands of some, it ought to restrain the tongues of others. The good fame of government is the same; it ought not to be traduced. This is necessary in all government; and if opinion be support, whattakes away this destroys that support: but the liberty of the press isnecessary to this government. 

The wisdom, however, of government is of more importance than the laws. I should study the temper of the people, before I ventured on actions ofthis kind. I would consider the whole of the prosecution of a libel ofsuch importance as Junius, as one piece, as one consistent plan ofoperations: and I would contrive it so, that, if I were defeated, Ishould not be disgraced, --that even my victory should not be moreignominious than my defeat; I would so manage, that the lowest in thepredicament of guilt should not be the only one in punishment. I wouldnot inform against the mere vender of a collection of pamphlets. Iwould not put him to trial first, if I could possibly avoid it. I wouldrather stand the consequences of my first error than carry it to ajudgment that must disgrace my prosecution or the court. We ought toexamine these things in a manner which becomes ourselves, and becomesthe object of the inquiry, --not to examine into the most importantconsideration which can come before us with minds heated with prejudiceand filled with passions, with vain popular opinions and humors, and, when we propose to examine into the justice of others, to be unjustourselves. 

An inquiry is wished, as the most effectual way of putting an end to theclamors and libels which are the disorder and disgrace of the times. Forpeople remain quiet, they sleep secure, when they imagine that thevigilant eye of a censorial magistrate watches over all the proceedingsof judicature, and that the sacred fire of an eternal constitutionaljealousy, which, is the guardian of liberty, law, and justice, is alivenight and day, and burning in this House. But when the magistrate givesup his office and his duty, the people assume it, and they inquire toomuch and too irreverently, because they think their representatives donot inquire at all. 

We have in a libel, 1st, the writing; 2nd, the communication, called bythe lawyers the publication; 3rd, the application to persons and facts;4th, the intent and tendency; 5th, the matter, --diminution of fame. Thelaw presumptions on all these are in the communication. No intent canmake a defamatory publication good, nothing can make it have a goodtendency; truth is not pleadable. Taken _juridically_, the foundationof these law presumptions is not unjust; taken _constitutionally_, theyare ruinous, and tend to the total suppression of all publication. Ifjuries are confined to the fact, no writing which censures, howeverjustly or however temperately, the conduct of administration, can beunpunished. Therefore, if the intent and tendency be left to the judge, as legal conclusions growing from the fact, you may depend upon it youcan have no public discussion of a public measure; which is a pointwhich even those who are most offended with the licentiousness of thepress (and it is very exorbitant, very provoking) will hardly contendfor. 

So far as to the first opinion, --that the doctrine is right, and needsno alteration. 2nd. The next is, that it is wrong, but that we are notin a condition to help it. I admit it is true that there are cases of anature so delicate and complicated that an act of Parliament on thesubject may become a matter of great difficulty. It sometimes cannotdefine with exactness, because the subject-matter will not bear an exactdefinition. It may seem to _take away_ everything which it does notpositively _establish_, and this might be inconvenient; or it may seem, _vice versâ_, to _establish_ everything which it does not _expresslytake away_. It may be more advisable to leave such matters to theenlightened discretion of a judge, awed by a censorial House of Commons. But then it rests upon those who object to a legislative interpositionto prove these inconveniences in the particular case before them. For itwould be a most dangerous, as it is a most idle and most groundlessconceit, to assume as a general principle, that the rights and libertiesof the subject are impaired by the care and attention of thelegislature to secure them. If so, very ill would the purchase of MagnaCharta have merited the deluge of blood which was shed in order to havethe body of English privileges defined by a positive written law. Thischarter, the inestimable monument of English freedom, so long the boastand glory of this nation, would have been at once an instrument of ourservitude and a monument of our folly, if this principle were true. Thethirty-four confirmations would have been only so many repetitions oftheir absurdity, so many new links in the chain, and so manyinvalidations of their right. 

You cannot open your statute-book without seeing positive provisionsrelative to every right of the subject. This business of juries is thesubject of not fewer than a dozen. To suppose that juries are somethinginnate in the Constitution of Great Britain, that they have jumped, likeMinerva, out of the head of Jove in complete armor, is a weak fancy, supported neither by precedent nor by reason. Whatever is most ancientand venerable in our Constitution, royal prerogative, privileges ofParliament, rights of elections, authority of courts, juries, must havebeen modelled according to the occasion. I spare your patience, and Ipay a compliment to your understanding, in not attempting to prove thatanything so elaborate and artificial as a jury was not the work of_chance_, but a matter of institution, brought to its present state bythe joint efforts of legislative authority and juridical prudence. Itneed not be ashamed of being (what in many parts of it, at least, it is)the offspring of an act of Parliament, unless it is a shame for our lawsto be the results of our legislature. Juries, which sensitively shrinkfrom the rude touch of Parliamentary remedy, have been the subject ofnot fewer than, I think, forty-three acts of Parliament, in which theyhave been changed with all the authority of a creator over its creature, from Magna Charta to the great alterations which were made in the 29thof George II. 

To talk of this matter in any other way is to turn a rational principleinto an idle and vulgar superstition, --like the antiquary, Dr. Woodward, who trembled to have his shield scoured, for fear it should bediscovered to be no better than an old pot-lid. This species oftenderness to a jury puts me in mind of a gentleman of good condition, who had been reduced to great poverty and distress: application was madeto some rich fellows in his neighborhood to give him some assistance;but they begged to be excused, for fear of affronting a person of hishigh birth; and so the poor gentleman was left to starve, out of purerespect to the antiquity of his family. From this principle has arisenan opinion, that I find current amongst gentlemen, that this distemperought to be left to cure itself:--that the judges, having been wellexposed, and something terrified on account of these clamors, willentirely change, if not very much relax from their rigor;--if thepresent race should not change, that the chances of succession may putother more constitutional judges in their place;--lastly, if neithershould happen, yet that the spirit of an English jury will always besufficient for the vindication of its own rights, and will not sufferitself to be overborne by the bench. I confess that I totally dissentfrom all these opinions. These suppositions become the strongestreasons with me to evince the necessity of some clear and positivesettlement of this question of contested jurisdiction. If judges are sofull of levity, so full of timidity, if they are influenced by such meanand unworthy passions that a popular clamor is sufficient to shake theresolution they build upon the solid basis of a legal principle, I wouldendeavor to fix that mercury by a positive law. If to please anadministration the judges can go one way to-day, and to please the crowdthey can go another to-morrow, if they will oscillate backward andforward between power and popularity, it is high time to fix the law insuch a manner as to resemble, as it ought, the great Author of all law, in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning. 

As to their succession I have just the same opinion. I would not leaveit to the chances of promotion, or to the characters of lawyers, whatthe law of the land, what the rights of juries, or what the liberty ofthe press should be. My law should not depend upon the fluctuation ofthe closet or the complexion of men. Whether a black-haired man or afair-haired man presided in the Court of King's Bench, I would have thelaw the same; the same, whether he was born _in domo regnatrice_ andsucked from his infancy the milk of courts, or was nurtured in therugged discipline of a popular opposition. This law of court cabal andof party, this _mens quædam nullo perturbata affectu_, this law ofcomplexion, ought not to be endured for a moment in a country whosebeing depends upon the certainty, clearness, and stability ofinstitutions. 

Now I come to the last substitute for the proposed bill, --the spirit ofjuries operating their own jurisdiction. This I confess I think theworst of all, for the same reasons on which I objected to theothers, --and for other weighty reasons besides, which are separate anddistinct. First, because juries, being taken at random out of a mass ofmen infinitely large, must be of characters as various as the body theyarise from is large in its extent. If the judges differ in theircomplexions, much more will a jury. A timid jury will give way to anawful judge delivering oracularly the law, and charging them on theiroaths, and putting it home to their consciences to beware of judging, where the law had given them no competence. We know that they will doso, they have done so in an hundred instances. A respectable member ofyour own House, no vulgar man, tells you, that, on the authority of ajudge, he found a man guilty in whom at the same time he could find noguilt. But supposing them full of knowledge and full of manly confidencein themselves, how will their knowledge or their confidence inform orinspirit others? They give no reason for their verdict, they can butcondemn or acquit; and no man can tell the motives on which they haveacquitted or condemned. So that this hope of the power of juries toassert their own jurisdiction must be a principle blind, as beingwithout reason, and as changeable as the complexion of men and thetemper of the times. 

But, after all, is it fit that this dishonorable contention between thecourt and juries should subsist any longer? On what principle is it thata jury [juror?] refuses to be directed by the court as to his_competence_? Whether a libel or no libel be a question of law or offact may be doubtful; but a question of jurisdiction and competence iscertainly a question of law: on this the court ought undoubtedly tojudge, and to judge solely and exclusively. If they judge wrong fromexcusable error, you ought to correct it, as to-day it is proposed, byan explanatory bill, --or if by corruption, by bill of _penalties_declaratory, and by punishment. What does a juror say to a judge, whenhe refuses his opinion upon a question of judicature? "You are socorrupt, that I should consider myself a partaker of your crime, were Ito be guided by your opinion"; or, "You are so grossly ignorant, that I, fresh from my hounds, from my plough, my counter, or my loom, am fit todirect you in your own profession. " This is an unfitting, it is adangerous state of things. The spirit of any sort of men is not a fit_rule_ for deciding on the bounds of their jurisdiction: first, becauseit is different in different men, and even different in the same atdifferent times, and can never become the proper directing line of law;next, because it is not reason, but feeling, and, when once it isirritated, it is not apt to confine itself within its proper limits. Ifit becomes not difference in opinion upon law, but a trial of spiritbetween parties, our courts of law are no longer the temple of justice, but the amphitheatre for gladiators. No, --God forbid! Juries ought totake their law from the bench only; but it is _our_ business that theyshould hear nothing from the bench but what is agreeable to theprinciples of the Constitution. The jury are to hear the judge: thejudge is to hear the law, where it speaks plain; where it does not, heis to hear the legislature. As I do not think these opinions of thejudges to be agreeable to those principles, I wish to take the onlymethod in which they can or ought to be corrected, --by bill. 

Next, my opinion is, that it ought to be rather by a bill for removingcontroversies than by a bill in the state of manifest and expressdeclaration and in words _de præterito_. I do this upon reasons ofequity and constitutional policy. I do not want to censure the presentjudges. I think them to be excused for their error. Ignorance is noexcuse for a judge; it is changing the nature of his crime; it is notabsolving. It must be such error as a wise and conscientious judge maypossibly fall into, and must arise from one or both these causes:--1. Aplausible principle of law; 2. The precedents of respectableauthorities, and in good times. In the first, the principle of law, thatthe judge is to decide on law, the jury to decide on fact, is an ancientand venerable principle and maxim of the law; and if supported in thisapplication by precedents of good times and of good men, the judge, ifwrong, ought to be corrected, --he ought not to be reproved or to bedisgraced, or the authority or respect to your tribunals to be impaired. In cases in which declaratory bills have been made, where by violenceand corruption some fundamental part of the Constitution has been struckat, where they would damn the principle, censure the persons, and annulthe acts, --but where the law has been by the accident of human frailtydepraved or in a particular instance misunderstood, where you neithermean to rescind the acts nor to censure the persons, in such cases youhave taken the explanatory mode, and, without condemning what is done, you direct the future judgment of the court. 

All bills for the reformation of the law must be according to thesubject-matter, the circumstances, and the occasion, and are of fourkinds:--1. Either the law is totally wanting, and then a new enactingstatute must be made to supply that want; or, 2. It is _defective_, thena new law must be made to enforce it; 3. Or it is opposed by power orfraud, and then an act must be made to declare it; 4. Or it is rendereddoubtful and controverted, and then a law must be made to explain it. These must be applied according to the exigence of the case: one is justas good as another of them. Miserable indeed would be the resources, poor and unfurnished the stores and magazines of legislation, if we werebound up to a little narrow form, and not able to frame our acts ofParliament according to every disposition of our own minds and to everypossible emergency of the commonwealth, --to make them declaratory, enforcing, explanatory, repealing, just in what mode or in what degreewe please. 

Those who think that the judges living and dead are to be condemned, that your tribunals of justice are to be dishonored, that their acts andjudgments on this business are to be rescinded, --they will undoubtedlyvote against this bill, and for another sort. 

I am not of the opinion of those gentlemen who are against disturbingthe public repose: I like a clamor, whenever there is an abuse. Thefire-bell at midnight disturbs your sleep, but it keeps you from beingburned in your bed. The hue-and-cry alarms the county, but it preservesall the property of the province. All these clamors aim at _redress_. But a clamor made merely for the purpose of rendering the peoplediscontented with their situation, without an endeavor to give them apractical remedy, is indeed one of the worst acts of sedition. 

I have read and heard much upon the conduct of our courts in thebusiness of libels. I was extremely willing to enter into, and very freeto act as facts should turn out on that inquiry, aiming constantly atremedy as the end of all clamor, all debate, all writing, and allinquiry; for which reason I did embrace, and do now with joy, thismethod of giving quiet to the courts, jurisdiction to juries, liberty tothe press, and satisfaction to the people. I thank my friends for whatthey have done; I hope the public will one day reap the benefit of theirpious and judicious endeavors. They have now sown the seed; I hope theywill live to see the flourishing harvest. Their bill is sown inweakness; it will, I trust, be reaped in power. And then, however, weshall have reason to apply to them what my Lord Coke says was anaphorism continually in the mouth of a great sage of the law, --"Blessedbe not the complaining tongue, but _blessed be the amending hand_. "

LETTER

ON

MR. DOWDESWELL'S BILL FOR EXPLAINING THE POWERS OF JURIES INPROSECUTIONS FOR LIBELS. [2]

An improper and injurious account of the bill brought into the House ofCommons by Mr. Dowdeswell has lately appeared in one of the publicpapers. I am not at all surprised at it, as I am not a stranger to theviews and politics of those who have caused it to be inserted. 

Mr. Dowdeswell did not _bring in an enacting bill to give to juries_, asthe account expresses it, _a power to try law and fact in matter oflibel_. Mr. Dowdeswell brought in a bill to put an end to those doubtsand controversies upon that subject which have unhappily distracted ourcourts, to the great detriment of the public, and to the great dishonorof the national justice. 

That it is the province of the jury, in informations and indictments forlibels, to try nothing more than the fact of the composing and of thepublishing averments and innuendoes is a doctrine held at present by allthe judges of the King's Bench, probably by most of the judges of thekingdom. The same doctrine has been held pretty uniformly since theRevolution; and it prevails more or less with the jury, according to thedegree of respect with which they are disposed to receive the opinionsof the bench. 

This doctrine, which, when it prevails, tends to annihilate the benefitof trial by jury, and when it is rejected by juries, tends to weaken anddisgrace the authority of the judge, is not a doctrine proper for anEnglish judicature. For the sake both of judge and jury, the controversyought to be quieted, and the law ought to be settled in a manner clear, definitive, and constitutional, by the only authority competent to it, the authority of the legislature. 

Mr. Dowdeswell's bill was brought in for that purpose. It _gives_ to thejury no _new_ powers; but, after reciting the doubts and controversies, (which nobody denies actually to subsist, ) and after stating, that, ifjuries are not reputed competent to try the whole matter, the benefit oftrial by jury will be of none or imperfect effect, it enacts, not thatthe jury _shall_ have the _power_, but that they shall be _held andreputed in law and right competent_ to try the whole matter laid in theinformation. The bill is directing to the judges concerning the opinionin law which they are known to hold upon this subject, --and does not inthe least imply that the jury were to derive a new right and power fromthat bill, if it should have passed into an act of Parliament. Theimplication is directly the contrary, and is as strongly conveyed as itis possible for those to do who state a doubt and controversy withoutcharging with criminality those persons who so doubted and socontroverted. 

Such a style is frequent in acts of this nature, and is that only whichis suited to the occasion. An insidious use has been made of the words_enact_ and _declare_, as if they were formal and operative words offorce to distinguish different species of laws producing differenteffects. Nothing is more groundless; and I am persuaded no lawyer willstand to such an assertion. The gentlemen who say that a bill ought tohave been brought in upon the principle and in the style of the Petitionof Right and Declaration of Right ought to consider how far thecircumstances are the same in the two cases, and how far they areprepared to go the whole lengths of the reason of those remarkable laws. Mr. Dowdeswell and his friends are of opinion that the circumstances arenot the same, and that therefore the bill ought not to be the same. 

It has been always disagreeable to the persons who compose thatconnection to engage wantonly in a paper war, especially with gentlemenfor whom they have an esteem, and who seem to agree with them in thegreat grounds of their public conduct; but they can never consent topurchase any assistance from any persons by the forfeiture of their ownreputation. They respect public opinion; and therefore, whenever theyshall be called upon, they are ready to meet their adversaries, as soonas they please, before the tribunal of the public, and there to justifythe constitutional nature and tendency, the propriety, the prudence, andthe policy of their bill. They are equally ready to explain and tojustify all their proceedings in the conduct of it, --equally ready todefend their resolution to make it one object (if ever they should havethe power) in a plan of public reformation. 

Your correspondent ought to have been satisfied with the assistancewhich his friends have lent to administration in defeating that bill. Heought not to make a feeble endeavor (I dare say, much to the displeasureof those friends) to disgrace the gentleman who brought it in. A measureproposed by Mr. Dowdeswell, seconded by Sir George Savile, and supportedby their friends, will stand fair with the public, even though it shouldhave been opposed by that list of names (respectable names, I admit)which have been printed with so much parade and ostentation in yourpapers. 

It is not true that Mr. Burke spoke in praise of Lord Mansfield. If hehad found anything in Lord Mansfield praiseworthy, I fancy he is notdisposed to make an apology to anybody for doing justice. Yourcorrespondent's reason for asserting it is visible enough; and it isaltogether in the strain of other misrepresentations. That gentlemenspoke decently of the judges, and he did no more; most of the gentlemenwho debated, on both sides, held the same language; and nobody willthink their zeal the less warm, or the less effectual, because it is notattended with scurrility and virulence. 

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The manuscript from which this Letter is taken is in Mr. Burke's ownhandwriting, but it does not appear to whom it was addressed, nor isthere any date affixed to it. It has been thought proper to insert ithere, as being connected with the subject of the foregoing Speech. 

LIBEL BILL. 

Whereas doubts and controversies have arisen at various times concerningthe right of jurors to try the whole matter laid in indictments andinformations for seditious and other libels; and whereas trial by jurieswould be of none or imperfect effect, if the jurors were not held to becompetent to try the whole matter aforesaid: for settling and clearingsuch doubts and controversies, and for securing to the subject theeffectual and complete benefit of trial by juries in such indictmentsand informations, Be it enacted, &c, That jurors duly impanelled and sworn to try theissue between the king and the defendant upon any indictment orinformation for a seditious libel, or a libel under any otherdenomination or description, shall be held and reputed competent, to allintents and purposes, in law and in right, to try every part of thematter laid or charged in said indictment or information, comprehendingthe criminal intention of the defendant, and the evil tendency of thelibel charged, as well as the mere fact of the publication thereof, andthe application by innuendo of blanks, initial letters, pictures, andother devices; any opinion, question, ambiguity, or doubt to thecontrary notwithstanding. 

SPEECH

ON

A BILL FOR THE REPEAL OF THE MARRIAGE ACT. 

JUNE 15, 1781. 

This act [_the Marriage Act_] stands upon _two_ principles: one, thatthe power of marrying without consent of parents should not take placetill twenty-one years of age; the other, that all marriages should be_public_. 

The proposition of the honorable mover goes to the first; andundoubtedly his motives are fair and honorable; and even, in thatmeasure by which he would take away paternal power, he is influenced toit by filial piety; and he is led into it by a natural, and to himinevitable, but real mistake, --that the ordinary race of mankind advanceas fast towards maturity of judgment and understanding as he does. 

The question is not now, whether the law ought to acknowledge andprotect such a state of life as minority, nor whether the continuancewhich is fixed for that state be not improperly prolonged in the law ofEngland. Neither of these in general are questioned. The only question, is, whether matrimony is to be taken out of the general rule, andwhether the minors of both sexes, without the consent of their parents, ought to have a capacity of contracting the matrimonial, whilst theyhave not the capacity of contracting any other engagement. Now itappears to me very clear that they ought not. It is a great mistake tothink that mere _animal_ propagation is the sole end of matrimony. Matrimony is instituted not only for the propagation of men, but fortheir nutrition, their education, their establishment, and for theanswering of all the purposes of a rational and moral being; and it isnot the duty of the community to consider alone of how many, but howuseful citizens it shall be composed. 

It is most certain that men are well qualified for propagation longbefore they are sufficiently qualified even by bodily strength, muchless by mental prudence, and by acquired skill in trades andprofessions, for the maintenance of a family. Therefore to enable andauthorize any man to introduce citizens into the commonwealth, before arational security can be given that he may provide for them and educatethem as citizens ought to be provided for and educated, is totallyincongruous with the whole order of society. Nay, it is fundamentallyunjust; for a man that breeds a family without competent means ofmaintenance incumbers other men with his children, and disables them sofar from maintaining their own. The improvident marriage of one manbecomes a tax upon the orderly and regular marriage of all the rest. Therefore those laws are wisely constituted that give a man the use ofall his faculties at one time, that they may be mutually subservient, aiding and assisting to each other: that the time of his completing hisbodily strength, the time of mental discretion, the time of his havinglearned his trade, and the time at which he has the disposition of hisfortune, should be likewise the time in which he is permitted tointroduce citizens into the state, and to charge the community withtheir maintenance. To give a man a family during his apprenticeship, whilst his very labor belongs to another, --to give him a family, whenyou do not give him a fortune to maintain it, --to give him a familybefore he can contract any one of those engagements without which nobusiness can be carried on, would be to burden the state with familieswithout any security for their maintenance. When parents themselvesmarry their children, they become in some sort security to prevent theill consequences. You have this security in parental consent; the statetakes its security in the knowledge of human nature. Parents ordinarilyconsider little the passion of their children and their presentgratification. Don't fear the power of a father: it is kind to passionto give it time to cool. But their censures sometimes make mesmile, --sometimes, for I am very infirm, make me angry: _sæpe bilem, sæpe jocum movent_. 

It gives me pain to differ on this occasion from many, if not most, ofthose whom I honor and esteem. To suffer the grave animadversion andcensorial rebuke of the honorable gentleman who made the motion, of himwhose good-nature and good sense the House look upon with a particularpartiality, whose approbation would have been one of the highest objectsof my ambition, --this hurts me. It is said the Marriage Act isaristocratic. I am accused, I am told abroad, of being a man ofaristocratic principles. If by aristocracy they mean the peers, I haveno vulgar admiration, nor any vulgar antipathy towards them; I holdtheir order in cold and decent respect. I hold them to be of an absolutenecessity in the Constitution; but I think they are only good when keptwithin their proper bounds. I trust, whenever there has been a disputebetween these Houses, the part I have taken has not been equivocal. Ifby the aristocracy (which, indeed, comes nearer to the point) they meanan adherence to the rich and powerful against the poor and weak, thiswould, indeed, be a very extraordinary part. I have incurred the odiumof gentlemen in this House for not paying sufficient regard to men ofample property. When, indeed, the smallest rights of the poorest peoplein the kingdom are in question, I would set my face against any act ofpride and power countenanced by the highest that are in it; and if itshould come to the last extremity, and to a contest of blood, --Godforbid! God forbid!--my part is taken: I would take my fate with thepoor and low and feeble. But if these people came to turn their libertyinto a cloak for maliciousness, and to seek a privilege of exemption, not from power, but from the rules of morality and virtuous discipline, then I would join my hand to make them feel the force which a few unitedin a good cause have over a multitude of the profligate and ferocious. 

I wish the nature of the ground of repeal were considered with a littleattention. It is said the act tends to accumulate, to keep up the powerof great families, and to add wealth to wealth. It may be that it doesso. It is impossible that any principle of law or government useful tothe community should be established without an advantage to those whohave the greatest stake in the country. Even some vices arise from it. The same laws which secure property encourage avarice; and the fencesmade about honest acquisition are the strong bars which secure thehoards of the miser. The dignities of magistracy are encouragements toambition, with all the black train of villanies which attend that wickedpassion. But still we must have laws to secure property, and still wemust have ranks and distinctions and magistracy in the state, notwithstanding their manifest tendency to encourage avarice andambition. 

By affirming the parental authority throughout the state, parents inhigh rank will generally aim at, and will sometimes have the means, too, of preserving their minor children from any but wealthy or splendidmatches. But this authority preserves from a thousand misfortunes whichembitter every part of every man's domestic life, and tear to pieces thedearest lies in human society. 

I am no peer, nor like to be, --but am in middle life, in the mass ofcitizens; yet I should feel for a son who married a prostituted woman, or a daughter who married a dishonorable and prostituted man, as much asany peer in the realm. 

You are afraid of the avaricious principle of fathers. But observe thatthe avaricious principle is here mitigated very considerably. It isavarice by proxy; it is avarice not working by itself or for itself, butthrough the medium of parental affection, meaning to procure good to itsoffspring. But the contest is not between love and avarice. 

While you would guard against the possible operation of this species ofbenevolent avarice, the avarice of the father, you let loose anotherspecies of avarice, --that of the fortune-hunter, unmitigated, unqualified. To show the motives, who has heard of a man running awaywith a woman not worth sixpence? Do not call this by the name of thesweet and best passion, --love. It is robbery, --not a jot better than anyother. 

Would you suffer the sworn enemy of his family, his life, and hishonor, possibly the shame and scandal and blot of human society, todebauch from his care and protection the dearest pledge that he has onearth, the sole comfort of his declining years, almost in infantineimbecility, --and with it to carry into the hands of his enemy, and thedisgrace of Nature, the dear-earned substance of a careful and laboriouslife? Think of the daughter of an honest, virtuous parent allied to viceand infamy. Think of the hopeful son tied for life by the meretriciousarts of the refuse of mercenary and promiscuous lewdness. Have mercy onthe youth of both sexes; protect them from their ignorance andinexperience; protect one part of life by the wisdom of another; protectthem by the wisdom of laws and the care of Nature. 

SPEECH

ON A

MOTION MADE IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 17, 1772, FOR LEAVE TO BRING IN

A BILL TO QUIET THE POSSESSIONS OF THE SUBJECT AGAINST DORMANT CLAIMS OFTHE CHURCH. 

If I considered this bill as an attack upon the Church, brought in forthe purpose of impoverishing and weakening the clergy, I should be oneof the foremost in an early and vigorous opposition to it. 

I admit, the same reasons do not press for limiting the claims of theChurch that existed for limiting the crown, by that wisest of all lawswhich, has secured the property, the peace, and the freedom of thiscountry from the most dangerous mode of attack which could be made uponthem all. 

I am very sensible of the propriety of maintaining that venerable bodywith decency, --and with more than mere decency. I would maintain itaccording to the ranks wisely established in it, with that sober andtemperate splendor that is suitable to a sacred character invested withhigh dignity. 

There ought to be a symmetry between all the parts and orders of astate. A _poor_ clergy in an _opulent_ nation can have littlecorrespondence with the body it is to instruct, and it is a disgrace tothe public sentiments of religion. Such irreligious frugality is evenbad economy, as the little that is given is entirely thrown away. Suchan impoverished and degraded clergy in quiet tunes could never executetheir duty, and in time of disorder would infinitely aggravate thepublic confusions. 

That the property of the Church is a favored and privileged property Ireadily admit. It is made with great wisdom; since a perpetual body, with a perpetual duty, ought to have a perpetual provision. 

The question is not, the property of the Church, or its security. Thequestion is, whether you will render the principle of prescription aprinciple of the law of this laud, and incorporate it with the whole ofyour jurisprudence, --whether, having given it first against the laity, then against the crown, you will now extend it to the Church. 

The acts which were made, giving limitation against the laity, were notacts against the property of those who might be precluded bylimitations. The act of quiet against the crown was not against theinterests of the crown, but against a power of vexation. 

If the principle of prescription be not a constitution of positive law, but a principle of natural equity, then to hold it out against any manis not doing him injustice. 

That _tithes_ are due of common right is readily granted; and if thisprinciple had been kept in its original straitness, it might, indeed, besupposed that to plead an exemption was to plead a long-continued_fraud_, and that no man could _be deceived_ in such a title, --as themoment he bought land, he must know that he bought land tithed:prescription could not aid him, for prescription can only attach on asupposed _bonâ fide_ possession. But the fact is, that the principle hasbeen broken in upon. 

Here it is necessary to distinguish two sorts of property. 

1. Land carries no _mark_ on it to distinguish it as ecclesiastical, astithes do, which are a _charge_ on land; therefore, though it had beenmade _inalienable_, it ought perhaps to be subject to limitation. Itmight _bonâ fide_ be held. 

But, first, it was not originally inalienable, no, not by the Canon Law, until the restraining act of the 11th [1st?] of Elizabeth. But the greatrevolution of the dissolution of monasteries, by the 31st Hen. , ch. 13, has so mixed and confounded ecclesiastical with lay property, that a manmay by every rule of good faith be possessed of it. The statute of QueenElizabeth, ann. 1, ch. 1, [?] gave away the bishop's lands. 

So far as to _lands_. 

As to _tithes_, they are not things in their own nature subject to bebarred by prescription upon the general principle. But tithes and Churchlands, by the statutes of Henry VIII. And the 11th [1st?] Eliz. , havebecome objects _in commercio_: for by coming to the crown they becamegrantable in that way to the subject, and a great part of the Churchlands passed through the crown to the people. 

By passing to the king, tithes became property to a mixed party; bypassing from the king, they became absolutely _lay_ property: thepartition-wall was broken down, and tithes and Church possession becameno longer synonymous terms. No [A?] man, therefore, might become a fairpurchaser of tithes, and of exemption from tithes. 

By the statute of Elizabeth, the lands took the same course, (I will notinquire by what justice, good policy, and decency, ) but they passed intolay lands, became the object of purchases for valuable consideration, and of marriage settlements. 

Now, if tithes might come to a layman, land in the hands of a laymanmight be also tithe-free. So that there was an object which a laymanmight become seized of equitably and _bonâ fide_; there was somethingon which a prescription might attach, the end of which is, to secure thenatural well-meaning ignorance of men, and to secure property by thebest of all principles, continuance. 

I have therefore shown that a layman may be equitably seized of Churchlands, --2. Of tithes, --3. Of exemption from tithes; and you will notcontend that there should be no prescription. Will you say that thealienations made before the 11th of Elizabeth shall not stand good?

I do not mean anything against the Church, her dignities, her honors, her privileges, or her possessions. I should wish even to enlarge themall: not that the Church of England is incompetently endowed. This is totake nothing from her but the power of making herself odious. If she besecure herself, she can have no objection to the security of others. ForI hope she is secure from lay-bigotry and anti-priestcraft, forcertainly such things there are. I heartily wish to see the Churchsecure in such possessions as will not only enable her ministers topreach the Gospel with ease, but of such a kind as will enable them topreach it with its full effect, so that the pastor shall not have theinauspicious appearance of a tax-gatherer, --such a maintenance as iscompatible with the civil prosperity and improvement of their country. 

HINTS

FOR

AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 

NOTE. 

These hints appear to have been first thoughts, which were probablyintended to be amplified and connected, and so worked up into a regulardissertation. No date appears of the time when they were written, but itwas probably before the year 1765. 

HINTS

FOR AN ESSAY ON THE DRAMA. 

It is generally observed that no species of writing is so difficult asthe dramatic. It must, indeed, appear so, were we to consider it uponone side only. It is a dialogue, or species of composition which initself requires all the mastery of a complete writer with grace andspirit to support. We may add, that it must have a fable, too, whichnecessarily requires invention, one of the rarest qualities of the humanmind. It would surprise us, if we were to examine the thing critically, how few good original stories there are in the world. The mostcelebrated borrow from each other, and are content with some new turn, some corrective, addition, or embellishment. Many of the most celebratedwriters in that way can claim no other merit. I do not think La Fontainehas one original story. And if we pursue him to those who were hisoriginals, the Italian writers of tales and novels, we shall find mosteven of them drawing from antiquity, or borrowing from the Easternworld, or adopting and decorating the little popular stories they foundcurrent and traditionary in their country. Sometimes they laid thefoundation of their tale in real fact. Even after all their borrowingfrom so many funds, they are still far from opulent. How few stories hasBoccace which are tolerable, and how much fewer are there which youwould desire to read twice! But this general difficulty is greatlyincreased, when we come to the drama. Here a fable is essential, --afable which is to be conducted with rapidity, clearness, consistency, and surprise, without any, or certainly with very little, aid fromnarrative. This is the reason that generally nothing is more dull intelling than the plot of a play. It is seldom or never a good story initself; and in this particular, some of the greatest writers, both inancient and modern theatres, have failed in the most miserable manner. It is well a play has still so many requisites to complete it, that, though the writer should not succeed in these particulars, and thereforeshould be so far from perfection, there are still enough left in whichhe may please, at less expense of labor to himself, and perhaps, too, with more real advantage to his auditory. It is, indeed, very difficulthappily to excite the passions and draw the characters of men; but ournature leads us more directly to such paintings than to the invention ofa story. We are imitative animals; and we are more naturally led toimitate the exertions of character and passion than to observe anddescribe a series of events, and to discover those relations anddependencies in them which will please. Nothing can be more rare thanthis quality. Herein, as I believe, consists the difference between theinventive and the descriptive genius. By the inventive genius I mean thecreator of agreeable facts and incidents; by the descriptive, thedelineator of characters, manners, and passions. Imitation calls us tothis; we are in some cases almost forced to it, and it is comparativelyeasy. More observe the characters of men than the order of things: tothe one we are formed by Nature, and by that sympathy from which we areso strongly led to take a part in the passions and manners of ourfellow-men; the other is, as it were, foreign and extrinsical. Neither, indeed, can anything be done, even in this, without invention; but it isobvious that this invention is of a kind altogether different from theformer. However, though the more sublime genius and the greatest art arerequired for the former, yet the latter, as it is more common and moreeasy, so it is more useful, and administers more directly to the greatbusiness of life. 

If the drama requires such a combination of talents, the most common ofwhich is very rarely to be found and difficult to be exerted, it is notsurprising, at a time when almost all kinds of poetry are cultivatedwith little success, to find that we have done no great matters in this. Many causes may be assigned for our present weakness in that oldest andmost excellent branch of philosophy, poetical learning, and particularlyin what regards the theatre. I shall here only consider what appears tome to be one of these causes: I mean the wrong notion of the art itself, which begins to grow fashionable, especially among people of an elegantturn of mind with a weak understanding; and these are they that form thegreat body of the idle part of every polite and civilized nation. Theprevailing system of that class of mankind is indolence. This gives theman aversion to all strong movements. It infuses a delicacy of sentiment, which, when it is real, and accompanied with a justness of thought, isan amiable quality, and favorable to the fine arts; but when it comesto make the whole of the character, it injures things more excellentthan those which it improves, and degenerates into a false refinement, which diffuses a languor and breathes a frivolous air over everythingwhich it can influence. . . . 

Having differed in my opinion about dramatic composition, andparticularly in regard to comedy, with a gentleman for whose characterand talents I have a very high respect, I thought myself obliged, onaccount of that difference, to a new and more exact examination of thegrounds upon which I had formed my opinions. I thought it would beimpossible to come to any clear and definite idea on this subject, without remounting to the natural passions or dispositions of men, whichfirst gave rise to this species of writing; for from these alone itsnature, its limits, and its true character can be determined. 

There are but four general principles which can move men to interestthemselves in the characters of others, and they may be classed underthe heads of good and ill opinion: on the side of the first may beclassed admiration and love, hatred and contempt on the other. And thesehave accordingly divided poetry into two very different kinds, --thepanegyrical, and the satirical; under one of which heads all genuinepoetry falls (for I do not reckon the didactic as poetry, in thestrictness of speech). 

Without question, the subject of all poetry was originally direct andpersonal. Fictitious character is a refinement, and comparativelymodern; for abstraction is in its nature slow, and always follows theprogress of philosophy. Men had always friends and enemies before theyknew the exact nature of vice and virtue; they naturally, and withtheir best powers of eloquence, whether in prose or verse, magnified andset off the one, vilified and traduced the other. 

The first species of composition in either way was probably somegeneral, indefinite topic of praise or blame, expressed in a song orhymn, which is the most common and simple kind of panegyric and satire. But as nothing tended to set their hero or subject in a more forciblelight than some story to their advantage or prejudice, they soonintroduced a narrative, and thus improved the composition into a greatervariety of pleasure to the hearer, and to a more forcible instrument ofhonor or disgrace to the subject. 

It is natural with men, when they relate any action with any degree ofwarmth, to represent the parties to it talking as the occasion requires;and this produces that mixed species of poetry, composed of narrativeand dialogue, which is very universal in all languages, and of whichHomer is the noblest example in any. This mixed kind of poetry seemsalso to be most perfect, as it takes in a variety of situations, circumstances, reflections, and descriptions, which must be rejected ona more limited plan. 

It must be equally obvious, that men, in relating a story in a forciblemanner, do very frequently mimic the looks, gesture, and voice of theperson concerned, and for the time, as it were, put themselves into hisplace. This gave the hint to the drama, or acting; and observing thepowerful effect of this in public exhibitions. . . . 

But the drama, the most artificial and complicated of all the poeticalmachines, was not yet brought to perfection; and like those animalswhich change their state, some parts of the old narrative still adhered. It still had a chorus, it still had a prologue to explain the design;and the perfect drama, an automaton supported and moved without anyforeign help, was formed late and gradually. Nay, there are stillseveral parts of the world in which it is not, and probably never maybe, formed. The Chinese drama. 

The drama, being at length formed, naturally adhered to the firstdivision of poetry, the satirical and panegyrical, which made tragedyand comedy. 

Men, in praising, naturally applaud the dead. Tragedy celebrated thedead. 

Great men are never sufficiently shown but in struggles. Tragedy turned, therefore, on melancholy and affecting subjects, --a sort ofthrenodia, --its passions, therefore, admiration, terror, and pity. 

Comedy was satirical. Satire is best on the living. 

It was soon found that the best way to depress an hated character was toturn it into ridicule; and therefore the greater vices, which in thebeginning were lashed, gave place to the _contemptible_. Its passion, therefore, became ridicule. 

Every writing must have its characteristic passion. What is that ofcomedy, if not ridicule?

Comedy, therefore, is a satirical poem, representing an action carriedon by dialogue, to excite laughter by describing ludicrous characters. See Aristotle. 

Therefore, to preserve this definition, the ridicule must be either inthe action or characters, or both. 

An action may be ludicrous, independent of the characters, by theludicrous situations and accidents which may happen to the characters. 

But the action is not so important as the characters. We see this everyday upon the stage. 

What are the characters fit for comedy?

It appears that no part of human life which may be subject to ridiculeis exempted from comedy; for wherever men run into the absurd, whetherhigh or low, they may be the subject of satire, and consequently ofcomedy. Indeed, some characters, as kings, are exempted through decency;others might be too insignificant. Some are of opinion that persons inbetter life are so polished that their tone characters and the real bentof their humor cannot appear. For my own part, I cannot give entirecredit to this remark. For, in the first place, I believe thatgood-breeding is not so universal or strong in any part of life as tooverrule the real characters and strong passions of such men as would beproper objects of the drama. Secondly, it is not the ordinary, commonplace discourse of assemblies that is to be represented in comedy. The parties are to be put in situations in which their passions areroused, and their real characters called forth; and if their situationsare judiciously adapted to the characters, there is no doubt but theywill appear in all their force, choose what situation of life youplease. Let the politest man alive game, and feel at loss; let this behis character; and his politeness will never hide it, nay, it will putit forward with greater violence, and make a more forcible contrast. [3]

But genteel comedy puts these characters, not in their passionate, butin their genteel light; makes elegant cold conversation, and virtuouspersonages. [4] Such sort of pictures disagreeable. 

Virtue and politeness not proper for comedy; for they have too much orno movement. 

They are not good in tragedy, much less here. 

The greater virtues, fortitude, justice, and the like, too serious andsublime. 

It is not every story, every character, every incident, but those onlywhich answer their end. --Painting of artificial things not good; a thingbeing useful does not therefore make it most pleasing inpicture. --Natural manners, good and bad. --Sentiment. In common affairsand common life, virtuous sentiments are not even the character ofvirtuous men; we cannot bear these sentiments, but when they are pressedout, as it were, by great exigencies, and a certain contention which isabove the general style of comedy. . . . 

The first character of propriety the Lawsuit possesses in an eminentdegree. The plot of the play is an iniquitous suit; there can be nofitter persons to be concerned in the active part of it than low, necessitous lawyers of bad character, and profligates of desperatefortune. On the other hand, in the passive part, if an honest andvirtuous man had been made the object of their designs, or a weak man ofgood intentions, every successful step they should take against himought rather to fill the audience with horror than pleasure and mirth;and if in the conclusion their plots should be baffled, even this wouldcome too late to prevent that ill impression. But in the Lawsuit this isadmirably avoided: for the character chosen is a rich, avaricioususurer: the pecuniary distresses of such a person can never be lookedupon with horror; and if he should be even handled unjustly, we alwayswait his delivery with patience. 

Now with regard to the display of the character, which is the essentialpart of the plot, nothing can be more finely imagined than to draw amiser in law. If you draw him inclined to love and marriage, you departfrom the height of his character in some measure, as Molière has done. Expenses of this kind he may easily avoid. If you draw him in law, toadvance brings expense, to draw back brings expense; and the characteris tortured and brought out at every moment. 

A sort of notion has prevailed that a comedy might subsist withouthumor. It is an idle disquisition, whether a story in private life, represented in dialogues, may not be carried on with some degree ofmerit without humor. It may unquestionably; but what shines chiefly incomedy, the painting the manners of life, must be in a great measurewanting. A character which has nothing extravagant, wrong, or singularin it can affect but very little: and this is what makes Aristotle drawthe great line of distinction between tragedy and comedy. Ἐν αὐτῇ δὲ τῇδιαφορᾷ καὶ ἡ τραγῳδία, &c. Arist. Poet. Ch. II. 

 * * * * *

There is not a more absurd mistake than that whatever may notunnaturally happen in an action is of course to be admitted into everypainting of it. In Nature, the great and the little, the serious and theludicrous, things the most disproportionate the one to the other, arefrequently huddled together in much confusion, And what then? It is thebusiness of Art first to choose some determinate end and purpose, andthen to select those parts of Nature, and those only, which conduce tothat end, avoiding with most religious exactness the intermixture ofanything which would contradict it. Else the whole idea of propriety, that is, the only distinction between the just and chimerical in thearts, would be utterly lost. An hero eats, drinks, and sleeps, likeother men; but to introduce such scenes on the stage, because they arenatural, would be ridiculous. And why? Because they have nothing to dowith the end for which the play is written. The design of a piece mightbe utterly destroyed by the most natural incidents in the world. Boileauhas somewhere criticized with what surely is a very just severity onAriosto, for introducing a ludicrous tale from his host to one of theprincipal persons of his poem, though the story has great merit in itsway. Indeed, that famous piece is so monstrous and extravagant in allits parts that one is not particularly shocked with this indecorum. But, as Boileau has observed, if Virgil had introduced Æneas listening to abawdy story from his host, what an episode had this formed in thatdivine poem! Suppose, instead of Æneas, he had represented the impiousMezentius as entertaining himself in that manner; such a thing would nothave been without probability, but it would have clashed with the veryfirst principles of taste, and, I would say, of common sense. 

I have heard of a celebrated picture of the Last Supper, --and if I donot mistake, it is said to be the work of some of the Flemish masters:in this picture all the personages are drawn in a manner suitable tothe solemnity of the occasion; but the painter has filled the void underthe table with a dog gnawing bones. Who does not see the possibility ofsuch an incident, and, at the same time, the absurdity of introducing iton such an occasion! Innumerable such cases might be stated. It is notthe incompatibility or agreeableness of incidents, characters, orsentiments with the probable in fact, but with propriety in design, thatadmits or excludes them from a place in any composition. We may as wellurge that stones, sand, clay, and metals lie in a certain manner in theearth, as a reason for building with these materials and in that manner, as for writing according to the accidental disposition of characters inNature. I have, I am afraid, been longer than it might seem necessary inrefuting such a notion; but such authority can only be opposed by a gooddeal of reason. We are not to forget that a play is, or ought to be, avery short composition; that, if one passion or disposition is to bewrought up with tolerable success, I believe it is as much as can in anyreason be expected. If there be scenes of distress and scenes of humor, they must either be in a double or single plot. If there be a doubleplot, there are in fact two. If they be in checkered scenes of seriousand comic, you are obliged continually to break both the thread of thestory and the continuity of the passion, --if in the same scene, as Mrs. V. Seems to recommend, it is needless to observe how absurd the mixturemust be, and how little adapted to answer the genuine end of anypassion. It is odd to observe the progress of bad taste: for this mixedpassion being universally proscribed in the regions of tragedy, it hastaken refuge and shelter in comedy, where it seems firmly established, though no reason can be assigned why we may not laugh in the one as wellas weep in the other. The true reason of this mixture is to be soughtfor in the manners which are prevalent amongst a people. It has becomevery fashionable to affect delicacy, tenderness of heart, and finefeeling, and to shun all imputation of rusticity. Much mirth is veryforeign to this character; they have introduced, therefore, a sort ofneutral writing. 

Now as to characters, they have dealt in them as in the passions. Thereare none but lords and footmen. One objection to characters in high lifeis, that almost all wants, and a thousand happy circumstances arisingfrom them, being removed from it, their whole mode of life is tooartificial, and not so fit for painting; and the contrary opinion hasarisen from a mistake, that whatever has merit in the realitynecessarily must have it in the representation. I have observed thatpersons, and especially women, in lower life, and of no breeding, arefond of such representations. It seems like introducing them into goodcompany, and the honor compensates the dulness of the entertainment. 

Fashionable manners being fluctuating is another reason for not choosingthem. --Sensible comedy, --talking sense a dull thing--. . . . 

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Sic in MS. 

[4] Sic in MS. 

AN ESSAY

TOWARDS AN

ABRIDGMENT OF THE ENGLISH HISTORY. 

IN THREE BOOKS. 

AN

ABRIDGMENT OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 

BOOK I. 

CHAPTER I. 

CAUSES OF THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ROMANS AND BRITONS. --CAESAR'S TWOINVASIONS OF BRITAIN. 

In order to obtain a clear notion of the state of Europe before theuniversal prevalence of the Roman power, the whole region is to bedivided into two principal parts, which we shall call Northern andSouthern Europe. The northern part is everywhere separated from thesouthern by immense and continued chains of mountains. From Greece it isdivided by Mount Hæmus; from Spain by the Pyrenees; from Italy by theAlps. This division is not made by an arbitrary or casual distributionof countries. The limits are marked out by Nature, and in these earlyages were yet further distinguished by a considerable difference in themanners and usages of the nations they divided. 

If we turn our eyes to the northward of these boundaries, a vast mass ofsolid continent lies before us, stretched out from the remotest shore ofTartary quite to the Atlantic Ocean. A line drawn through this extent, from east to west, would pass over the greatest body of unbroken landthat is anywhere known upon the globe. This tract, in a course of somedegrees to the northward, is not interrupted by any sea; neither are themountains so disposed as to form any considerable obstacle to hostileincursions. Originally it was all inhabited but by one sort of people, known by one common denomination of Scythians. As the several tribes ofthis comprehensive name lay in many parts greatly exposed, and as bytheir situation and customs they were much inclined to attack, and byboth ill qualified for defence, throughout the whole of that immenseregion there was for many ages a perpetual flux and reflux of barbarousnations. None of their commonwealths continued long enough establishedon any particular spot to settle and to subside into a regular order, one tribe continually overpowering or thrusting out another. But asthese were only the mixtures of Scythians with Scythians, the triumphsof barbarians over barbarians, there were revolutions in empire, butnone in manners. The Northern Europe, until some parts of it weresubdued by the progress of the Roman arms, remained almost equallycovered with all the ruggedness of primitive barbarism. 

The southern part was differently circumstanced. Divided, as we havesaid, from the northern by great mountains, it is further divided withinitself by considerable seas. Spain, Greece, and Italy are peninsulas. Bythese advantages of situation the inhabitants were preserved from thosegreat and sudden revolutions to which the Northern world had been alwaysliable; and being confined within a space comparatively narrow, theywere restrained from wandering into a pastoral and unsettled life. Itwas upon one side only that they could be invaded by land. Whoever madean attempt on any other part must necessarily have arrived in ships ofsome magnitude, and must therefore have in a degree been cultivated, ifnot by the liberal, at least by the mechanic arts. In fact, theprincipal colonies-which we find these countries to have received weresent from Phœnicia, or the Lesser Asia, or Egypt, the great fountainsof the ancient civility and learning. And they became more or less, earlier or later, polished, as they were situated nearer to or furtherfrom these celebrated sources. Though I am satisfied, from a comparisonof the Celtic tongues with the Greek and Roman, that the originalinhabitants of Italy and Greece were of the same race with the people ofNorthern Europe, yet it is certain they profited so much by theirguarded situation, by the mildness of their climate favorable tohumanity, and by the foreign infusions, that they came greatly to excelthe Northern nations in every respect, and particularly in the art anddiscipline of war. For, not being so strong in their bodies, partly fromthe temperature of their climate, partly from a degree of softnessinduced by a more cultivated life, they applied themselves to remove thefew inconveniences of a settled society by the advantages which itaffords in art, disposition, and obedience; and as they consisted ofmany small states, their people were well exercised in arms, andsharpened against each other by continual war. 

Such was the situation of Greece and Italy from a very remote period. The Gauls and other Northern nations, envious of their wealth, anddespising the effeminacy of their manners, often invaded them with, numerous, though ill-formed armies. But their greatest and most frequentattempts were against Italy, their connection with which country alonewe shall here consider. In the course of these wars, the superiority ofthe Roman discipline over the Gallic ferocity was at lengthdemonstrated. The Gauls, notwithstanding the numbers with which theirirruptions were made, and the impetuous courage by which that nation wasdistinguished, had no permanent success. They were altogether unskilfuleither in improving their victories or repairing their defeats. But theRomans, being governed by a most wise order of men, perfected by atraditionary experience in the policy of conquest, drew some advantagefrom every turn of fortune, and, victorious or vanquished, persisted inone uniform and comprehensive plan of breaking to pieces everythingwhich endangered their safety or obstructed their greatness. For, afterhaving more than once expelled the Northern invaders out of Italy, theypursued them over the Alps; and carrying the war into the country oftheir enemy, under several able generals, and at last under Caius Cæsar, they reduced all the Gauls from the Mediterranean Sea to the Rhine andthe Ocean. During the progress of this decisive war, some of themaritime nations of Gaul had recourse for assistance to the neighboringisland of Britain. Prom thence they received considerable succors; bywhich means this island first came to be known with any exactness by theRomans, and first drew upon it the attention of that victorious people. 

Though Cæsar had reduced Gaul, he perceived clearly that a great dealwas still wanting to make his conquest secure and lasting. Thatextensive country, inhabited by a multitude of populous and fiercenations, had been rather overrun than conquered. The Gauls were not yetbroken to the yoke, which they bore with murmuring and discontent. Theruins of their own strength were still considerable; and they had hopesthat the Germans, famous for their invincible courage and their ardentlove of liberty, would be at hand powerfully to second any endeavors forthe recovery of their freedom; they trusted that the Britons, of theirown blood, allied in manners and religion, and whose help they hadlately experienced, would not then be wanting to the same cause. Cæsarwas not ignorant of these dispositions. He therefore judged, that, if hecould confine the attention of the Germans and Britons to their owndefence, so that the Gauls, on which side soever they turned, shouldmeet nothing but the Roman arms, they must soon be deprived of all hope, and compelled to seek their safety in an entire submission. 

These were the public reasons which made the invasion of Britain andGermany an undertaking, at that particular time, not unworthy a wise andable general. But these enterprises, though reasonable in themselves, were only subservient to purposes of more importance, and which he hadmore at heart. Whatever measures he thought proper to pursue on the sideof Germany, or on that of Britain, it was towards Rome that he alwayslooked, and to the furtherance of his interest there that all hismotions were really directed. That republic had receded from many ofthose maxims by which her freedom had been hitherto preserved under theweight of so vast an empire. Rome now contained many citizens of immensewealth, eloquence, and ability. Particular men were more considered thanthe republic; and the fortune and genius of the Roman people, whichformerly had been thought equal to everything, came now to be lessrelied upon than the abilities of a few popular men. The war with theGauls, as the old and most dangerous enemy of Rome, was of the lastimportance; and Cæsar had the address to obtain the conduct of it for aterm of years, contrary to one of the most established principles oftheir government. But this war was finished before that term wasexpired, and before the designs which he entertained against the libertyof his country were fully ripened. It was therefore necessary to findsome pretext for keeping his army on foot; it was necessary to employthem in some enterprise that might at once raise his character, keep hisinterest alive at Rome, endear him to his troops, and by that meansweaken the ties which held them to their country. 

From this motive, colored by reasons plausible and fit to be avowed, heresolved in one and the same year, and even when that was almostexpired, upon two expeditions, the objects of which lay at a greatdistance from each other, and were as yet untouched by the Roman arms. And first he resolved to pass the Rhine, and penetrate into Germany. 

Cæsar spent but twenty-eight days in his German expedition. In ten hebuilt his admirable bridge across the Rhine; in eighteen he performedall he proposed by entering that country. When the Germans saw thebarrier of their river so easily overcome, and Nature herself, as itwere, submitted to the yoke, they were struck with astonishment, andnever after ventured to oppose the Romans in the field. The mostobnoxious of the German countries were ravaged, the strong awed, theweak taken into protection. Thus an alliance being formed, always thefirst step of the Roman policy, and not only a pretence, but a means, being thereby acquired of entering the country upon any future occasion, he marched back through Gaul to execute a design of much the same natureand extent in Britain. 

[Sidenote: B. C. 55. ]

The inhabitants of that island, who were divided into a great number ofpetty nations, under a very coarse and disorderly frame of government, did not find it easy to plan any effectual measures for their defence. In order, however, to gain time in this exigency, they sent ambassadorsto Cæsar with terms of submission. Cæsar could not colorably rejecttheir offers. But as their submission rather clashed than coincided withhis real designs, he still persisted in his resolution of passing overinto Britain; and accordingly embarked with the infantry of two legionsat the port of Itium. [5] His landing was obstinately disputed by thenatives, and brought on a very hot and doubtful engagement. But thesuperior dispositions of so accomplished a commander, the resources ofthe Roman discipline, and the effect of the military engines on theunpractised minds of a barbarous people prevailed at length over thebest resistance which could be made by rude numbers and mere bravery. The place where the Romans first entered this island was somewhere nearDeal, and the time fifty-five years before the birth of Christ. 

The Britons, who defended their country with so much resolution in theengagement, immediately after it lost all their spirit. They had laid noregular plan, for their defence. Upon their first failure they seamed tohave no resources left. On the slightest loss they betook themselves totreaty and submission; upon the least appearance in their favor theywere as ready to resume their arms, without any regard to their formerengagements: a conduct which demonstrates that our British ancestors hadno regular polity with a standing coercive power. The ambassadors whichthey sent to Cæsar laid all the blame of a war carried on by greatarmies upon the rashness of their young men, and they declared that theruling people had no share in these hostilities. This is exactly theexcuse which the savages of America, who have no regular government, make at this day upon the like occasions; but it would be a strangeapology from one of the modern states of Europe that had employed armiesagainst another. Cæsar reprimanded them for the inconstancy of theirbehavior, and ordered them to bring hostages to secure their fidelity, together with provisions for his army. But whilst the Britons wereengaged in the treaty, and on that account had free access to the Romancamp, they easily observed that the army of the invaders was neithernumerous nor well provided; and having about the same time receivedintelligence that the Roman fleet had suffered in a storm, they againchanged their measures, and came to a resolution of renewing the war. Some prosperous actions against the Roman foraging parties inspired themwith great confidence. They were betrayed by their success into ageneral action in the open field. Here the disciplined troops obtainedan easy and complete victory; and the Britons were taught the error oftheir conduct at the expense of a terrible slaughter. 

Twice defeated, they had recourse once more to submission. Cæsar, whofound the winter approaching, provisions scarce, and his fleet not fitto contend with that rough and tempestuous sea in a winter voyage, hearkened to their proposals, exacting double the number of the formerhostages. He then set sail with his whole army. 

In this first expedition into Britain, Cæsar did not make, nor indeedcould he expect, any considerable advantage. He acquired a knowledge ofthe sea-coast, and of the country contiguous to it; and he becameacquainted with the force, the manner of fighting, and the militarycharacter of the people. To compass these purposes he did not think apart of the summer ill-bestowed. But early in the next he prepared tomake a more effective use of the experience he had gained. He embarkedagain at the same port, but with a more numerous army. The Britons, ontheir part, had prepared more regularly for their defence in this thanthe former year. Several of those states which were nearest and mostexposed to the danger had, during Cæsar's absence, combined for theircommon safety, and chosen Cassibelan, a chief of power and reputation, for the leader of their union. They seemed resolved to dispute thelanding of the Romans with their former intrepidity. But when theybeheld the sea covered, as far as the eye could reach, with themultitude of the enemy's ships, (for they were eight hundred sail, ) theydespaired of defending the coast, they retired into the woods' andfastnesses, and Cæsar landed his army without opposition. 

The Britons now saw the necessity of altering their former method ofwar. They no longer, therefore, opposed the Romans in the open field;they formed frequent ambuscades; they divided themselves into lightflying parties, and continually harassed the enemy on his march. Thisplan, though in their circumstances the most judicious, was attendedwith no great success. Cæsar forced some of their strongestintrenchments, and then carried the war directly into the territories ofCassibelan. 

The only fordable passage which he could find over the Thames wasdefended by a row of palisadoes which lined the opposite bank; anotherrow of sharpened stakes stood under water along the middle of thestream. Some remains of these works long subsisted, and were to bediscerned in the river[6] down almost to the present times. The Britonshad made the best of the situation; but the Romans plunged into thewater, tore away the stakes and palisadoes, and obtained a completevictory. The capital, or rather chief fastness, of Cassibelan was thentaken, with a number of cattle, the wealth of this barbarous city. Afterthese misfortunes the Britons were no longer in a condition to act witheffect. Their ill-success in the field soon dissolved the ill-cementedunion of their councils. They split into factions, and some of themchose the common enemy for their protector, insomuch that, after somefeeble and desultory efforts, most of the tribes to the southward of theThames submitted themselves to the conqueror. Cassibelan, worsted in somany encounters, and deserted by his allies, was driven at length to suefor peace. A tribute was imposed; and as the summer began to wear away, Cæsar, having finished the war to his satisfaction, embarked for Gaul. 

The whole of Cæsar's conduct in these two campaigns sufficientlydemonstrates that he had no intention of making an absolute conquest ofany part of Britain. Is it to be believed, that, if he had formed sucha design, he would have left Britain without an army, without a legion, without a single cohort, to secure his conquest, and that he should sitdown contented with an empty glory and the tribute of an indigentpeople, without any proper means of securing a continuance of that smallacquisition? This is not credible. But his conduct here, as well as inGermany, discovers his purpose in both expeditions: for by them heconfirmed the Roman dominion in Gaul, he gained time to mature hisdesigns, and he afforded his party in Rome an opportunity of promotinghis interest and exaggerating his exploits, which they did in such amanner as to draw from the Senate a decree for a very remarkableacknowledgment of his services in a supplication or thanksgiving oftwenty days. This attempt, not being pursued, stands single, and haslittle or no connection with the subsequent events. 

Therefore I shall in this place, where the narrative will be the leastbroken, insert from the best authorities which are left, and the bestconjectures which in so obscure a matter I am able to form, some accountof the first peopling of this island, the manners of its inhabitants, their art of war, their religious and civil discipline. These arematters not only worthy of attention as containing a very remarkablepiece of antiquity, but as not wholly unnecessary towards comprehendingthe great change made in all these points, when the Roman conquest cameafterwards to be completed. 

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Some think this port to be Witsand, others Boulogne. 

[6] Coway Stakes, near Kingston-on-Thames. 

CHAPTER II. 

SOME ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT INHABITANTS OF BRITAIN. 

That Britain was first peopled from Gaul we are assured by the bestproofs, --proximity of situation, and resemblance in language andmanners. Of the time in which this event happened we must be contentedto remain in ignorance, for we have no monuments. But we may concludethat it was a very ancient settlement, since the Carthaginians foundthis island inhabited when they traded hither for tin, --as thePhœnicians, whose tracks they followed in this commerce, are said tohave done long before them. It is true, that, when we consider the shortinterval between the universal deluge and that period, and compare itwith the first settlement of men at such a distance from this corner ofthe world, it may seem not easy to reconcile such a claim to antiquitywith the only authentic account we have of the origin and progress ofmankind, --especially as in those early ages the whole face of Nature wasextremely rude and uncultivated, when the links of commerce, even in thecountries first settled, were few and weak, navigation imperfect, geography unknown, and the hardships of travelling excessive. But thespirit of migration, of which we have now only some faint ideas, wasthen strong and universal, and it fully compensated all thesedisadvantages. Many writers, indeed, imagine that these migrations, socommon in the primitive times, were caused by the prodigious increase ofpeople beyond what their several territories could maintain. But thisopinion, far from being supported, is rather contradicted by thegeneral appearance of things in that early time, when in every countryvast tracts of land were suffered to lie almost useless in morasses andforests. Nor is it, indeed, more countenanced by the ancient modes oflife, no way favorable to population. I apprehend that these firstsettled countries, so far from being overstocked with inhabitants, wererather thinly peopled, and that the same causes which occasioned thatthinness occasioned also those frequent migrations which make so large apart of the first history of almost all nations. For in these ages mensubsisted chiefly by pasturage or hunting. These are occupations whichspread the people without multiplying them in proportion; they teachthem an extensive knowledge of the country; they carry them frequentlyand far from their homes, and weaken those ties which might attach themto any particular habitation. 

It was in a great degree from this manner of life that mankind becamescattered in the earliest times over the whole globe. But their peacefuloccupations did not contribute so much to that end as their wars, whichwere not the less frequent and violent because the people were few, andthe interests for which they contended of but small importance. Ancienthistory has furnished us with many instances of whole nations, expelledby invasion, falling in upon others, which they have entirelyoverwhelmed, --more irresistible in their defeat and ruin than in theirfullest prosperity. The rights of war were then exercised with greatinhumanity. A cruel death, or a servitude scarcely less cruel, was thecertain fate of all conquered people; the terror of which hurried menfrom habitations to which they were but little attached, to seeksecurity and repose under any climate that, however in other respectsundesirable, might afford them refuge from the fury of their enemies. Thus the bleak and barren regions of the North, not being peopled bychoice, were peopled as early, in all probability, as many of the milderand more inviting climates of the Southern world; and thus, by awonderful disposition of the Divine Providence, a life of hunting, whichdoes not contribute to increase, and war, which is the great instrumentin the destruction of men, were the two principal causes of their beingspread so early and so universally over the whole earth. From what isvery commonly known of the state of North America, it need not be saidhow often and to what distance several of the nations on that continentare used to migrate, who, though thinly scattered, occupy an immenseextent of country. Nor are the causes of it less obvious, --their huntinglife, and their inhuman wars. 

Such migrations, sometimes by choice, more frequently from necessity, were common in the ancient world. Frequent necessities introduced afashion which subsisted after the original causes. For how could ithappen, but from some universally established public prejudice, whichalways overrules and stifles the private sense of men, that a wholenation should deliberately think it a wise measure to quit their countryin a body, that they might obtain in a foreign land a settlement whichmust wholly depend upon the chance of war? Yet this resolution was takenand actually pursued by the entire nation of the Helvetii, as it isminutely related by Cæsar. The method of reasoning which led them to itmust appear to us at this day utterly inconceivable. They were far frombeing compelled to this extraordinary migration by any want ofsubsistence at home; for it appears that they raised, withoutdifficulty, as much corn in one year as supported them for two; theycould not complain of the barrenness of such a soil. 

This spirit of migration, which grew out of the ancient manners andnecessities, and sometimes operated like a blind instinct, such asactuates birds of passage, is very sufficient to account for the earlyhabitation of the remotest parts of the earth, and in some sort alsojustifies that claim which has been so fondly made by almost all nationsto great antiquity. 

Gaul, from whence Britain was originally peopled, consisted of threenations: the Belgæ, towards the north; the Celtæ, in the middlecountries; and the Aquitani, to the south. Britain appears to havereceived its people only from the two former. From the Celtæ werederived the most ancient tribes of the Britons, of which the mostconsiderable were called Brigantes. The Belgæ, who did not even settlein Gaul until after Britain had been peopled by colonies from theformer, forcibly drove the Brigantes into the inland countries, andpossessed the greatest part of the coast, especially to the south andwest. These latter, as they entered the island in a more improved age, brought with them the knowledge and practice of agriculture, which, however, only prevailed in their own countries. The Brigantes stillcontinued their ancient way of life by pasturage and hunting. In thisrespect alone they differed: so that what we shall say, in treating oftheir manners, is equally applicable to both. And though the Britonswere further divided into an innumerable multitude of lesser tribes andnations, yet all being the branches of these two stocks, it is not toour purpose to consider them more minutely. 

Britain was in the time of Julius Cæsar what it is at this day, inclimate and natural advantages, temperate and reasonably fertile. Butdestitute of all those improvements which in a succession of ages it hasreceived from ingenuity, from commerce, from riches and luxury, it thenwore a very rough and savage appearance. The country, forest or marsh;the habitations, cottages; the cities, hiding-places in woods; thepeople naked, or only covered with skins; their sole employment, pasturage and hunting. They painted their bodies for ornament or terror, by a custom general amongst all savage nations, who, being passionatelyfond of show and finery, and having no object but their naked bodies onwhich to exercise this disposition, have in all times painted or cuttheir skins, according to their ideas of ornament. They shaved the beardon the chin; that on the upper lip was suffered to remain, and grow toan extraordinary length, to favor the martial appearance, in which theyplaced their glory. They were in their natural temper not unlike theGauls, impatient, fiery, inconstant, ostentatious, boastful, fond ofnovelty, --and like all barbarians, fierce, treacherous, and cruel. Theirarms were short javelins, small shields of a slight texture, and greatcutting swords with a blunt point, after the Gaulish fashion. 

Their chiefs went to battle in chariots, not unartfully contrived norunskilfully managed. I cannot help thinking it something extraordinary, and not easily to be accounted for, that the Britons should have been soexpert in the fabric of those chariots, when they seem utterly ignorantin all other mechanic arts: but thus it is delivered to us. They hadalso horse, though of no great reputation, in their armies. Their footwas without heavy armor; it was no firm body, nor instructed to preservetheir ranks, to make their evolutions, or to obey their commanders; butin tolerating hardships, in dexterity of forming ambuscades, (the artmilitary of savages, ) they are said to have excelled. A natural ferocityand an impetuous onset stood them in the place of discipline. 

It is very difficult, at this distance of time, and with so littleinformation, to discern clearly what sort of civil government prevailedamong the ancient Britons. In all very uncultivated countries, associety is not close nor intricate, nor property very valuable, libertysubsists with few restraints. The natural equality of mankind appearsand is asserted, and therefore there are but obscure lines of any formof government. In every society of this sort the natural connections arethe same as in others, though the political ties are weak. Among suchbarbarians, therefore, though there is little authority in themagistrate, there is often great power lodged, or rather left, in thefather: for, as among the Gauls, so among the Britons, he had the powerof life and death in his own family, over his children and his servants. 

But among freemen and heads of families, causes of all sorts seem tohave been decided by the Druids: they summoned and dissolved all thepublic assemblies; they alone had the power of capital punishments, andindeed seem to have had the sole execution and interpretation ofwhatever laws subsisted among this people. In this respect the Celticnations did not greatly differ from others, except that we view them inan earlier stage of society. Justice was in all countries originallyadministered by the priesthood: nor, indeed, could laws in their firstfeeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men torelinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to comedown to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The firstopenings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst theRomans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely inthe college of the pontiffs for above a century. [7]

The time in which the Druid priesthood was instituted is unknown. Itprobably rose, like other institutions of that kind, from low andobscure beginnings, and acquired from time, and the labors of able men, a form by which it extended itself so far, and attained at length somighty an influence over the minds of a fierce and otherwiseungovernable people. Of the place where it arose there is somewhat lessdoubt: Cæsar mentions it as the common opinion that this institutionbegan in Britain, that there it always remained in the highestperfection, and that from thence it diffused itself into Gaul. I own Ifind it not easy to assign any tolerable cause why an order of so muchauthority and a discipline so exact should have passed from the morebarbarous people to the more civilized, from the younger to the older, from the colony to the mother country: but it is not wonderful that theearly extinction of this order, and that general contempt in which theRomans held all the barbarous nations, should have left these mattersobscure and full of difficulty. 

The Druids were kept entirely distinct from the body of the people; andthey were exempted from all the inferior and burdensome offices ofsociety, that they might be at leisure to attend the important duties oftheir own charge. They were chosen out of the best families, and fromthe young men of the most promising talents: a regulation which placedand preserved them in a respectable light with the world. None wereadmitted into this order but after a long and laborious novitiate, whichmade the character venerable in their own eyes by the time anddifficulty of attaining it. They were much devoted to solitude, andthereby acquired that abstracted and thoughtful air which is so imposingupon the vulgar; and when they appeared in public, it was seldom, andonly on some great occasion, --in the sacrifices of the gods, or on theseat of judgment. They prescribed medicine; they formed the youth; theypaid the last honors to the dead; they foretold events; they exercisedthemselves in magic. They were at once the priests, lawgivers, andphysicians of their nation, and consequently concentred in themselvesall that respect that men have diffusively for those who heal theirdiseases, protect their property, or reconcile them to the Divinity. What contributed not a little to the stability and power of this orderwas the extent of its foundation, and the regularity and proportion ofits structure. It took in both sexes; and the female Druids were in noless esteem for their knowledge and sanctity than the males. It wasdivided into several subordinate ranks and classes; and they alldepended upon a chief or Arch-Druid, who was elected to his place withgreat authority and preeminence for life. They were further armed with apower of interdicting from their sacrifices, or excommunicating, anyobnoxious persons. This interdiction, so similar to that used by theancient Athenians, and to that since practised among Christians, wasfollowed by an exclusion from all the benefits of civil community; andit was accordingly the most dreaded of all punishments. This ampleauthority was in general usefully exerted; by the interposition of theDruids differences were composed, and wars ended; and the minds of thefierce Northern people, being reconciled to each other under theinfluence of religion, united with signal effect against their commonenemies. 

There was a class of the Druids whom they called Bards, who delivered insongs (their only history) the exploits of their heroes, and whocomposed those verses which contained the secrets of Druidicaldiscipline, their principles of natural and moral philosophy, theirastronomy, and the mystical rites of their religion. These verses in allprobability bore a near resemblance to the Golden Verses ofPythagoras, --to those of Phocylides, Orpheus, and other remnants of themost ancient Greek poets. The Druids, even in Gaul, where they were notaltogether ignorant of the use of letters, in order to preserve theirknowledge in greater respect, committed none of their precepts towriting. The proficiency of their pupils was estimated principally bythe number of technical verses which they retained in their memory: acircumstance that shows this discipline rather calculated to preservewith accuracy a few plain maxims of traditionary science than to improveand extend it. And this is not the sole circumstance which leads us tobelieve that among them learning had advanced no further than itsinfancy. 

The scholars of the Druids, like those of Pythagoras, were carefullyenjoined a long and religious silence: for, if barbarians come toacquire any knowledge, it is rather by instruction than, examination;they must therefore be silent. Pythagoras, in the rude times of Greece, required silence in his disciples; but Socrates, in the meridian of theAthenian refinement, spoke less than his scholars: everything wasdisputed in the Academy. 

The Druids are said to be very expert in astronomy, in geography, and inall parts of mathematical knowledge; and authors speak in a veryexaggerated strain of their excellence in these, and in many othersciences. Some elemental knowledge I suppose they had; but I canscarcely be persuaded that their learning was either deep or extensive. In all countries where Druidism was professed, the youth, were generallyinstructed by that order; and yet was there little either in the mannersof the people, in their way of life, or their works of art, thatdemonstrates profound science or particularly mathematical skill. Britain, where their discipline was in its highest perfection, and whichwas therefore resorted to by the people of Gaul as an oracle inDruidical questions, was more barbarous in all other respects than Gaulitself, or than any other country then known in Europe. Those piles ofrude magnificence, Stonehenge and Abury, are in vain produced in proofof their mathematical abilities. These vast structures have nothingwhich can be admired, but the greatness of the work; and they are notthe only instances of the great things which the mere labor of manyhands united, and persevering in their purpose, may accomplish with verylittle help from mechanics. This may be evinced by the immensebuildings and the low state of the sciences among the originalPeruvians. 

The Druids were eminent above all the philosophic lawgivers of antiquityfor their care in impressing the doctrine of the soul's immortality onthe minds of their people, as an operative and leading principle. Thisdoctrine was inculcated on the scheme of Transmigration, which someimagine them to have derived from Pythagoras. But it is by no meansnecessary to resort to any particular teacher for an opinion which owesits birth to the weak struggles of unenlightened reason, and to mistakesnatural to the human mind. The idea of the soul's immortality is indeedancient, universal, and in a manner inherent in our nature; but it isnot easy for a rude people to conceive any other mode of existence thanone similar to what they had experienced in life, nor any other world asthe scene of such an existence but this we inhabit, beyond the bounds ofwhich the mind extends itself with great difficulty. Admiration, indeed, was able to exalt to heaven a few selected heroes: it did not seemabsurd that those who in their mortal state had distinguished themselvesas superior and overruling spirits should after death ascend to thatsphere which influences and governs everything below, or that the properabode of beings at once so illustrious and permanent should be in thatpart of Nature in which they had always observed the greatest splendorand the least mutation. But on ordinary occasions it was natural someshould imagine that the dead retired into a remote country, separatedfrom the living by seas or mountains. It was natural that some shouldfollow their imagination with a simplicity still purer, and pursue thesouls of men no further than the sepulchres in which their bodies hadbeen deposited;[8] whilst others of deeper penetration, observing thatbodies worn out by age or destroyed by accident still afforded thematerials for generating new ones, concluded likewise that a soul beingdislodged did not wholly perish, but was destined, by a similarrevolution in Nature, to act again, and to animate some other body. Thislast principle gave rise to the doctrine of Transmigration: but we mustnot presume of course, that, where it prevailed, it necessarily excludedthe other opinions; for it is not remote from the usual procedure of thehuman mind, blending in obscure matters imagination and reasoningtogether, to unite ideas the most inconsistent. When Homer representsthe ghosts of his heroes appearing at the sacrifices of Ulysses, hesupposes them endued with life, sensation, and a capacity of moving; buthe has joined to these powers of living existence uncomeliness, want ofstrength, want of distinction, the characteristics of a dead carcass. This is what the mind is apt to do: it is very apt to confound the ideasof the surviving soul and the dead body. The vulgar have always andstill do confound these very irreconcilable ideas. They lay the scene ofapparitions in churchyards; they habit the ghost in a shroud; and itappears in all the ghastly paleness of a corpse. A contradiction of thiskind has given rise to a doubt whether the Druids did in reality holdthe doctrine of Transmigration. There is positive testimony that theydid hold it; there is also testimony as positive that they buried orburned with the dead utensils, arms, slaves, and whatever might bejudged useful to them, as if they were to be removed into a separatestate. They might have held both these opinions; and we ought not to besurprised to find error inconsistent. 

The objects of the Druid worship were many. In this respect they did notdiffer from other heathens: but it must be owned that in general theirideas of divine matters were more exalted than those of the Greeks andRomans, and that they did not fall into an idolatry so coarse andvulgar. That their gods should be represented under a human form theythought derogatory to beings uncreated and imperishable. To confine whatcan endure no limits within walls and roofs they judged absurd andimpious. In these particulars there was something refined and suitableenough to a just idea of the Divinity. But the rest was not equal. Somenotions they had, like the greatest part of mankind, of a Being eternaland infinite; but they also, like the greatest part of mankind, paidtheir worship to inferior objects, from the nature of ignorance andsuperstition always tending downwards. 

The first and chief objects of their worship were the elements, --and ofthe elements, fire, as the most pure, active, penetrating, and whatgives life and energy to all the rest. Among fires, the preference wasgiven to the sun, as the most glorious visible being, and the fountainof all life. Next they venerated the moon and the planets. After fire, water was held in reverence. This, when pure, and ritually prepared, wassupposed to wash away all sins, and to qualify the priest to approachthe altar of the gods with more acceptable prayers: washing with waterbeing a type natural enough of inward cleansing and purity of mind. They also worshipped fountains and lakes and rivers. 

Oaks were regarded by this sect with a particular veneration, as, bytheir greatness, their shade, their stability, and duration, not illrepresenting the perfections of the Deity. From the great reverence inwhich they held this tree, it is thought their name of Druids isderived: the word Deru, in the Celtic language, signifying an oak. Buttheir reverence was not wholly confined to this tree. All forests wereheld sacred; and many particular plants were respected, as endued with aparticular holiness. No plant was more revered than the mistletoe, especially if it grew on the oak, --not only because it is rarely foundupon that tree, but because the oak was among the Druids peculiarlysacred. Towards the end of the year they searched for this plant, andwhen it was found great rejoicing ensued; it was approached with, reverence; it was cut with a golden hook; it was not suffered to fall tothe ground, but received with great care and solemnity upon a whitegarment. 

In ancient times, and in all countries, the profession of physic wasannexed to the priesthood. Men imagined that all their diseases wereinflicted by the immediate displeasure of the Deity, and thereforeconcluded that the remedy would most probably proceed from those whowere particularly employed in his service. Whatever, for the samereason, was found of efficacy to avert or cure distempers was consideredas partaking somewhat of the Divinity. Medicine was always joined withmagic: no remedy was administered without mysterious ceremony andincantation. The use of plants and herbs, both in medicinal and magicalpractices, was early and general. The mistletoe, pointed out by its verypeculiar appearance and manner of growth, must have struck powerfully onthe imaginations of a superstitious people. Its virtues may have beensoon discovered. It has been fully proved, against the opinion ofCelsus, that internal remedies were of very early use. [9] Yet if it hadnot, the practice of the present savage nations supports the probabilityof that opinion. By some modern authors the mistletoe is said to be ofsignal service in the cure of certain convulsive distempers, which, bytheir suddenness, their violence, and their unaccountable symptoms, havebeen ever considered as supernatural. The epilepsy was by the Romans forthat reason called _morbus sacer_; and all other nations have regardedit in the same light. The Druids also looked upon vervain, and someother plants, as holy, and probably for a similar reason. 

The other objects of the Druid worship were chiefly serpents, in theanimal world, and rude heaps of stone, or great pillars without polishor sculpture, in the inanimate. The serpent, by his dangerous qualities, is not ill adapted to inspire terror, --by his annual renewals, to raiseadmiration, --by his make, easily susceptible of many figures, to servefor a variety of symbols, --and by all, to be an object of religiousobservance: accordingly, no object of idolatry has been moreuniversal. [10] And this is so natural, that serpent-veneration seems tobe rising again, even in the bosom of Mahometanism. [11]

The great stones, it has been supposed, were originally monuments ofillustrious men, or the memorials of considerable actions, --or they werelandmarks for deciding the bounds of fixed property. In time the memoryof the persons or facts which these stones were erected to perpetuatewore away; but the reverence which custom, and probably certainperiodical ceremonies, had preserved for those places was not so soonobliterated. The monuments themselves then came to be venerated, --andnot the less because the reason for venerating them was no longer known. The landmark was in those times held sacred on account of its greatuses, and easily passed into an object of worship. Hence the godTerminus amongst the Romans. This religious observance towards rudestones is one of the most ancient and universal of all customs. Tracesof it are to be found in almost all, and especially in these Northernnations; and to this day, in Lapland, where heathenism is not yetentirely extirpated, their chief divinity, which they call_Storjunkare, _ is nothing more than a rude stone. [12]

Some writers among the moderns, because the Druids ordinarily made nouse of images in their worship, have given into an opinion that theirreligion was founded on the unity of the Godhead. But this is no justconsequence. The spirituality of the idea, admitting their idea to havebeen spiritual, does not infer the unity of the object. All the ancientauthors who speak of this order agree, that, besides those great andmore distinguishing objects of their worship already mentioned they hadgods answerable to those adored by the Romans. And we know that theNorthern nations, who overran the Roman Empire, had in fact a greatplurality of gods, whose attributes, though not their names, bore aclose analogy to the idols of the Southern world. 

The Druids performed the highest act of religion by sacrifice, agreeablyto the custom of all other nations. They not only offered up beasts, buteven human victims: a barbarity almost universal in the heathen world, but exercised more uniformly, and with circumstances of peculiarcruelty, amongst those nations where the religion of the Druidsprevailed. They held that the life of a man was the only atonement forthe life of a man. They frequently inclosed a number of wretches, somecaptives, some criminals, and, when these were wanting, even innocentvictims, in a gigantic statue of wicker-work, to which they set fire, and invoked their deities amidst the horrid cries and shrieks of thesufferers, and the shouts of those who assisted at this tremendous rite. 

There were none among the ancients more eminent for all the arts ofdivination than the Druids. Many of the superstitious practices in useto this day among the country people for discovering their futurefortune seem to be remains of Druidism. Futurity is the great concern ofmankind. Whilst the wise and learned look back upon experience andhistory, and reason from things past about events to come, it is naturalfor the rude and ignorant, who have the same desires without the samereasonable means of satisfaction, to inquire into the secrets offuturity, and to govern their conduct by omens, dreams, and prodigies. The Druids, as well as the Etruscan and Roman priesthood, attended withdiligence the flight of birds, the pecking of chickens, and the entrailsof their animal sacrifices. It was obvious that no contemptibleprognostics of the weather were to be taken from certain motions andappearances in birds and beasts. [13] A people who lived mostly in theopen air must have been well skilled in these observations. And aschanges in the weather influenced much the fortune of their huntings ortheir harvests, which were all their fortunes, it was easy to apply thesame prognostics to every event by a transition very natural and common;and thus probably arose the science of auspices, which formerly guidedthe deliberations of councils and the motions of armies, though now theyonly serve, and scarcely serve, to amuse the vulgar. 

The Druid temple is represented to have been nothing more than aconsecrated wood. The ancients speak of no other. But monuments remainwhich show that the Druids were not in this respect wholly confined togroves. They had also a species of building which in all probability wasdestined to religious use. This sort of structure was, indeed, withoutwalls or roof. It was a colonnade, generally circular, of huge, rudestones, sometimes single, sometimes double, sometimes with, oftenwithout, an architrave. These open temples were not in all respectspeculiar to the Northern nations. Those of the Greeks, which werededicated to the celestial gods, ought in strictness to have had noroof, and were thence called _hypæthra_. [14]

Many of these monuments remain in the British islands, curious fortheir antiquity, or astonishing for the greatness of the work: enormousmasses of rock, so poised as to be set in motion with the slightesttouch, yet not to be pushed from their place by a very great power; vastaltars, peculiar and mystical in their structure, thrones, basins, heapsor cairns; and a variety of other works, displaying a wild industry, anda strange mixture of ingenuity and rudeness. But they are all worthy ofattention, --not only as such monuments often clear up the darkness andsupply the defects of history, but as they lay open a noble field ofspeculation for those who study the changes which have happened in themanners, opinions, and sciences of men, and who think them as worthy ofregard as the fortune of wars and the revolutions of kingdoms. 

The short account which I have here given does not contain the whole ofwhat is handed down to us by ancient writers, or discovered by modernresearch, concerning this remarkable order. But I have selected thosewhich appear to me the most striking features, and such as throw thestrongest light on the genius and true character of the Druidicalinstitution. In some respects it was undoubtedly very singular; it stoodout more from the body of the people than the priesthood of othernations; and their knowledge and policy appeared the more striking bybeing contrasted with the great simplicity and rudeness of the peopleover whom they presided. But, notwithstanding some peculiar appearancesand practices, it is impossible not to perceive a great conformitybetween this and the ancient orders which have been established for thepurposes of religion in almost all countries. For, to say nothing of theresemblance which many have traced between this and the Jewishpriesthood, the Persian Magi, and the Indian Brahmans, it did not sogreatly differ from the Roman priesthood, either in the original objectsor in the general mode of worship, or in the constitution of theirhierarchy. In the original institution neither of these nations had theuse of images; the rules of the Salian as well as Druid discipline weredelivered in verse; both orders were under an elective head; and bothwere for a long time the lawyers of their country. So that, when theorder of Druids was suppressed by the Emperors, it was rather from adread of an influence incompatible with the Roman government than fromany dislike of their religious opinions. 

FOOTNOTES:

[7] _Digest. Lib. I. Tit. Ii. De Origine et Progressu Juris, § 6. _

[8] Cic. Tusc. Quest. Lib. I

[9] See this point in the Divine Legation of Moses. 

[10] Παρὰ παντὶ νομιζομίνων παρ' ὑμῖν θεῶν ὄφις σύμβολον μέγα καὶμιστήριον ἀναγράφεται--Justin Martyr, in Stillingfleet's Origines Sacræ. 

[11] Norden's Travels. 

[12] Scheffer's Lapland, p. 92, the translation. 

[13] Cic. De Divinatione, Lib. I. 

[14] Decor. . . . Perficitur statione, . . . . Cum Jovi Fulguri, et Cœlo, etSoli, et Lunæ ædificia sub divo hypæthraque constituentur. Horum enimdeorum et species et effectus in aperto mundo atque lucenti præsentesvidemus. --Vitruv. De Architect. P. 6. De Laet. Antwerp. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE REDUCTION OF BRITAIN BY THE ROMANS. 

The death of Cæsar, and the civil wars which ensued, afforded foreignnations some respite from the Roman ambition. Augustus, having restoredpeace to mankind, seems to have made it a settled maxim of his reign notto extend the Empire. He found himself at the head of a new monarchy;and he was more solicitous to confirm it by the institutions of soundpolicy than to extend the bounds of its dominion. In consequence of thisplan Britain was neglected. 

Tiberius came a regular successor to an established government. But hispolitics were dictated rather by his character than his situation. Hewas a lawful prince, and he acted on the maxims of an usurper. Havingmade it a rule never to remove far from the capital, and jealous ofevery reputation which seemed too great for the measure of a subject, heneither undertook any enterprise of moment in his own person nor caredto commit the conduct of it to another. There was little in a Britishtriumph that could affect a temper like that of Tiberius. 

His successor, Caligula, was not influenced by this, nor indeed by anyregular system; for, having undertaken an expedition to Britain withoutany determinate view, he abandoned it on the point of execution withoutreason. And adding ridicule to his disgrace, his soldiers returned toRome loaded with shells. These spoils he displayed as the ornaments of atriumph which he celebrated over the Ocean, --if in all these particularswe may trust to the historians of that time, who relate things almostincredible of the folly of their masters and the patience of the Romanpeople. 

But the Roman people, however degenerate, still retained much of theirmartial spirit; and as the Emperors held their power almost entirely bythe affection of the soldiery, they found themselves often obliged tosuch enterprises as might prove them no improper heads of a militaryconstitution. An expedition to Britain was well adapted to answer allthe purposes of this ostentatious policy. The country was remote andlittle known, so that every exploit there, as if achieved in anotherworld, appeared at Rome with double pomp and lustre; whilst the sea, which divided Britain from the continent, prevented a failure in thatisland from being followed by any consequences alarming to the body ofthe Empire. A pretext was not wanting to this war. The maritime Britons, while the terror of the Roman arms remained fresh, upon their minds, continued regularly to pay the tribute imposed by Cæsar. But thegeneration which experienced that war having passed away, that whichsucceeded felt the burden, but knew from rumor only the superioritywhich had imposed it; and being very ignorant, as of all things else, soof the true extent of the Roman power, they were not afraid to provokeit by discontinuing the payment of the tribute. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 43]

This gave occasion to the Emperor Claudius, ninety-seven years after thefirst expedition of Cæsar, to invade Britain in person, and with a greatarmy. But he, having rather surveyed than conducted the war, left in ashort time the management of it to his legate, Plautius, who subduedwithout much difficulty those countries which lay to the southward ofthe Thames, the best cultivated and most accessible parts of the island. But the inhabitants of the rough inland countries, the people calledCattivellauni, made a more strenuous opposition. They were under thecommand of Caractacus, a chief of great and just renown amongst all theBritish nations. This leader wisely adjusted his conduct of the war tothe circumstances of his savage subjects and his rude country. Plautiusobtained no decisive advantages over him. He opposed Ostorius Scapula, who succeeded that general, with the same bravery, but with unequalsuccess; for he was, after various turns of fortune, obliged to abandonhis dominions, which Ostorius at length subdued and disarmed. 

This bulwark of the British freedom being overturned, Ostorius was notafraid to enlarge his plan. Not content with disarming the enemies ofRome, he proceeded to the same extremities with those nations who hadbeen always quiet, and who, under the name of an alliance, lay ripeningfor subjection. This fierce people, who looked upon their arms as theironly valuable possessions, refused to submit to terms as severe as themost absolute conquest could impose. They unanimously entered into aleague against the Romans. But their confederacy was either notsufficiently strong or fortunate to resist so able a commander, and onlyafforded him an opportunity, from a more comprehensive victory, toextend the Roman province a considerable way to the northern and westernparts of the island. The frontiers of this acquisition, which extendedalong the rivers Severn and Nen, he secured by a chain of forts andstations; the inland parts he quieted by the settlement of colonies ofhis veteran troops at Maldon and Verulam: and such was the beginning ofthose establishments which afterwards became so numerous in Britain. This commander was the first who traced in this island a plan ofsettlement and civil policy to concur with his military operations. For, after he had settled these colonies, considering with what difficultyany and especially an uncivilized people are broke into submission to aforeign government, he imposed it on some of the most powerful of theBritish nations in a more indirect manner. He placed them under kings oftheir own race; and whilst he paid this compliment to their pride, hesecured their obedience by the interested fidelity of a prince who knew, that, as he owed the beginning, so he depended for the duration of hisauthority wholly upon their favor. Such was the dignity and extent ofthe Roman policy, that they could number even royalty itself amongsttheir instruments of servitude. 

Ostorius did not confine himself within the boundaries of these rivers. He observed that the Silures, inhabitants of South Wales, one of themost martial tribes in Britain, were yet unhurt and almost untouched bythe war. He could expect to make no progress to the northward, whilst anenemy of such importance hung upon his rear, --especially as they werenow commanded by Caractacus, who preserved the spirit of a prince, though he had lost his dominions, and fled from nation to nation, wherever he could find a banner erected against the Romans. Hischaracter obtained him reception and command. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 51]

Though the Silures, thus headed, did everything that became theirmartial reputation, both in the choice and defence of their posts, theRomans, by their discipline and the weight and excellence of their arms, prevailed over the naked bravery of this gallant people, and defeatedthem in a great battle. Caractacus was soon after betrayed into theirhands, and conveyed to Rome. The merit of the prisoner was the soleornament of a triumph celebrated over an indigent people headed by agallant chief. The Romans crowded eagerly to behold the man who, withinferior forces, and in an obscure corner of the world, had so manyyears stood up against the weight of their empire. 

As the arts of adulation improved in proportion as the real grandeur ofRome declined, this advantage was compared to the greatest conquests inthe most flourishing times of the Republic: and so far as regarded thepersonal merit of Caractacus, it could not be too highly rated. Beingbrought before the emperor, he behaved with such manly fortitude, andspoke of his former actions and his present condition with so much plainsense and unaffected dignity, that he moved the compassion of theemperor, who remitted much of that severity which the Romans formerlyexercised upon their captives. Rome was now a monarchy, and that fiercerepublican spirit was abated which had neither feeling nor respect forthe character of unfortunate sovereigns. 

The Silures were not reduced by the loss of Caractacus, and the greatdefeat they had suffered. They resisted every measure of force orartifice that could be employed against them, with the most generousobstinacy: a resolution in which they were confirmed by some imprudentwords of the legate, threatening to extirpate, or, what appeared to themscarcely less dreadful, to transplant their nation. Their naturalbravery thus hardened into despair, and inhabiting a country verydifficult of access, they presented an impenetrable barrier to theprogress of that commander; insomuch that, wasted with continual cares, and with the mortification to find the end of his affairs so littleanswerable to the splendor of their beginning, Ostorius died of grief, and left all things in confusion. 

The legates who succeeded to his charge did little more for about sixtyyears than secure the frontiers of the Roman province. But in thebeginning of Nero's reign the command in Britain was devolved onSuetonius Paulinus, a soldier of merit and experience, who, when hecame to view the theatre of his future operations, and had wellconsidered the nature of the country, discerned evidently that the warmust of necessity be protracted to a great length, if he should beobliged to penetrate into every fastness to which the enemy retired, andto combat their flying parties one by one. He therefore resolved to makesuch a blow at the head as must of course disable all the inferiormembers. 

The island then called Mona, now Anglesey, at that time was theprincipal residence of the Druids. Here their councils were held, andtheir commands from hence were dispersed among all the British nations. Paulinus proposed, in reducing this their favorite and sacred seat, todestroy, or at least greatly to weaken, the body of the Druids, andthereby to extinguish the great actuating principle of all the Celticpeople, and that which was alone capable of communicating order andenergy to their operations. 

Whilst the Roman troops were passing that strait which divides thisisland from the continent of Britain, they halted on a sudden, --notchecked by the resistance of the enemy, but suspended by a spectacle ofan unusual and altogether surprising nature. On every side of theBritish army were seen bands of Druids in their most sacred habitssurrounding the troops, lifting their hands to heaven, devoting to deaththeir enemies, and animating their disciples to religious frenzy by theuncouth ceremonies of a savage ritual, and the horrid mysteries of asuperstition familiar with blood. The female Druids also moved about ina troubled order, their hair dishevelled, their garments torn, torchesin their hands, and, with an horror increased by the perverted softnessof their sex, howled out the same curses and incantations with greaterclamor. [15] Astonished at this sight, the Romans for some time neitheradvanced nor returned the darts of the enemy. But at length, rousingfrom their trance, and animating each other with the shame of yieldingto the impotence of female and fanatical fury, they found the resistanceby no means proportioned to the horror and solemnity of thepreparations. These overstrained efforts had, as frequently happens, exhausted the spirits of the men, and stifled that ardor they wereintended to kindle. The Britons were defeated; and Paulinus, pretendingto detest the barbarity of their superstition, in reality from thecruelty of his own nature, and that he might cut off the occasion offuture disturbances, exercised the most unjustifiable severities on thisunfortunate people. He burned the Druids in their own fires; and that noretreat might be afforded to that order, their consecrated woods wereeverywhere destroyed. Whilst he was occupied in this service, a generalrebellion broke out, which his severity to the Druids served rather toinflame than allay. 

From the manners of the republic a custom had been ingrafted into themonarchy of Rome altogether unsuitable to that mode of government. Inthe time of the Commonwealth, those who lived in a dependent andcliental relation on the great men used frequently to show marks oftheir acknowledgment by considerable bequests at their death. But whenall the scattered powers of that state became united in the emperor, these legacies followed the general current, and flowed in upon thecommon patron. In the will of every considerable person he inheritedwith the children and relations, and such devises formed noinconsiderable part of his revenue: a monstrous practice, which let anabsolute sovereign into all the private concerns of his subjects, andwhich, by giving the prince a prospect of one day sharing in all thegreat estates, whenever he was urged by avarice or necessity, naturallypointed out a resource by an anticipation always in his power. Thispractice extended into the provinces. A king of the Iceni[16] haddevised a considerable part of his substance to the emperor. But theRoman procurator, not satisfied with entering into his master's portion, seized upon the rest, --and pursuing his injustice to the most horribleoutrages, publicly scourged Boadicea, queen to the deceased prince, andviolated his daughters. These cruelties, aggravated by the shame andscorn that attended them, --the general severity of the government, --thetaxes, (new to a barbarous people, ) laid on without discretion, extortedwithout mercy, and, even when respited, made utterly ruinous byexorbitant usury, --the farther mischiefs they had to dread, when morecompletely reduced, --all these, with, the absence of the legate and thearmy on a remote expedition, provoked all the tribes of the Britons, provincials, allies, enemies, to a general insurrection. The command ofthis confederacy was conferred on Boadicea, as the first in rank, andresentment of injuries. They began by cutting off a Roman legion; thenthey fell upon the colonies of Camelodunum and Verulam, and with abarbarous fury butchered the Romans and their adherents to the number ofseventy thousand. 

An end had been now put to the Roman power in this island, if Paulinus, with unexampled vigor and prudence, had not conducted his army throughthe midst of the enemy's country from Anglesey to London. There unitingthe soldiers that remained dispersed in different garrisons, he formedan army of ten thousand men, and marched to attack the enemy in theheight of their success and security. The army of the Britons is said tohave amounted to two hundred and thirty thousand; but it was illcomposed, and without choice or order, --women, boys, old men, priests, --full of presumption, tumult, and confusion. Boadicea was attheir head, --a woman of masculine spirit, but precipitant, and withoutany military knowledge. 

The event was such as might have been expected. Paulinus, having chosena situation favorable to the smallness of his numbers, and encouragedhis troops not to dread a multitude whose weight was dangerous only tothemselves, piercing into the midst of that disorderly crowd, after ablind and furious resistance, obtained a complete victory. Eightythousand Britons fell in this battle. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 61] Paulinus improved the terror this slaughter hadproduced by the unparalleled severities which he exercised. This methodwould probably have succeeded to subdue, but at the same time todepopulate the nation, if such loud complaints had not been made at Romeof the legate's cruelty as procured his recall. 

Three successive legates carried on the affairs of Britain during thelatter part of Nero's reign, and during the troubles occasioned by thedisputed succession. But they were all of an inactive character. Thevictory obtained by Paulinus had disabled the Britons from any newattempt. Content, therefore, with recovering the Roman province, thesegenerals compounded, as it were, with the enemy for the rest of theisland. They caressed the troops; they indulged them in theirlicentiousness; and not being of a character to repress the seditionsthat continually arose, they submitted to preserve their ease and someshadow of authority by sacrificing the most material parts of it. Andthus they continued, soldiers and commanders, by a sort of compact, in acommon neglect of all duty on the frontiers of the Empire, in the faceof a bold and incensed enemy. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 69]

[Sidenote: A. D. 71]

But when Vespasian arrived to the head of affairs, he caused the vigorof his government to be felt in Britain, as he had done in all the otherparts of the Empire. He was not afraid to receive great services. Hislegates, Cerealis and Frontinus, reduced the Silures and Brigantes, --onethe most warlike, the other the most numerous people in the island. Butits final reduction and perfect settlement were reserved for JuliusAgricola, a man by whom, it was a happiness for the Britons to beconquered. He was endued with all those bold and popular virtues whichwould have given him the first place in the times of the free Republic;and he joined to them all that reserve and moderation which enabled himto fill great offices with safety, and made him a good subject under ajealous despotism. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 84. ]

Though the summer was almost spent when he arrived in Britain, knowinghow much the vigor and success of the first stroke influences allsubsequent measures, he entered immediately into action. After reducingsome tribes, Mona became the principal object of his attention. Thecruel ravages of Paulinus had not entirely effaced the idea of sanctitywhich the Britons by a long course of hereditary reverence had annexedto that island: it became once more a place of consideration by thereturn of the Druids. Here Agricola observed a conduct very differentfrom that of his predecessor, Paulinus: the island, when he had reducedit, was treated with great lenity. Agricola was a man of humanity andvirtue: he pitied the condition and respected the prejudices of theconquered. This behavior facilitated the progress of his arms, insomuchthat in less than two campaigns all the British nations comprehended inwhat we now call England yielded themselves to the Roman government, assoon as they found that peace was no longer to be considered as adubious blessing. Agricola carefully secured the obedience of theconquered people by building forts and stations in the most importantand commanding places. Having taken these precautions for securing hisrear, he advanced northwards, and, penetrating into Caledonia as far asthe river Tay, he there built a _prætentura_, or line of forts, betweenthe two friths, which are in that place no more than twenty milesasunder. The enemy, says Tacitus, was removed as it were into anotherisland. And this line Agricola seems to have destined as the boundaryof the Empire. For though in the following year he carried his armsfurther, and, as it is thought, to the foot of the Grampian Mountains, and there defeated a confederate army of the Caledonians, headed byGalgacus, one of their most famous chiefs, yet he built no fort to thenorthward of this line: a measure which he never omitted, when heintended to preserve his conquests. The expedition of that summer wasprobably designed only to disable the Caledonians from attemptinganything against this barrier. But he left them their mountains, theirarms, and their liberty: a policy, perhaps, not altogether worthy of soable a commander. He might the more easily have completed the conquestof the whole island by means of the fleet which he equipped to coöperatewith his land forces in that expedition. This fleet sailed quite roundBritain, which had not been before, by any certain proof, known to be anisland: a circumnavigation, in that immature state of naval skill, oflittle less fame than a voyage round the globe in the present age. 

In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the greatlabors of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by thelegislator, and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honorablewhich is only an introduction to tyranny. His first care was theregulation of his household, which under former legates had been alwaysfull of faction and intrigue, lay heavy on the province, and was asdifficult to govern. He never suffered his private partialities tointrude into the conduct of public business, nor in appointing toemployments did he permit solicitation to supply the place of merit, wisely sensible that a proper choice of officers is almost the whole ofgovernment. He eased the tribute of the province, not so much byreducing it in quantity as by cutting off all those vexatious practiceswhich attended the levying of it, far more grievous than the impositionitself. Every step in securing the subjection of the conquered countrywas attended with the utmost care in providing for its peace andinternal order. Agricola reconciled the Britons to the Roman governmentby reconciling them to the Roman manners. He moulded that fierce nationby degrees to soft and social customs, leading them imperceptibly into afondness for baths, for gardens, for grand houses, and all thecommodious elegancies of a cultivated life. He diffused a grace anddignity over this new luxury by the introduction of literature. Heinvited instructors in all the arts and sciences from Rome; and he sentthe principal youth of Britain to that city to be educated at his ownexpense. In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them, and madethem exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. Hisconduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, butsometimes necessary task, of subduing a rude and free people. 

Thus was Britain, after a struggle of fifty-four years, entirely bentunder the yoke, and moulded into the Roman Empire. How so stubborn anopposition, could have been so long maintained against the greatestpower on earth by a people ill armed, worse united, without revenues, without discipline, has justly been deemed an object of wonder. Authorsare generally contented with attributing it to the extraordinary braveryof the ancient Britons. But certainly the Britons fought with armies asbrave as the world ever saw, with superior discipline, and moreplentiful resources. 

To account for this opposition, we must have recourse to the generalcharacter of the Roman politics at this time. War, during this period, was carried on upon principles very different from, those that actuatedthe Republic. Then one uniform spirit animated one body through wholeages. With whatever state they were engaged, the war was so prosecutedas if the republic could not subsist, unless that particular enemy weretotally destroyed. But when the Roman dominion had arrived to as greatan extent as could well be managed, and that the ruling power had moreto fear from disaffection to the government than from enmity to theEmpire, with regard to foreign affairs common rules and a moderatepolicy took place. War became no more than a sort of exercise for theRoman forces. [17] Even whilst they were declaring war they lookedtowards an accommodation, and were satisfied with reasonable terms whenthey concluded it. Their politics were more like those of the presentpowers of Europe, where kingdoms seek rather to spread their influencethan to extend their dominion, to awe and weaken rather than to destroy. Under unactive and jealous princes the Roman legates seldom dared topush the advantages they had gained far enough to produce a dangerousreputation. [18] They wisely stopped, when they came to the verge ofpopularity. And these emperors fearing as much from the generals astheir generals from them, such frequent changes were made in thecommand that the war was never systematically carried on. Besides, thechange of emperors (and their reigns were not long) almost alwaysbrought on a change of measures; and the councils even of the same reignwere continually fluctuating, as opposite court factions happened toprevail. Add to this, that during the commotions which followed thedeath of Nero the contest for the purple turned the eyes of the worldfrom every other object. All persons of consequence interestedthemselves in the success of some of the contending parties; and thelegates in Britain, suspended in expectation of the issue of such mightyquarrels, remained unactive till it could be determined for what masterthey were to conquer. 

On the side of the Roman government these seem to have been some of thecauses which so long protracted the fate of Britain. Others arose fromthe nature of the country itself, and from the manners of itsinhabitants. The country was then extremely woody and full of morasses. There were originally no roads. The motion of armies was thereforedifficult, and communication in many cases impracticable. There were nocities, no towns, no places of cantonment for soldiers; so that theRoman forces were obliged to come into the field late and to leave itearly in the season. They had no means to awe the enemy, and to preventtheir machinations during the winter. Every campaign they had nearly thesame work to begin. When a civilized nation suffers some great defeat, and loses some place critically situated, such is the mutual dependenceof the several parts by commerce, and by the orders of a well-regulatedcommunity, that the whole is easily secured. A long-continued state ofwar is unnatural to such a nation. They abound with artisans, withtraders, and a number of settled and unwarlike people, who are lessdisturbed in their ordinary course by submitting to almost any powerthan in a long opposition; and as this character diffuses itself throughthe whole nation, they find it impossible to carry on a war, when theyare deprived of the usual resources. But in a country like ancientBritain there are as many soldiers as inhabitants. They unite anddisperse with ease. They require no pay nor formal subsistence; and thehardships of an irregular war are not very remote from their ordinarycourse of life. Victories are easily obtained over such a rude people, but they are rarely decisive; and the final conquest becomes a work oftime and patience. All that can be done is to facilitate communicationby roads, and to secure the principal avenues and the most remarkableposts on the navigable rivers by forts and stations. To conquer thepeople, you must subdue the nature of the country. The Romans at lengtheffected this; but until this was done, they never were able to make aperfect conquest. 

I shall now add something concerning the government the Romans settledhere, and of those methods which they used to preserve the conqueredpeople under an entire subjection. Those nations who had eitherpassively permitted or had been instrumental in the conquest of theirfellow-Britons were dignified with the title of allies, and therebypreserved their possessions, laws, and magistrates: they were subject tono kind of charge or tribute. But as their league was not equal, andthat they were under the protection, of a superior power, they wereentirely divested of the right of war and peace; and in many cases anappeal lay to Rome in consequence of their subordinate and dependentsituation. This was the lightest species of subjection; and it wasgenerally no more than a step preparatory to a stricter government. 

The condition of those towns and communities called _municipia_, bytheir being more closely united to the greater state, seemed to partakea degree less of independence. They were adopted citizens of Rome; butwhatever was detracted from their ancient liberty was compensated by amore or less complete possession of the privileges which constituted aRoman city, according to the merits which had procured their adoption. These cities were models of Rome in little; their courts and magistrateswere the same; and though they were at liberty to retain their old laws, and to make new at their pleasure, they commonly conformed to those ofRome. The _municipia_ were not subject to tribute. 

When a whole people had resisted the Roman power with great obstinacy, had displayed a readiness to revolt upon every occasion, and hadfrequently broken their faith, they were reduced into what the Romanscalled the form of a province: that is, they lost their laws, theirliberties, their magistrates; they forfeited the greatest part of theirlands; and they paid a heavy tribute for what they were permitted toretain. 

In these provinces the supreme government was in the prætor sent by thesenate, who commanded the army, and in his own person exercised thejudicial power. Where the sphere of his government was large, he deputedhis legates to that employment, who judged according to the standinglaws of the republic, aided by those occasional declarations of lawcalled the prætorial edicts. The care of the revenue was in the quæstor. He was appointed to that office in Rome; but when he acted in a judicialcapacity, it was always by commission from the prætor of theprovince. [19] Between these magistrates and all others who had any sharein the provincial government the Roman manners had established a kind ofsacred relation, as inviolable as that of blood. [20] All the officerswere taught to look up to the prætor as their father, and to regard eachother as brethren: a firm and useful bond of concord in a virtuousadministration; a dangerous and oppressive combination in a bad one. But, like all the Roman institutions, it operated strongly towards itsprincipal purpose, the security of dominion, which is by nothing so muchexposed as the factions and competitions of the officers, when thegoverning party itself gives the first example of disobedience. 

On the overthrow of the Commonwealth, a remarkable revolution ensued inthe power and the subordination of these magistrates. For, as the princecame alone to possess all that was by a proper title either imperial orprætorial authority, the ancient prætors dwindled into his legates, bywhich the splendor and importance of that dignity were much diminished. The business of the quæstor at this time seems to have been transferredto the emperor's procurator. The whole of the public revenue became partof the fisc, and was considered as the private estate of the prince. Butthe old office under this new appellation rose in proportion as theprætorship had declined. For the procurator seems to have drawn tohimself the cognizance of all civil, while capital cases alone werereserved for the judgment of the legate. [21] And though his power was atfirst restrained within narrow bounds, and all his judgments weresubject to a review and reversal by the prætor and the senate, hegradually grew into independence of both, and was at length by Claudiusinvested with a jurisdiction absolutely uncontrollable. Two causes, Iimagine, joined to produce this change: first, the sword was in thehands of the legate; the policy of the emperors, in order to balancethis dangerous authority, thought too much weight could not be throwninto the scale of the procurator: secondly, as the government was nowentirely despotical, a connection between the inferior officers of theempire and the senate[22] was found to shock the reason of that absolutemode of government, which extends the sovereign power in all its fulnessto every officer in his own district, and renders him accountable to hismaster alone for the abuse of it. 

The veteran soldiers were always thought entitled to a settlement in thecountry which had been subdued by their valor. The whole legion, withthe tribunes, the centurions, and all the subordinate officers, wereseated on an allotted portion of the conquered lands, which weredistributed among them according to their rank. These colonies weredisposed throughout the conquered country, so as to sustain each other, to surround the possessions that were left to the conquered, to mix withthe _municipia_ or free towns, and to overawe the allies. Rome extendedherself by her colonies into every part of her empire, and waseverywhere present. I speak here only of the military colonies, becauseno other, I imagine, were ever settled in Britain. 

There were few countries of any considerable extent in which all thesedifferent modes of government and different shades and gradations ofservitude did not exist together. There were allies, _municipia_, provinces, and colonies in this island, as elsewhere; and thosedissimilar parts, far from being discordant, united to make a firm andcompact body, the motion of any member of which could only serve toconfirm and establish the whole; and when time was given to thisstructure to coalesce and settle, it was found impossible to break anypart of it from the Empire. 

By degrees the several parts blended and softened into one another. Andas the remembrance of enmity, on the one hand, wore away by time, so, onthe other, the privileges of the Roman citizens at length became lessvaluable. When, nothing throughout so vast an extent of the globe was ofconsideration but a single man, there was no reason to make anydistinction amongst his subjects. Claudius first gave the full rights ofthe city to all the Gauls. Under Antoninus Rome opened her gates stillwider. All the subjects of the Empire were made partakers of the samecommon rights. The provincials flocked in; even slaves were no soonerenfranchised than they were advanced to the highest posts; and the planof comprehension, which had overturned the republic, strengthened themonarchy. 

Before the partitions were thus broken down, in order to support theEmpire, and to prevent commotions, they had a custom of sending spiesinto all the provinces, where, if they discovered any provincial layinghimself out for popularity, they were sure of finding means, for theyscrupled none, to repress him. It was not only the prætor, with histrain of lictors and apparitors, the rods and the axes, and all theinsolent parade of a conqueror's jurisdiction; every private Romanseemed a kind of magistrate: they took cognizance of all their words andactions, and hourly reminded them of that jealous and stern authority, so vigilant to discover and so severe to punish the slightest deviationsfrom obedience. 

As they had framed the action _de pecuniis repetundis_ against theavarice and rapacity of the provincial governors, they made at length alaw[23] which, one may say, was against their virtues. For theyprohibited them from receiving addresses of thanks on theiradministration, or any other public mark of acknowledgment, lest theyshould come to think that their merit or demerit consisted in the goodor ill opinion of the people over whom they ruled. They dreaded either arelaxation of government, or a dangerous influence in the legate, fromthe exertion of an humanity too popular. 

These are some of the civil and political methods by which the Romansheld their dominion over conquered nations; but even in peace they keptup a great military establishment. They looked upon the interior countryto be sufficiently secured by the colonies; their forces were thereforegenerally quartered on the frontiers. There they had their _stativa_, orstations, which were strong intrenched camps, many of them fitted evenfor a winter residence. The communication between these camps, thecolonies, and the municipal towns was formed by great roads, which theycalled military ways. The two principal of these ran in almost straightlines, the whole length of England, from north to south. Two othersintersected them from east to west. The remains show them to have beenin their perfection noble works, in all respects worthy the Romanmilitary prudence and the majesty of the Empire. The Anglo-Saxons calledthem streets. [24] Of all the Roman works, they respected and kept upthese alone. They regarded them, with a sort of sacred reverence, granting them a peculiar protection and great immunities. Those whotravelled on them were privileged from arrests in all civil suits. 

As the general character of the Roman government was hard and austere, it was particularly so in what regarded the revenue. This revenue waseither fixed or occasional. The fixed consisted, first, of an annual taxon persons and lands, but in what proportion to the fortunes of the oneor the value of the other I have not been able to ascertain. Next wasthe imposition called _decuma_, which consisted of a tenth, and often agreater portion of the corn of the province, which was generallydelivered in kind. Of all other products a fifth was paid. After thistenth had been exacted on the corn, they were obliged to sell anothertenth, or a more considerable part, to the prætor, at a price estimatedby himself. Even what remained was still subject to be bought up in thesome manner, and at the pleasure of the same magistrate, who, independent of these taxes and purchases, received for the use of hishousehold a large portion of the corn of the province. The most valuableof the pasture grounds were also reserved to the public, and aconsiderable revenue was thence derived, which they called _scriptura_. The state made a monopoly of almost the whole produce of the land, whichpaid several taxes, and was further enhanced by passing through severalhands before it came to popular consumption. 

The third great branch of the Roman revenue was the _portorium_, whichdid not differ from those impositions which we now call customs andduties of export and import. 

This was the ordinary revenue; besides which there were occasionalimpositions for shipping, for military stores and provisions, and fordefraying the expense of the prætor and his legates on the variouscircuits they made for the administration of the province. This lastcharge became frequently a means of great oppression, and several wayswere from time to time attempted, but with little effect, to confine itwithin reasonable bounds. [25] Amongst the extraordinary impositions mustbe reckoned the obligation they laid on the provincials to labor at thepublic works, after the manner of what the French call the _corvée_, andwe term statute-labor. 

As the provinces, burdened by the ordinary charges, were often in nocondition of levying these occasional taxes, they were obliged to borrowat interest. Interest was then to communities at the same exorbitantrate as to individuals. No province was free from a most onerous publicdebt; and that debt was far from operating like the same engagementcontracted in modern states, by which, as the creditor is thrown intothe power of the debtor, they often add considerably to their strength, and to the number and attachment of their dependants. The prince in thislatter case borrows from a subject or from a stranger. The one becomesmore the subject, and the other less a stranger. But in the Romanprovinces the subject borrowed from his master, and he thereby doubledhis slavery. The overgrown favorites and wealthy nobility of Romeadvanced money to the provincials; and they were in a condition both toprescribe the terms of the loan and to enforce the payment. Theprovinces groaned at once under all the severity of public impositionand the rapaciousness of private usury. They were overrun by publicans, farmers of the taxes, agents, confiscators, usurers, bankers, thosenumerous and insatiable bodies which always flourish in a burdened andcomplicated revenue. In a word, the taxes in the Roman Empire were soheavy, and in many respects so injudiciously laid on, that they havebeen not improperly considered as one cause of its decay and ruin. TheRoman government, to the very last, carried something of the spirit ofconquest in it; and this system of taxes seems rather calculated for theutter impoverishment of nations, in whom a long subjection had not wornaway the remembrance of enmity, than for the support of a justcommonwealth. 

FOOTNOTES:

[15] There is a curious instance of a ceremony not unlike this in afragment of an ancient Runic history, which it may not be disagreeableto compare with this part of the British manners. "Ne vero regent eximproviso adoriretur Ulafus, admoto sacculo suo, eundem quaterecœpit, carmen simul magicum obmurmurans, hac verborum formula:Duriter increpetur cum tonitru; stringant Cyclopia tela; injiciant manumParcæ; . . . Acriter excipient monticolæ genii plurimi, atque gigantes . . . Contundent; quatient; procellæ . . . , disrumpent lapides navigiumejus. . . . "--Hickesii Thesaur. Vol. II. P. 140. 

[16] Inhabitants of Norfolk and Suffolk. 

[17] Rem Romanam huc satietate gloriæ provectam, ut externis quoquegentibus quietem velit. --Tacit. Annal. XII. 11. 

[18] Nam duces, ubi impetrando triumphalium insigni sufficere res suascrediderant, hostam omittebant. --Tacit. Annal. IV. 23. 

[19] Sigonii de Antiquo Jure Provinciarum, Lib. 1 and 2. 

[20] Cic. In Verrem, I. 

[21] Duobus insuper inserviendum tyrannis; quorum legatus in sanguinem, procurator in bona sæviret--Tacit. Annal. XII. 60. 

[22] Ne vim principatus resolveret cuncta ad senatum vocando, eamconditionem esse imperandi, ut non aliter ratio constet, quam si unireddatur. --Tacit. Annal. I. 6. 

[23] Tacit. Annal. XV. 21, 22. 

[24] The four roads they called Watling Street, Ikenild Street, ErminStreet, and the Fosseway. 

[25] Cod. Lib. XII. Tit. Lxii. 

CHAPTER IV. 

THE FALL OF THE ROMAN POWER IN BRITAIN. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 117. ]

After the period which we have just closed, no mention is made of theaffairs of Britain until the reign of Adrian. At that time was wroughtthe first remarkable change in the exterior policy of Rome. Althoughsome of the emperors contented themselves with those limits which theyfound at their accession, none before this prince had actuallycontracted the bounds of the Empire: for, being more perfectlyacquainted with all the countries that composed it than any of hispredecessors, what was strong and what weak, and having formed tohimself a plan wholly defensive, he purposely abandoned several largetracts of territory, that he might render what remained more solid andcompact. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 121. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 140. ]

This plan particularly affected Britain. All the conquests of Agricolato the northward of the Tyne were relinquished, and a strong rampart wasbuilt from the mouth of that river, on the east, to Solway Frith, on theIrish Sea, a length of about eighty miles. But in the reign of hissuccessor, Antoninus Pius, other reasonings prevailed, and othermeasures were pursued. The legate who then commanded in Britain, concluding that the Caledonians would construe the defensive policy ofAdrian into fear, that they would naturally grow more numerous in alarger territory, and more haughty when they saw it abandoned to them, the frontier was again advanced to Agricola's second line, whichextended between the Friths of Forth and Clyde, and the stations whichhad been established by that general were connected with a continuedwall. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 207]

[Sidenote: A. D. 208]

[Sidenote: A. D. 209]

From this time those walls become the principal object in the Britishhistory. The Caledonians, or (as they are called) the Picts, made veryfrequent and sometimes successful attempts upon this barrier, takingadvantage more particularly of every change in government, whilst thesoldiery throughout the Empire were more intent upon the choice of amaster than the motions of an enemy. In this dubious state of unquietpeace and unprosecuted war the province continued until Severus came tothe purple, who, finding that Britain had grown into one of the mostconsiderable provinces of the Empire, and was at the same time in adangerous situation, resolved to visit that island in person, and toprovide for its security. He led a vast army into the wilds ofCaledonia, and was the first of the Romans who penetrated to the mostnorthern boundary of this island. The natives, defeated in someengagements, and wholly unable to resist so great and determined apower, were obliged to submit to such a peace as the emperor thoughtproper to impose. Contenting himself with a submission, always cheaplywon from a barbarous people, and never long regarded, Severus made nosort of military establishment in that country. On the contrary, heabandoned the advanced work which had been raised in the reign ofAntoninus, and, limiting himself by the plan of Adrian, he either builta new wall near the former, or he added to the work of that emperor suchconsiderable improvements and repairs that it has since been called theWall of Severus. 

Severus with great labor and charge terrified the Caledonians; but hedid not subdue them. He neglected those easy and assured means ofsubjection which the nature of that part of Britain affords to a powermaster of the sea, by the bays, friths, and lakes with which it iseverywhere pierced, and in some places almost cut through. A fewgarrisons at the necks of land, and a fleet to connect them and to awethe coast, must at any time have been sufficient irrecoverably to subduethat part of Britain. This was a neglect in Agricola occasioned probablyby a limited command; and it was not rectified by boundless authority inSeverus. The Caledonians again resumed their arms, and renewed theirravages on the Roman frontier. Severus died before he could take any newmeasures; and from his death there is an almost total silence concerningthe affairs of Britain until the division of the Empire. 

Had the unwieldy mass of that overgrown dominion been effectivelydivided, and divided into large portions, each forming a state, separateand absolutely independent, the scheme had been far more perfect. Thoughthe Empire had perished, these states might have subsisted; and theymight have made a far better opposition to the inroads of the barbarianseven than the whole united; since each nation would have its ownstrength solely employed in resisting its own particular enemies. For, notwithstanding the resources which might have been expected from theentireness of so great a body, it is clear from history that the Romanswere never able to employ with effect and at the same time above twoarmies, and that on the whole they were very unequal to the defence of afrontier of many thousand miles in circuit. 

But the scheme which was pursued, the scheme of joint emperors, holdingby a common title, each governing his proper territory, but not whollywithout authority in the other portions, this formed a species ofgovernment of which it is hard to conceive any just idea. It was agovernment in continual fluctuation from one to many, and from manyagain to a single hand. Each state did not subsist long enoughindependent to fall into those orders and connected classes of men thatare necessary to a regular commonwealth; nor had they time to grow intothose virtuous partialities from which nations derive the firstprinciple of their stability. 

The events which follow sufficiently illustrate these reflections, andwill show the reason of introducing them in this place, with regard tothe Empire in general, and to Britain more particularly. 

In the division which Diocletian first made of the Roman territory, thewestern provinces, in which Britain was included, fell to Maximian. Itwas during his reign that Britain, by an extraordinary revolution, wasfor some time entirely separated from the body of the Empire. Carausius, a man of obscure birth, and a barbarian, (for now not only the army, butthe senate, was filled with foreigners, ) had obtained the government ofBoulogne. He was also intrusted with the command of a fleet stationed inthat part to oppose the Saxon pirates, who then began cruelly to infestthe northwest parts of Gaul and the opposite shore of Britain. ButCarausius made use of the power with which he had been intrusted, not somuch to suppress the pirates as to aggrandize himself. He even permittedtheir depredations, that he might intercept them on their return, andenrich himself with the retaken plunder. By such methods he acquiredimmense wealth, which he distributed with so politic a bounty among theseamen of his fleet and the legions in Britain that by degrees hedisposed both the one and the other to a revolt in his favor. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 286]

[Sidenote: A. D. 290]

[Sidenote: A. D. 293]

As there were then no settled principles either of succession orelection in the Empire, and all depended on the uncertain faith of thearmy, Carausius made his attempt, perhaps, with the less guilt, andfound the less difficulty in prevailing upon the provincial Britons tosubmit to a sovereignty which seemed to reflect a sort of dignity onthemselves. In this island he established the seat of his new dominion;but he kept up and augmented his fleet, by which he preserved hiscommunication with his old government, and commanded the intermediateseas. He entered into a close alliance with the Saxons and Frisians, bywhich he at once preserved his own island from their depredations andrendered his maritime power irresistible. He humbled the Picts byseveral defeats; he repaired the frontier wall, and supplied it withgood garrisons. He made several roads equal to the works of the greatestemperors. He cut canals, with vast labor and expense, through all thelow eastern parts of Britain, at the same time draining those fennycountries, and promoting communication and commerce. On these canals hebuilt several cities. Whilst he thus labored to promote the internalstrength and happiness of his kingdom, he contended with so much successagainst his former masters that they were at length obliged not only torelinquish their right to his acquisition, but to admit him to aparticipation of the imperial titles. He reigned after this for sevenyears prosperously and with great glory, because he wisely set bounds tohis ambition, and contented himself with the possession of a greatcountry, detached from the rest of the world, and therefore easilydefended. Had he lived long enough, and pursued this plan withconsistency, Britain, in all probability, might then have become, andmight have afterwards been, an independent and powerful kingdom, instructed in the Roman arts, and freed from their dominion. But thesame distemper of the state which had raised Carausius to power did notsuffer him long to enjoy it. The Roman soldiery at that time was whollydestitute of military principle. That religious regard to their oath, the great bond of ancient discipline, had been long worn out; and thewant of it was not supplied by that punctilio of honor and loyalty whichis the support of modern armies. Carausius was assassinated, andsucceeded in his kingdom by Allectus, the captain of his guards. But themurderer, who did not possess abilities to support the power he hadacquired by his crimes, was in a short time defeated, and in his turnput to death, by Constantius Chlorus. In about three years from thedeath of Carausius, Britain, after a short experiment of independency, was again united to the body of the Empire. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 304]

Constantius, after he came to the purple, chose this island for hisresidence. Many authors affirm that his wife Helena was a Briton. It ismore certain that his son Constantine the Great was born here, andenabled to succeed his father principally by the helps which he derivedfrom Britain. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 306. ]

Under the reign of this great prince there was an almost totalrevolution in the internal policy of the Empire. This was the thirdremarkable change in the Roman government since the dissolution of theCommonwealth. The first was that by which Antoninus had taken away thedistinctions of the _municipium_, province, and colony, communicating toevery part of the Empire those privileges which had formerlydistinguished a citizen of Rome. Thus the whole government was cast intoa more uniform and simple frame, and every mark of conquest was finallyeffaced. The second alteration was the division of the Empire byDiocletian. The third was the change made in the great offices of thestate, and the revolution in religion, under Constantine. 

The _præfecti prætorio_, who, like the commanders of the janizaries ofthe Porte, by their ambition and turbulence had kept the government incontinual ferment, were reduced by the happiest art imaginable. Theirnumber, only two originally, was increased to four, by which their powerwas balanced and broken. Their authority was not lessened, but itsnature was totally changed: for it became from that time a dignity andoffice merely civil. The whole Empire was divided into four departmentsunder these four officers. The subordinate districts were governed bytheir _vicarii_; and Britain, accordingly, was under a vicar, subject tothe _præfectus prætorio_ of Gaul. The military was divided nearly in thesame manner; and it was placed under officers also of a new creation, the _magistri militiæ_. Immediately under these were the _duces_, andunder those the _comites_, dukes and counts, titles unknown in the timeof the Republic or in the higher Empire; but afterwards they extendedbeyond the Roman territory, and having been conferred by the Northernnations upon their leaders, they subsist to this day, and contribute tothe dignity of the modern courts of Europe. 

But Constantine made a much greater change with regard to religion bythe establishment of Christianity. At what time the Gospel was firstpreached in this island I believe it impossible to ascertain, as it camein gradually, and without, or rather contrary to, public authority. Itwas most probably first introduced among the legionary soldiers; for wefind St. Alban, the first British martyr, to have been of that body. Asit was introduced privately, so its growth was for a long timeinsensible; but it shot up at length with great vigor, and spread itselfwidely, at first under the favor of Constantius and the protection ofHelena, and at length under the establishment of Constantine. From thistime it is to be considered as the ruling religion; though heathenismsubsisted long after, and at last expired imperceptibly, and with aslittle noise as Christianity had been at first introduced. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 368. ]

In this state, with regard to the civil, military, and religiousestablishment, Britain, remained without any change, and at intervals ina tolerable state of repose, until the reign of Valentinian. Then it wasattacked all at once with incredible fury and success, and as it were inconcert, by a number of barbarous nations. The principal of these werethe Scots, a people of ancient settlement in Ireland, and who had thencebeen transplanted into the northern part of Britain, which afterwardsderived its name from that colony. The Scots of both nations united withthe Picts to fall upon the Roman province. To these were added thepiratical Saxons, who issued from the mouths of the Rhine. For someyears they met but slight resistance, and made a most miserable havoc, until the famous Count Theodosius was sent to the relief ofBritain, --who, by an admirable conduct in war, and as vigorousapplication to the cure of domestic disorders, for a time freed thecountry from its enemies and oppressors, and having driven the Picts andScots into the barren extremity of the island, he shut and barred themin with a new wall, advanced as far as the remotest of the former, and, what had hitherto been imprudently neglected, he erected theintermediate space into a Roman province, and a regular government, under the name of Valentia. But this was only a momentary relief. TheEmpire was perishing by the vices of its constitution. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 388. ]

Each province was then possessed by the inconsiderate ambition ofappointing a head to the whole; although, when the end was obtained, thevictorious province always returned to its ancient insignificance, andwas lost in the common slavery. A great army of Britons followed thefortune of Maximus, whom they had raised to the imperial titles, intoGaul. They were there defeated; and from their defeat, as it is said, arose a new people. They are supposed to have settled in Armorica, whichwas then, like many other parts of the sickly Empire, become a meredesert; and that country, from this accident, has been since calledBretagne. 

The Roman province thus weakened afforded opportunity and encouragementto the barbarians again to invade and ravage it. Stilicho, indeed duringthe minority of Honorius, obtained some advantages over them, whichprocured a short intermission of their hostilities. But as the Empire onthe continent was now attacked on all sides, and staggered under theinnumerable shocks which, it received, that minister ventured to recallthe Roman forces from Britain, in order to sustain those parts which hejudged of more importance and in greater danger. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 411. ]

On the intelligence of this desertion, their barbarous enemies break inupon the Britons, and are no longer resisted. Their ancient protectionwithdrawn, the people became stupefied with terror and despair. Theypetition the emperor for succor in the most moving terms. The emperor, protesting his weakness, commits them to their own defence, absolvesthem from, their allegiance, and confers on them a freedom which theyhave no longer the sense to value nor the virtue to defend. The princeswhom after this desertion they raised and deposed with a stupidinconstancy were styled Emperors. So hard it is to change ideas to whichmen have been long accustomed, especially in government, that theBritons had no notion of a sovereign who was not to be emperor, nor ofan emperor who was not to be master of the Western world. This singleidea ruined Britain. Constantine, a native of this island, one of thoseshadows of imperial majesty, no sooner found himself established at homethan, fatally for himself and his country, he turned his eyes towardsthe continent. Thither he carried the flower of the British youth, --allwho were any ways eminent for birth, for courage, for their skill in themilitary or mechanic arts; but his success was not equal to his hopes orhis forces. The remains of his routed army joined their countrymen inArmorica, and a baffled attempt upon the Empire a second time recruitedGaul and exhausted Britain. 

The Scots and Picts, attentive to every advantage, rushed with redoubledviolence into this vacuity. The Britons, who could find no protectionbut in slavery, again implore the assistance of their former masters. Atthat time Aëtius commanded the imperial forces in Gaul, and with thevirtue and military skill of the ancient Romans supported the Empire, tottering with age and weakness. Though he was then hard pressed by thevast armies of Attila, which like a deluge had overspread Gaul, heafforded them a small and temporary succor. This detachment of Romansrepelled the Scots; they repaired the walls; and animating the Britonsby their example and instructions to maintain their freedom, theydeparted. But the Scots easily perceived and took advantage of theirdeparture. Whilst they ravaged the country, the Britons renewed theirsupplications to Aëtius. They once more obtained a reinforcement, whichagain reëstablished their affairs. They were, however, given tounderstand that this was to be their last relief. The Roman auxiliarieswere recalled, and the Britons abandoned to their own fortune forever. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 432. ]

When the Romans deserted this island, they left a country, with regardto the arts of war or government, in a manner barbarous, but destituteof that spirit or those advantages with which sometimes a state ofbarbarism is attended. They carried out of each province its proper andnatural strength, and supplied it by that of some other, which had noconnection with the country. The troops raised in Britain often servedin Egypt; and those which were employed for the protection of thisisland were sometimes from Batavia or Germany, sometimes from provincesfar to the east. Whenever the strangers were withdrawn, as they werevery easily, the province was left in the hands of men whollyunpractised in war. After a peaceable possession of more than threehundred years, the Britons derived but very few benefits from theirsubjection to the conquerors and civilizers of mankind. Neither does itappear that the Roman people were at any time extremely numerous in thisisland, or had spread themselves, their manners, or their language asextensively in Britain as they had done in the other parts of theirEmpire. The Welsh and the Anglo-Saxon languages retain much less ofLatin than the French, the Spanish, or the Italian. The Romans subduedBritain at a later period, at a time when Italy herself was notsufficiently populous to supply so remote a province: she was rathersupplied from her provinces. The military colonies, though in somerespects they were admirably fitted for their purposes, had, however, one essential defect: the lands granted to the soldiers did not pass totheir posterity; so that the Roman people must have multiplied poorly inthis island, when their increase principally depended on a succession ofsuperannuated soldiers. From this defect the colonies were continuallyfalling to decay. They had also in many respects degenerated from theirprimitive institution. [26] We must add, that in the decline of theEmpire a great part of the troops in Britain were barbarians, Bataviansor Germans. Thus, at the close of this period, this unhappy country, desolated of its inhabitants, abandoned by its masters, stripped of itsartisans, and deprived of all its spirit, was in a condition the mostwretched and forlorn. 

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Neque conjugiis suscipiendis neque alendis liberis sueti, orbassine posteris domos relinquebant. Non enim, ut olim, universæ legionesdeducebantur cum tribunis et centurionibus et suis cujusque ordinismilitibus, ut consensu et caritate rempublicam efficerent, sed ignotiinter se, diversis manipulis, sine rectore, sine affectibus mutuis, quasi ex alio genere mortalium repente in unum collecti, numerus magisquam colonia--Tacit. Annal. XIV. 27. 

BOOK II

CHAPTER I. 

THE ENTRY AND SETTLEMENT OF THE SAXONS, AND THEIR CONVERSION TOCHRISTIANITY. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 447. ]

After having been so long subject to a foreign dominion, there was amongthe Britons no royal family, no respected order in the state, none ofthose titles to government, confirmed by opinion and long use, moreefficacious than the wisest schemes for the settlement of the nation. Mere personal merit was then the only pretence to power. But thiscircumstance only added to the misfortunes of a people who had noorderly method of election, and little experience of merit in any of thecandidates. During this anarchy, whilst they suffered the most dreadfulcalamities from the fury of barbarous nations which invaded them, theyfell into that disregard of religion, and those loose, disorderlymanners, which are sometimes the consequence of desperate and hardenedwretchedness, as well as the common distempers of ease and prosperity. 

At length, after frequent elections and deposings, rather wearied out bytheir own inconstancy than, fixed by the merit of their choice, theysuffered Vortigern to reign over them. This leader had made some figurein the conduct of their wars and factious. But he was no sooner settledon the throne than he showed himself rather like a prince born of anexhausted stock of royalty in the decline of empire than one of thosebold and active spirits whose manly talents obtain them the first placein their country, and stamp upon it that character of vigor essential tothe prosperity of a new commonwealth. However, the mere settlement, inspite of the ill administration of government, procured the Britons someinternal repose, and some temporary advantages over their enemies, thePicts. But having been long habituated to defeats, neither relying ontheir king nor on themselves, and fatigued with the obstinate attacks ofan enemy whom they sometimes checked, but could never remove, in one oftheir national assemblies it was resolved to call in the mercenary aidof the Saxons, a powerful nation of Germany, which had been long bytheir piratical incursions terrible not only to them, but to all theadjacent countries. This resolution has been generally condemned. It hasbeen said, that they seem to have through mere cowardice distrusted astrength not yet worn down, and a fortune sufficiently prosperous. Butas it was taken by general counsel and consent, we must believe that thenecessity of such a step was felt, though the event was dubious. Theevent, indeed, might be dubious: in a state radically weak, everymeasure vigorous enough for its protection must endanger its existence. 

There is an unquestioned tradition among the Northern nations of Europe, importing that all that part of the world had suffered a great andgeneral revolution by a migration from Asiatic Tartary of a people whomthey call Asers. These everywhere expelled or subdued the ancientinhabitants of the Celtic and Cimbric original. The leader of thisAsiatic army was called Odin or Wodin: first their general, afterwardstheir tutelar deity. The time of this great change is lost in theimperfection of traditionary history, and the attempts to supply it byfable. It is, however, certain, that the Saxon nation believedthemselves the descendants of those conquerors: and they had as good atitle to that descent as any other of the Northern tribes; for they usedthe same language which then was and is still spoken, with smallvariation of the dialects, in all the countries which extend from thepolar circle to the Danube. This people most probably derived theirname, as well as their origin, from, the Sacæ, a nation of the AsiaticScythia. At the time of which we write they had seated themselves in theCimbric Chersonesus, or Jutland, in the countries of Holstein andSleswick, and thence extended along the Elbe and Weser to the coast ofthe German Ocean, as far as the mouths of the Rhine. In that tract theylived in a sort of loose military commonwealth of the ordinary Germanmodel, under several leaders, the most eminent of whom was Hengist, descended from Odin, the great conductor of the Asiatic colonies. It wasto this chief that the Britons applied themselves. They invited him by apromise of ample pay for his troops, a large share of their commonplunder, and the Isle of Thanet for a settlement. 

The army which came over under Hengist did not exceed fifteen hundredmen. The opinion which the Britons had entertained of the Saxon prowesswas well founded; for they had the principal share in a decisive victorywhich was obtained over the Picts soon after their arrival, a victorywhich forever freed the Britons from all terror of the Picts and Scots, but in the same moment exposed them to an enemy no less dangerous. 

Hengist and his Saxons, who had obtained by the free vote of the Britonsthat introduction into this island they had so long in vain attempted byarms, saw that by being necessary they were superior to their allies. They discovered the character of the king; they were eye-witnesses ofthe internal weakness and distraction of the kingdom. This state ofBritain was represented with so much effect to the Saxons in Germany, that another and much greater embarkation followed the first; new bodiesdaily crowded in. As soon as the Saxons began to be sensible of theirstrength, they found it their interest to be discontented; theycomplained of breaches of a contract, which they construed according totheir own designs; and then fell rudely upon their unprepared and feebleallies, who, as they had not been able to resist the Picts and Scots, were still less in a condition to oppose that force by which they hadbeen protected against those enemies, when turned unexpectedly uponthemselves. Hengist, with very little opposition, subdued the provinceof Kent, and there laid the foundation of the first Saxon kingdom. Everybattle the Britons fought only prepared them for a new defeat, byweakening their strength and displaying the inferiority of theircourage. Vortigern, instead of a steady and regular resistance, opposeda mixture of timid war and unable negotiation. In one of their meetings, wherein the business, according to the German mode, was carried onamidst feasting and riot, Vortigern was struck with the beauty of aSaxon virgin, a kinswoman of Hengist, and entirely under his influence. Having married her, he delivered himself over to her counsels. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 452]

His people, harassed by their enemies, betrayed by their prince, andindignant at the feeble tyranny that oppressed them, deposed him, andset his son Vortimer in his place. But the change of the king proved noremedy for the exhausted state of the nation and the constitutionalinfirmity of the government. For even if the Britons could havesupported themselves against the superior abilities and efforts ofHengist, it might have added to their honor, but would have contributedlittle to their safety. The news of his success had roused all Saxony. Five great bodies of that adventurous people, under different andindependent commanders, very nearly at the same time broke in upon asmany different parts of the island. They came no longer as pirates, butas invaders. Whilst the Britons contended with one body of their fierceenemies, another gained ground, and filled with slaughter and desolationthe whole country from sea to sea. A devouring war, a dreadful famine, aplague, the most wasteful of any recorded in our history, united toconsummate the ruin of Britain. The ecclesiastical writers of that age, confounded at the view of those complicated calamities, saw nothing butthe arm of God stretched out for the punishment of a sinful anddisobedient nation. And truly, when we set before us in one point ofview the condition of almost all the parts which had lately composed theWestern Empire, --of Britain, of Gaul, of Italy, of Spain, of Africa, --atonce overwhelmed by a resistless inundation of most cruel barbarians, whose inhuman method of war made but a small part of the miseries withwhich these nations were afflicted, we are almost driven out of thecircle of political inquiry: we are in a manner compelled to acknowledgethe hand of God in those immense revolutions by which at certain periodsHe so signally asserts His supreme dominion, and brings about that greatsystem of change which is perhaps as necessary to the moral as it isfound to be in the natural world. 

But whatever was the condition of the other parts of Europe, it isgenerally agreed that the state of Britain was the worst of all. Somewriters have asserted, that, except those who took refuge in themountains of Wales and in Cornwall, or fled into Armorica, the Britishrace was in a manner destroyed. What is extraordinary, we find Englandin a very tolerable state of population in less than two centuries afterthe first invasion of the Saxons; and it is hard to imagine either thetransplantation or the increase of that single people to have been in soshort a time sufficient for the settlement of so great an extent ofcountry. Others speak of the Britons, not as extirpated, but as reducedto a state of slavery; and here these writers fix the origin of personaland predial servitude in England. 

I shall lay fairly before the reader all I have been able to discoverconcerning the existence or condition of this unhappy people. That theywere much more broken and reduced than any other nation which had fallenunder the German power I think may be inferred from two considerations. First, that in all other parts of Europe the ancient language subsistedafter the conquest, and at length incorporated with that of theconquerors; whereas in England the Saxon language received little or notincture from the Welsh; and it seems, even among the lowest people, tohave continued a dialect of pure Teutonic to the time in which it wasitself blended with the Norman. Secondly, that on the continent theChristian religion, after the Northern irruptions, not only remained, but flourished. It was very early and universally adopted by the rulingpeople. In England it was so entirely extinguished, that, when Augustinundertook his mission, it does not appear that among all the Saxonsthere was a single person professing Christianity. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 500]

The sudden extinction of the ancient religion, and language appearssufficient to show that Britain must have suffered more than any of theneighboring nations on the continent. But it must not be concealed thatthere are likewise proofs that the British race, though much diminished, was not wholly extirpated, and that those who remained were not, merelyas Britons, reduced to servitude. For they are mentioned as existing insome of the earlier Saxon laws. In these laws they are allowed acompensation on the footing of the meaner kind of English; and they areeven permitted, as well as the English, to emerge out of that low rankinto a more liberal condition. This is degradation, but not slavery. [27]The affairs of that whole period are, however, covered with an obscuritynot to be dissipated. The Britons had little leisure or ability to writea just account of a war by which they were ruined; and the Anglo-Saxonswho succeeded them, attentive only to arms, were, until theirconversion, ignorant of the use of letters. 

It is on this darkened theatre that some old writers have introducedthose characters and actions which have afforded such ample matter topoets and so much perplexity to historians. This is the fabulous andheroic age of our nation. After the natural and just representations ofthe Roman scene, the stage is again crowded with enchanters, giants, andall the extravagant images of the wildest and most remote antiquity. Nopersonage makes so conspicuous a figure in these stories as King Arthur:a prince whether of British or Roman origin, whether born on this islandor in Amorica, is uncertain; but it appears that he opposed the Saxonswith remarkable virtue and no small degree of success, which hasrendered him and his exploits so large an argument of romance that bothare almost disclaimed by history. Light scarce begins to dawn until theintroduction of Christianity, which, bringing with it the use of lettersand the arts of civil life, affords at once a juster account of thingsand facts that are more worthy of relation: nor is there, indeed, anyrevolution so remarkable in the English story. 

The bishops of Rome had for some time meditated the conversion of theAnglo-Saxons. Pope Gregory, who is surnamed the Great, affected thatpious design with an uncommon zeal; and he at length found acircumstance highly favorable to it in the marriage of a daughter ofCharibert, a king of the Franks, to the reigning monarch of Kent. Thisopportunity induced Pope Gregory to commission Augustin, a monk ofRheims, and a man of distinguished piety, to undertake this arduousenterprise. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 600]

It was in the year of Christ 600, and 150 years after the coming of thefirst Saxon colonies into England, that Ethelbert, king of Kent, received intelligence of the arrival in his dominions of a number ofmen in a foreign garb, practising several strange and unusualceremonies, who desired to be conducted to the king's presence, declaring that they had things to communicate to him and to his peopleof the utmost importance to their eternal welfare. This was Augustin, with forty of the associates of his mission, who now landed in the Isleof Thanet, the same place by which the Saxons had before entered, whenthey extirpated Christianity. 

The king heard them in the open air, in order to defeat, [28] upon aprinciple of Druidical superstition, the effects of their enchantments. Augustin spoke by a Frankish interpreter. The Franks and Saxons were ofthe same origin, and used at that time the same language. He wasfavorably received; and a place in the city of Canterbury, the capitalof Kent, was allotted for the residence of him and his companions. Theyentered Canterbury in procession, preceded by two persons who bore asilver cross and the figure of Christ painted on a board, singing, asthey went, litanies to avert the wrath of God from that city and people. 

The king was among their first converts. Tho principal of his nobility, as usual, followed that example, moved, as it is related, by many signalmiracles, but undoubtedly by the extraordinary zeal of the missionaries, and the pious austerity of their lives. The new religion, by theprotection of so respected a prince, who held under his dominion orinfluence all the countries to the southward of the Humber, spreaditself with great rapidity. Paganism, after a faint resistance, everywhere gave way. And, indeed, the chief difficulties whichChristianity had to encounter did not arise so much from the strugglesof opposite religious prejudices as from the gross and licentiousmanners of a barbarous people. One of the Saxon princes expelled theChristians from his territory because the priest refused to give himsome of that white bread which he saw distributed to his congregation. 

It is probable that the order of Druids either did not at all subsistamongst the Anglo-Saxons, or that at this time it had declined not alittle from its ancient authority and reputation; else it is not easy toconceive how they admitted so readily a new system, which at one strokecut off from their character its whole importance. We even find somechiefs of the Pagan priesthood amongst the foremost in submitting to thenew doctrine. On the first preaching of the Gospel in Northumberland, the heathen pontiff of that territory immediately mounted a horse, whichto those of his order was unlawful, and, breaking into the sacredinclosure, hewed to pieces the idol he had so long served. [29]

If the order of the Druids did not subsist amongst the Saxons, yet thechief objects of their religion appear to have been derived from thatfountain. They, indeed, worshipped several idols under various forms ofmen and beasts; and those gods to whom they dedicated the days of theweek bore in their attributes, and in the particular days that wereconsecrated to them, though not in their names, a near resemblance tothe divinities of ancient Rome. But still the great and capital objectsof their worship were taken from Druidism, --trees, stones, the elements, and the heavenly bodies. [30] These were their principal devotions, laidthe strongest hold upon their minds, and resisted the progress of theChristian religion with the greatest obstinacy: for we find thesesuperstitions forbidden amongst the latest Saxon laws. A worship whichstands in need of the memorial of images or books to support it mayperish when these are destroyed; but when a superstition is establishedupon those great objects of Nature which continually solicit the senses, it is extremely difficult to turn the mind from things that inthemselves are striking, and that are always present. Amongst theobjects of this class must be reckoned the goddess Eostre, who, from theetymology of the name, as well as from the season sacred to her, wasprobably that beautiful planet which the Greeks and Romans worshippedunder the names of Lucifer and Venus. It is from this goddess that inEngland the paschal festival has been called Easter. [31] To these theyjoined the reverence of various subordinate genii, or demons, fairies, and goblins, --fantastical ideas, which, in a state of uninstructedNature, grow spontaneously out of the wild fancies or fears of men. Thus, they worshipped a sort of goddess, whom they called Mara, formedfrom those frightful appearances that oppress men in their sleep; andthe name is still retained among us. [32]

As to the manners of the Anglo-Saxons, they were such as might beexpected in a rude people, --fierce, and of a gross simplicity. Theirclothes were short. As all barbarians are much taken with exteriorform, and the advantages and distinctions which are conferred by Nature, the Saxons set an high value on comeliness of person, and studied muchto improve it. It is remarkable that a law of King Ina orders the careand education of foundlings to be regulated by their beauty. [33] Theycherished their hair to a great length, and were extremely proud andjealous of this natural ornament. Some of their great men weredistinguished by an appellative taken from the length of their hair. [34]To pull the hair was punishable;[35] and forcibly to cut or injure itwas considered in the same criminal light with cutting off the nose orthrusting out the eyes. In the same design of barbarous ornament, theirfaces were generally painted and scarred. They were so fond of chainsand bracelets that they have given a surname to some of their kings fromtheir generosity in bestowing such marks of favor. [36]

Few things discover the state of the arts amongst people more certainlythan the presents that are made to them by foreigners. The Pope, on hisfirst mission into Northumberland, sent to the queen of that countrysome stuffs with ornaments of gold, an ivory comb inlaid with the samemetal, and a silver mirror. A queen's want of such female ornaments andutensils shows that the arts were at this time little cultivated amongstthe Saxons. These are the sort of presents commonly sent to a barbarouspeople. 

Thus ignorant in sciences and arts, and unpractised in trade ormanufacture, military exercises, war, and the preparation for war, wastheir employment, hunting their pleasure. They dwelt in cottages ofwicker-work plastered with clay and thatched with rushes, where they satwith their families, their officers and domestics, round a fire made inthe middle of the house. In this manner their greatest princes livedamidst the ruins of Roman magnificence. But the introduction ofChristianity, which, under whatever form, always confers suchinestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in theserude and fierce manners. 

It is by no means impossible, that, for an end so worthy, Providence onsome occasions might directly have interposed. The books which containthe history of this time and change are little else than a narrative ofmiracles, --frequently, however, with such apparent marks of weakness ordesign that they afford little encouragement to insist on them. Theywere then received with a blind credulity: they have been since rejectedwith as undistinguishing a disregard. But as it is not in my design norinclination, nor indeed in my power, either to establish or refute thesestories, it is sufficient to observe, that the reality or opinion ofsuch miracles was the principal cause of the early acceptance and rapidprogress of Christianity in this island. Other causes undoubtedlyconcurred; and it will be more to our purpose to consider some of thehuman and politic ways by which religion was advanced in this nation, and those more particularly by which the monastic institution, theninterwoven with Christianity, and making an equal progress with it, attained to so high a pitch, of property and power, so as, in a timeextremely short, to form a kind of order, and that not the leastconsiderable, in the state. 

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Leges Inæ, 32, De Cambrico Homine Agrum possidente. --Id. 54

[28] "Veteri usus augurio, " says Henry of Huntingdon, p. 321. 

[29] Bede, Hist. Eccl. Lib. II. C 13. 

[30] Deos gentiles, et solem vel lunam, ignem vel fluvium, torrentem velsaxa, vel alicujus generis arborum ligna. --L. Cnut. 5. --Superstitiosusille conventus, qui Frithgear dicitur, circa lapidem, arborem, fontem. --Leg. Presb. Northumb. 

[31] Spelman's Glossary, Tit. Eod. 

[32] The night-mare. 

[33] L. Inæ, 26. 

[34] Oslacus . . . Promissâ cæsarie heros. --Chron. Saxon. 123. 

[35] L. Ælfred. 31. L. Cnut. Apud Brompt. 27. 

[36] Eadgarus nobilibus torquium largitor. --Chron. Sax. 123 Bed. Hist. Eccl. Lib. IV. C. 29. 

CHAPTER II. 

ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY--OF MONASTIC INSTITUTIONS--AND OF THEIREFFECTS. 

The marriage of Ethelbert to a Christian princess was, we have seen, ameans of introducing Christianity into his dominions. The same influencecontributed to extend it in the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy, thesovereigns of which were generally converted by their wives. Among theancient nations of Germany, the female sex was possessed not only of itsnatural and common ascendant, but it was believed peculiarly sacred, [37]and favored with more frequent revelations of the Divine will; womenwere therefore heard with an uncommon attention in all deliberations, and particularly in those that regarded religion. The Pagan superstitionof the North furnished, in this instance, a principle which contributedto its own destruction. 

In the change of religion, care was taken to render the transition fromfalsehood to truth as little violent as possible. Though the firstproselytes were kings, it does not appear that there was anypersecution. It was a precept of Pope Gregory, under whose auspices thismission was conducted, that the heathen temples should not be destroyed, especially where they were well built, --but that, first removing theidols, they should be consecrated anew by holier rites and to betterpurposes, [38] in order that the prejudices of the people might not betoo rudely shocked by a declared profanation of what they had so longheld sacred, and that, everywhere beholding the same places to whichthey had formerly resorted for religious comfort, they might begradually reconciled to the new doctrines and ceremonies which, werethere introduced; and as the sacrifices used in the Pagan worship werealways attended with feasting, and consequently were highly grateful tothe multitude, the Pope ordered that oxen, should as usual beslaughtered near the church, and the people indulged in their ancientfestivity. [39] Whatever popular customs of heathenism were found to beabsolutely not incompatible with Christianity were retained; and some ofthem were continued to a very late period. Deer were at a certain seasonbrought into St. Paul's church in London, and laid on the altar;[40] andthis custom subsisted until the Reformation. The names of some of theChurch festivals were, with a similar design, taken from those of theheathen which had been celebrated at the same time of the year. Nothingcould have been more prudent than these regulations: they were, indeed, formed from a perfect understanding of human nature. 

Whilst the inferior people were thus insensibly led into a better order, the example and countenance of the great completed the work. For theSaxon kings and ruling men embraced religion with so signal, and intheir rank so unusual a zeal, that in many instances they evensacrificed to its advancement the prime objects of their ambition. Wulfhere, king of the West Saxons, bestowed the Isle of Wight on theking of Sussex, to persuade him to embrace Christianity. [41] This zealoperated in the same manner in favor of their instructors. The greatestkings and conquerors frequently resigned their crowns and shutthemselves up in monasteries. When kings became monks, a high lustre wasreflected upon the monastic state, and great credit accrued to the powerof their doctrine, which was able to produce such extraordinary effectsupon persons over whom religion has commonly the slightest influence. 

The zeal of the missionaries was also much assisted by their superiorityin the arts of civil life. At their first preaching in Sussex, thatcountry was reduced to the greatest distress from a drought, which hadcontinued for three years. The barbarous inhabitants, destitute of anymeans to alleviate the famine, in an epidemic transport of despairfrequently united forty and fifty in a body, and, joining their hands, precipitated themselves from the cliffs, and were either drowned ordashed to pieces on the rocks. Though a maritime people, they knew nothow to fish; and this ignorance probably arose from a remnant ofDruidical superstition, which had forbidden the use of that sort ofdiet. In this calamity, Bishop Wilfrid, their first preacher, collectingnets, at the head of his attendants, plunged into the sea; and havingopened this great resource of food, he reconciled the desperate peopleto life, and their minds to the spiritual care of those who had shownthemselves so attentive to their temporal preservation. [42]

The same regard to the welfare of the people appeared in all theiractions. The Christian kings sometimes made donations to the Church oflands conquered from their heathen enemies. The clergy immediatelybaptized and manumitted their new vassals. Thus they endeared to allsorts of men doctrines and teachers which could mitigate the rigorouslaw of conquest; and they rejoiced to see religion and liberty advancingwith, an equal progress. Nor were the monks in this time in anythingmore worthy of praise than in their zeal for personal freedom. In thecanon wherein they provided against the alienation of their lands, amongother charitable exceptions to this restraint they particularize thepurchase of liberty[43]. In their transactions with the great the samepoint was always strenuously labored. When they imposed penance, theywere remarkably indulgent to persons of that rank; but they always madethem purchase the remission of corporal austerity by acts ofbeneficence. They urged their powerful penitents to the enfranchisementof their own slaves, and to the redemption of those which belonged toothers; they directed them to the repair of highways, and to theconstruction of churches, bridges, and other works of generalutility. [44] They extracted the fruits of virtue even from crimes; andwhenever a great man expiated his private offences, he provided in thesame act for the public happiness. The monasteries were then the onlybodies corporate in the kingdom; and if any persons were desirous toperpetuate their charity by a fund for the relief of the sick orindigent, there was no other way than to confide this trust to somemonastery. The monks were the sole channel through which the bounty ofthe rich could pass in any continued stream to the poor; and the peopleturned their eyes towards them in all their distresses. We must observe, that the monks of that time, especially those from Ireland, [45] who hada considerable share in the conversion of all the northern parts, didnot show that rapacious desire of riches which long disgraced andfinally ruined their successors. Not only did they not seek, but seemedeven to shun such donations. This prevented that alarm which might havearisen from an early and declared avarice. At this time the most ferventand holy anchorites retired to places the furthest that could be foundfrom human concourse and help, to the most desolate and barrensituations, which even from their horror seemed particularly adapted tomen who had renounced the world. Many persons followed them in order topartake of their instructions and prayers, or to form themselves upontheir example. An opinion of their miracles after their death drew stillgreater numbers. Establishments were gradually made. The monastic lifewas frugal, and the government moderate. These causes drew a constantconcourse. Sanctified deserts assumed a new face; the marshes weredrained, and the lands cultivated. And as this revolution seemed ratherthe effect of the holiness of the place than of any natural causes, itincreased their credit; and every improvement drew with it a newdonation. In this manner the great abbeys of Croyland and Glastonbury, and many others, from the most obscure beginnings, were advanced to adegree of wealth and splendor little less than royal. 

In these rude ages government was not yet fixed upon solid principles, and everything was full of tumult and distraction. As the monasterieswere better secured from violence by their character than any otherplaces by laws, several great men, and even sovereign princes, wereobliged to take refuge in convents; who, when, by a more happyrevolution in their fortunes, they were reinstated in their formerdignities, thought they could never make a sufficient return for thesafety they had enjoyed under the sacred hospitality of these roofs. Notcontent to enrich them with ample possessions, that others also mightpartake of the protection they had experienced, they formally erectedinto an asylum those monasteries, and their adjacent territory. So thatall thronged to that refuge who were rendered unquiet by their crimes, their misfortunes, or the severity of their lords; and content to liveunder a government to which their minds were subject, they raised theimportance of their masters by their numbers, their labor, and, aboveall, by an inviolable attachment. 

The monastery was always the place of sepulture for the greatest lordsand kings. This added to the other causes of reverence a sort ofsanctity, which, in universal opinion, always attends the repositoriesof the dead: and they acquired also thereby a more particularprotection against the great and powerful; for who would violate thetomb of his ancestors or his own? It was not an unnatural weakness tothink that some advantage might be derived from lying in holy places andamongst holy persons: and this superstition was fomented with thegreatest industry and art. The monks of Glastonbury spread a notion thatit was almost impossible any person should be damned whose body lay intheir cemetery. This must be considered as coming in aid of the amplestof their resources, prayer for the dead. 

But there was no part of their policy, of whatever nature, that procuredto them a greater or juster credit than their cultivation of learningand useful arts: for, if the monks contributed to the fall of science inthe Roman Empire, it is certain that the introduction of learning andcivility into this Northern world is entirely owing to their labors. Itis true that they cultivated letters only in a secondary way, and assubsidiary to religion. But the scheme of Christianity is such that italmost necessitates an attention to many kinds of learning. For theScripture is by no means an irrelative system of moral and divinetruths; but it stands connected with so many histories, and with thelaws, opinions, and manners of so many various sorts of people, and insuch different times, that it is altogether impossible to arrive to anytolerable knowledge of it without having recourse to much exteriorinquiry: for which reason the progress of this religion has always beenmarked by that of letters. There were two other circumstances at thistime that contributed no less to the revival of learning. The sacredwritings had not been translated into any vernacular language, and eventhe ordinary service of the Church was still continued in the Latintongue; all, therefore, who formed themselves for the ministry, andhoped to make any figure in it, were in a manner driven to the study ofthe writers of polite antiquity, in order to qualify themselves fortheir most ordinary functions. By this means a practice liable in itselfto great objections had a considerable share in preserving the wrecks ofliterature, and was one means of conveying down to our times thoseinestimable monuments which otherwise, in the tumult of barbarousconfusion on one hand, and untaught piety on the other, must inevitablyhave perished. The second circumstance, the pilgrimages of that age, ifconsidered in itself, was as liable to objection as the former; but itproved of equal advantage to the cause of literature. A principal objectof these pious journeys was Rome, which contained all the little thatwas left in the Western world of ancient learning and taste. The othergreat object of those pilgrimages was Jerusalem: this led them into theGrecian Empire, which still subsisted in the East with great majesty andpower. Here the Greeks had not only not discontinued the ancientstudies, but they added to the stock of arts many inventions ofcuriosity and convenience that were unknown to antiquity. When, afterwards, the Saracens prevailed in that part of the world, thepilgrims had also by the same means an opportunity of profiting from theimprovements of that laborious people; and however little the majorityof these pious travellers might have had such objects in their view, something useful must unavoidably have stuck to them; a few certainlysaw with more discernment, and rendered their travels serviceable totheir country by importing other things besides miracles and legends. Thus a communication was opened between this remote island and countriesof which it otherwise could then scarcely have heard mention made; andpilgrimages thus preserved that intercourse amongst mankind which is nowformed by politics, commerce, and learned curiosity. 

It is not wholly unworthy of observation, that Providence, whichstrongly appears to have intended the continual intermixture of mankind, never leaves the human mind destitute of a principle to effect it. Thispurpose is sometimes carried on by a sort of migratory instinct, sometimes by the spirit of conquest; at one time avarice drives men fromtheir homes, at another they are actuated by a thirst of knowledge;where none of these causes can operate, the sanctity of particularplaces attracts men from the most distant quarters. It was this motivewhich sent thousands in those ages to Jerusalem and Rome, and now, in afull tide, impels half the world annually to Mecca. 

By those voyages the seeds of various kinds of knowledge and improvementwere at different times imported into England. They were cultivated inthe leisure and retirement of monasteries; otherwise they could not havebeen cultivated at all: for it was altogether necessary to draw certainmen from the general rude and fierce society, and wholly to set a barbetween them and the barbarous life of the rest of the world, in orderto fit them for study and the cultivation of arts and science. Accordingly, we find everywhere in the first institutions for thepropagation of knowledge amongst any people, that those who followed itwere set apart and secluded from the mass of the community. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 682]

The great ecclesiastical chair of this kingdom, for near a century, wasfilled by foreigners. They were nominated by the Popes, who were in thatage just or politic enough to appoint persons of a merit in some degreeadequate to that important charge. Through this series of foreign andlearned prelates, continual accessions were made to the originallyslender stock of English literature. The greatest and most valuable ofthese accessions was made in the time and by the care of Theodorus, theseventh Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a Greek by birth, a man of ahigh ambitious spirit, and of a mind more liberal and talents bettercultivated than generally fell to the lot of the Western prelates. Hefirst introduced the study of his native language into this island. Hebrought with him a number of valuable books in many faculties, andamongst them a magnificent copy of the works of Homer, the most ancientand best of poets, and the best chosen to inspire a people justinitiated into letters with an ardent love and with a true taste for thesciences. Under his influence a school was formed at Canterbury; andthus the other great fountain of knowledge, the Greek tongue, was openedin England in the year of our Lord 669. 

The southern parts of England received their improvements directlythrough the channel of Rome. The kingdom of Northumberland, as soon asit was converted, began to contend with the southern provinces in anemulation of piety and learning. The ecclesiastics then [there?] alsokept up and profited by their intercourse with Rome; but they foundtheir principal resources of knowledge from another and a moreextraordinary quarter. The island of Hii, or Columbkill, [46] is a smalland barren rock in the Western Ocean. But in those days it was high inreputation as the site of a monastery which had acquired great renownfor the rigor of its studies and the severity of its ascetic discipline. Its authority was extended over all the northern parts of Britain andIreland; and the monks of Hii even exercised episcopal jurisdiction overall those regions. They had a considerable share both in the religiousand literate institution of the Northumbrians. Another island, of stillless importance, in the mouth of the Tees [Tweed?], and calledLindisfarne, was about this time sanctified by the austerities of anhermit called Cuthbert. It soon became also a very celebrated monastery. It was, from a dread of the ravages of pirates, removed first to theadjacent part of the continent, and on the same account finally toDurham. The heads of this monastery omitted nothing which couldcontribute to the glory of their founder and to the dignity of theirhouse, which became, in a very short time, by their assiduous endeavors, the most considerable school perhaps in Europe. 

The great and justest boast of this monastery is the Venerable Beda, whowas educated and spent his whole life there. An account of his writingsis an account of the English learning in that age, taken in its mostadvantageous view. Many of his works remain, and he wrote both in proseand verse, and upon all sorts of subjects. His theology forms the mostconsiderable part of his writings. He wrote comments upon almost thewhole Scripture, and several homilies on the principal festivals of theChurch. Both the comments and sermons are generally allegorical in theconstruction of the text, and simply moral in the application. In thesediscourses several things seem strained and fanciful; but herein hefollowed entirely the manner of the earlier fathers, from whom thegreatest part of his divinity is not so much imitated as extracted. Thesystematic and logical method, which seems to have been first introducedinto theology by John of Damascus, and which after wards was known bythe name of School Divinity, was not then in use, at least in theWestern Church, though soon after it made an amazing progress. In thisscheme the allegorical gave way to the literal explication, theimagination had less scope, and the affections were less touched. But itprevailed by an appearance more solid and philosophical, by an ordermore scientific, and by a readiness of application either for thesolution or the exciting of doubts and difficulties. 

They also cultivated in this monastery the study of natural philosophyand astronomy. There remain of Beda one entire book and some scatteredessays on these subjects. This book, _De Rerum Natura_, is concise andmethodical, and contains no very contemptible abstract of the physicswhich were taught in the decline of the Roman Empire. It was somewhatunfortunate that the infancy of English learning was supported by thedotage of the Roman, and that even the spring-head from whence they drewtheir instructions was itself corrupted. However, the works of the greatmasters of the ancient science still remained; but in natural philosophythe worst was the most fashionable. The Epicurean physics, the mostapproaching to rational, had long lost all credit by being made thesupport of an impious theology and a loose morality. The fine visions ofPlato fell into some discredit by the abuse which heretics had made ofthem; and the writings of Aristotle seem to have been then the only onesmuch regarded, even in natural philosophy, in which branch of sciencealone they are unworthy of him. Beda entirely follows his system. Theappearances of Nature are explained by matter and form, and by the fourvulgar elements, acted upon by the four supposed qualities of hot, dry, moist, and cold. His astronomy is on the common system of the ancients, sufficient for the few purposes to which they applied it, but otherwiseimperfect and grossly erroneous. He makes the moon larger than theearth; though a reflection on the nature of eclipses, which heunderstood, might have satisfied him of the contrary. But he had so muchto copy that he had little time to examine. These speculations, howevererroneous, were still useful; for, though men err in assigning thecauses of natural operations, the works of Nature are by this meansbrought under their consideration, which cannot be done withoutenlarging the mind. The science may be false or frivolous; theimprovement will be real. It may here be remarked, that soon afterwardsthe monks began to apply themselves to astronomy and chronology, fromthe disputes, which were carried on with so much heat and so littleeffect, concerning the proper time of celebrating Easter; and theEnglish owed the cultivation of these noble sciences to one of the mosttrivial controversies of ecclesiastic discipline. 

Beda did not confine his attention to those superior sciences. Hetreated of music, and of rhetoric, of grammar, and the art ofversification, and of arithmetic, both by letters and on the fingers;and his work on this last subject is the only one in which that pieceof antique curiosity has been preserved to us. All these are shortpieces; some of them are in the catechetical method, and seem designedfor the immediate use of the pupils in his monastery, in order tofurnish them with some leading ideas in the rudiments of these arts, then newly introduced into his country. He likewise made, and probablyfor the same purpose, a very ample and valuable collection of shortphilosophical, political, and moral maxims, from Aristotle, Plato, Seneca, and other sages of heathen antiquity. He made a separate book ofshining commonplaces and remarkable passages extracted from the works ofCicero, of whom he was a great admirer, though he seems to have been notan happy or diligent imitator in his style. From a view of these pieceswe may form an idea of what stock in the science the English at thattime possessed, and what advances they had made. That work of Beda whichis the best known and most esteemed is the Ecclesiastical History of theEnglish nation. Disgraced by a want of choice and frequently by aconfused ill disposition of his matter, and blemished with a degree ofcredulity next to infantine, it is still a valuable, and for the time asurprising performance. The book opens with a description of this islandwhich would not have disgraced a classical author; and he has prefixedto it a chronological abridgment of sacred and profane historyconnected, from the beginning of the world, which, though not criticallyadapted to his main design, is of far more intrinsic value, and indeeddisplays a vast fund of historical erudition. On the whole, though thisfather of the English learning seems to have been but a genius of themiddle class, neither elevated nor subtile, and one who wrote in a lowstyle, simple, but not elegant, yet, when we reflect upon the time inwhich he lived, the place in which he spent his whole life, within thewalls of a monastery, in so remote and wild a country, it is impossibleto refuse him the praise of an incredible industry and a generous thirstof knowledge. 

That a nation who not fifty years before had but just begun to emergefrom a barbarism so perfect that they were unfurnished even with analphabet should in so short a time have established so flourishing aseminary of learning, and have produced so eminent a teacher, is acircumstance which I imagine no other nation besides England can boast. 

Hitherto we have spoken only of their Latin and Greek literature. Theycultivated also their native language, which, according to the opinionsof the most adequate judges, was deficient neither in energy nor beauty, and was possessed of such an happy flexibility as to be capable ofexpressing with grace and effect every new technical idea introducedeither by theology or science. They were fond of poetry; they sung atall their feasts; and it was counted extremely disgraceful not to beable to take a part in these performances, even when they challengedeach other to a sudden exertion of the poetic spirit. Cædmon, afterwardsone of the most eminent of their poets, was disgraced in this mannerinto an exertion of a latent genius. He was desired in his turn to sing, but, being ignorant and full of natural sensibility, retired inconfusion from the company, and by instant and strenuous applicationsoon became a distinguished proficient in the art. 

FOOTNOTES:

[37] Inesse quinetiam sanctum aliquid et providum putant; nec autconsilia carum aspernantur aut responsa negligunt. --Tacit. De Mor. Ger. C. 8. 

[38] Bed. Hist. Eccl. Lib. I. C. 30. 

[39] Id. C. Cod. 

[40] Dugdale's History of St. Paul's. 

[41] Bed. Hist. Eccl. Lib. IV. C. 13. 

[42] Bed. Hist. Eccl. Lib IV. C. 13. 

[43] Spelm. Concil. P. 329. 

[44] Instauret etiam Dei ecclesiam; . . . Et instauret vias publicaspontibus super aquas profundas et super cænosas vias; . . . Manumittatservos suos proprios, et redimat ab aliis hominibus servos suos adlibertatem. --L Eccl. Edgari, 14. 

[45] Aidanus, Finan, Colmannus miræ sanctitatis fuerunt etparsimoniæ. . . . Adeo autem sacerdotes erant illius temporis ab avaritiaimmunes, ut nec territoria nisi coacti acciperent. --Hen. Huntingd. Lib. III. P. 333. Bed. Hist. Eccl. Lib. III c. 26. 

[46] Icolmkill, or Iona. 

CHAPTER III. 

SERIES OF ANGLO-SAXON KINGS FROM ETHELBERT TO ALFRED: WITH THE INVASIONOF THE DANES. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 799]

The Christian religion, having once taken root in Kent, spread itselfwith great rapidity throughout all the other Saxon kingdoms in England. The manners of the Saxons underwent a notable alteration by this changein their religion: their ferocity was much abated; they became more mildand sociable; and their laws began to partake of the softness of theirmanners, everywhere recommending mercy and a tenderness for Christianblood. There never was any people who embraced religion with a morefervent zeal than the Anglo-Saxons, nor with more simplicity of spirit. Their history for a long time shows us a remarkable conflict betweentheir dispositions and their principles. This conflict produced nomedium, because they were absolutely contrary, and both operated withalmost equal violence. Great crimes and extravagant penances, rapine andan entire resignation of worldly goods, rapes and vows of perpetualchastity, succeeded each other in the same persons. There was nothingwhich the violence of their passions could not induce them to commit;nothing to which they did not submit to atone for their offences, whenreflection gave an opportunity to repent. But by degrees the sanctionsof religion began to preponderate; and as the monks at this timeattracted all the religious veneration, religion everywhere began torelish of the cloister: an inactive spirit, and a spirit of scruplesprevailed; they dreaded to put the greatest criminal to death; theyscrupled to engage in any worldly functions. A king of the Saxonsdreaded that God would call him to an account for the time which hespent in his temporal affairs and had stolen from prayer. It wasfrequent for kings to go on pilgrimages to Rome or to Jerusalem, onfoot, and under circumstances of great hardship. Several kings resignedtheir crowns to devote themselves to religious contemplation inmonasteries, --more at that time and in this nation than in all othernations and in all times. This, as it introduced great mildness into thetempers of the people, made them less warlike, and consequently preparedthe way to their forming one body under Egbert, and for the otherchanges which followed. 

The kingdom of Wessex, by the wisdom and courage of King Ina, thegreatest legislator and politician of those times, had swallowed upCornwall, for a while a refuge for some of the old Britons, togetherwith the little kingdom of the South Saxons. By this augmentation itstretched from the Land's End to the borders of Kent, the Thames flowingon the north, the ocean washing it on the south. By their situation thepeople of Wessex naturally came to engross the little trade which thenfed the revenues of England; and their minds were somewhat opened by aforeign communication, by which they became more civilized and betteracquainted with the arts of war and of government. Such was thecondition of the kingdom of Wessex, when Egbert was called to the throneof his ancestors. The civil commotions which for some time prevailed haddriven this prince early in life into an useful banishment. He washonorably received at the court of Charlemagne, where he had anopportunity of studying government in the best school, and of forminghimself after the most perfect model. Whilst Charlemagne was reducingthe continent of Europe into one empire, Egbert reduced England into onekingdom. The state of his own dominions, perfectly united under him, with the other advantages which we have just mentioned, and the state ofthe neighboring Saxon governments, made this reduction less difficult. Besides Wessex, there were but two kingdoms of consideration inEngland, --Mercia and Northumberland. They were powerful enough in theadvantages of Nature, but reduced to great weakness by their divisions. As there is nothing of more moment to any country than to settle thesuccession of its government on clear and invariable principles, theSaxon monarchies, which were supported by no such principles, werecontinually tottering. The right of government sometimes was consideredas in the eldest son, sometimes in all; sometimes the will of thedeceased prince disposed of the crown, sometimes a popular electionbestowed it. The consequence of this was the frequent division andfrequent reunion of the same territory, which were productive ofinfinite mischief; many various principles of succession gave titles tosome, pretensions to more; and plots, cabals, and crimes could not bewanting to all the pretenders. Thus was Mercia torn to pieces; and thekingdom of Northumberland, assaulted on one side by the Scots, andravaged on the other by the Danish incursions, could not recover from along anarchy into which its intestine divisions had plunged it. Egbertknew how to make advantage of these divisions: fomenting them by hispolicy at first, and quelling them afterwards by his sword, he reducedthese two kingdoms under his government. The same power which conqueredMercia and Northumberland made the reduction of Kent and Essexeasy, --the people on all hands the more readily submitting, becausethere was no change made in their laws, manners, or the form of theirgovernment. 

[Sidenote: Egbert A. D. 827. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 832]

Egbert, when he had brought all England under his dominion, made theWelsh tributary, and carried his arms with success into Scotland, assumed the title of Monarch of all Britain. [47] The southern part ofthe island was now for the first time authentically known by the name ofEngland, and by every appearance promised to have arrived at thefortunate moment for forming a permanent and splendid monarchy. ButEgbert had not reigned seven years in peace, when the Danes, who hadbefore showed themselves in some scattered parties, and made someinconsiderable descents, entered the kingdom in a formidable body. Thispeople came from the same place whence the English themselves werederived, and they differed from them in little else than that they stillretained their original barbarity and heathenism. These, assisted by theNorwegians, and other people of Scandinavia, were the last torrent ofthe Northern ravagers which overflowed Europe. What is remarkable, theyattacked England and France when these two kingdoms were in the heightof their grandeur, --France under Charlemagne, England united by Egbert. The good fortune of Egbert met its first check from these people, whodefeated his forces with great slaughter near Charmouth in Dorsetshire. It generally happens that a new nation, with a new method of makingwar, succeeds against a people only exercised in arms by their own civildissensions. Besides, England, newly united, was not without thosejealousies and that disaffection which give such great advantage to aninvader. But the vigilance and courage of Egbert repaired this defeat;he repulsed the Danes; and died soon after at Winchester, full of yearsand glory. 

[Sidenote: Ethelwolf A. D. 838]

He left a great, but an endangered succession, to his son Ethelwolf, whowas a mild and virtuous prince, full of a timid piety, which utterlydisqualifies for government; and he began to govern at a time when thegreatest capacity was wanted. The Danes pour in upon every side; theking rouses from his lethargy; battles are fought with various success, which it were useless and tedious to recount. The event seems to havebeen, that in some corners of the kingdom the Danes gained a fewinconsiderable settlements; the rest of the kingdom, after beingterribly ravaged, was left a little time to recover, in order to beplundered anew. But the weak prince took no advantage of this time toconcert a regular plan of defence, or to rouse a proper spirit in hispeople. Yielding himself wholly to speculative devotion, he entirelyneglected his affairs, and, to complete the ruin of his kingdom, abandoned it, in such critical circumstances, to make a pilgrimage toRome. At Rome he behaved in the manner that suited his little genius, inmaking charitable foundations, and in extending the Rome-scot orPeter-pence, which the folly of some princes of the Heptarchy hadgranted for their particular dominions, over the whole Kingdom. Hisshameful desertion of his country raised so general a discontent, thatin his absence his own son, with the principal of his nobility andbishops, conspired against him. At his return, he found, however, thatseveral still adhered to him; but here, too, incapable of acting withrigor, he agreed to an accommodation, which placed the crown on the headof his rebellious son, and only left to himself a sphere of governmentas narrow as his genius, --the district of Kent, whither he retired toenjoy an inglorious privacy with a wife whom he had married in France. 

[Sidenote: Ethelred, A. D. 866]

On his death, his son Ethelred still held the crown, which he hadpreoccupied by his rebellion, and which he polluted with a new stain. Hemarried his father's widow. The confused history of these timesfurnishes no clear account either of the successions of the kings or oftheir actions. During the reign of this prince and his successorsEthelbert and Ethelred, the people in several parts of England seem tohave withdrawn from the kingdom of Wessex, and to have revived theirformer independency. This, added to the weakness of the government, madeway for new swarms of Danes, who burst in upon this ill-governed anddivided people, ravaging the whole country in a terrible manner, butprincipally directing their fury against every monument of civility orpiety. They had now formed a regular establishment in Northumberland, and gained a very considerable footing in Mercia and East Anglia; theyhovered over every part of the kingdom with their fleets; and beingestablished in many places in the heart of the country, nothing seemedable to resist them. 

FOOTNOTES:

[47] No Saxon monarch until Athelstan. 

CHAPTER IV. 

REIGN OF KING ALFRED. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 871]

[Sidenote: A. D. 875]

It was in the midst of these distractions that Alfred succeeded to asceptre which, was threatened every moment to be wrenched from hishands. He was then only twenty-two years of age, but exercised from hisinfancy in troubles and in wars that formed and displayed his virtue. Some of its best provinces were torn from his kingdom, which was shrunkto the ancient bounds of Wessex; and what remained was weakened bydissension, by a long war, by a raging pestilence, and surrounded byenemies whose numbers seemed inexhaustible, and whose fury was equallyincreased by victories or defeats. All these difficulties served only toincrease the vigor of his mind. He took the field without delay; but hewas defeated with considerable loss. This ominous defeat displayed morefully the greatness of his courage and capacity, which found indesperate hopes and a ruined kingdom such powerful resources. In a shorttime after he was in a condition to be respected: but he was not ledaway by the ambition of a young warrior. He neglected no measures toprocure peace for his country, which wanted a respite from thecalamities which had long oppressed it. A peace was concluded forWessex. Then the Danes turned their faces once more towards Mercia andEast Anglia. They had before stripped the inhabitants of all theirmovable substance, and now they proceeded without resistance to seizeupon their lands. Their success encouraged new swarms of Danes to crowdover, who, finding all the northern parts of England possessed by theirfriends, rushed into Wessex. They were adventurers under different andindependent leaders; and a peace little regarded by the particular partythat made it had no influence at all upon the others. Alfred opposedthis shock with so much firmness that the barbarians had recourse to astratagem: they pretended to treat; but taking advantage of the truce, they routed a body of the West Saxon cavalry that were off their guard, mounted their horses, and, crossing the country with amazing celerity, surprised the city of Exeter. This was an acquisition of infiniteadvantage to their affairs, as it secured them a port in the midst ofWessex. 

Alfred, mortified at this series of misfortunes, perceived clearly thatnothing could dislodge the Danes, or redress their continual incursions, but a powerful fleet which might intercept them at sea. The want ofthis, principally, gave rise to the success of that people. They usedsuddenly to land and ravage a part of the country; when a force opposedthem, they retired to their ships, and passed to some other part, whichin a like manner they ravaged, and then retired as before, until thecountry, entirely harassed, pillaged, and wasted by these incursions, was no longer able to resist them. Then they ventured safely to enter adesolated and disheartened country, and to establish themselves in it. These considerations made Alfred resolve upon equipping a fleet. In thisenterprise nothing but difficulties presented themselves: his revenuewas scanty, and his subjects altogether unskilled in maritime affairs, either as to the construction or the navigation of ships. He did nottherefore despair. With great promises attending a little money, heengaged in his service a number of Frisian seamen, neighbors to theDanes, and pirates, as they were. He brought, by the same means, shipwrights from the continent. He was himself present to everything;and having performed the part of a king in drawing together supplies ofevery kind, he descended with no less dignity into theartist, --improving on the construction, inventing new machines, andsupplying by the greatness of his genius the defects and imperfectionsof the arts in that rude period. By his indefatigable application thefirst English navy was in a very short time in readiness to put to sea. At that time the Danish fleet of one hundred and twenty-five ships stoodwith full sail for Exeter; they met; but, with an omen prosperous to thenew naval power, the Danish fleet was entirely vanquished and dispersed. This success drew on the surrendry of Exeter, and a peace, which Alfredmuch wanted to put the affairs of his kingdom in order. 

This peace, however, did not last long. As the Danes were continuallypouring into some part of England, they found most parts already inDanish hands; so that all these parties naturally directed their courseto the only English kingdom. All the Danes conspired to put them inpossession of it, and bursting unexpectedly with the united force oftheir whole body upon Wessex, Alfred was entirely overwhelmed, andobliged to drive before the storm of his fortune. He fled in disguiseinto a fastness in the Isle of Athelney, where he remained four monthsin the lowest state of indigence, supported by an heroic humility, andthat spirit of piety which neither adverse fortune nor prosperity couldovercome. It is much to be lamented that a character so formed tointerest all men, involved in reverses of fortune that make the mostagreeable and useful part of history, should be only celebrated by pensso little suitable to the dignity of the subject. These revolutions areso little prepared, that we neither can perceive distinctly the causeswhich sunk him nor those which again raised him to power. A few nakedfacts are all our stock. From these we see Alfred, assisted by thecasual success of one of his nobles, issuing from his retreat; he headsa powerful army once more, defeats the Danes, drives them out of Wessex, follows his blow, expels them from Mercia, subdues them inNorthumberland, and makes them tributary in Bast Anglia; and thusestablished by a number of victories in a full peace, he is presented tous in that character which makes him venerable to posterity. It is arefreshment, in the midst of such a gloomy waste of barbarism anddesolation, to fall upon so fair and cultivated a spot. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 880. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 896. ]

When Alfred had once more reunited the kingdoms of his ancestors, hefound the whole face of things in the most desperate condition: therewas no observance of law and order; religion had no force; there was nohonest industry; the most squalid poverty and the grossest ignorance hadoverspread the whole kingdom. Alfred at once enterprised the cure of allthese evils. To remedy the disorders in the government, he revived, improved, and digested all the Saxon institutions, insomuch that he isgenerally honored as the founder of our laws and Constitution. [48]

The shire he divided into hundreds, the hundreds into tithings; everyfreeman was obliged to be entered into some tithing, the members ofwhich were mutually bound for each other, for the preservation of thepeace, and the avoiding theft and rapine. For securing the liberty ofthe subject, he introduced the method of giving bail, the most certainfence against the abuses of power. It has been observed that the reignsof weak princes are times favorable to liberty; but the wisest andbravest of all the English princes is the father of their freedom. Thisgreat man was even jealous of the privileges of his subjects; and as hiswhole life was spent in protecting them, his last will breathes the samespirit, declaring that he had left his people as free as their ownthoughts. He not only collected with great care a complete body of laws, but he wrote comments on them for the instruction of his judges, whowere in general, by the misfortune of the time, ignorant. And if hetook care to correct their ignorance, he was rigorous towards theircorruption. He inquired strictly into their conduct, he heard appeals inperson; he held his Wittenagemotes, or Parliaments, frequently; and keptevery part of his government in health and vigor. 

Nor was he less solicitous for the defence than he had shown himself forthe regulation of his kingdom. He nourished with particular care the newnaval strength which he had established; he built forts and castles inthe most important posts; he settled beacons to spread an alarm on thearrival of an enemy; and ordered his militia in such a manner that therewas always a great power in readiness to march, well appointed and welldisciplined. But that a suitable revenue might not be wanting for thesupport of his fleets and fortifications, he gave great encouragement totrade, which, by the piracies on the coasts, and the rapine andinjustice exercised by the people within, had long become a stranger tothis island. 

In the midst of these various and important cares, he gave a peculiarattention to learning, which by the rage of the late wars had beenentirely extinguished in his kingdom. "Very few there were" (says thismonarch) "on this side the Humber that understood their ordinaryprayers, or that were able to translate any Latin book into English, --sofew, that I do not remember even one qualified to the southward of theThames when I began my reign. " To cure this deplorable ignorance, he wasindefatigable in his endeavors to bring into England men of learning inall branches from every part of Europe, and unbounded in his liberalityto them. He enacted by a law that every person possessed of two hidesof land should send their children to school until sixteen. Wiselyconsidering where to put a stop to his love even of the liberal arts, which are only suited to a liberal condition, he enterprised yet agreater design than that of forming the growing generation, --to instructeven the grown: enjoining all his earldormen and sheriffs immediately toapply themselves to learning, or to quit their offices. To facilitatethese great purposes, he made a regular foundation of an university, which with great reason is believed to have been at Oxford. Whatevertrouble he took to extend the benefits of learning amongst his subjects, he showed the example himself, and applied to the cultivation of hismind with unparalleled diligence and success. He could neither read norwrite at twelve years old; but he improved his time in such a mannerthat he became one of the most knowing men of his age, in geometry, inphilosophy, in architecture, and in music. He applied himself to theimprovement of his native language; he translated several valuable worksfrom Latin; and wrote a vast number of poems in the Saxon tongue with awonderful facility and happiness. He not only excelled in the theory ofthe arts and sciences, but possessed a great mechanical genius for theexecutive part; he improved the manner of ship-building, introduced amore beautiful and commodious architecture, and even taught hiscountrymen the art of making bricks, --most of the buildings having beenof wood before his time. In a word, he comprehended in the greatness ofhis mind the whole of government and all its parts at once, and, what ismost difficult to human frailty, was at the same time sublime andminute. 

Religion, which in Alfred's father was so prejudicial to affairs, without being in him at all inferior in its zeal and fervor, was of amore enlarged and noble kind; far from being a prejudice to hisgovernment, it seems to have been the principle that supported him in somany fatigues, and fed like an abundant source his civil and militaryvirtues. To his religious exercises and studies he devoted a full thirdpart of his time. It is pleasant to trace a genius even in its smallestexertions, --in measuring and allotting his time for the variety ofbusiness he was engaged in. According to his severe and methodicalcustom, he had a sort of wax candles made of different colors indifferent proportions, according to the time he allotted to eachparticular affair; as he carried these about with him wherever he went, to make them burn evenly he invented horn lanterns. One cannot helpbeing amazed that a prince, who lived in such turbulent times, whocommanded personally in fifty-four pitched battles, who had sodisordered a province to regulate, who was not only a legislator, but ajudge, and who was continually superintending his armies, his navies, the traffic of his kingdom, his revenues, and the conduct of all hisofficers, could have bestowed so much of his time on religious exercisesand speculative knowledge; but the exertion of all his faculties andvirtues seemed to have given a mutual strength to all of them. Thus allhistorians speak of this prince, whose whole history was one panegyric;and whatever dark spots of human frailty may have adhered to such acharacter, they are entirely hid in the splendor of his many shiningqualities and grand virtues, that throw a glory over the obscure periodin which he lived, and which is for no other reason worthy of ourknowledge. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 897. ]

The latter part of his reign was molested with new and formidableattempts from the Danes: but they no longer found the country in itsformer condition; their fleets were attacked; and those that landedfound a strong and regular opposition. There were now fortresses whichrestrained their ravages, and armies well appointed to oppose them inthe field; they were defeated in a pitched battle; and after severaldesperate marches from one part of the country to the other, everywhereharassed and hunted, they were glad to return with half their number, and to leave Alfred in quiet to accomplish the great things he hadprojected. This prince reigned twenty-seven, years, and died at last ofa disorder in his bowels, which had afflicted him, without interruptinghis designs or souring his temper, during the greatest part of his life. 

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Historians, copying after one another, and examining little, haveattributed to this monarch the institution of juries, an institutionwhich certainly did never prevail amongst the Saxons. They have likewiseattributed to him the distribution of England into shires, hundreds, andtithings, and of appointing officers over these divisions. But it isvery obvious that the shires were never settled upon any regular plan, nor are they the result of any single design. But these reports, howeverill imagined, are a strong proof of the high veneration in which thisexcellent prince has always been held; as it has been thought that theattributing these regulations to him would endear them to the nation. Beprobably settled them in such an order, and made such reformations inhis government, that some of the institutions themselves which heimproved have been attributed to him: and, indeed, there was one work ofhis which serves to furnish us with a higher idea of the politicalcapacity of that great man than any of these fictions. He made a generalsurvey and register of all the property in the kingdom, who held it, andwhat it was distinctly: a vast work for an age of ignorance and time ofconfusion, which has been neglected in more civilized nations andsettled times. It was called the Roll of Winton, and served as a modelof a work of the same kind made by William the Conqueror. 

CHAPTER V. 

SUCCESSION OF KINGS FROM ALFRED TO HAROLD. 

[Sidenote: Edward, A. D. 900. ]

[Sidenote: Athelstan A. D. 925. ]

[Sidenote: Edmund, A. D. 942. ]

[Sidenote: Edred, A. D. 947. ]

[Sidenote: Edwin, A. D. 957. ]

His son Edward succeeded. Though of less learning than his father, heequalled him in his political virtues. He made war with success on theWelsh, the Scots, and the Danes, and left his kingdom stronglyfortified, and exercised, not weakened, with the enterprises of avigorous reign. Because his son Edmund was under age, the crown was seton the head of his illegitimate offspring, Athelstan. His, like thereigns of all the princes of this time, was molested by the continualincursions of the Danes; and nothing but a succession of men of spirit, capacity, and love of their country, which providentially happened atthis time, could ward off the ruin of the kingdom. Such Athelstan was;and such was his brother Edmund, who reigned five years with greatreputation, but was at length, by an obscure ruffian, assassinated inhis own palace. Edred, his brother, succeeded to the late monarchy:though he had left two sons, Edwin and Edgar, both were passed by onaccount of their minority. But on this prince's death, which happenedafter a troublesome reign of ten years, valiantly supported againstcontinual inroads of the Danes; the crown devolved on Edwin; of whomlittle can be said, because his reign was short, and he was so embroiledwith his clergy that we can take his character only from the monks, whoin such a case are suspicious authority. 

[Sidenote: Edgar, A. D. 959. ]

Edgar, the second son of King Edmund, came young to the throne; but hehad the happiness to have his youth formed and his kingdom ruled by menof experience, virtue, and authority. The celebrated Dunstan was hisfirst minister, and had a mighty influence over all his actions. Thisprelate had been educated abroad, and had seen the world to advantage. As he had great power at court by the superior wisdom of his counsels, so by the sanctity of his life he had great credit with the people, which gave a firmness to the government of his master, whose privatecharacter was in many respects extremely exceptionable. It was in hisreign, and chiefly by the means of his minister, Dunstan, that themonks, who had long prevailed in the opinion of the generality of thepeople, gave a total overthrow to their rivals, the secular clergy. Thesecular clergy were at this time for the most part married, and weretherefore too near the common modes of mankind to draw a great deal oftheir respect; their character was supported by a very small portion oflearning, and their lives were not such as people wish to see in theclergy. But the monks were unmarried, austere in their lives, regular intheir duties, possessed of the learning of the times, well united undera proper subordination, full of art, and implacable towards theirenemies. These circumstances, concurring with the dispositions of theking and the designs of Dunstan, prevailed so far that it was agreed ina council convened for that purpose to expel the secular clergy fromtheir livings, and to supply their places with monks, throughout thekingdom. Although the partisans of the secular priests were not a few, nor of the lowest class, yet they were unable to withstand the currentof the popular desire, strengthened by the authority of a potent andrespected monarch. However, there was a seed of discontent sown on thisoccasion, which grew up afterwards to the mutual destruction of all theparties. During the whole reign of Edgar, as he had secured the mostpopular part of the clergy, and with them the people, in his interests, there was no internal disturbance; there was no foreign war, becausethis prince was always ready for war. But he principally owed hissecurity to the care he took of his naval power, which was much greaterand better regulated than that of any English monarch before him. He hadthree fleets always equipped, one of which annually sailed round theisland. Thus the Danes, the Scots, the Irish, and the Welsh were keptin awe. He assumed the title of King of all Albion. His court wasmagnificent, and much frequented by strangers. His revenues were inexcellent order, and no prince of his time supported the royal characterwith more dignity. 

[Sidenote: Edward, A. D. 975. ]

[Sidenote: Ethelred, A. D. 979. ]

Edgar had two wives, Elfleda and Elfrida. By the first he had a soncalled Edward; the second bore him one called Ethelred. On Edgar'sdeath, Edward, in the usual order of succession, was called to thethrone; but Elfrida caballed in favor of her son, and finding itimpossible to set him up in the life of his brother, she murdered himwith her own hands in her castle of Corfe, whither he had retired torefresh himself, wearied with hunting. Ethelred, who by the crimes ofhis mother ascended a throne sprinkled with his brother's blood, had apart to act which exceeded the capacity that could be expected in one ofhis youth and inexperience. The partisans of the secular clergy, whowere kept down by the vigor of Edgar's government, thought this a fittime to renew their pretensions. The monks defended themselves in theirpossession; there was no moderation on either side, and the whole nationjoined in these parties. The murder of Edward threw an odious stain onthe king, though he was wholly innocent of that crime. There was ageneral discontent, and every corner was full of murmurs and cabals. Inthis state of the kingdom, it was equally dangerous to exert the fulnessof the sovereign authority or to suffer it to relax. The temper of theking was most inclined to the latter method, which is of all things theworst. A weak government, too easy, suffers evils to grow which oftenmake the most rigorous and illegal proceedings necessary. Through anextreme lenity it is on some occasions tyrannical. This was thecondition of Ethelred's nobility, who, by being permitted everything, were never contented. 

Thus all the principal men held a sort of factious and independentauthority; they despised the king, they oppressed the people, and theyhated one another. The Danes, in every part of England but Wessex asnumerous as the English themselves, and in many parts more numerous, were ready to take advantage of these disorders, and waited withimpatience some new attempt from abroad, that they might rise in favorof the invaders. They were not long without such an occasion; the Danespour in almost upon every part at once, and distract the defence whichthe weak prince was preparing to make. 

In those days of wretchedness and ignorance, when all the maritime partsof Europe were attacked by these formidable enemies at once, they neverthought of entering into any alliance against them; they equallyneglected the other obvious method to prevent their incursions, whichwas, to carry the war into the invaders' country. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 987. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 991. ]

What aggravated these calamities, the nobility, mostly disaffected tothe king, and entertaining very little regard to their country, made, some of them, a weak and cowardly opposition to the enemy; some actuallybetrayed their trust; some even were found who undertook the trade ofpiracy themselves. It was in this condition, that Edric, Duke of Mercia, a man of some ability, but light, inconstant, and utterly devoid of allprinciple, proposed to buy a peace from the Danes. The general weaknessand consternation disposed the king and people to take this perniciousadvice. At first 10, 000_l. _ was given to the Danes, who retired withthis money and the rest of their plunder. The English were now, for thefirst time, taxed to supply this payment. The imposition was calledDanegelt, not more burdensome in the thing than scandalous in the name. The scheme of purchasing peace not only gave rise to many internalhardships, but, whilst it weakened the kingdom, it inspired such adesire of invading it to the enemy, that Sweyn, King of Denmark, came inperson soon after with a prodigious fleet and army. The English, havingonce found the method of diverting the storm by an inglorious bargain, could not bear to think of any other way of resistance. A greater sum, 48, 000_l. _, was now paid, which the Danes accepted with pleasure, asthey could by this means exhaust their enemies and enrich themselveswith little danger or trouble. With very short intermissions they stillreturned, continually increasing in their demands. In a few years theyextorted upwards of 160, 000_l. _ from the English, besides an annualtribute of 48, 000_l. _ The country was wholly exhausted both of money andspirit. The Danes in England, under the protection of the foreign Danes, committed a thousand insolencies; and so infatuated with stupidity andbaseness were the English at this time, that they employed hardly anyother soldiers for their defence. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1002]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1003]

In this state of shame and misery, their sufferings suggested to them adesign rather desperate than brave. They resolved on a massacre of theDanes. Some authors say, that in one night the whole race was cut off. Many, probably all the military men, were so destroyed. But thismassacre, injudicious as it was cruel, was certainly not universal; nordid it serve any other or better end than to exasperate those of thesame nation abroad, who the next year landed in England with a powerfularmy to revenge it, and committed outrages even beyond the usual tenorof the Danish cruelty. There was in England no money left to purchase apeace, nor courage to wage a successful war; and the King of Denmark, Sweyn, a prince of capacity, at the head of a large body of brave andenterprising men, soon mastered the whole kingdom, except London. Ethelred, abandoned by fortune and his subjects, was forced to fly intoNormandy. 

[Sidenote: Edmund Ironside, A. D. 1016. ]

As there was no good order in the English affairs, though continuallyalarmed, they were always surprised; they were only roused to arms bythe cruelty of the enemy, and they were only formed into a body by beingdriven from their homes: so that they never made a resistance until theyseemed to be entirely conquered. This may serve to account for thefrequent sudden reductions of the island, and the frequent renewals oftheir fortune when it seemed the most desperate. Sweyn, in the midst ofhis victories, dies, and, though succeeded by his son Canute, whoinherited his father's resolution, their affairs were thrown into somedisorder by this accident. The English were encouraged by it. Ethelredwas recalled, and the Danes retired out of the kingdom; but it was onlyto return the nest year with a greater and better appointed force. Nothing seemed able to oppose them. The king dies. A great part of theland was surrendered, without resistance, to Canute. Edmund, the eldestson of Ethelred, supported, however, the declining hopes of the Englishfor some time; in three months he fought three victorious battles; heattempted a fourth, but lost it by the base desertion of Edric, theprincipal author of all these troubles. It is common with the conqueredside to attribute all their misfortunes to the treachery of their ownparty. They choose to be thought subdued by the treachery of theirfriends rather than the superior bravery of their enemies. All the oldhistorians talk in this strain; and it must be acknowledged that alladherents to a declining party have many temptations to infidelity. 

Edmund, defeated, but not discouraged, retreated to the Severn, where herecruited his forces. Canute followed at his heels. And now the twoarmies were drawn up which were to decide the fate of England, when itwas proposed to determine the war by a single combat between the twokings. Neither was unwilling; the Isle of Alney in the Severn was chosenfor the lists. Edmund had the advantage by the greatness of hisstrength, Canute by his address; for when Edmund had so far prevailed asto disarm him, he proposed a parley, in which he persuaded Edmund to apeace, and to a division of the kingdom. Their armies accepted theagreement, and both kings departed in a seeming friendship. But Edmunddied soon after, with a probable suspicion of being murdered by theinstruments of his associate in the empire. 

[Sidenote: The Danish race. 

Canute. ]

[Sidenote: Harold I. , A. D. 1035. ]

[Sidenote: Hardicanute, A. D. 1035]

[Sidenote: The Saxon line restored. ]

Canute, on this event, assembled the states of the kingdom, by whom hewas acknowledged King of all England. He was a prince truly great; for, having acquired the kingdom by his valor, he maintained and improved itby his justice and clemency. Choosing rather to rule by the inclinationof his subjects than the right of conquest, he dismissed his Danisharmy, and committed his safety to the laws. He reëstablished the orderand tranquillity which so long a series of bloody wars had banished. Herevived the ancient statutes of the Saxon princes, and governed throughhis whole reign with such steadiness and moderation that the Englishwere much happier under this foreign prince than they had been undertheir natural kings. Canute, though the beginning of his life wasstained with those marks of violence and injustice which attendconquest, was remarkable in his latter end for his piety. According tothe mode of that time, he made a pilgrimage to Rome, with a view toexpiate the crimes which paved his way to the throne; but he made a gooduse of this peregrination, and returned full of the observations he hadmade in the country through which he passed, which he turned to thebenefit of his extensive dominions. They comprehended England, Denmark, Norway, and many of the countries which lie upon the Baltic. Those heleft, established in peace and security, to his children. The fate ofhis Northern possessions is not of this place. England fell to his sonHarold, though not without much competition in favor of the sons ofEdmund Ironside, while some contended for the right of the sons ofEthelred, Alfred and Edward. Harold inherited none of the virtues ofCanute; he banished his mother Emma, murdered his half-brother Alfred, and died without issue after a short reign, full of violence, weakness, and cruelty. His brother Hardicanute, who succeeded him, resembled himin his character; he committed new cruelties and injustices in revengingthose which his brother had committed, and he died after a yet shorterreign. The Danish power, established with so much blood, expired ofitself; and Edward, the only surviving son of Ethelred, then an exile inNormandy, was called to the throne by the unanimous voice of thekingdom. 

[Sidenote: Edward the Confessor, A. D. 1041. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1053]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1066. ]

This prince was educated in a monastery, where he learned piety, continence, and humility, but nothing of the art of government. He wasinnocent and artless, but his views were narrow, and his geniuscontemptible. The character of such a prince is not, therefore, whatinfluences the government, any further than as it puts it in the handsof others. When he came to the throne, Godwin, Earl of Kent, was themost popular man in England; he possessed a very great estate, anenterprising disposition, and an eloquence beyond the age he lived in;he was arrogant, imperious, assuming, and of a conscience which neverput itself in the way of his interest. He had a considerable share inrestoring Edward to the throne of his ancestors; and by this merit, joined to his popularity, he for some time directed everything accordingto his pleasure. He intended to fortify his interest by giving inmarriage to the king his daughter, a lady of great beauty, great virtue, and an education beyond her sex. Godwin had, however, powerful rivals inthe king's favor. This monarch, who possessed many of the privatevirtues, had a grateful remembrance of his favorable reception inNormandy; he caressed the people of that country, and promoted severalto the first places, ecclesiastical and civil, in his kingdom. Thisbegot an uneasiness in all the English; but Earl Godwin wasparticularly offended. The Normans, on the other hand, accused Godwin ofa design on the crown, the justice of which imputation the whole tenorof his conduct evinced sufficiently. But as his cabals began to breakinto action before they were in perfect ripeness for it, the Normanparty prevailed, and Godwin was banished. This man was not only verypopular at home by his generosity and address, but he found means toengage even, foreigners in his interests. Baldwin, Earl of Flanders, gave him a very kind reception. By his assistance Godwin fitted out afleet, hired a competent force, sailed to England, and having nearSandwich deceived the king's navy, he presented himself at London beforehe was expected. The king made ready as great a force as the time wouldadmit to oppose him. The galleys of Edward and Godwin met on the Thames;but such was the general favor to Godwin, such the popularity of hiscause, that the king's men threw down their arms, and refused to fightagainst their countrymen in favor of strangers. Edward was obliged totreat with his own subjects, and in consequence of this treaty todismiss the Normans, whom he believed to be the best attached to hisinterests. Godwin used the power to which he was restored to gratify hispersonal revenge, showing no mercy to his enemies. Some of his sonsbehaved in the most tyrannical manner. The great lords of the kingdomenvied and hated a greatness which annihilated the royal authority, eclipsed them, and oppressed the people; but Godwin's death soon afterquieted for a while their murmurs. The king, who had the least share inthe transactions of his own reign, and who was of a temper not toperceive his own insignificance, begun in his old age to think of asuccessor. He had no children: for some weak reasons of religion orpersonal dislike, he had never cohabited with his wife. He sent for hisnephew Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, out of Hungary, where he hadtaken refuge; but he died soon after he came to England, leaving a soncalled Edgar Atheling. The king himself irresolute in so momentous anaffair, died without making any settlement. His reign was properly thatof his great men, or rather of their factions. All of it that was hisown was good. He was careful of the privileges of his subjects, and tookcare to have a body of the Saxon laws, very favorable to them, digestedand enforced. He remitted the heavy imposition called Danegelt, amounting to 40, 000_l. _ a year, which had been constantly collectedafter the occasion had ceased; he even repaid to his subjects what hefound in the treasury at his accession. In short, there is little in hislife that can call his title to sanctity in question, though he cannever be reckoned among the great kings. 

CHAPTER VI. 

HAROLD II. --INVASION OF THE NORMANS. --ACCOUNT OF THAT PEOPLE, AND OF THESTATE OF ENGLAND AT THE TIME OF THE INVASION. 

[Sidenote: Harold II. , A. D. 1066. ]

Though Edgar Atheling had the best title to the succession, yet Harold, the son of Earl Godwin, on account of the credit of his father, and hisown great qualities, which supported and extended the interest of hisfamily, was by the general voice set upon the throne. The right ofEdgar, young, and discovering no great capacity, gave him littledisturbance in comparison of the violence of his own brother Tosti, whomfor his infamous oppression he had found himself obliged to banish. Thisman, who was a tyrant at home and a traitor abroad, insulted themaritime parts with a piratical fleet, whilst he incited all theneighboring princes to fall upon his country. Harold Harfager, King ofNorway, after the conquest of the Orkneys, with a powerful navy hungover the coasts of England. But nothing troubled Harold so much as thepretensions and the formidable preparation of William, Duke of Normandy, one of the most able, ambitious, and enterprising men of that age. Wehave mentioned the partiality of King Edward to the Normans, and thehatred he bore to Godwin, and his family. The Duke of Normandy, to whomEdward had personal obligations, had taken a tour into England, andneglected no means to improve these dispositions to his own advantage. It is said that he then received the fullest assurances of beingappointed to the succession, and that Harold himself had been sent soonafter into Normandy to settle whatever related to it. This is an obscuretransaction, and would, if it could be cleared up, convey but littleinstruction. So that whether we believe or not that William had engagedHarold by a solemn oath to secure him the kingdom, we know that heafterwards set up a will of King Edward in his favor, which, however, henever produced, and probably never had to produce. In these delicatecircumstances Harold was not wanting to himself. By the most equitablelaws and the most popular behavior he sought to secure the affections ofhis subjects; and he succeeded so well, that, when he marched againstthe King of Norway, who had invaded his kingdom and taken York, withoutdifficulty he raised a numerous army of gallant men, zealous for hiscause and their country. He obtained a signal and decisive victory overthe Norwegians. The King Harfager, and the traitor Tosti, who had joinedhim, were slain in the battle, and the Norwegians were forced toevacuate the country. Harold had, however, but little time to enjoy thefruits of his victory. 

Scarce had the Norwegians departed, when William, Duke of Normandy, landed in the southern part of the kingdom with an army of sixtythousand chosen men, and struck a general terror through all the nation, which was well acquainted with the character of the commander and thecourage and discipline of his troops. 

The Normans were the posterity of those Danes who had so long and socruelly harassed the British islands and the shore of the adjoiningcontinent. In, the days of King Alfred, a body of these adventurers, under their leader, Rollo, made an attempt upon England; but so well didthey find every spot defended by the vigilance and bravery of that greatmonarch that they were compelled to retire. Beaten from these shores, the stream of their impetuosity bore towards the northern parts ofFrance, which had been reduced to the most deplorable condition by theirformer ravages. Charles the Simple then sat on the throne of thatkingdom; unable to resist this torrent of barbarians, he was obliged toyield to it; he agreed to give up to Rollo the large and fertileprovince of Neustria, to hold of him as his feudatory. This province, from the new inhabitants, was called Normandy. Five princes succeededRollo, who maintained with great bravery and cultivated with equalwisdom his conquests. The ancient ferocity of this people was a littlesoftened by their settlement; but the bravery which, had made the Danesso formidable was not extinguished in the Normans, nor the spirit ofenterprise. Not long before this period, a private gentleman ofNormandy, by his personal bravery, had acquired the kingdom of Naples. Several others followed his fortunes, who added Sicily to it. From oneend of Europe to the other the Norman name was known, respected, andfeared. Robert, the sixth Duke of Normandy, to expiate some crime whichlay heavy upon his conscience, resolved, according to the ideas of thattime, upon a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It was in vain that his nobility, whom he had assembled to notify this resolution to them, represented tohim the miserable state to which his country would be reduced, abandonedby its prince, and uncertain of a legal successor. The Duke was not tobe moved from his resolution, which appeared but the more meritoriousfrom the difficulties which attended it. He presented to the statesWilliam, then an infant, born of an obscure woman, whom, notwithstanding, he doubted not to be his son; him he appointed tosucceed; him he recommended to their virtue and loyalty; and then, solemnly resigning the government in his favor, he departed on thepilgrimage, from whence he never returned. The states, hesitating sometime between, the mischiefs that attend the allowing an illegitimatesuccession, and those which might arise from admitting foreignpretensions, thought the former the least prejudicial, and accordinglyswore allegiance to William. But this oath was not sufficient toestablish a right so doubtful. The Dukes of Burgundy and Brittany, aswell as several Norman noblemen, had specious titles. The endeavors ofall these disquieted the reign of the young prince with perpetualtroubles. In these troubles he was formed early in life to vigilance, activity, secrecy, and a conquest over all those passions, whether bador good, which obstruct the way to greatness. He had to contend with allthe neighboring princes, with the seditions of a turbulent andunfaithful nobility, and the treacherous protection of his feudal lord, the King of France. All of these in their turns, sometimes all of thesetogether, distressed him. But with the most unparalleled good fortuneand conduct he overcame all opposition, and triumphed over every enemy, raising his power and reputation above that of all his ancestors, asmuch as he was exalted by his bravery above the princes of his own time. 

Such was the prince who, on a pretended claim from the will of KingEdward, supported by the common and popular pretence of punishingoffenders and redressing grievances, landed at Pevensey in Sussex, tocontest the crown with Harold. Harold had no sooner advice of hislanding than he advanced to meet him with all possible diligence; butthere did not appear in his army, upon this occasion, the same unanimityand satisfaction which animated it on its march against the Norwegians. An ill-timed economy in Harold, which made him refuse to his soldiersthe plunder of the Norwegian camp, had created a general discontent. Several deserted; and the soldiers who remained followed heavily aleader under whom there was no hope of plunder, the greatest incitementof the soldiery. Notwithstanding this ill disposition, Harold stillurged forward, and by forced marches advanced within seven miles of theenemy. The Norman, on his landing, is said to have sent away his ships, that his army might have no way of safety but in conquest; yet had hefortified his camp, and taken every prudent precaution, that soconsiderable an enterprise should not be reduced to a single effort ofdespair. When the armies, charged with the decision of so mighty acontest, had approached each other, Harold paused awhile. A great dealdepended on his conduct at this critical time. The most experienced inthe council of war, who knew the condition of their troops, were ofopinion that the engagement ought to be deferred, --that the countryought to be wasted, --that, as the winter approached, the Normans wouldin all probability be obliged to retire of themselves, --that, if thisshould not happen, the Norman army was without resources, whilst theEnglish would be every day considerably augmented, and might attacktheir enemy at a time and manner which might make their success certain. To all these reasons nothing was opposed but a false point of honor anda mistaken courage in Harold, who urged his fate, and resolved on anengagement. The Norman, as soon as he perceived that the English, weredetermined on a battle, left his camp to post himself in an advantageoussituation, in which his whole army remained the night which preceded theaction. 

This night was spent in a manner which prognosticated the event of thefollowing day. On the part of the Normans it was spent in prayer, andin a cool and steady preparation for the engagement; on the side of theEnglish, in riot and a vain confidence that neglected all the necessarypreparations. The two armies met in the morning; from seven to five thebattle was fought with equal vigor, until at last the Norman armypretending to break in confusion, a stratagem to which they had beenregularly formed, the English, elated with success, suffered that firmorder in which their security consisted to dissipate, which when Williamobserved, he gave the signal to his men to regain their formerdisposition, and fall upon the English, broken and dispersed. Harold inthis emergency did everything which became him, everything possible tocollect his troops and to renew the engagement; but whilst he flew fromplace to place, and in all places restored the battle, an arrow piercedhis brain, and he died a king, in a manner worthy of a warrior. TheEnglish immediately fled; the rout was total, and the slaughterprodigious. 

The consternation which this defeat and the death of Harold producedover the kingdom was more fatal than the defeat itself. If William hadmarched directly to London, all contest had probably been at an end; buthe judged it more prudent to secure the sea-coast, to make way forreinforcements, distrusting his fortune in his success more than he haddone in his first attempts. He marched to Dover, where the effect of hisvictory was such that the strong castle there surrendered withoutresistance. Had this fortress made any tolerable defence, the Englishwould have had leisure to rouse from their consternation, and plan somerational method for continuing the war; but now the conqueror was onfull march to London, whilst the English were debating concerning themeasures they should take, and doubtful in what manner they should fillthe vacant throne. However, in this emergency it was necessary to takesome resolution. The party of Edgar Atheling prevailed, and he was ownedking by the city of London, which even at this time was exceedinglypowerful, and by the greatest part of the nobility then present. But hisreign was of a short duration. William advanced by hasty marches, and, as he approached, the perplexity of the English redoubled: they had donenothing for the defence of the city; they had no reliance on their newking; they suspected one another; there was no authority, no order, nocounsel; a confused and ill-sorted assembly of unwarlike people, ofpriests, burghers, and nobles confounded with them in the general panic, struck down by the consternation of the late defeat, and trembling underthe bolts of the Papal excommunication, were unable to plan any methodof defence: insomuch that, when he had passed the Thames and drew nearto London, the clergy, the citizens, and the greater part of the nobles, who had so lately set the crown on the head of Edgar, went out to meethim; they submitted to him, and having brought him in triumph toWestminster, he was there solemnly crowned King of England. The wholenation followed the example of London; and one battle gave England tothe Normans, which had cost the Romans, the Saxons, and Danes so muchtime and blood to acquire. 

At first view it is very difficult to conceive how this could havehappened to a powerful nation, in which it does not appear that theconqueror had one partisan. It stands a single event in history, unless, perhaps, we may compare it with the reduction of Ireland, some timeafter, by Henry the Second. An attentive consideration of the state ofthe kingdom at that critical time may, perhaps, in some measure, layopen to us the cause of this extraordinary revolution. The nobility ofEngland, in which its strength consisted, was much decayed. Wars andconfiscations, but above all the custom of gavelkind, had reduced thatbody very low. At the same time some few families had been, raised to adegree of power unknown in the ancient Saxon times, and dangerous inall. Large possessions, and a larger authority, were annexed to theoffices of the Saxon magistrates, whom they called Aldermen. Thisauthority, in their long and bloody wars with the Danes, it was foundnecessary to increase, and often to increase beyond the ancient limits. Aldermen were created for life; they were then frequently madehereditary; some were vested with a power over others; and at thisperiod we begin to hear of dukes who governed over several shires, andhad many aldermen subject to them. These officers found means to turnthe royal bounty into an instrument of becoming independent of itsauthority. Too great to obey, and too little to protect, they were adead weight upon the country. They began to cast an eye on the crown, and distracted the nation by cabals to compass their designs. At thesame time they nourished the most terrible feuds amongst themselves. Thefeeble government of Edward established these abuses. He could find nomethod of humbling one subject grown too great, but by aggrandizing inthe same excessive degree some others. Thus, he endeavored to balancethe power of Earl Godwin by exalting Leofric, Duke of Mercia, andSiward, Duke of Northumberland, to an extravagant greatness. Theconsequence was this: he did not humble Godwin, but raised him potentrivals. When, therefore, this prince died, the lawful successor to thecrown, who had nothing but right in his favor, was totally eclipsed bythe splendor of the great men who had adorned themselves with the spoilsof royalty. The throne was now the prize of faction; and Harold, the sonof Godwin, having the strongest faction, carried it. By this success theopposite parties were inflamed with a new occasion of rancor andanimosity, and an incurable discontent was raised in the minds of Edwinand Morcar, the sons of Duke Leofric, who inherited their father's powerand popularity: but this animosity operated nothing in favor of thelegitimate heir, though it weakened the hands of the governing prince. 

The death of Harold was far from putting an end to these evils; itrather unfolded more at large the fatal consequences of the ill measureswhich had been pursued. Edwin and Morcar set on foot once more theirpractices to obtain the crown; and when they found themselves baffled, they retired in discontent from the councils of the nation, withdrawingthereby a very large part of its strength and authority. The council ofthe nation, which was formed of the clashing factions of a few greatmen, (for the rest were nothing, ) divided, disheartened, weakened, without head, without direction, dismayed by a terrible defeat, submitted, because they saw no other course, to a conqueror whose valorthey had experienced, and who had hitherto behaved with greatappearances of equity and moderation. As for the grandees, they werecontented rather to submit to this foreign prince than to those whomthey regarded as their equals and enemies. 

With these causes other strong ones concurred. For near two centuriesthe continual and bloody wars with the Danes had exhausted the nation;the peace, which for a long time they were obliged to buy dearly, exhausted it yet more; and it had not sufficient leisure nor sufficientmeans of acquiring wealth to yield at this time any extraordinaryresources. The new people, which after so long a struggle had mixed withthe English, had not yet so thoroughly incorporated with the ancientinhabitants that a perfect union might be expected between them, or thatany strong, uniform, national effort might have resulted from it. Besides, the people of England were the most backward in Europe in allimprovements, whether in military or in civil life. Their towns weremeanly built, and more meanly fortified; there was scarcely anythingthat deserved the name of a strong place in the kingdom; there was nofortress which, by retarding the progress of a conqueror, might give thepeople an opportunity of recalling their spirits and collecting theirstrength. To these we may add, that the Pope's approbation of William'spretensions gave them great weight, especially amongst the clergy, andthat this disposed and reconciled to submission a people whom thecircumstances we have mentioned had before driven to it. 

CHAPTER VII. 

OF THE LAWS AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE SAXONS. 

Before we begin to consider the laws and constitutions of the Saxons, let us take a view of the state of the country from whence they arederived, as it is portrayed in ancient writers. This view will be thebest comment on their institutions. Let us represent to ourselves apeople without learning, without arts, without industry, solely pleasedand occupied with war, neglecting agriculture, abhorring cities, andseeking their livelihood only from pasturage and hunting through aboundless range of morasses and forests. Such a people must necessarilybe united to each other by very feeble bonds; their ideas of governmentwill necessarily be imperfect, their freedom and their love of freedomgreat. From these dispositions it must happen, of course, that theintention of investing one person or a few with the whole powers ofgovernment, and the notion of deputed authority or representation, areideas that never could have entered their imaginations. When, therefore, amongst such a people any resolution of consequence was to be taken, there was no way of effecting it but by bringing together the whole bodyof the nation, that every individual might consent to the law, and eachreciprocally bind the other to the observation of it. This polity, if soit may be called, subsists still in all its simplicity in Poland. 

But as in such a society as we have mentioned the people cannot beclassed according to any political regulations, great talents have amore ample sphere in which to exert themselves than in a close andbetter formed society. These talents must therefore have attracted agreat share of the public veneration, and drawn a numerous train afterthe person distinguished by them, of those who sought his protection, orfeared his power, or admired his qualifications, or wished to formthemselves after his example, or, in fine, of whoever desired to partakeof his importance by being mentioned along with him. These the ancientGauls, who nearly resembled the Germans in their customs, calledAmbacti; the Romans called them Comites. Over these their chief had aconsiderable power, and the more considerable because it depended uponinfluence rather than institution: influence among so free a peoplebeing the principal source of power. But this authority, great as itwas, never could by its very nature be stretched to despotism; becauseany despotic act would have shocked the only principle by which thatauthority was supported, the general good opinion. On the other hand, itcould not have been bounded by any positive laws, because laws canhardly subsist amongst a people who have not the use of letters. It wasa species of arbitrary power, softened by the popularity from whence itarose. It came from popular opinion, and by popular opinion it wascorrected. 

If people so barbarous as the Germans have no laws, they have yetcustoms that serve in their room; and these customs operate amongst thembetter than laws, because they become a sort of Nature both to thegovernors and the governed. This circumstance in some measure removedall fear of the abuse of authority, and induced the Germans to permittheir chiefs[49] to decide upon matters of lesser moment, their privatedifferences, --for so Tacitus explains the _minores res_. These chiefswere a sort of judges, but not legislators; nor do they appear to havehad a share in the superior branches of the executive part ofgovernment, --the business of peace and war, and everything of a publicnature, being determined, as we have before remarked, by the whole bodyof the people, according to a maxim general among the Germans, that whatconcerned all ought to be handled by all. Thus were delineated the faintand incorrect outlines of our Constitution, which has since been sonobly fashioned and so highly finished. This fine system, saysMontesquieu, was invented in the woods; but whilst it remained in thewoods, and for a long time after, it was far from being a fine one, --nomore, indeed, than a very imperfect attempt at government, a system fora rude and barbarous people, calculated to maintain them in theirbarbarity. 

The ancient state of the Germans was military: so that the orders intowhich they were distributed, their subordination, their courts, andevery part of their government, must be deduced from an attention to amilitary principle. 

The ancient German people, as all the other Northern tribes, consistedof freemen and slaves: the freemen professed arms, the slaves cultivatedthe ground. But men were not allowed to profess arms at their own will, nor until they were admitted to that dignity by an established order, which at a certain age separated the boys from men. For when a young manapproached to virility, [50] he was not yet admitted as a member of thestate, which was quite military, until he had been invested with aspear in the public assembly of his tribe; and then he was adjudgedproper to carry arms, and also to assist in the public deliberations, which were always held armed. [51] This spear he generally received fromthe hand of some old and respected chief, under whom he commonly enteredhimself, and was admitted among his followers. [52] No man could standout as an independent individual, but must have enlisted in one of thesemilitary fraternities; and as soon as he had so enlisted, immediately hebecame bound to his leader in the strictest dependence, which wasconfirmed by an oath, [53] and to his brethren in a common vow for theirmutual support in all dangers, and for the advancement and the honor oftheir common chief. This chief was styled Senior, Lord, and the liketerms, which marked out a superiority in age and merit; the followerswere called Ambacti, Comites, Leudes, Vassals, and other terms, markingsubmission and dependence. This was the very first origin of civil, orrather, military government, amongst the ancient people of Europe; andit arose from the connection that necessarily was created between theperson who gave the arms, or knighted the young man, and him thatreceived them; which implied that they were to be occupied in hisservice who originally gave them. These principles it is necessarystrictly to attend to, because they will serve much to explain the wholecourse both of government and real property, wherever the Germannations obtained a settlement: the whole of their government dependingfor the most part upon two principles in our nature, --ambition, thatmakes one man desirous, at any hazard or expense, of taking the leadamongst others, --and admiration, which makes others equally desirous offollowing him, from the mere pleasure of admiration, and a sort ofsecondary ambition, one of the most universal passions among men. Thesetwo principles, strong, both of them, in our nature, create a voluntaryinequality and dependence. But amongst equals in condition there couldbe no such bond, and this was supplied by confederacy; and as the firstof these principles created the senior and the knight, the secondproduced the _conjurati fratres_, which, sometimes as a more extensive, sometimes as a stricter bond, are perpetually mentioned in the old lawsand histories. 

The relation between the lord and the vassal produced anothereffect, --that the leader was obliged to find sustenance for hisfollowers, and to maintain them at his table, or give them someequivalent in order to their maintenance. It is plain from theseprinciples, that this service on one hand, and this obligation tosupport on the other, could not have originally been hereditary, butmust have been entirely in the free choice of the parties. 

But it is impossible that such a polity could long have subsisted byelection alone. For, in the first place, that natural love which everyman has to his own kindred would make the chief willing to perpetuatethe power and dignity he acquired in his own blood, --and for thatpurpose, even during his own life, would raise his son, if grown up, orhis collaterals, to such a rank as they should find it only necessary tocontinue their possession upon his death. On the other hand, if afollower was cut off in war, or fell by natural course, leaving hisoffspring destitute, the lord could not so far forget the services ofhis vassal as not to continue his allowance to his children; and theseagain growing up, from reason and gratitude, could only take theirknighthood at his hands from whom they had received their education; andthus, as it could seldom happen but that the bond, either on the side ofthe lord or dependant, was perpetuated, some families must have beendistinguished by a long continuance of this relation, and have beentherefore looked upon in an honorable light, from that only circumstancefrom whence honor was derived in the Northern world. Thus nobility wasseen in Germany; and in the earliest Anglo-Saxon times some familieswere distinguished by the title of Ethelings, or of noble descent. Butthis nobility of birth was rather a qualification for the dignities ofthe state than an actual designation to them. The Saxon ranks arechiefly designed to ascertain the quantity of the composition forpersonal injuries against them. 

But though this hereditary relation was created very early, it must notbe mistaken for such a regular inheritance as we see at this day: it wasan inheritance only according to the principles from whence it wasderived; by them it was modified. It was originally a militaryconnection; and if a father loft his son under a military age, so asthat he could neither lead nor judge his people, nor qualify the youngmen who came up under him to take arms, --in order to continue thecliental bond, and not to break up an old and strong confederacy, andthereby disperse the tribe, who should be pitched upon to head thewhole, but the worthiest of blood of the deceased leader, he that rankednext to him in his life?[54] And this is Tanistry, which is a successionmade up of inheritance and election, a succession in which blood isinviolably regarded, so far as it was consistent with military purposes. It was thus that our kings succeeded to the throne throughout the wholetime of the Anglo-Saxon, empire. The first kings of the Franks succeededin the same manner, and without all doubt the succession of all theinferior chieftains was regulated by a similar law. Very frequentexamples occur in the Saxon times, where the son of the deceased king, if under age, was entirely passed over, and his uncle, or some remoterrelation, raised to the crown; but there is not a single instance wherethe election has carried it out of the blood. So that, in truth, thecontroversy, which has been managed with such heat, whether in the Saxontimes the crown was hereditary or elective, must be determined in somedegree favorably for the litigants on either side; for it was certainlyboth hereditary and elective within the bounds, which we have mentioned. This order prevailed in Ireland, where the Northern customs wereretained some hundreds of years after the rest of Europe had in a greatmeasure receded from them. Tanistry continued in force there until thebeginning of the last century. And we have greatly to regret the narrownotions of our lawyers, who abolished the authority of the Brehon law, and at the same time kept no monuments of it, --which if they had done, there is no doubt but many things of great value towards determiningmany questions relative to the laws, antiquities, and manners of thisand other countries had been preserved. But it is clear, though it hasnot been, I think, observed, that the ascending collateral branch wasmuch regarded amongst the ancient Germans, and even preferred to that ofthe immediate possessor, as being, in case of an accident arriving tothe chief, the presumptive heir, and him on whom the hope of the familywas fixed: and this is upon the principles of Tanistry. And the ruleseems to have taken such deep root as to have much influenced aconsiderable article of our feudal law: for, what is very singular, and, I take it, otherwise unaccountable, a collateral warranty bound, evenwithout any descending assets, where the lineal did not, unlesssomething descended; and this subsisted invariably in the law until thiscentury. 

Thus we have seen the foundation of the Northern government and theorders of their people, which consisted of dependence and confederacy:that the principal end of both was military; that protection andmaintenance were due on the part of the chief, obedience on that of thefollower; that the followers should be bound to each other as well as tothe chief; that this headship was not at first hereditary, but that itcontinued in the blood by an order of its own, called Tanistry. 

All these unconnected and independent parts were only linked together bya common council: and here religion interposed. Their priests, theDruids, having a connection throughout each state, united it. Theycalled the assembly of the people: and here their general resolutionswere taken; and the whole might rather be called a general confederacythan a government. In no other bonds, I conceive, were they unitedbefore they quitted Germany. In this ancient state we know them fromTacitus. Then follows an immense gap, in which undoubtedly some changeswere made by time; and we hear little more of them until we find themChristians, and makers of written laws. In this interval of time theorigin of kings may be traced out. When the Saxons left their owncountry in search of new habitations, it must be supposed that theyfollowed their leaders, whom they so much venerated at home; but as thewars which made way for their establishment continued for a long time, military obedience made them familiar with a stricter authority. Asubordination, too, became necessary among the leaders of each band ofadventurers: and being habituated to yield an obedience to a singleperson in the field, the lustre of his command and the utility of theinstitution easily prevailed upon them to suffer him to form the band oftheir union in time of peace, under the name of King. But the leaderneither knew the extent of the power he received, nor the people of thatwhich they bestowed. Equally unresolved were they about the method ofperpetuating it, --sometimes filling the vacant throne by election, without regard to, but more frequently regarding, the blood of thedeceased prince; but it was late before they fell into any regular planof succession, if ever the Anglo-Saxons attained it. Thus their politywas formed slowly; the prospect clears up by little and little; and thisspecies of an irregular republic we see turned into a monarchy asirregular. It is no wonder that the advocates for the several partiesamong us find something to favor their several notions in the Saxongovernment, which was never supported by any fixed or uniform principle. To comprehend the other parts of the government of our ancestors, wemust take notice of the orders into winch they were classed. As well aswe can judge in so obscure a matter, they were divided into nobles orgentlemen, freeholders, freemen that were not freeholders, and slaves. Of these last we have little to say, as they were nothing in the state. The nobles were called Thanes, or servants. It must be remembered thatthe German chiefs were raised to that honorable rank by thosequalifications which drew after them a numerous train of followers anddependants. [55] If it was honorable to be followed by a numerous train, so it was honorable in a secondary degree to be a follower of a man ofconsideration; and this honor was the greater in proportion to thequality of the chief, and to the nearness of the attendance on hisperson. When a monarchy was formed, the splendor of the crown naturallydrowned all the inferior honors; and the attendants on the person of theking were considered as the first in rank, and derived their dignityfrom their service. Yet as the Saxon government had still a largemixture of the popular, it was likewise requisite, in order to raise aman to the first rank of thanes, that he should have a suitableattendance and sway amongst the people. To support him in both of these, it was necessary that he should have a competent estate. Therefore inthis service of the king, this attendance on himself, and this estate tosupport both, the dignity of a thane consisted. I understand here athane of the first order. 

[Sidenote: Hallmote, or Court-Baron. ]

Every thane, in the distribution of his lands, had two objects in view:the support of his family, and the maintenance of his dignity. Hetherefore retained in his own hands a parcel of land near his house, which in the Saxon times was called inland, and afterwards his demesne, which served to keep up his hospitality: and this land was cultivatedeither by slaves, or by the poorer sort of people, who held lands of himby the performance of this service. The other portion of his estate heeither gave for life or lives to his followers, men of a liberalcondition, who served the greater thane, as he himself served the king. They were called Under Thanes, or, according to the language of thattime, Theoden. [56] They served their lord in all public business; theyfollowed him in war; and they sought justice in his court in all theirprivate differences. These may be considered as freeholders of thebetter sort, or indeed a sort of lesser gentry therefore, as they werenot the absolute dependants, but in some measure the peers of theirlord, when they sued in his court, they claimed the privilege of all theGerman freemen, the right of judging one another: the lord's steward wasonly the register. This domestic court, which continued in full vigorfor many ages, the Saxons called Hall mote, from the place in which itwas held; the Normans, who adopted it, named it a Court-Baron. Thiscourt had another department, in which the power of the lord was moreabsolute. From the most ancient times the German nobility consideredthemselves as the natural judges of those who were employed in thecultivation of their lands, looking on husbandmen with contempt, andonly as a parcel of the soil which they tilled: to these the Saxonscommonly allotted some part of their outlands to hold as tenants atwill, and to perform very low services for them. The differences ofthese inferior tenants were decided in the lord's court, in which hissteward sat as judge; and this manner of tenure probably gave an originto copyholders. [57] Their estates were at will, but their persons werefree: nor can we suppose that villains, if we consider villains assynonymous to slaves, could ever by any natural course have risen tocopyholders; because the servile condition of the villain's person wouldalways have prevented that stable tenure in the lands which thecopyholders came to in very early times. The merely servile part of thenation seems never to have been known by the name of Villains orCeorles, but by those of Bordars, Esnes, and Theowes. 

[Sidenote: Tithing Court. ]

As there were large tracts throughout the country not subject to thejurisdiction of any thane, the inhabitants of which were probably someremains of the ancient Britons not reduced to absolute slavery, and suchSaxons as had not attached themselves to the fortunes of any leadingman, it was proper to find some method of uniting and governing thesedetached parts of the nation, which had not been brought into order byany private dependence. To answer this end, the whole kingdom wasdivided into Shires, these into Hundreds, and the Hundreds intoTithings. [58] This division was not made, as it is generally imagined, by King Alfred, though he might have introduced better regulationsconcerning it; it prevailed on the continent, wherever the Northernnations had obtained a settlement; and it is a species of orderextremely obvious to all who use the decimal notation: when for thepurposes of government they divide a county, tens and hundreds are thefirst modes of division which occur. The Tithing, which was the smallestof these divisions, consisted of ten heads of families, free, and ofsome consideration. These held a court every fortnight, which theycalled the Folkmote, or Leet, and there became reciprocally bound toeach other and to the public for their own peaceable behavior and thatof their families and dependants. Every man in the kingdom, except thosewho belonged to the seigneurial courts we have mentioned, was obliged toenter himself into some tithing: to this he was inseparably attached;nor could he by any means quit it without license from the head of thetithing; because, if he was guilty of any misdemeanor, his district wasobliged to produce him or pay his fine. In this manner was the wholenation, as it were, held under sureties: a species of regulationundoubtedly very wise with regard to the preservation of peace andorder, but equally prejudicial to all improvement in the minds or thefortunes of the people, who, fixed invariably to the spot, weredepressed with all the ideas of their original littleness, and by allthat envy which is sure to arise in those who see their equalsattempting to mount over them. This rigid order deadened by degrees thespirit of the English, and narrowed their conceptions. Everything wasnew to them, and therefore everything was terrible; all activity, boldness, enterprise, and invention died away. There may be a danger instraining too strongly the bonds of government. As a life of absolutelicense tends to turn men into savages, the other extreme of constraintoperates much in the same manner: it reduces them to the same ignorance, but leaves them nothing of the savage spirit. These regulations helpedto keep the people of England the most backward in Europe; for thoughthe division into shires and hundreds and tithings was common to themwith the neighboring nations, yet the _frankpledge_ seems to be apeculiarity in the English Constitution; and for good reasons they havefallen into disuse, though still some traces of them are to be found inour laws. 

[Sidenote: Hundred Court. ]

Ten of these tithings made an Hundred. Here in ordinary course they helda monthly court for the centenary, when all the suitors of thesubordinate tithings attended. Here were determined causes concerningbreaches of the peace, small debts, and such matters as rather requireda speedy than a refined justice. 

[Sidenote: County Court. ]

[Sidenote: Ealdorman and Bishop. ]

There was in the Saxon Constitution a great simplicity. The higher orderof courts were but the transcript of the lower, somewhat more extendedin their objects and in their power; and their power over the inferiorcourts proceeded only from their being a collection of them all. TheCounty or Shire Court was the great resort for justice (for the fourgreat courts of record did not then exist). It served to unite all theinferior districts with one another, and those with the privatejurisdiction of the thanes. This court had no fixed place. The aldermanof the shire appointed it. Hither came to account for their own conduct, and that of those beneath them, the bailiffs of hundreds and tithingsand boroughs, with their people, --the thanes of either rank, with theirdependants, --a vast concourse of the clergy of all orders: in a word, ofall who sought or distributed justice. In this mixed assembly theobligations contracted in the inferior courts were renewed, a generaloath of allegiance to the king was taken, and all debates between theseveral inferior coördinate jurisdictions, as well as the causes of toomuch weight for them, finally determined. In this court presided (for instrict signification he does not seem to have been a judge) an officerof great consideration in those times, called the Ealdorman of theShire. With him sat the bishop, to decide in whatever related to theChurch, and to mitigate the rigor of the law by the interposition ofequity, according to the species of mild justice that suited theecclesiastical character. It appears by the ancient Saxon laws, that thebishop was the chief acting person in this court. The reverence in whichthe clergy were then held, the superior learning of the bishop, hissucceeding to the power and jurisdiction of the Druid, all contributedto raise him far above the ealdorman, and to render it in reality hiscourt. And this was probably the reason of the extreme lenity of theSaxon laws. The canons forbade the bishops to meddle in cases of blood. Amongst the ancient Gauls and Germans the Druid could alone condemn todeath; so that on the introduction of Christianity there was none whocould, in ordinary course, sentence a man to capital punishment:necessity alone forced it in a few cases. 

Concerning the right of appointing the Alderman of the Shire there issome uncertainty. That he was anciently elected by his county isindisputable; that an alderman of the shire was appointed by the crownseems equally clear from the writings of King Alfred. A conjecture ofSpelman throws some light upon this affair. He conceives that there weretwo aldermen with concurrent jurisdiction, one of whom was elected bythe people, the other appointed by the king. This is very probable, andvery correspondent to the nature of the Saxon Constitution, which was aspecies of democracy poised and held together by a degree of monarchicalpower. If the king had no officer to represent him in the county court, wherein all the ordinary business of the nation was then transacted, thestate would have hardly differed from a pure democracy. Besides, as theking had in every county large landed possessions, either in hisdemesne, or to reward and pay his officers, he would have been in a muchworse condition than any of his subjects, if he had been destitute of amagistrate to take care of his rights and to do justice to his numerousvassals. It appears, as well as we can judge in so obscure a matter, that the popular alderman was elected for a year only, and that theroyal alderman held his place at the king's pleasure. This latteroffice, however, in process of time, was granted for life; and it grewafterwards to be hereditary in many shires. 

[Sidenote: The Sheriff. ]

[Sidenote: Sheriff's Tourn. ]

We cannot pretend to say when the Sheriff came to be substituted in theplace of the Ealdorman: some authors think King Alfred the contriver ofthis regulation. It might have arisen from the nature of the thingitself. As several persons of consequence enough to obtain by theirinterest or power the place of alderman were not sufficiently qualifiedto perform the duty of the office, they contented themselves with thehonorary part, and left the judicial province to their substitute. [59]The business of the robe to a rude martial people was contemptible anddisgusting. The thanes, in their private jurisdictions, had delegatedtheir power of judging to their reeves, or stewards; and the earl, oralderman, who was in the shire what the thane was in his manor, for thesame reasons officiated by his deputy, the shire-reeve. This is theorigin of the Sheriff's Tourn, which decided in all affairs, civil andcriminal, of whatever importance, and from which there lay no appeal butto the Witenagemote. Now there scarce remains the shadow of a bodyformerly so great: the judge being reduced almost wholly to aministerial officer; and to the court there being left nothing morethan the cognizance of pleas under forty shillings, unless by aparticular writ or special commission. But by what steps such arevolution came on it will be our business hereafter to inquire. 

[Sidenote: Witenagemote. ]

The Witenagemote or Saxon Parliament, the supreme court, had authorityover all the rest, not upon any principle of subordination, but becauseit was formed of all the rest. In this assembly, which was heldannually, and sometimes twice a year, sat the earls and bishops andgreater thanes, with the other officers of the crown. [60] So far as wecan judge by the style of the Saxon laws, none but the thanes, ornobility, were considered as necessary constituent parts of thisassembly, at least whilst it acted deliberatively. It is true that greatnumbers of all ranks of people attended its session, and gave by theirattendance, and their approbation of what was done, a sanction to thelaws; but when they consented to anything, it was rather in the way ofacclamation than by the exercise of a deliberate voice, or a regularassent or negative. This may be explained by considering the analogy ofthe inferior assemblies. All persons, of whatever rank, attended at thecounty courts; but they did not go there as judges, they went to sue forjustice, --to be informed of their duty, and to be bound to theperformance of it. Thus all sorts of people attended at theWitenagemotes, not to make laws, but to attend at the promulgation ofthe laws;[61] as among so free a people every institution must havewanted much of its necessary authority, if not confirmed by the generalapprobation. Lambard is of opinion that in these early times the commonssat, as they do at this day, by representation from shires and boroughs;and he supports his opinion by very plausible reasons. A notion of thiskind, so contrary to the simplicity of the Saxon ideas of government, and to the genius of that people, who held the arts and commerce in somuch contempt, must be founded on such appearances as no otherexplanation can account for. 

To the reign of Henry the Second, the citizens and burgesses were littleremoved from absolute slaves. They might be taxed individually at whatsum the king thought fit to demand; or they might be discharged byoffering the king a sum, from which, if he accepted it, the citizenswere not at liberty to recede; and in either case the demand was exactedwith severity, and even cruelty. A great difference is made betweentaxing them and those who cultivate lands: because, says my author, their property is easily concealed; they live penuriously, are intent byall methods to increase their substance, and their immense wealth is noteasily exhausted. Such was their barbarous notion of trade and itsimportance. The same author, speaking of the severe taxation, andviolent method of extorting it, observes that it is a very propermethod, --and that it is very just that a degenerate officer, or otherfreeman, rejecting his condition for sordid gain, should be punishedbeyond the common law of freemen. 

I take it that those who held by ancient demesne did not prescribesimply not to contribute to the expenses of the knight of the shire; butthey prescribed, as they did in all cases, upon a general principle, topay no tax, nor to attend any duty of whatever species, because theywere the king's villains. The argument is drawn from the poverty of theboroughs, which ever since the Conquest have been of no consideration, and yet send members to Parliament; which they could not do, but by someprivileges inherent in them, on account of a practice of the same kindin the Saxon times, when they were of more repute. It is certain thatmany places now called boroughs were formerly towns or villages inancient demesne of the king, and had, as such, writs directed to them toappear in Parliament, that they might make a free gift or benevolence, as the boroughs did; and from thence arose the custom of summoning them. This appears by sufficient records. And it appears by records also, thatit was much at the discretion of the sheriff what boroughs he shouldreturn; a general writ was directed to him to return for all theboroughs in a shire; sometimes boroughs which had formerly sent membersto Parliament were quite passed over, and others, never considered assuch before, were returned. What is called the prescription on thisoccasion was rather a sort of rule to direct the sheriff in theexecution of his general power than a right inherent in any boroughs. But this was long after the time of which we speak. In whatever mannerwe consider it, we must own that this subject during the Saxon times isextremely dark. One thing, however, is, I think, clear from the wholetenor of their government, and even from the tenor of the NormanConstitution long after: that their Witenagemotes or Parliaments wereunformed, and that the rights by which the members held their seatswere far from being exactly ascertained. The _Judicia CivitatisLondoniæ_ afford a tolerable insight into the Saxon method of making andexecuting laws. First, the king called together his bishops, and suchother persons _as he thought proper_. This council, or Witenagemote, having made such laws as seemed convenient, they then swore to theobservance of them. The king sent a notification of these proceedings toeach Burgmote, where the people of that court also swore to theobservance of them, and confederated, by means of mutual strength andcommon charge, to prosecute delinquents against them. Nor did there atthat time seem to be any other method of enforcing new laws or old. Foras the very form of their government subsisted by a confederacycontinually renewed, so, when a law was made, it was necessary for itsexecution to have again recourse to confederacy, which was the great, and I should almost say the only, principle of the Anglo-Saxongovernment. 

What rights the king had in this assembly is a matter of equaluncertainty. [62] The laws generally run in his name, with the assent ofhis wise men, &c. But considering the low estimation of royalty in thosedays, this may rather be considered as the voice of the executivemagistrate, of the person who compiled the law and propounded it to theWitenagemote for their consent, than of a legislator dictating from hisown proper authority. For then, it seems, the law was digested by theking or his council for the assent of the general assembly. That orderis now reversed. All these things are, I think, sufficient to show ofwhat a visionary nature those systems are which would settle the ancientConstitution in the most remote times exactly in the same form in whichwe enjoy it at this day, --not considering that such mighty changes inmanners, during so many ages, always must produce a considerable changein laws, and in the forms as well as the powers of all governments. 

We shall next consider the nature of the laws passed in theseassemblies, and the judicious manner of proceeding in these severalcourts which we have described. 

[Sidenote: Saxon laws. ]

The Anglo-Saxons trusted more to the strictness of their police, and tothe simple manners of their people, for the preservation of peace andorder, than to accuracy or exquisite digestion of their laws, or to theseverity of the punishments which they inflicted. [63] The laws whichremain to us of that people seem almost to regard two points only: thesuppressing of riots and affrays, --and the regulation of the severalranks of men, in order to adjust the fines for delinquencies accordingto the dignity of the person offended, or to the quantity of theoffence. In all other respects their laws seem very imperfect. Theyoften speak in the style of counsel as well as that of command. In thecollection of laws attributed to Alfred we have the Decaloguetranscribed, with no small part of the Levitical law; in the same codeare inserted many of the Saxon institutions, though these two laws werein all respects as opposite as could possibly be imagined. Theseindisputable monuments of our ancient rudeness are a very sufficientconfutation of the panegyrical declamations in which some persons wouldpersuade us that the crude institutions of an unlettered people hadattained an height which the united efforts of necessity, learning, inquiry, and experience can hardly reach to in many ages. We must add, that, although as one people under one head there was some resemblancein the laws and customs of our Saxon ancestors throughput the kingdom, yet there was a considerable difference, in many material points, between the customs of the several shires: nay, that in different manorssubsisted a variety of laws not reconcilable with each other, some ofwhich custom, that caused them, has abrogated; others have beenoverruled by laws or public judgment to the contrary; not a few subsistto this time. 

[Sidenote: Purgation by oath. ]

[Sidenote: By ordeal. ]

The Saxon laws, imperfect and various as they were, served in sometolerable degree a people who had by their Constitution an eye on eachother's concerns, and decided almost all matters of any doubt amongstthem by methods which, however inadequate, were extremely simple. Theyjudged every controversy either by the conscience of the parties, or bythe country's opinion of it, or what they judged an appeal toProvidence. They were unwilling to submit to the trouble of weighingcontradictory testimonies; and they were destitute of those criticalrules by which evidence is sifted, the true distinguished from thefalse, the certain from the uncertain. Originally, therefore, thedefendant in the suit was put to his oath, and if on oath he denied thedebt or the crime with which he was charged, he was of course acquitted. But when the first fervors of religion began to decay, and fraud and thetemptations to fraud to increase, they trusted no longer to theconscience of the party. They cited him to an higher tribunal, --theimmediate judgment of God. Their trials were so many conjurations, andthe magical ceremonies of barbarity and heathenism entered into law andreligion. This supernatural method of process they called God's Dome; itis generally known by the name of _Ordeal_, which in the Saxon languagesignifies the Great Trial. This trial was made either by fire or water:that by fire was principally reserved for persons of rank; that by waterdecided the fate of the vulgar; sometimes it was at the choice of theparty. A piece of iron, kept with a religious veneration in somemonastery, which claimed this privilege as an honor, was brought forthinto the church upon the day of trial; and it was there againconsecrated to this awful purpose by a form of service still extant. Asolemn mass was performed; and then the party accused appeared, surrounded by the clergy, by his judges, and a vast concourse of people, suspended and anxious for the event; all that assisted purifiedthemselves by a fast of three days; and the accused, who had undergonethe same fast, and received the sacrament, took the consecrated iron, ofabout a pound weight, heated red, in his naked hand, and in that mannercarried it nine feet. This done, the hand was wrapped up and sealed inthe presence of the whole assembly. Three nights being passed, theseals were opened before all the people: if the hand was found withoutany sore inflicted by the fire, the party was cleared with universalacclamation; if on the contrary a raw sore appeared, the party, condemned by the judgment of Heaven, had no further plea or appeal. Sometimes the accused walked over nine hot irons: sometimes boilingwater was used; into this the man dipped his hand to the arm. Thejudgment by water was accompanied by the solemnity of the sameceremonies. The culprit was thrown into a pool of water, in which if hedid not sink, he was adjudged guilty, as though the element (they said)to which they had committed the trial of his innocency had rejected him. 

Both these species of ordeal, though they equally appealed to God, yetwent on different principles. In the fire ordeal a miracle must bewrought to acquit the party; in the water a miracle was necessary toconvict him. Is there any reason for this extraordinary distinction? ormust we resolve it solely into the irregular caprices of the human mind?The greatest genius which has enlightened this age seems in this affairto have been carried by the sharpness of his wit into a subtilty hardlyto be justified by the way of thinking of that unpolished period. Speaking of the reasons for introducing this method of trial, "_Qui nevoit_, " says he, "_que, chez un peuple exercé à manier des armes, lapeau rude et calleuse ne devoit pas recevoir assez l'impression du ferchaud, . . . Pour qu'il y parût trois jours après? Et s'il y paroissoit, c'étoit une marque que celui qui faisoit l'épreuve étoit un efféminé_. "And this mark of effeminacy, he observes, in those warlike times, supposed that the man has resisted the principles of his education, thathe is insensible to honor, and regardless of the opinion of hiscountry. But supposing the effect of hot iron to be so slight even onthe most callous hands, of which, however, there is reason to doubt, yetwe can hardly admit this reasoning, when we consider that women weresubjected to this fire ordeal, and that no other women than those ofcondition could be subjected to it. Montesquieu answers the objection, which he foresaw would be made, by remarking, that women might haveavoided this proof, if they could find a champion to combat in theirfavor; and he thinks a just presumption might be formed against a womanof rank who was so destitute of friends as to find no protector. It mustbe owned that the barbarous people all over Europe were much guided bypresumptions in all their judicial proceedings; but how shall wereconcile all this with the custom of the Anglo-Saxons, among whom theordeal was in constant use, and even for women, without the alternativeof the combat, to which it appears this people were entire strangers?What presumption can arise from the event of the water ordeal, in whichno callosity of hands, no bravery, no skill in arms, could be in anydegree serviceable? The causes of both may with more success be soughtamongst the superstitious ideas of the ancient Northern world. Amongstthe Germans the administration of the law was in the hands of thepriests or Druids. [64] And as the Druid worship paid the highest respectto the elements of fire and water, it was very natural that they whoabounded with so many conjurations for the discovery of doubtful factsor future events should make use of these elements in their divination. It may appear the greater wonder, how the people came to continue solong, and with, such obstinacy, after the introduction of Christianity, and in spite of the frequent injunctions of the Pope, whose authoritywas then much venerated, in the use of a species of proof theinsufficiency of which a thousand examples might have detected. But thisis perhaps not so unaccountable. Persons were not put to this trial, unless there was pretty strong evidence against them, somethingsufficient to form what is equivalent to a _corpus delicti_; they musthave been actually found guilty by the _duodecemvirale judicium_, beforethey could be subjected in any sort to the ordeal. It was in effectshowing the accused an indulgence to give him this chance, even such achance as it was, of an acquittal; and it was certainly much milder thanthe torture, which is used, with full as little certainty of producingits end, among the most civilized nations. And the ordeal withoutquestion frequently operated by the mere terror. Many persons, from adread of the event, chose to discover rather than to endure the trial. Of those that did endure it, many must certainly have been guilty. Theinnocency of some who suffered could never be known with certainty. Others by accident might have escaped; and this apparently miraculousescape had great weight in confirming the authority of this trial. Howlong did we continue in punishing innocent people for witchcraft, thoughexperience might, to thinking persons, have frequently discovered theinjustice of that proceeding! whilst to the generality a thousandequivocal appearances, confessions from fear or weakness, in fine, thetorrent of popular prejudice rolled down through so many ages, conspiredto support the delusion. 

[Sidenote: Compurgation. ]

To avoid as much as possible this severe mode of trial, and at the sametime to leave no inlet for perjury, another method of clearing wasdevised. The party accused of any crime, or charged in a civilcomplaint, appeared in court with some of his neighbors, who were calledhis Compurgators; and when on oath he denied the charge, they swore thatthey believed his oath to be true. [65] These compurgators were at firstto be three; afterwards five were required; in process of time twelvebecame necessary. [66] As a man might be charged by the opinion of thecountry, so he might also be discharged by it: twelve men were necessaryto find him guilty, twelve might have acquitted him. If opinion supportsall government, it not only supported in the general sense, but itdirected every minute part in the Saxon polity. A man who did not seemto have the good opinion of those among whom he lived was judged to beguilty, or at least capable of being guilty, of every crime. It was uponthis principle that a man who could not find the security of sometithing or friborg for his behavior, [67] he that was upon account ofthis universal desertion called Friendless Man, was by our ancestorscondemned to death, --a punishment which the lenity of the English lawsin that time scarcely inflicted for any crime, however clearly proved: acircumstance which strongly marks the genius of the Saxon government. 

[Sidenote: Trial by the Country. ]

On the same principle from which the trial by the oath of compurgatorswas derived, was derived also the Trial by the Country, which was themethod of taking the sense of the neighborhood on any dubious fact. Ifthe matter was of great importance, it was put in the full Shiremote;and if the general voice acquitted or condemned, decided for one partyor the other, this was final in the cause. But then it was necessarythat all should agree: for it does not appear that our ancestors, inthose days, conceived how any assembly could be supposed to give anassent to a point concerning which several who composed that assemblythought differently. They had no idea that a body composed of severalcould act by the opinion of a small majority. But experience havingshown that this method of trial was tumultuary and uncertain, theycorrected it by the idea of compurgation. The party concerned was nolonger put to his oath, --he simply pleaded; the compurgators swore asbefore in ancient times; therefore the jury were strictly from theneighborhood, and were supposed to have a personal knowledge of the manand the fact. They were rather a sort of evidence than judges: and fromhence is derived that singularity in our laws, that most of ourjudgments are given upon verdict, and not upon evidence, contrary to thelaws of most other countries. Neither are our juries bound, except byone particular statute, and in particular cases, to observe any positivetestimony, but are at liberty to judge upon presumptions. These are thefirst rude chalkings-out of our jurisprudence. The Saxons were extremelyimperfect in their ideas of law, --the civil institutions of the Romans, who were the legislators of mankind, having never reached them. Theorder of our courts, the discipline of our jury, by which it is becomeso elaborate a contrivance, and the introduction of a sort of scientificreason in the law, have been the work of ages. 

As the Saxon laws did not suffer any transaction, whether of the sale ofland or goods, to pass but in the shire and before witnesses, so allcontroversies of them were concluded by what they called the _scyrewitness_. [68] This was tried by the oaths of the parties, by _vivâ voce_testimony, and the producing of charters and records. Then the people, laity and clergy, whether by plurality of votes or by what other meansis not very certain, affirmed the testimony in favor of one of theclaimants. Then the proceeding was signed, first by those who held thecourt, and then by the persons who affirmed the judgment, who also sworeto it in the same manner. [69]

[Sidenote: Punishments. ]

The Saxons were extremely moderate in their punishments. Murder andtreason were compounded, and a fine set for every offence. Forfeiturefor felony was incurred only by those that fled. The punishment withdeath was very rare, --with torture unknown. In all ancient nations, thepunishment of crimes was in the family injured by them, particularly incase of murder. [70] This brought deadly feuds amongst the people, which, in the German nations particularly, subsisted through severalgenerations. But as a fruitless revenge could answer little purpose tothe parties injured and was ruinous to the public peace, by theinterposal of good offices they were prevailed upon to accept somecomposition in lieu of the blood of the aggressor, and peace wasrestored. The Saxon government did little more than act the part ofarbitrator between the contending parties, exacted the payment of thiscomposition, and reduced it to a certainty. However, the king, as thesovereign of all, and the sheriff, as the judicial officer, had theirshare in those fines. This unwillingness to shed blood, which the Saxoncustoms gave rise to, the Christian religion confirmed. Yet was it notaltogether so imperfect as to have no punishment adequate to those greatdelinquencies which tend entirely to overturn a state, public robbery, murder of the lord. [71]

[Sidenote: Origin of succession. ]

[Sidenote: Annual property. ]

As amongst the Anglo-Saxons government depended in some measure uponland-property, it will not be amiss to say something upon their mannerof holding and inheriting their lands. It must not be forgot that theGermans were of Scythian original, and had preserved that way of lifeand those peculiar manners which distinguished the parent nation. As theScythians lived principally by pasturage and hunting, from the nature ofthat way of employment they were continually changing their habitations. But even in this case some small degree of agriculture was carried on, and therefore some sort of division of property became necessary. Thisdivision was made among each tribe by its proper chief. But their shareswere allotted to the several individuals only for a year, lest theyshould come to attach themselves to any certain habitation: a settlementbeing wholly contrary to the genius of the Scythian, manners. 

 Campestres melius Scythæ, Quorum plaustra vagas rite trahunt domos, Vivunt, et rigidi Getæ, Immetata quibus jugera liberas Fruges et Cererem ferunt, Nec cultura placet longior annuâ. 

[Sidenote: Estates for life. ]

[Sidenote: Inheritance. ]

[Sidenote: Book-land. ]

[Sidenote: Folk-land. ]

[Sidenote: Saxon fiefs. ]

This custom of an annual property probably continued amongst the Germansas long as they remained in their own country; but when their conquestscarried them into other parts, another object besides the possession ofthe land arose, which obliged them to make a change in this particular. In the distribution of the conquered lands, the ancient possessors ofthem became an object of consideration, and the management of thesebecame one of the principal branches of their polity. It was expedienttowards holding them in perfect subjection, that they should behabituated to obey one person, and that a kind of cliental relationshould be created between them; therefore the land, with the slaves, andthe people in a state next to slavery, annexed to it, was bestowed forlife in the general distribution. When life-estates were once granted, it seemed a natural consequence that inheritances should immediatelysupervene. When a durable connection is created between a certain manand a certain portion of land by a possession for his whole life, andwhen his children have grown up and have been supported on that land, itseems so great an hardship to separate them, and to deprive thereby thefamily of all means of subsisting, that nothing could be more generallydesired nor more reasonably allowed than an inheritance; and thisreasonableness was strongly enforced by the great change wrought intheir affairs when life-estates were granted. Whilst according to theancient custom lands were only given for a year, there was a rotation soquick that every family came in its turn to be easily provided for, andhad not long to wait; but the children of a tenant for life, when theylost the benefit of their father's possession, saw themselves as itwere immured upon every side by the life-estates, and perceived noreasonable hope of a provision from any new arrangement. Theseinheritances began very early in England. By a law of King Alfred itappears that they were then of a very ancient establishment: and as suchinheritances were intended for great stability, they fortified them bycharters; and therefore they were called Book-land. This was done withregard to the possession of the better sort: the meaner, who were called_ceorles_, if they did not live in a dependence on some thane, heldtheir small portions of land as an inheritance likewise, --not bycharter, but by a sort of prescription. This was called Folk-land. Theseestates of inheritance, both the greater and the meaner, were not fiefs;they were to all purposes allodial, and had hardly a single property ofa feud; they descended equally to all the children, males and females, according to the custom of gavelkind, a custom absolutely contrary tothe genius of the feudal tenure; and whenever estates were granted inthe later Saxon times by the bounty of the crown with an intent thatthey should be inheritable, so far were they from being granted with thecomplicated load of all the feudal services annexed, that in all thecharters of that kind which subsist they are bestowed with a full powerof alienation, _et liberi ab omni seculari gravamine_. This was thegeneral condition of those inheritances which were derived from theright of original conquest, as well to all the soldiers as to theleader; and these estates, as it is said, were not even forfeitable, no, not for felony, as if that were in some sort the necessary consequenceof an inheritable estate. So far were they from resembling a fief. Butthere were other possessions which bore a nearer resemblance to fiefs, at least in their first feeble and infantile state of the tenure, than, those inheritances which were held by an absolute right in theproprietor. The great officers who attended the court, commanded armies, or distributed justice must necessarily be paid and supported; but inwhat manner could they be paid? In money they could not, because therewas very little money then in Europe, and scarce any part of that littlecame into the prince's coffers. The only method of paying them was byallotting lands for their subsistence whilst they remained in hisservice. For this reason, in the original distribution, vast tracts ofland were left in the hands of the king. If any served the king in amilitary command, his land may be said to have been in some sort held byknight-service. If the tenant was in an office about the king's person, this gave rise to sergeantry; the persons who cultivated his lands maybe considered as holding by socage. But the long train of services thatmade afterwards the learning of the tenures were then not thought of, because these feuds, if we may so call them, had not then come to beinheritances, --which circumstance of inheritance gave rise to the wholefeudal system. With the Anglo-Saxons the feuds continued to the last buta sort of pay or salary of office. The _trinoda necessitas_, so muchspoken of, which was to attend the king in his expeditions, and tocontribute to the building of bridges and repair of highways, neverbound the lands by way of tenure, but as a political regulation, whichequally affected every class and condition of men and every species ofpossession. 

[Sidenote: Gavelkind. ]

The manner of succeeding to lands in England at this period was, as wehave observed, by Gavelkind, --an equal distribution amongst thechildren, males and females. The ancient Northern nations had but animperfect notion of political power. That the possessor of the landshould be the governor of it was a simple idea; and their schemesextended but little further. It was not so in the Greek and Italiancommonwealths. In those the property of the land was in all respectssimilar to that of goods, and had nothing of jurisdiction annexed to it;the government there was a merely political institution. Amongst such apeople the custom of distribution could be of no ill consequence, because it only affected property. But gavelkind amongst the Saxons wasvery prejudicial; for, as government was annexed to a certain possessionin land, this possession, which was continually changing, kept thegovernment in a very fluctuating state: so that their civil polity hadin it an essential evil, which contributed to the sickly condition inwhich the Anglo-Saxon state always remained, as well as to its finaldissolution. 

FOOTNOTES:

[49] They had no other nobility; yet several families amongst them wereconsidered as noble. 

[50] Arma sumere non ante cuiquam moris, quàm civitas suffecturumprobaverit. --Tacitus de Mor. Germ. 13. 

[51] Nihil autem neque publicæ neque privatæ rei nisi armatiagunt. --Tacitus de Mor. Germ. 13. 

[52] Cæteri robustioribus ac jam pridem probatis aggregantur. --Id. Ibid. 

[53] Illum defendere, tueri, sua quoque fortia facta gloriæ ejus assignare, præcipuum sacramentum est. --Id. 14. 

[54] Deputed authority, guardianship, &c, not known to the Northernnations; they gained this idea by intercourse with the Romans. 

[55] Jud. Civ. Lund. Apud Wilk. Post p. 68. 

[56] Spelman of Feuds, ch. 5. 

[57] Fuerunt etiam in conquestu liberi homines, qui libere tenuerunttenementa sua per libera servitia vel per liberas consuetudines. --Forthe original of copyholds, see Bracton, Lib. I. Fol. 7. 

[58] Ibi debent populi omnes et gentes universæ singulis annis, semel inanno scilicet, convenire, scilicet in capite Kal. Maii, et se fide etsacramento non fracto ibi in unam et simul confœderare, etconsolidare sicut conjurati fratres ad defendendum regnum contraalienigenas et contra inimicos, unâ cum domino suo rege, et terras ethonores illius omni fidelitate cum eo servare, et quod illi ut dominosuo regi intra et extra regnum universum Britanniæ fideles essevolunt--LL. Ed. Conf. C. 35. --Of Heretoches and their election, vide Id. Eodem. 

Probibitum erat etiam in eadem lege, ne quis emeret vivum animal velpannum usatum sine plegiis et bonis testibus. --Of other particulars ofbuying and selling, vide Leges Ed. Conf. 38. 

[59] Sheriff in the Norman times was merely the king's officer, not theearl's. The earl retained his ancient fee, without jurisdiction; thesheriff did all the business. The elective sheriff must have disappearedon the Conquest; for then all land was the king's, either immediately ormediately, and therefore his officer governed. 

[60] How this assembly was composed, or by what right the members sat init, I cannot by any means satisfy myself. What is here said is, Ibelieve, nearest to the truth. 

[61] Hence, perhaps, all men are supposed cognizant of the law. 

[62] Debet etiam rex omnia rite facere in regno, et per judiciumprocerum regni. --Debet . . . Justitiam per consilium procerum regni suitenere. --Leges Ed. 17. 

[63] The non-observance of a regulation of police was always heavilypunished by barbarous nations; a slighter punishment was inflicted uponthe commission of crimes. Among the Saxons moat crimes were punished byfine; wandering from the highway without sounding an horn was death. Soamong the Druids, --to enforce exactness in time at their meetings, hethat came last after the time appointed was punished with death. 

[64] The Druids judged not as magistrates, but as interpreters of thewill of Heaven. "Ceterum neque animadvertere, neque vincire, nequeverberare quidem, nisi sacerdotibus permissum; non quasi in pœnam, nec ducis jussu, sed velut Deo imperante, " says Tacitus, de Mor. German. 7. 

[65] Si quis emendationem oppidorum vel pontium vel profectionemmilitarem detrectaverit, compenset regi cxx solidis, . . . Vel purget se, et nominentur ei xiv, et eligantur xi. --Leges Cnuti, 62. 

[66] Si accusatio sit, et purgatio male succedat, judicetEpiscopus. --Leges Cnuti, 53. 

[67] Every man not privileged, whether he be paterfamilias, (heorthfest, [A]) or pedissequa, (folghere, [B]) must enter into thehundred and tithing, and all above twelve to swear he will not be athief or consenting to a thief. --Leges Cnuti, 19. 

[A] Heorthfeste, --the same with Husfastene, i. E. The master of a family, from the Saxon, Hearthfæst, i. E. Fixed to the house or hearth. 

[B] The Folgheres, or Folgeres, were the menial servants or followers ofthe Husfastene, or Housekeepers. --Bracton, Lib. III. , Tract. 2, cap. 10. Leges Hen. I. Cap. 8. 

[68] Si quis terram defenderit testimonio provinciæ, &c. --Leges Cnuti, 76: And sethe land gewerod hebbe be scyre gewitnesse. 

[69] See, in Madox, the case in Bishop of Bathes Court See also Brady, 272, where the witnesses on one side offer to swear, or join battle withthe other. 

[70] Parentibus occisi fiat emendatio, vel guerra eorum portetur; undeAnglicè proverbium habetur, Bige spere of side, oththe bær; id est, Emelanceam a latere, aut fer. --Leges Ed. 12. 

The fines on the town or hundred. 

Parentes murdrati sex marcas haberent, rex quadraginta. [This differentfrom the ancient usage, where the king had half. ] Si parentes deessent, dominus ejus reciperet. Si dominum non haberet, felagus ejus, id est, fide cum eo ligatus. --Leges Ed. 15. 

[71] Purveyance. Vide Leges Cnuti, 67. 

Si quis intestatus ex hac vita decedat, sive sit per negligentiam ejus, sive per mortem subitaneam, tunc non assumat sibi dominus pluspossessionis (æhta) ipsius quam justum armamentum; sed post mortempossessio (æhtgescyft) ejus quam justissime distribuatur uxori etliberis, et propinquis cognatis, cuilibet pro dignitate quæ ad cumpertinet. --Leges Cnuti, 68. 

BOOK III. 

CHAPTER I. 

VIEW OF THE STATE OF EUROPE AT THE TIME OF THE NORMAN INVASION. 

Before the period of which we are going to treat, England was littleknown or considered in Europe. Their situation, their domesticcalamities, and their ignorance circumscribed the views and politics ofthe English within the bounds of their own island. But the Normanconqueror threw down all these barriers. The English laws, manners, andmaxims were suddenly changed; the scene was enlarged; and thecommunication with the rest of Europe, being thus opened, has beenpreserved ever since in a continued series of wars and negotiations. That we may, therefore, enter more fully into the matters which liebefore us, it is necessary that we understand the state of theneighboring continent at the time when this island first came to beinterested in its affairs. 

The Northern nations who had overran the Roman Empire were at firstrather actuated by avarice than ambition, and were more intent uponplunder than conquest; they were carried beyond their original purposes, when they began, to form regular governments, for which they had beenprepared by no just ideas of legislation. For a long time, therefore, there was little of order in their affairs or foresight in theirdesigns. The Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks, the Vandals, the Suevi, after they had prevailed over the Roman Empire, by turns prevailed overeach other in continual wars, which were carried on upon no principlesof a determinate policy, entered into upon motives of brutality andcaprice, and ended as fortune and rude violence chanced to prevail. Tumult, anarchy, confusion, overspread the face of Europe; and anobscurity rests upon the transactions of that time which suffers us todiscover nothing but its extreme barbarity. 

Before this cloud could be dispersed, the Saracens, another body ofbarbarians from the South, animated by a fury not unlike that which gavestrength to the Northern irruptions, but heightened by enthusiasm, andregulated by subordination and an uniform policy, began to carry theirarms, their manners, and religion, into every part of the universe. Spain was entirely overwhelmed by the torrent of their armies, Italy andthe islands were harassed by their fleets, and all Europe alarmed bytheir vigorous and frequent enterprises. Italy, who had so long sat themistress of the world, was by turns the slave of all nations. Thepossession of that fine country was hotly disputed between the GreekEmperor and the Lombards, and it suffered infinitely by that contention. Germany, the parent of so many nations, was exhausted by the swarms shehad sent abroad. 

However, in the midst of this chaos there were principles at work whichreduced things to a certain form, and gradually unfolded a system inwhich the chief movers and main springs were the Papal and the Imperialpowers, --the aggrandizement or diminution of which have been the driftof almost all the politics, intrigues, and wars which have employed anddistracted Europe to this day. 

From Rome the whole Western world had received its Christianity; she wasthe asylum of what learning had escaped the general desolation; and evenin her ruins she preserved something of the majesty of her ancientgreatness. On these accounts she had a respect and a weight whichincreased every day amongst a simple religious people, who looked but alittle way into the consequences of their actions. The rudeness of theworld was very favorable for the establishment of an empire of opinion. The moderation with which the Popes at first exerted this empire madeits growth unfelt until it could no longer be opposed; and the policy oflater Popes, building on the piety of the first, continually increasedit: and they made use of every instrument but that of force. Theyemployed equally the virtues and the crimes of the great; they favoredthe lust of kings for absolute authority, and the desire of subjects forliberty; they provoked war, and mediated peace; and took advantage ofevery turn in the minds of men, whether of a public or private nature, to extend their influence, and push their power from ecclesiastical tocivil, from subjection to independency, from independency to empire. 

France had many advantages over the other parts of Europe. The Saracenshad no permanent success in that country. The same hand which expelledthose invaders deposed the last of a race of heavy and degenerateprinces, more like Eastern monarchs than German leaders, and who hadneither the force to repel the enemies of their kingdom nor to asserttheir own sovereignly. This usurpation placed on the throne princes ofanother character, princes who were obliged to supply their want oftitle by the vigor of their administration. The French monarch had needof some great and respected authority to throw a veil over hisusurpation, and to sanctify his newly acquired power by those names andappearances which are necessary to make it respectable to the people. Onthe other hand, the Pope, who hated the Grecian Empire, and equallyfeared the success of the Lombards, saw with joy this new star arise inthe North, and gave it the sanction of his authority. Presently after becalled it to his assistance. Pepin passed the Alps, relieved the Pope, and invested him with the dominion of a large country in the best partof Italy. 

Charlemagne pursued the course which was marked out for him, and put anend to the Lombard kingdom, weakened by the policy of his father and theenmity of the Popes, who never willingly saw a strong power in Italy. Then he received from the hand of the Pope the Imperial crown, sanctified by the authority of the Holy See, and with it the title ofEmperor of the Romans, a name venerable from the fame of the old Empire, and which was supposed to carry great and unknown prerogatives; and thusthe Empire rose again out of its ruins in the West, and, what isremarkable, by means of one of those nations which had helped to destroyit. If we take in the conquests of Charlemagne, it was also very near asextensive as formerly; though its constitution was altogether different, as being entirely on the Northern model of government. From Charlemagnethe Pope received in return an enlargement and a confirmation of his newterritory. Thus the Papal and Imperial powers mutually gave birth, toeach other. They continued for some ages, and in some measure stillcontinue, closely connected, with a variety of pretensions upon eachother, and on the rest of Europe. 

Though, the Imperial power had its origin in France, it was soon dividedinto two branches, the Gallic and the German. The latter alone supportedthe title of Empire; but the power being weakened by this division, thePapal pretensions had the greater weight. The Pope, because he firstrevived the Imperial dignity, claimed a right of disposing of it, or atleast of giving validity to the election of the Emperor. The Emperor, onthe other hand, remembering the rights of those sovereigns whose titlehe bore, and how lately the power which insulted him with such demandshad arisen from the bounty of his predecessors, claimed the sameprivileges in the election of a Pope. The claims of both were somewhatplausible; and they were supported, the one by force of arms, and theother by ecclesiastical influence, powers which in those days were verynearly balanced. Italy was the theatre upon which this prize wasdisputed. In every city the parties in favor of each of the opponentswere not far from an equality in their numbers and strength. Whilstthese parties disagreed in the choice of a master, by contending for achoice in their subjection they grew imperceptibly into freedom, andpassed through the medium of faction and anarchy into regularcommonwealths. Thus arose the republics of Venice, of Genoa, ofFlorence, Sienna, and Pisa, and several others. These cities, established in this freedom, turned the frugal and ingenious spiritcontracted in such communities to navigation and traffic; and pursuingthem with skill and vigor, whilst commerce was neglected and despised bythe rustic gentry of the martial governments, they grew to aconsiderable degree of wealth, power, and civility. 

The Danes, who in this latter time preserved the spirit and the numbersof the ancient Gothic people, had seated themselves in England, in theLow Countries, and in Normandy. They passed from thence to the southernpart of Europe, and in this romantic age gave rise in Sicily and Naplesto a new kingdom and a new line of princes. 

All the kingdoms on the continent of Europe were governed nearly in thesame form; from whence arose a great similitude in the manners of theirinhabitants. The feodal discipline extended itself everywhere, andinfluenced the conduct of the courts and the manners of the people withits own irregular martial spirit. Subjects, under the complicated lawsof a various and rigorous servitude, exercised all the prerogatives ofsovereign power. They distributed justice, they made war and peace atpleasure. The sovereign, with great pretensions, had but little power;he was only a greater lord among great lords, who profited of thedifferences of his peers; therefore no steady plan could be wellpursued, either in war or peace. This day a prince seemed irresistibleat the head of his numerous vassals, because their duty obliged them towar, and they performed this duty with pleasure. The next day saw thisformidable power vanish like a dream, because this fierce undisciplinedpeople had no patience, and the time of the feudal service was containedwithin very narrow limits. It was therefore easy to find a number ofpersons at all times ready to follow any standard, but it was hard tocomplete a considerable design which required a regular and continuedmovement. This enterprising disposition in the gentry was very general, because they had little occupation or pleasure but in war, and thegreatest rewards did then attend personal valor and prowess. All thatprofessed arms became in some sort on an equality. A knight was the peerof a king, and men had been used to see the bravery of private personsopening a road to that dignity. The temerity of adventurers was muchjustified by the ill order of every state, which left it a prey toalmost any who should attack it with sufficient vigor. Thus, littlechecked by any superior power, full of fire, impetuosity, and ignorance, they longed to signalize themselves, wherever an honorable danger calledthem; and wherever that invited, they did not weigh very deliberatelythe probability of success. 

The knowledge of this general disposition in the minds of men willnaturally remove a great deal of our wonder at seeing an attempt foundedon such slender appearances of right, and supported by a power so littleproportioned to the undertaking as that of William, so warmly embracedand so generally followed, not only by his own subjects, but by all theneighboring potentates. The Counts of Anjou, Bretagne, Ponthieu, Boulogne, and Poictou, sovereign princes, --adventurers from everyquarter of France, the Netherlands, and the remotest parts of Germany, laying aside their jealousies and enmities to one another, as well as toWilliam, ran with an inconceivable ardor into this enterprise, captivated with the splendor of the object, which obliterated allthoughts of the uncertainty of the event. William kept up this fervorby promises of large territories to all his allies and associates in thecountry to be reduced by their united efforts. But after all it becameequally necessary to reconcile to his enterprise the three great powersof whom we have just spoken, whose disposition must have had the mostinfluence on his affairs. 

His feudal lord, the King of France, was bound by his most obviousinterests to oppose the further aggrandizement of one already too potentfor a vassal. But the King of France was then a minor; and Baldwin, Earlof Flanders, whose daughter William had married, was regent of thekingdom. This circumstance rendered the remonstrance of the FrenchCouncil against his design of no effect: indeed, the opposition of theCouncil itself was faint; the idea of having a king under vassalage totheir crown might have dazzled the more superficial courtiers; whilstthose who thought more deeply were unwilling to discourage an enterprisewhich they believed would probably end in the ruin of the undertaker. The Emperor was in his minority, as well as the King of France; but bywhat arts the Duke prevailed upon the Imperial Council to declare in hisfavor, whether or no by an idea of creating a balance to the power ofFrance, if we can imagine that any such idea then subsisted, isaltogether uncertain; but it is certain that he obtained leave for thevassals of the Empire to engage in his service, and that he made use ofthis permission. The Popes consent was obtained with still lessdifficulty. William had shown himself in many instances a friend to theChurch and a favorer of the clergy. On this occasion he promised toimprove those happy beginnings in proportion to the means he shouldacquire by the favor of the Holy See. It is said that he even proposedto hold his new kingdom as a fief from Rome. The Pope, therefore, entered heartily into his interests; he excommunicated all those thatshould oppose his enterprise, and sent him, as a means of insuringsuccess, a consecrated banner. 

CHAPTER II. 

REIGN OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1065. ]

After the Battle of Hastings, the taking of Dover, the surrender ofLondon, and the submission of the principal nobility, William hadnothing left but to order in the best manner the kingdom he had sohappily acquired. Soon after his coronation, fearing the sudden andungoverned motions of so great a city, new to subjection, he left Londonuntil a strong citadel could be raised to overawe the people. This wasbuilt where the Tower of London now stands. Not content with this, hebuilt three other strong castles in situations as advantageously chosen, at Norwich, at Winchester, and at Hereford, securing not only the heartof affairs, but binding down the extreme parts of the kingdom. And as heobserved from his own experience the want of fortresses in England, heresolved fully to supply that defect, and guard the kingdom both againstinternal and foreign enemies. But he fortified his throne yet morestrongly by the policy of good government. To London he confirmed bycharter the liberties it had enjoyed under the Saxon kings, andendeavored to fix the affections of the English in general by governingthem with equity according to their ancient laws, and by treating themon all occasions with the most engaging deportment. He set up nopretences which arose from absolute conquest. He confirmed their estatesto all those who had not appeared in arms against him, and seemed not toaim at subjecting the English to the Normans, but to unite the twonations under the wings of a common parental care. If the Normansreceived estates and held lucrative offices and were raised by wealthymatches in England, some of the English were enriched with lands anddignities and taken into considerable families in Normandy. But theking's principal regards were showed to those by whose bravery he hadattained his greatness. To some he bestowed the forfeited estates, whichwere many and great, of Harold's adherents; others he satisfied from thetreasures his rival had amassed; and the rest, quartered upon wealthymonasteries, relied patiently on the promises of one whose performanceshad hitherto gone hand in hand with his power. There was anothercircumstance which conduced much to the maintaining, as well as to themaking, his conquest. The posterity of the Danes, who had finallyreduced England under Canute the Great, were still very numerous in thatkingdom, and in general not well liked by nor well affected to the oldAnglo-Saxon inhabitants. William wisely took advantage of this enmitybetween the two sorts of inhabitants, and the alliance of blood whichwas between them and his subjects. In the body of laws which hepublished he insists strongly on this kindred, and declares that theNormans and Danes ought to be as sworn brothers against all men: apolicy which probably united these people to him, or at least soconfirmed the ancient jealousy which subsisted between them and theoriginal English as to hinder any cordial union against his interests. 

When the king had thus settled his acquisitions by all the methods offorce and policy, he thought it expedient to visit his patrimonialterritory, which, with regard to its internal state, and the jealousieswhich his additional greatness revived in many of the bordering princes, was critically situated. He appointed to the regency in his absence hisbrother Odo, an ecclesiastic, whom he had made Bishop of Bayeux, inFrance, and Earl of Kent, with great power and preeminence, inEngland, --a man bold, fierce, ambitious, full of craft, imperious, andwithout faith, but well versed in all affairs, vigilant, and courageous. To him he joined William Fitz-Osbern, his justiciary, a person ofconsummate prudence and great integrity. But not depending on thisdisposition, to secure his conquest, as well as to display itsimportance abroad, under a pretence of honor, he carried with him allthe chiefs of the English nobility, the popular Earls Edwin and Morcar, and, what was of most importance, Edgar Atheling, the last branch of theroyal stock of the Anglo-Saxon kings, and infinitely dear to all thepeople. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1607. ]

The king managed his affairs abroad with great address, and covered, allhis negotiations for the security of his Norman dominions under themagnificence of continual feasting and unremitted diversion, which, without an appearance of design, displayed his wealth and power, and bythat means facilitated his measures. But whilst he was thus employed, his absence from England gave an opportunity to several humors to breakout, which the late change had bred, but which the amazement likewiseproduced by that violent change, and the presence of their conqueror, wise, vigilant, and severe, had hitherto repressed. The ancient line oftheir kings displaced, the only thread on which it hung carried out ofthe kingdom and ready to be cut off by the jealousy of a mercilessusurper, their liberties none by being precarious, and the dailyinsolencies and rapine of the Normans intolerable, --these discontentswere increased by the tyranny and rapaciousness of the regent, and theywere fomented from abroad by Eustace, Count of Boulogne. But the people, though ready to rise in all parts, were destitute of leaders, and theinsurrections actually made were not carried on in concert, nor directedto any determinate object; so that the king, returning speedily, andexerting himself everywhere with great vigor, in a short time dissipatedthese ill-formed projects. However, so general a dislike to William'sgovernment had appeared on this occasion, that he became in his turndisgusted with his subjects, and began to change his maxims of rule to arigor which was more conformable to his advanced age and the sternnessof his natural temper. He resolved, since he could not gain theaffections of his subjects, to find such matter for their hatred asmight weaken them, and fortify his own authority against the enterpriseswhich that hatred might occasion. He revived the tribute of Danegelt, soodious from its original cause and that of its revival, which he causedto be strictly levied throughout the kingdom. He erected castles atNottingham, at Warwick, and at York, and filled them with Normangarrisons. He entered into a stricter inquisition for the discovery ofthe estates forfeited on his coming in; paying no regard to theprivileges of the ecclesiastics, he seized upon the treasures which, asin an inviolable asylum, the unfortunate adherents to Harold haddeposited in monasteries. At the same time he entered into a resolutionof deposing all the English, bishops, on none of whom he could rely, andfilling their places with Normans. But he mitigated the rigor of theseproceedings by the wise choice he made in filling the places of thosewhom he had deposed, and gave by that means these violent changes theair rather of reformation than oppression. He began with Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury. A synod was called, in which, for the firsttime in England, the Pope's legate _a latere_ is said to have presided. In this council, Stigand, for simony and for other crimes, of which itis easy to convict those who are out of favor, was solemnly degradedfrom his dignity. The king filled his place with Lanfranc, an Italian. By his whole conduct he appeared resolved to reduce his subjects of allorders to the most perfect obedience. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1068. ]

The people, loaded with new taxes, the nobility, degraded andthreatened, the clergy, deprived of their immunities and influence, joined in one voice of discontent, and stimulated each other to the mostdesperate resolutions. The king was not unapprised of these motions, nornegligent of them. It is thought he meditated to free himself from muchof his uneasiness by seizing those men on whom the nation in itsdistresses used to cast its eyes for relief. But whilst he digestedthese measures, Edgar Atheling, Edwin and Morcar, Waltheof, the son ofSiward, and several others, eluded his vigilance, and escaped into Scotland, where they were received with open arms by King Malcolm. TheScottish monarch on this occasion married the sister of Edgar; and thismatch engaged him more closely to the accomplishment of what hisgratitude to the Saxon kings and the rules of good policy had beforeinclined him. He entered at last into the cause of his brother-in-lawand the distressed English. He persuaded the King of Denmark to enterinto the same measures, who agreed to invade England with a fleet of athousand ships. Drone, an Irish king, declared in their favor, andsupplied the sons of Earl Godwin with vessels and men, with which theyheld the English coast in continual alarms. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1069. ]

Whilst the forces of this powerful confederacy were collecting on allsides, and prepared to enter England, equal dangers threatened fromwithin the kingdom. Edric the Forester, a very brave and popular Saxon, took up arms in the counties of Hereford and Salop, the country of theancient Silures, and inhabited by the same warlike and untamable race ofmen. The Welsh strengthened him with their forces, and Cheshire joinedin the revolt. Hereward le Wake, one of the most brave and indefatigablesoldiers of his time, rushed with a numerous band of fugitives andoutlaws from the fens of Lincoln and the Isle of Ely, from whence, protected by the situation of the place, he had for some time carried onan irregular war against the Normans. The sons of Godwin landed with astrong body in the West; the fire of rebellion ran through the kingdom;Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, at once threw off the yoke. Daily skirmisheswere fought in every part of the kingdom, with various success and withgreat bloodshed. The Normans retreated to their castles, which theEnglish had rarely skill or patience to master; out of these theysallied from time to time, and asserted their dominion. The conqueredEnglish for a moment resumed their spirit; the forests and morasses, with which this island then, abounded, served them for fortifications, and their hatred to the Normans stood in the place of discipline; eachman, exasperated by his own wrongs, avenged them in his own manner. Everything was full of blood and violence: murders, burnings, rapine, and confusion overspread the whole kingdom. During these distractions, several of the Normans quitted the country, and gave up theirpossessions, which they thought not worth holding in continual horrorand danger. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1070. ]

In the midst of this scene of disorder, the king alone was present tohimself and to his affairs. He first collected all the forces on whom hecould depend within the kingdom, and called powerful succors fromNormandy. Then he sent a strong body to repress the commotions in theWest; but he reserved the greatest force and his own presence againstthe greatest danger, which menaced from the North. The Scots hadpenetrated as far as Durham; they had taken the castle, and put thegarrison to the sword. A like fate attended York from the Danes, who hadentered the Humber with a formidable fleet. They put this city into thehands of the English malcontents, and thereby influenced all thenorthern counties in their favor. William, when he first perceived thegathering of the storm, endeavored, and with some success, to break theforce of the principal blow by a correspondence at the court ofDenmark; and now he entirely blunted the weapon by corrupting, with aconsiderable sum, the Danish general. It was agreed, to gratify thatpiratical nation, that they should plunder some part of the coast, anddepart without further disturbance. By this negotiation the king wasenabled to march with an undissipated force against the Scots and theprincipal body of the English. Everything yielded. The Scots retiredinto their own country. Some of the most obnoxious of the English fledalong with them. One desperate party, under the brave Waltheof, threwthemselves into York, and ventured alone to resist his victorious army. William pressed the siege with vigor, and, notwithstanding the prudentdispositions of Waltheof, and the prodigies of valor he displayed in itsdefence, standing alone in the breach, and maintaining his groundgallantly and successfully, the place was at last reduced by famine. Theking left his enemies no time to recover this disaster; he followed hisblow, and drove all who adhered to Edgar Atheling out of all thecountries northward of the Humber. This tract he resolved entirely todepopulate, influenced by revenge, and by distrust of the inhabitants, and partly with a view of opposing an hideous desert of sixty miles inextent as an impregnable barrier against all attempts of the Scots infavor of his disaffected subjects. The execution of this barbarousproject was attended with all the havoc and desolation that it seemed tothreaten. One hundred thousand are said to have perished by cold, penury, and disease. The ground lay untilled throughout that whole spacefor upwards of nine years. Many of the inhabitants both of this and allother parts of England fled into Scotland; but they were so received byKing Malcolm as to forget that they had lost their country. This wisemonarch gladly seized so fair an opportunity, by the exertion of abenevolent policy, to people his dominions, and to improve his nativesubjects. He received the English nobility according to their rank, hepromoted them to offices according to their merit, and enriched them byconsiderable estates from his own demesne. From these noble refugeesseveral considerable families in Scotland are descended. 

William, on the other hand, amidst all the excesses which the insolenceof victory and the cruel precautions of usurped authority could make himcommit, gave many striking examples of moderation and greatness of mind. He pardoned Waltheof, whose bravery he did not the less admire becauseit was exerted against himself. He restored him to his ancient honorsand estates; and thinking his family strengthened by the acquisition ofa gallant man, he bestowed upon him his niece Judith in marriage. OnEdric the Forester, who lay under his sword, in the same generous mannerhe not only bestowed his life, but honored it with an addition ofdignity. 

The king, having thus, by the most politic and the most courageousmeasures, by art, by force, by severity, and by clemency, dispelledthose clouds which had gathered from every quarter to overwhelm him, returned triumphant to Winchester, where, as if he had newly acquiredthe kingdom, he was crowned with great solemnity. After this heproceeded to execute the plan he had long proposed of modelling thestate according to his own pleasure, and of fixing his authority upon animmovable foundation. 

There were few of the English who in the late disturbances had noteither been active against the Normans or shown great disinclination tothem. Upon some right, or some pretence, the greatest part of theirlands were adjudged to be forfeited. William gave these lands toNormans, to be held by the tenure of knight-service, according to thelaw which modified that service in all parts of Europe. These people hechose because he judged they must be faithful to the interest on whichthey depended; and this tenure he chose because it raised an armywithout expense, called it forth at the least warning, and seemed tosecure the fidelity of the vassal by the multiplied ties of thoseservices which were inseparably annexed to it. In the establishment ofthese tenures, William only copied the practice which was now becomevery general. One fault, however, he seems to have committed in thisdistribution: the immediate vassals of the crown were too few; thetenants _in capite_ at the end of this reign did not exceed sevenhundred; the eyes of the subject met too many great objects in the statebesides the state itself; and the dependence of the inferior people wasweakened by the interposal of another authority between them and thecrown, and this without being at all serviceable to liberty. The illconsequence of this was not so obvious whilst the dread of the Englishmade a good correspondence between the sovereign and the great vassalsabsolutely necessary; but it afterwards appeared, and in a light veryoffensive to the power of our kings. 

As there is nothing of more consequence in a state than theecclesiastical establishment, there was nothing to which this vigilantprince gave more of his attention. If he owed his own power to theinfluence of the clergy, it convinced him how necessary it was toprevent that engine from being employed in its turn against himself. Heobserved, that, besides the influence they derived from their character, they had a vast portion of that power which always attends property. Ofabout sixty thousand knights' fees, which England was then judged tocontain, twenty-eight thousand were in the hands of the clergy; andthese they held discharged of all taxes, and free from every burden ofcivil or military service: a constitution undoubtedly no lessprejudicial to the authority of the state than detrimental to thestrength of the nation, deprived of so much revenue, so many soldiers, and of numberless exertions of art and industry, which were stifled byholding a third of the soil in dead hands out of all possibility ofcirculation. William in a good measure remedied these evils, but withthe great offence of all the ecclesiastic orders. At the same time thathe subjected the Church lands to military service, he obliged eachmonastery and bishopric to the support of soldiers, in proportion to thenumber of knights' fees that they possessed. No less jealous was he ofthe Papal pretensions, which, having favored so long as they served himas the instruments of his ambition, he afterwards kept within verynarrow bounds. He suffered no communication with Rome but by hisknowledge and approbation. He had a bold and ambitious Pope to dealwith, who yet never proceeded to extremities with nor gained oneadvantage over William during his whole reign, --although he had by anexpress law reserved to himself a sort of right in approving the Popechosen, by forbidding his subjects to yield obedience to any whose rightthe king had not acknowledged. 

To form a just idea of the power and greatness of this king, it will beconvenient to take a view of his revenue. And I the rather choose todwell a little upon this article, as nothing extends to so many objectsas the public finances, and consequently nothing puts in a clearer ormore decisive light the manners of the people, and the form, as well asthe powers, of government at any period. 

The first part of this consisted of the demesne. The lands of the crownwere, even before the Conquest, very extensive. The forfeituresconsequent to that great change had considerably increased them. Itappears from the record of Domesday, that the king retained in his ownhands no fewer than fourteen hundred manors. This alone was a royalrevenue. However, great as it really was, it has been exaggerated beyondall reason. Ordericus Vitalis, a writer almost contemporary, assertsthat this branch alone produced a thousand pounds a day, [72]--which, valuing the pound, as it was then estimated, at a real pound of silver, and then allowing for the difference in value since that time, will makenear twelve millions of our money. This account, coming from such anauthority, has been copied without examination by all the succeedinghistorians. If we were to admit the truth of it, we must entirely changeour ideas concerning the quantity of money which then circulated inEurope. And it is a matter altogether monstrous and incredible in an agewhen there was little traffic in this nation, and the traffic of allnations circulated but little real coin, when the tenants paid thegreatest part of their rents in kind, and when it may be greatlydoubted whether there was so much current money in the nation as is saidto have come into the king's coffers from this one branch, of hisrevenue only. For it amounts to a twelfth part of all the circulatingspecies which a trade infinitely more extensive has derived from sourcesinfinitely more exuberant, to this wealthy nation, in this improved age. Neither must we think that the whole revenue of this prince ever rose tosuch a sum. The great fountain which fed his treasury must have beenDanegelt, which, upon any reasonable calculation, could not possiblyexceed 120, 000_l. _ of our money, if it ever reached that sum. Williamwas observed to be a great hoarder, and very avaricious; his army wasmaintained without any expense to him, his demesne supported hishousehold; neither his necessary nor his voluntary expenses wereconsiderable. Yet the effects of many years' scraping and hoarding leftat his death but 60, 000_l. _, --not the sixth part of one year's income, according to this account, of one branch of his revenue; and this wasthen esteemed a vast treasure. Edgar Atheling, on being reconciled tothe king, was allowed a mark a day for his expenses, and he was thoughtto be allowed sufficiently, though he received it in some sort as anequivalent for his right to the crown. I venture on this digression, because writers in an ignorant age, making guesses at random, impose onmore enlightened times, and affect by their mistakes many of ourreasonings on affairs of consequence; and it is the error of allignorant people to rate unknown times, distances, and sums very farbeyond their real extent. There is even something childish and whimsicalin computing this revenue, as the original author has done, at so mucha day. For my part, I do not imagine it so difficult to come at a prettyaccurate decision of the truth or falsehood of this story. 

The above-mentioned manors are charged with rents from five to anhundred pounds each. The greatest number of those I have seen in printare under fifty; so that we may safely take that number as a justmedium; and then the whole amount of the demesne rents will be70, 000_l. _, or 210, 000_l. _ of our money. This, though almost a fourthless than the sum stated by Vitalis, still seems a great deal too high, if we should suppose the whole sum, as that author does, to be paid inmoney, and that money to be reckoned by real pounds of silver. But wemust observe, that, when sums of money are set down in old laws andrecords, the interpretation of those words, pounds and shillings, is forthe most part oxen, sheep, corn, and provision. When real coin money wasto be paid, it was called white money, or _argentum album_, and was onlyin a certain stipulated proportion to what was rendered in kind, andthat proportion generally very low. This method of paying rent, thoughit entirely overturns the prodigious idea of that monarch's pecuniarywealth, was far from being less conducive to his greatness. It enabledhim to feed a multitude of people, --one of the surest and largestsources of influence, and which always outbuys money in the traffic ofaffections. This revenue, which was the chief support of the dignity ofour Saxon kings, was considerably increased by the revival of Danegelt, of the imposition of which we have already spoken, and which is supposedto have produced an annual income of 40, 000_l. _ of money, as thenvalued. 

The nest branch of the king's revenue were the feudal duties, by himfirst introduced into England, --namely, ward, marriage, relief, andaids. By the first, the heir of every tenant who held immediately fromthe crown, during his minority, was in ward for his body and his land tothe king; so that he had the formation of his mind at that early andductile age to mould to his own purposes, and the entire profits of hisestate either to augment his demesne or to gratify his dependants: andas we have already seen how many and how vast estates, or rather, princely possessions, were then held immediately of the crown, we maycomprehend how important an article this must have been. 

Though the heir had attained his age before the death of his ancestor, yet the king intruded between him and his inheritance, and obliged himto redeem, or, as the term then was, to relieve it. The quantity of thisrelief was generally pretty much at the king's discretion, and oftenamounted to a very great sum. 

But the king's demands on his rents in chief were not yet satisfied. Hehad a right and interest in the marriage of heirs, both males andfemales, virgins and widows, --and either bestowed them at pleasure onhis favorites, or sold them to the best bidder. The king received forthe sale of one heiress the sum of 20, 000_l. _, or 60, 000_l. _ of ourpresent money, --and this at a period when the chief estates were muchreduced. And from hence was derived a great source of revenue, if thisright were sold, --of influence and attachment, if bestowed. 

Under the same head of feudal duties were the casual aids to knight hiseldest son and marry his eldest daughter. These duties could be paid butonce, and, though not considerable, eased him in these articles ofexpenses. 

After the feudal duties, rather in the order than in point of value, wasthe profit which arose from the sale of justice. No man could then suein the king's court by a common or public right, or without payinglargely for it, --sometimes the third, and sometimes even half, the valueof the estate or debt sued for. These presents were called oblations;and the records preceding Magna Charta, and for some time after, arefull of them. And, as the king thought fit, this must have added greatlyto his power or wealth, or indeed to both. 

The fines and amercements were another branch, and this, at a time whendisorders abounded, and almost every disorder was punished by a fine, was a much greater article than at first could readily be imagined, ---especially when we consider that there were no limitations in this pointbut the king's mercy, particularly in all offences relating to theforest, which were of various kinds, and very strictly inquired into. The sale of offices was not less considerable. It appears that alloffices at that time were, or might be, legally and publicly sold, --thatthe king had many and very rich employments in his gift, and, though itmay appear strange, not inferior to, if they did not exceed, in numberand consequence, those of our present establishment. At one time thegreat seal was sold for three thousand marks. The office of sheriff wasthen very lucrative: this charge was almost always sold. Sometimes acounty paid a sum to the king, that he might appoint a sheriff whom theyliked; sometimes they paid as largely to prevent him from appointing aperson disagreeable to them; and thus the king had often from the sameoffice a double profit in refusing one candidate and approving theother. If some offices were advantageous, others were burdensome; andthe king had the right, or was at least in the unquestioned practice, offorcing his subjects to accept these employments, or to pay for thereimmunity; by which means he could either punish his enemies or augmenthis wealth, as his avarice or his resentments prevailed. 

The greatest part of the cities and trading towns were under hisparticular jurisdiction, and indeed in a state not far removed fromslavery. On these he laid a sort of imposition, at such a time and insuch a proportion as he thought fit. This was called a _tallage_. If thetowns did not forthwith pay the sum at which they were rated, it was notunusual, for their punishment, to double the exaction, and to proceed inlevying it by nearly the same methods and in the same manner now used toraise a contribution in an enemy's country. 

But the Jews were a fund almost inexhaustible. They were slaves to theking in the strictest sense; insomuch that, besides the various tallagesand fines extorted from them, none succeeded to the inheritance of hisfather without the king's license and an heavy composition. He sometimeseven made over a wealthy Jew as a provision to some of his favorites forlife. They were almost the only persons who exercised usury, and thusdrew to themselves the odium and wealth of the whole kingdom; but theywere only a canal, through which it passed to the royal treasury. Andnothing could be more pleasing and popular than such exactions: thepeople rejoiced, when they saw the Jews plundered, --not consideringthat they were a sort of agents for the crown, who, in proportion to theheavy taxes they paid, were obliged to advance the terms and enforcewith greater severity the execution of their usurious contracts. Throughthem almost the whole body of the nobility were in 'debt to the king;and when he thought proper to confiscate the effects of the Jews, thesecurities passed into his hands; and by this means he must havepossessed one of the strongest and most terrible instruments ofauthority that could possibly be devised, and the best calculated tokeep the people in an abject and slavish dependence. 

The last general head of his revenue were the customs, prisages, andother impositions upon trade. Though the revenue arising from traffic inthis rude period was much limited by the then smallness of its object, this was compensated by the weight and variety of the exactions leviedby an occasional exertion of arbitrary power, or the more uniform systemof hereditary tyranny. Trade was restrained, or the privilege granted, on the payment of tolls, passages, paages, pontages, and innumerableother vexatious imposts, of which, only the barbarous and almostunintelligible names subsist at this day. 

These were the most constant and regular branches of the revenue. Butthere were other ways innumerable by which money, or an equivalent incattle, poultry, horses, hawks, and dogs, accrued to the exchequer. Theking's interposition in marriages, even where there was no pretence fromtenure, was frequently bought, as well as in other negotiations of lessmoment, for composing of quarrels, and the like; and, indeed, someappear on the records, of so strange and even ludicrous a nature, thatit would not be excusable to mention them, if they did not help to showfrom how many minute sources this revenue was fed, and how the king'spower descended to the most inconsiderable actions of private life. [73]It is not easy to penetrate into the true meaning of all theseparticulars, but they equally suffice to show the character ofgovernment in those times. A prince furnished with so many means ofdistressing enemies and gratifying friends, and possessed of so ample arevenue entirely independent of the affections of his subjects, musthave been very absolute in substance and effect, whatever might havebeen the external forms of government. 

For the regulation of all these revenues, and for determining allquestions which concerned them, a court was appointed, upon the model ofa court of the same nature, said to be of ancient use in Normandy, andcalled the Exchequer. 

There was nothing in the government of William conceived in a greatermanner, or more to be commended, than the general survey he took of hisconquest. An inquisition was made throughout the kingdom concerning thequantity of land which was contained in each county, --the name of thedeprived and the present proprietor, --the stock of slaves, and cattle ofevery kind, which it contained. All these were registered in a book, each article beginning with the king's property, and proceedingdownward, according to the rank of the proprietors, in an excellentorder, by which might be known at one glance the true state of the royalrevenues, the wealth, consequence, and natural connections of everyperson in the kingdom, --in order to ascertain the taxes that might beimposed, and, to serve purposes in the state as well as in civil causes, to be general and uncontrollable evidence of property. This book iscalled Domesday or the Judgment Book, and still remains a grand monumentof the wisdom of the Conqueror, --a work in all respects useful andworthy of a better age. 

The Conqueror knew very well how much discontent must have arisen fromthe great revolutions which his conquest produced in all men's property, and in the general tenor of the government. He, therefore, as much aspossible to guard against every sudden attempt, forbade any light orfire to continue in any house after a certain bell, called curfew, hadsounded. This bell rung at about eight in the evening. There was policyin this; and it served to prevent the numberless disorders which arosefrom the late civil commotions. 

For the same purpose of strengthening his authority, he introduced theNorman law, not only in its substance, but in all its forms, and orderedthat all proceedings should be had according to that law in the Frenchlanguage. [74] The change wrought by the former part of this regulationcould not have been very grievous; and it was partly the necessaryconsequence of the establishment of the new tenures, and which wanted anew law to regulate them: in other respects the Norman institutions werenot very different from the English. But to force, against nature, a newlanguage upon a conquered people, to make them, strangers in thosecourts of justice in which they were still to retain a considerableshare, to be reminded, every time they had recourse to government forprotection, of the slavery in which it held them, --this is one of thoseacts of superfluous tyranny from which very few conquering nations orparties have forborne, though no way necessary, but often prejudicial totheir safety. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1071. ]

These severities, and affronts more galling than severities, drove theEnglish to another desperate attempt, which was the last convulsiveeffort of their expiring freedom. Several nobles, prelates, and others, whose estates had been confiscated, or who were in daily apprehension oftheir confiscation, fled into the fens of Lincoln and Ely, whereHereward still maintained his ground. This unadvised step completed theruin of the little English interest that remained. William hastened tofill up the sees of the bishops and the estates of the nobles with hisNorman favorites. He pressed the fugitives with equal vivacity; and atonce to cut off all the advantage they derived from their situation, hepenetrated into the Isle of Ely by a wooden bridge two miles in length;and by the greatness of the design, and rapidity of the execution, asmuch as by the vigor of his charge, compelled them to surrender atdiscretion. Hereward alone escaped, who disdained to surrender, and hadcut his way through his enemies, carrying his virtue and his sword, ashis passports, wheresoever fortune should conduct him. He escapedhappily into Scotland, where, as usual, the king was making some slowmovements for the relief of the English. William lost no time to opposehim, and had passed with infinite difficulty through a desert of his ownmaking to the frontiers of Scotland. Here he found the enemy stronglyintrenched. The causes of the war being in a good measure spent byWilliam's late successes, and neither of the princes choosing to risk abattle in a country where the consequences of a defeat must be sodreadful, they agreed to an accommodation, which included a pardon forEdgar Atheling on a renunciation of his title to the crown. William onthis occasion showed, as he did on all occasions, an honorable anddisinterested sense of merit, by receiving Hereward to his friendship, and distinguishing him by particular favors and bounties. Malcolm, byhis whole conduct, never seemed intent upon coming to extremities withWilliam: he was satisfied with keeping this great warrior in some awe, without bringing things to a decision, that might involve his kingdom inthe same calamitous fate that had oppressed England; whilst his wisdomenabled him to reap advantages from the fortunes of the conquered, indrawing so many useful people into his dominions, and from the policy ofthe Conqueror, in imitating those feudal regulations which he saw hisneighbor force upon the English, and which appeared so well calculatedfor the defence of the kingdom. He compassed this the more easily, because the feudal policy, being the discipline of all the considerablestates in Europe, appeared the masterpiece of government. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1073. ]

If men who have engaged in vast designs could ever promise themselvesrepose, William, after so many victories, and so many politicalregulations to secure the fruit of them, might now flatter himself withsome hope of quiet. But disturbances were preparing for his old age froma new quarter, from whence they were less expected and lesstolerable, --from the Normans, his companions in victory, and from hisfamily, which he found not less difficulty in governing than hiskingdom. Nothing but his absence from England was wanting to make theflame blaze out. The numberless petty pretensions which the petty lordshis neighbors on the continent had on each other and on William, together with their restless disposition and the intrigues of the Frenchcourt, kept alive a constant dissension, which made the king's presenceon the continent frequently necessary. The Duke of Anjou had at thistime actually invaded his dominions. He was obliged to pass over intoNormandy with an army of fifty thousand men. William, who had conqueredEngland by the assistance of the princes on the continent, now turnedagainst them the arms of the English, who served him with bravery andfidelity; and by their means he soon silenced all opposition, andconcluded the terms of an advantageous peace. In the mean time hisNorman subjects in England, inconstant, warlike, independent, fierce bynature, fiercer by their conquest, could scarcely brook thatsubordination in which their safety consisted. Upon some frivolouspretences, chiefly personal disgusts, [75] a most dangerous conspiracywas formed: the principal men among the Normans were engaged in it; andforeign correspondence was not wanting. Though this conspiracy waschiefly formed and carried on by the Normans, they knew so well the usewhich William on this occasion would not fail to make of his Englishsubjects, that they endeavored, as far as was consistent with secrecy, to engage several of that nation, and above all, the Earl Waltheof, asthe first in rank and reputation among his countrymen. Waltheof, thinking it base to engage in any cause but that of his country againsthis benefactor, unveils the whole design to Lanfranc, who immediatelytook measures for securing the chief conspirators. He dispatchedmessengers to inform the king of his danger, who returned without delayat the head of his forces, and by his presence, and his usual boldactivity, dispersed at once the vapors of this conspiracy. The headswere punished. The rest, left under the shade of a dubious mercy, wereawed into obedience. His glory was, however, sullied by his putting todeath Waltheof, who had discovered the conspiracy; but he thought thedesire the rebels had shown of engaging him in their designsdemonstrated sufficiently that Waltheof still retained a dangerouspower. For as the years, so the suspicions, of this politic princeincreased, --at whose time of life generosity begins to appear no morethan a splendid weakness. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1079]

These troubles were hardly appeased, when others began to break forth inhis own family, which neither his glory, nor the terror which held agreat nation in chains, could preserve in obedience to him. To remove insome measure the jealousy of the court of France with regard to hisinvasion of England, he had promised upon his acquisition of thatkingdom to invest his eldest son, Robert, with the Duchy of Normandy. But as his new acquisition did not seem so secure as it was great andmagnificent, he was far from any thoughts of resigning his hereditarydominions, which he justly considered as a great instrument inmaintaining his conquests, and a necessary retreat, if he should bedeprived of them by the fortune of war. So long as the state of hisaffairs in England appeared unsettled, Robert acquiesced in thereasonableness of this conduct; but when he saw his father establishedon his throne, and found himself growing old in an inglorioussubjection, he began first to murmur at the injustice of the king, soonafter to cabal with the Norman barons and at the court of France, and atlast openly rose in rebellion, and compelled the vassals of the Duchy todo him homage. The king was not inclined to give up to force what he hadrefused to reason. Unbroken with age, unwearied with so manyexpeditions, he passed again into Normandy, and pressed his son with thevigor of a young warrior. 

This war, which was carried on without anything decisive for some time, ended by a very extraordinary and affecting incident. In one of thoseskirmishes which were frequent according to the irregular mode ofwarfare in those days, William and his son Robert, alike in a forwardand adventurous courage, plunged into the thickest of the fight, andunknowingly encountered each other. But Robert, superior by fortune, orby the vigor of his youth, wounded and unhorsed the old monarch, and wasjust on the point of pursuing his unhappy advantage to the fatalextremity, when the well-known voice of his father at once struck hisears and suspended his arm. Blushing for his victory, and overwhelmedwith the united emotions of grief, shame, and returning piety, he fellon his knees, poured out a flood of tears, and, embracing his father, besought him for pardon. The tide of nature returning strongly on both, the father in his turn embraced his son, and bathed him with his tears;whilst the combatants on either side, astonished at so unusual aspectacle, suspended the fight, applauded this striking act of filialpiety and paternal tenderness, and pressed that it might become theprelude to a lasting peace. Peace was made, but entirely to theadvantage of the father, who carried his son into England, to secureNormandy from the dangers to which his ambition and popularity mightexpose that dukedom. 

That William might have peace upon no part, the Welsh and Scots tookadvantage of these troubles in his family to break into England: buttheir expeditions were rather incursions than invasions: they wasted thecountry, and then retired to secure their plunder. But William, alwaystroubled, always in action, and always victorious, pursued them andcompelled them to a peace, which was not concluded but by compelling theKing of Scotland and all the princes of Wales to do him homage. How farthis homage extended with regard to Scotland I find it difficult todetermine. 

Robert, who had no pleasure but in action, as soon as this war wasconcluded, finding that he could not regain his father's confidence, andthat he had no credit at the court of England, retired to that ofFrance. Edgar Atheling saw likewise that the innocence of his conductcould not make amends for the guilt of an undoubted title to the crown, and that the Conqueror, soured by continual opposition, and suspiciousthrough age and the experience of mankind, regarded him with an evileye. He therefore desired leave to accompany Robert out of the kingdom, and then to make a voyage to the Holy Land. This leave was readilygranted. Edgar, having displayed great valor in useless acts of chivalryabroad, after the Conqueror's death returned to England, where he longlived in great tranquillity, happy in himself, beloved by all thepeople, and unfeared by those who held his sceptre, from his mild andinactive virtue. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1084. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1087. ]

William had been so much a stranger to repose that it became no longeran object desirable to him. He revived his claim, to the Vexin Français, and some other territories on the confines of Normandy. This quarrel, which began, between him and the King of France on political motives, was increased into rancor and bitterness, first, by a boyish contest atchess between their children, which was resented, more than became wisemen, by the fathers; it was further exasperated by taunts and mockeriesyet less becoming their age and dignity, but which infused a mortalvenom into the war. William entered first into the French territories, wantonly wasting the country, and setting fire to the towns andvillages. He entered Mantes, and as usual set it on fire; but whilst heurged his horse over the smoking ruins, and pressed forward to furtherhavoc, the beast, impatient of the hot embers which burned his hoofs, plunged and threw his rider violently on the saddle-bow. The rim of hisbelly was wounded; and this wound, as William was corpulent and in thedecline of life, proved fatal. A rupture ensued, and he died at Rouen, after showing a desire of making amends for his cruelty by restitutionsto the towns he had destroyed, by alms and endowments, the usual fruitsof a late penitence, and the acknowledgments which expiring ambitionpays to virtue. 

There is nothing more memorable in history than the actions, fortunes, and character of this great man, --whether we consider the grandeur ofthe plans he formed, the courage and wisdom with which they wereexecuted, or the splendor of that success which, adorning his youth, continued without the smallest reverse to support his age, even to thelast moments of his life. He lived above seventy years, and reignedwithin ten years as long as he lived, sixty over his dukedom, abovetwenty over England, --both of which he acquired or kept by his ownmagnanimity, with hardly any other title than he derived from his arms:so that he might be reputed, in all respects, as happy as the highestambition, the most fully gratified, can make a man. The silent inwardsatisfactions of domestic happiness he neither had nor sought. He had abody suited to the character of his mind, erect, firm, large, andactive, whilst to be active was a praise, --a countenance stern, andwhich became command. Magnificent in his living, reserved in hisconversation, grave in his common deportment, but relaxing with a wisefacetiousness, he knew how to relieve his mind and preserve his dignity:for he never forfeited by a personal acquaintance that esteem he hadacquired by his great actions. Unlearned in books, he formed hisunderstanding by the rigid discipline of a large and complicatedexperience. He knew men much, and therefore generally trusted them butlittle; but when he knew any man to be good, he reposed in him an entireconfidence, which prevented his prudence from degenerating into a vice. He had vices in his composition, and great ones; but they were the vicesof a great mind: ambition, the malady of every extensive genius, --andavarice, the madness of the wise: one chiefly actuated his youth, --theother governed his age. The vices of young and light minds, the joys ofwine and the pleasures of love, never reached his aspiring nature. Thegeneral run of men he looked on with contempt, and treated with crueltywhen they opposed him. Nor was the rigor of his mind to be softened butwith the appearance of extraordinary fortitude in his enemies, which, bya sympathy congenial to his own virtues, always excited his admirationand insured his mercy. So that there were often seen in this one man, atthe same time, the extremes of a savage cruelty, and a generosity thatdoes honor to human nature. Religion, too, seemed to have a greatinfluence on his mind, from policy, or from better motives; but hisreligion was displayed in the regularity with which he performed itsduties, not in the submission he showed to its ministers, which wasnever more than what good government required. Yet his choice of acounsellor and favorite was, not according to the mode of the time, outof that order, and a choice that does honor to his memory. This wasLanfranc, a man of great learning for the times, and extraordinarypiety. He owed his elevation to William; but though always inviolablyfaithful, he never was the tool or flatterer of the power which raisedhim; and the greater freedom he showed, the higher he rose in theconfidence of his master. By mixing with the concerns of state he didnot lose his religion and conscience, or make them the covers orinstruments of ambition; but tempering the fierce policy of a new powerby the mild lights of religion, he became a blessing to the country inwhich he was promoted. The English owed to the virtue of this stranger, and the influence he had on the king, the little remains of liberty theycontinued to enjoy, and at last such a degree of his confidence as insome sort counterbalanced the severities of the former part of hisreign. 

FOOTNOTES:

[72] I have known, myself, great mistakes in calculation by computing, as the produce of every day in the year, that of one extraordinary day. 

[73] The Bishop of Winchester fined for not putting the king in mind togive a girdle to the Countess of Albemarle. --Robertus de Vallibus debetquinque optimos palafredos, ut rex taceret de uxore Henrici Pinel. --Thewife of Hugh do Nevil fined in two hundred hens, that she might liewith, her husband for one night; another, that he might rise from, hisinfirmity; a third, that he might eat. 

[74] For some particulars of the condition of the English of this time, vide Eadmer, p. 110. 

[75] Upon occasion of a ward refused in marriage. Wright thinks thefeudal right of marriage not then introduced. 

CHAPTER III. 

REIGN OF WILLIAM THE SECOND, SURNAMED RUFUS. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1087. ]

William had by his queen Matilda three sons, who survived him, --Robert, William, and Henry. Robert, though in an advanced age at his father'sdeath, was even then more remarkable for those virtues which make usentertain hopes of a young man than for that steady prudence which isnecessary when the short career we are to run will not allow us to makemany mistakes. He had, indeed, a temper suitable to the genius of thetime he lived in, and which therefore enabled him to make a considerablefigure in the transactions which distinguished that period. He was of asincere, open, candid nature; passionately fond of glory; ambitious, without having any determinate object in view; vehement in his pursuits, but inconstant; much in war, which he understood and loved. But guidinghimself, both in war and peace, solely by the impulses of an unboundedand irregular spirit, he filled the world with an equal admiration andpity of his splendid qualities and great misfortunes. William was of acharacter very different. His views were short, his designs few, hisgenius narrow, and his manners brutal; full of craft, rapacious, withoutfaith, without religion; but circumspect, steady, and courageous for hisends, not for glory. These qualities secured to him that fortune whichthe virtues of Robert deserved. Of Henry we shall speak hereafter. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1088. ]

We have seen the quarrels, together with the causes of them, whichembroiled the Conqueror with his eldest son, Robert. Although the woundwas skinned over by several temporary and palliative accommodations, itstill left a soreness in the father's mind, which influenced him by hislast will to cut off Robert from the inheritance of his Englishdominions. Those he declared he derived from his sword, and therefore hewould dispose of them, to that son whose dutiful behavior had made himthe most worthy. To William, therefore, he left his crown; to Henry hedevised his treasures: Robert possessed nothing but the Duchy, which washis birthright. William had some advantages to enforce the execution ofa bequest which was not included even in any of the modes of successionwhich then were admitted. He was at the time of his father's death inEngland, and had an opportunity of seizing the vacant government, athing of great moment in all disputed rights. He had also, by hispresence, an opportunity of engaging some of the most considerableleading men in his interests. But his greatest strength was derived fromthe adherence to his cause of Lanfranc, a prelate of the greatestauthority amongst the English as well as the Normans, both from theplace he had held in the Conqueror's esteem, whose memory all menrespected, and from his own great and excellent qualities. By theadvice of this prelate the new monarch professed to be entirelygoverned. And as an earnest of his future reign, he renounced all therigid maxims of conquest, and swore to protect the Church and thepeople, and to govern by St. Edward's Laws, --a promise extremelygrateful and popular to all parties: for the Normans, finding theEnglish passionately desirous of these laws, and only knowing that theywere in general favorable to liberty and conducive to peace and order, became equally clamorous for their reëstablishment. By these measures, and the weakness of those which were adopted by Robert, Williamestablished himself on his throne, and suppressed a dangerous conspiracyformed by some Norman noblemen in the interests of his brother, althoughit was fomented by all the art and intrigue which his uncle Odo couldput in practice, the most bold and politic man of that age. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1089. ]

The security he began to enjoy from this success, and the strength whichgovernment receives by merely continuing, gave room to his naturaldispositions to break out in several acts of tyranny and injustice. Theforest laws were executed with rigor, the old impositions revived, andnew laid on. Lanfranc made representations to the king on this conduct, but they produced no other effect than the abatement of his credit, which from that moment to his death, which happened soon after, was verylittle in the government. The revenue of the vacant see was seized intothe king's hands. When the Church lands were made subject to militaryservice, they seemed to partake all the qualities of the militarytenure, and to be subject to the same burdens; and as on the death of amilitary vassal his land was in wardship of the lord until the heir hadattained his age, so there arose a pretence, on the vacancy of abishopric, to suppose the land in ward with the king until the seatshould be filled. This principle, once established, opened a large fieldfor various lucrative abuses; nor could it be supposed, whilst thevacancy turned to such good account, that a necessitous or avariciousking would show any extraordinary haste to put the bishoprics andabbacies out of his power. In effect, William always kept them a longtime vacant, and in the vacancy granted away much of their possessions, particularly several manors belonging to the see of Canterbury; and whenhe filled this see, it was only to prostitute that dignity by disposingof it to the highest bidder. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1093. ]

To support him in these courses he chose for his minister RalphFlambard, a fit instrument in his designs, and possessed of such art andeloquence as to color them in a specious manner. This man inflamed allthe king's passions, and encouraged him in his unjust enterprises. It ishard to say which was most unpopular, the king or his minister. ButFlambard, having escaped a conspiracy against his life, and havingpunished the conspirators severely, struck such a general terror intothe nation, that none dared to oppose him. Robert's title alone stood inthe king's way, and he knew that this must be a perpetual source ofdisturbance to him. He resolved, therefore, to put him in peril for hisown dominions. He collected a large army, and entering into Normandy, hebegan a war, at first with great success, on account of a differencebetween the Duke and his brother Henry. But their common dread ofWilliam reconciled them; and this reconciliation put them in a conditionof procuring an equal peace, the chief conditions of which were, thatRobert should be put in possession of certain seigniories in England, and that each, in case of survival, should succeed to the other'sdominions. William concluded this peace the more readily, becauseMalcolm, King of Scotland, who hung over him, was ready upon everyadvantage to invade his territories, and had now actually enteredEngland with a powerful army. Robert, who courted action, withoutregarding what interest might have dictated, immediately on concludingthe treaty entered into his brother's service in this war against theScots; which, on the king's return, being in appearance laid asleep byan accommodation, broke out with redoubled fury the following year. TheKing of Scotland, provoked to this rupture by the haughtiness ofWilliam, was circumvented by the artifice and fraud of one of hisministers: under an appearance of negotiation, he was attacked andkilled, together with his only son. This was a grievous wound toScotland, in the loss of one of the wisest and bravest of her kings, andin the domestic distractions which afterwards tore that kingdom topieces. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1094. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1096. ]

No sooner was this war ended, than William, freed from an enemy whichhad given himself and his father so many alarms, renewed his illtreatment of his brother, and refused to abide by the terms of the latetreaty. Robert, incensed at these repeated perfidies, returned toNormandy with thoughts full of revenge and war. But he found that theartifices and bribes of the King of England had corrupted the greatestpart of his barons, and filled the country with faction and disloyalty. His own facility of temper had relaxed all the bands of government, andcontributed greatly to these disorders. In this distress he was obligedto have recourse to the King of France for succor. Philip, who was thenon the throne, entered into his quarrel. Nor was William, on his side, backward; though prodigal to the highest degree, the resources of histyranny and extortion were inexhaustible. He was enabled to enterNormandy once more with a considerable army. But the opposition, too, was considerable; and the war had probably been spun out to a greatlength, and had drawn on very bloody consequences, if one of the mostextraordinary events which are contained in the history of mankind hadnot suspended their arms, and drawn, all inferior views, sentiments, anddesigns into the vortex of one grand project. This was the Crusade, which, with astonishing success, now began to be preached through allEurope. This design was then, and it continued long after, the principlewhich influenced the transactions of that period both at home andabroad; it will, therefore, not be foreign to our subject to trace it toits source. 

As the power of the Papacy spread, the see of Rome began to be more andmore an object of ambition; the most refined intrigues were put inpractice to attain it; and all the princes of Europe interestedthemselves in the contest. The election of Pope was not regulated bythose prudent dispositions which have since taken place; there werefrequent pretences to controvert the validity of the election, and ofcourse several persons at the same time laid claim to that dignity. Popes and Antipopes arose. Europe was rent asunder by these disputes, whilst some princes maintained the rights of one party, and somedefended the pretensions of the other: sometimes the prince acknowledgedone Pope, whilst his subjects adhered to his rival. The scandalsoccasioned by these schisms were infinite; and they threatened a deadlywound to that authority whose greatness had occasioned them. Princeswere taught to know their own power. That Pope who this day was asuppliant to a monarch to be recognized by him could with an ill gracepretend to govern him with an high hand the next. The lustre of the HolySee began to be tarnished, when Urban the Second, after a long contestof this nature, was universally acknowledged. That Pope, sensible by hisown experience of the ill consequence of such disputes, sought to turnthe minds of the people into another channel, and by exerting itvigorously to give a new strength to the Papal power. In an age soignorant, it was very natural that men should think a great deal inreligion depended upon the very scene where the work of our Redemptionwas accomplished. Pilgrimages to Jerusalem were therefore judged highlymeritorious, and became very frequent. But the country which was theobject of them, as well as several of those through which the journeylay, were in the hands of Mahometans, who, against all the rules ofhumanity and good policy, treated the Christian pilgrims with greatindignity. These, on their return, filled the minds of their neighborswith hatred and resentment against those infidels. Pope Urban laid holdon this disposition, and encouraged Peter the Hermit, a man visionary, zealous, enthusiastic, and possessed of a warm irregular eloquenceadapted to the pitch of his hearers, to preach an expedition for thedelivery of the Holy Land. 

Great designs may be started and the spirit of them inspired byenthusiasts, but cool heads are required to bring them into form. ThePope, not relying solely on Peter, called a council at Clermont, wherean infinite number of people of all sorts were assembled. Here hedispensed with a full hand benedictions and indulgences to all personswho should engage in the expedition; and preaching with great vehemencein a large plain, towards the end of his discourse, somebody, by designor by accident, cried out, "It is the will of God!" This voice wasrepeated by the next, and in a moment it circulated through thisinnumerable people, which rang with the acclamation of "It is the willof God! It is the will of God!"[76] The neighboring villages caught upthose oracular words, and it is incredible with what celerity theyspread everywhere around into places the most distant. Thiscircumstance, then considered as miraculous, contributed greatly to thesuccess of the Hermit's mission. No less did the disposition of thenobility throughout Europe, wholly actuated with devotion and chivalry, contribute to forward an enterprise so suited to the gratification ofboth these passions. Everything was now in motion; both sexes, and everystation and age and condition of life, engaged with transport in thisholy warfare. [77] There was even a danger that Europe would be entirelyexhausted by the torrents that were rushing out to deluge Asia. Thesevast bodies, collected without choice, were conducted without skill ororder; and they succeeded accordingly. Women and children composed nosmall part of those armies, which were headed by priests; and it ishard to say which is most lamentable, the destruction of such multitudesof men, or the frenzy which drew it upon them. But this design, afterinnumerable calamities, began at last to be conducted in a manner worthyof so grand and bold a project. Raimond, Count of Toulouse, Godfrey ofBouillon, and several other princes, who were great captains as well asdevotees, engaged in the expedition, and with suitable effects. But noneburned more to signalize his zeal and courage on this occasion thanRobert, Duke of Normandy, who was fired with the thoughts of anenterprise which seemed to be made for his genius. He immediatelysuspended his interesting quarrel with his brother, and, instead ofcontesting with him the crown to which he had such fair pretensions, orthe duchy of which he was in possession, he proposed to mortgage to himthe latter during five years for a sum of thirteen thousand marks ofgold. William, who had neither sense of religion nor thirst of glory, intrenched in his secure and narrow policy, laughed at a design that haddeceived all the great minds in Europe. He extorted, as usual, this sumfrom his subjects, and immediately took possession of Normandy; whilstRobert, at the head of a gallant army, leaving his hereditary dominions, is gone to cut out unknown kingdoms in Asia. 

Some conspiracies disturbed the course of the reign, or rather tyranny, of this prince: as plots usually do, they ended in the ruin of those whocontrived them, but proved no check to the ill government of William. Some disturbances, too, he had from the incursions of the Welsh, fromrevolts in Normandy, and from a war, that began and ended withoutanything memorable either in the cause or consequence, with France. 

He had a dispute at home which at another time had raised greatdisturbances; but nothing was now considered but the expedition to theHoly Land. After the death of Lanfranc, William omitted for a long timeto fill up that see, and had even alienated a considerable portion ofthe revenue. A fit of sickness, however, softened his mind; and theclergy, taking advantage of those happy moments, among other parts ofmisgovernment which they advised him to correct, particularly urged himto fill the vacant sees. He filled that of Canterbury with Anselm, Bishop of Bec, a man of great piety and learning, but inflexible andrigid in whatever related to the rights, real or supposed, of theChurch. This prelate refused to accept the see of Canterbury, foreseeingthe troubles that must arise from his own dispositions and those of theking; nor was he prevailed upon to accept it, but on a promise ofindemnification for what the temporalities of the see had suffered. ButWilliam's sickness and pious resolutions ending together, little carewas taken about the execution of this agreement. Thus began a quarrelbetween this rapacious king and inflexible archbishop. Soon after, Anselm declared in favor of Pope Urban, before the king had recognizedhim, and thus subjected himself to the law which William the Conquerorhad made against accepting a Pope without his consent. The quarrel wasinflamed to the highest pitch; and Anselm desiring to depart thekingdom, the king consented. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1100. ]

The eyes of all men being now turned towards the great transactions inthe East, William, Duke of Guienne, fired by the success and glory thatattended the holy adventurers, resolved to take the cross; but hisrevenues were not sufficient to support the figure his rank required inthis expedition. He applied to the King of England, who, being master ofthe purses of his subjects, never wanted money; and he was politicianenough to avail himself of the prodigal, inconsiderate zeal of the timesto lay out this money to great advantage. He acted the part of usurer tothe Croises; and as he had taken Normandy in mortgage from his brotherRobert, having advanced the Duke of Guienne a sum on the sameconditions, he was ready to confirm his bargain by taking possession, when he was killed in hunting by an accidental stroke of an arrow whichpierced his heart. This accident happened in the New Forest, which hisfather with such infinite oppression of the people had made, and inwhich they both delighted extremely. In the same forest the Conqueror'seldest son, a youth of great hopes, had several years before met hisdeath from the horns of a stag; and these so memorable fates to the samefamily and in the same place easily inclined men to think this ajudgment from Heaven: the people consoling themselves under theirsufferings with these equivocal marks of the vengeance of Providenceupon their oppressors. 

We have painted this prince in the colors in which he is drawn by allthe writers who lived the nearest to his time. Although the monkishhistorians, affected with the partiality of their character, and withthe sense of recent injuries, expressed themselves with passionconcerning him, we have no other guides to follow. Nothing, indeed, inhis life appears to vindicate his character; and it makes strongly forhis disadvantage, that, without any great end of government, hecontradicted the prejudices of the age in which he lived, the generaland common foundation of honor, and thereby made himself obnoxious tothat body of men who had the sole custody of fame, and could alonetransmit his name with glory or disgrace to posterity. 

FOOTNOTES:

[76] Maimbourg. 

[77] Chron. Sax. 204. 

CHAPTER IV. 

REIGN OF HENRY I. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1100. ]

Henry, the youngest son of the Conqueror, was hunting at the same timeand in the same forest in which his brother met his fate. He was notlong before he came to a resolution of seizing on the vacant crown. Theorder of succession had already been broken; the absence of Duke Robert, and the concurrence of many circumstances altogether resembling thosewhich had been so favorable to the late monarch, incited him to asimilar attempt. To lose no time at a juncture when the use of a momentis often decisive, he went directly to Winchester, where the regalia andthe treasures of the crown were deposited. But the governor, a man ofresolution, and firmly attached to Robert, positively refused to deliverthem. Henry, conscious that great enterprises are not to be conducted ina middle course, prepared to reduce him by force of arms. During thiscontest, the news of the king's death, and the attempts of Henry, drewgreat numbers of the nobility to Winchester, and with them a vastconcourse of the inferior people. To the nobility he set forth histitle to the crown in the most plausible manner it could bear: healleged that he was born after his father had acquired his kingdom, andthat he was therefore natural heir of the crown; but that his brotherwas, at best, only born to the inheritance of a dukedom. The nobilityheard the claim of this prince; but they were more generally inclined toRobert, whose birthright, less questionable in itself, had been alsoconfirmed by a solemn treaty. But whilst they retired to consult, Henry, well apprised of their dispositions, and who therefore was littleinclined to wait the result of their debates, threw himself entirelyupon the populace. To them he said little concerning his title, as heknew such an audience is little moved with a discussion of rights, butmuch with the spirit and manner in which they are claimed; for whichreason he began by drawing his sword, and swearing, with a bold anddetermined air, to persist in his pretensions to his last breath. Thenturning to the crowd, and remitting of his severity, he began to soothethem with the promises of a milder government than they had experiencedeither beneath his brother or his father; the Church should enjoy herimmunities, the people their liberties, the nobles their pleasures; theforest laws should cease; the distinction of Englishman and Norman beheard no more. Next he expatiated on the grievances of the formerreigns, and promised to redress them all. Lastly, he spoke of hisbrother Robert, whose dissoluteness, whose inactivity, whose unsteadytemper, nay, whose very virtues, threatened nothing but ruin to anycountry which he should govern. The people received this popularharangue, delivered by a prince whose person was full of grace andmajesty, with shouts of joy and rapture. Immediately they rush to thehouse where the council is held, which they surround, and with clamorand menaces demand Henry for their king. The nobility were terrified bythe sedition; and remembering how little present Robert had been on aformer occasion to his own interests, or to those who defended him, theyjoined their voice to that of the people, and Henry was proclaimedwithout opposition. The treasure which he seized he divided amongstthose that seemed wavering in his cause; and that he might secure hisnew and disputed right by every method, he proceeded without delay toLondon to be crowned, and to sanctify by the solemnity of the unctionthe choice of the people. As the churchmen in those days were thearbiters of everything, and as no churchman possessed more credit thanAnselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been persecuted and banishedby his brother, he recalled that prelate, and by every mark ofconfidence confirmed him in his interests. Two other steps he took, equally prudent and politic: he confirmed and enlarged the privileges ofthe city of London, and gave to the whole kingdom a charter ofliberties, which was the first of the kind, and laid the foundation ofthose successive charters which at last completed the freedom of thesubject. In fine, he cemented the whole fabric of his power by marryingMaud, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scotland, by the sister of EdgarAtheling, --thus to insure the affection, of the English, and, as heflattered himself, to have a sure succession to his children. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1101. ]

The Crusade being successfully finished by the taking of Jerusalem, Robert returned into Europe. He had acquired great reputation in thatwar, in which he had no interest; his real and valuable rights heprosecuted with languor. Yet such was the respect paid to his title, andsuch the attraction of his personal accomplishments, that, when he hadat last taken possession of his Norman territories, and entered Englandwith an army to assert his birthright, he found most of the Normanbarons, and many of the English, in readiness to join him. But thediligence of Anselm, who employed all his credit to keep the people firmto the oath they had taken, prevented him from profiting of the generalinclination in his favor. His friends began to fall off by degrees, sothat he was induced, as well by the situation of his affairs as theflexibility of his temper, to submit to a treaty on the plan of that hehad formerly entered into with his brother Rufus. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1103. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1106. ]

This treaty being made, Robert returned to his dukedom, and gave himselfover to his natural indolence and dissipation. Uncured by hismisfortunes of a loose generosity that flowed indiscriminately on all, he mortgaged every branch of his revenue, and almost his whole domain. His barons, despising his indigence, and secure in the benignity of histemper, began to assume the unhappy privilege of sovereigns. They madewar on each other at pleasure, and, pursuing their hostilities with themost scandalous license, they reduced that fine country to a deplorablecondition. In vain did the people, ruined by the tyranny and divisionsof the great, apply to Robert for protection: neither from hiscircumstances nor his character was he able to afford them any effectualrelief; whilst Henry, who by his bribes and artifices kept alive thedisorder of which he complained and profited, formed a party in Normandyto call him over, and to put the dukedom under his protection. Accordingly, he prepared a considerable force for the expedition, andtaxed his own subjects, arbitrarily, and without mercy, for the reliefhe pretended to afford those of his brother. His preparations rousedRobert from his indolence, and united likewise the greater part of hisbarons to his cause, unwilling to change a master whose only fault washis indulgence of them for the severe vigilance of Henry. The King ofFrance espoused the same side; and even in England some emotions wereexcited in favor of the Duke by indignation for the wrongs he hadsuffered and those he was going to suffer. Henry was alarmed, but didnot renounce his design. He was to the last degree jealous of hisprerogative; but knowing what immense resources kings may have inpopularity, he called on this occasion a great council of his barons andprelates, and there, by his arts and his eloquence, in both which he waspowerful, he persuaded the assembly to a hearty declaration in hisfavor, and to a large supply. Thus secured at home, he lost no time topass over to the continent, and to bring the Norman army to a speedyengagement. They fought under the walls of Tinchebrai, where the braveryand military genius of Robert, never more conspicuous than on that day, were borne down by the superior fortune and numbers of his ambitiousbrother. He was made prisoner; and notwithstanding all the tender pleasof their common blood, in spite of his virtues, and even of hismisfortunes, which pleaded so strongly for mercy, the rigid conquerorheld him in various prisons until his death, which did not happen untilafter a rigorous confinement of eighteen, some say twenty-seven, years. This was the end of a prince born with a thousand excellent qualities, which served no other purpose than to confirm, from the example of hismisfortunes, that a facility of disposition and a weak beneficence arethe greatest vices that can enter into the composition of a monarch, equally ruinous to himself and to his subjects. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1107. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1108. ]

The success of this battle put Henry in possession of Normandy, which heheld ever after with very little disturbance. He fortified his newacquisition by demolishing the castles of those turbulent barons who hadwasted and afterwards enslaved their country by their dissensions. Orderand justice took place, until everything was reduced to obedience; thena severe and regular oppression succeeded the former disorderly tyranny. In England things took the same course. The king no longer doubted hisfortune, and therefore no longer respected his promises or his charter. The forests, the savage passion of the Norman princes, for which boththe prince and people paid so dearly, were maintained, increased, andguarded with laws more rigorous than before. Taxes were largely andarbitrarily assessed. But all this tyranny did not weaken, though itvexed the nation, because the great men were kept in proper subjection, and justice was steadily administered. 

The politics of this remarkable reign consisted of three branches: toredress the gross abuses which prevailed in the civil government and therevenue, to humble the great barons, and keep the aspiring spirit ofthe clergy within proper bounds. The introduction of a new law with anew people at the Conquest had unsettled everything: for whilst someadhered to the Conqueror's regulations, and others contended for thoseof St. Edward, neither of them were well executed or properly obeyed. The king, therefore, with the assistance of his justiciaries, compiled anew body of laws, in order to find a temper between both. The coin hadbeen miserably debased, but it was restored by the king's vigilance, andpreserved by punishments, cruel, but terrifying in their example. Therewas a savageness in all the judicial proceedings of those days, thatgave even justice itself the complexion of tyranny: for whilst a numberof men were seen in all parts of the kingdom, some castrated, somewithout hands, others with their feet cut off, and in various wayscruelly mangled, the view of a perpetual punishment blotted out thememory of the transient crime, and government was the more odious, which, out of a cruel and mistaken mercy, to avoid punishing with death, devised torments far more terrible than death itself. 

But nothing called for redress more than the disorders in the king's ownhousehold. It was considered as an incident annexed to their tenure, that the socage vassals of the crown, and so of all the subordinatebarons, should receive their lord and all his followers, and supply themin their progresses and journeys, which custom continued for some agesafter in Ireland, under the name of _coshering_. But this indefinite andill-contrived charge on the tenant was easily perverted to an instrumentof much oppression by the disorders of a rude and licentious court;insomuch that the tenants, in fear for their substance, for the honorof their women, and often for their lives, deserted their habitationsand fled into the woods on the king's approach. No circumstance could bemore dishonorable to a prince; but happily, like many other greatabuses, it gave rise to a great reform, which went much further than itsimmediate purposes. This disorder, which the punishment of offenderscould only palliate, was entirely taken away by commuting personalservice for a rent in money; which regulation, passing from the king toall the inferior lords, in a short time wrought a great change in thestate of the nation. To humble the great men, more arbitrary methodswere used. The adherence to the title of Robert was a cause, or apretence, of depriving many of their vast possessions, which were splitor parcelled out amongst the king's creatures, with great injustice toparticulars, but in the consequences with general and lasting benefit. The king held his courts, according to the custom, at Christmas andEaster, but he seldom kept both festivals in the same place. He madecontinual progresses into all parts of his kingdom, and brought theroyal authority and person home to the doors of his haughty barons, which kept them in strict obedience during his long and severe reign. 

His contests with the Church, concerning the right of investiture, weremore obstinate and more dangerous. As this is an affair that troubledall Europe as well as England, and holds deservedly a principal place inthe story of those times, it will not be impertinent to trace it up toits original. In the early times of Christianity, when religion was onlydrawn from its obscurity to be persecuted, when a bishop was only acandidate for martyrdom, neither the preferment, nor the right ofbestowing it, were sought with great ambition. Bishops were thenelected, and often against their desire, by their clergy and the people:the subordinate ecclesiastical districts were provided for in the samemanner. After the Roman Empire became Christian, this usage, sogenerally established, still maintained its ground. However, in theprincipal cities, the Emperor frequently exercised the privilege ofgiving a sanction to the choice, and sometimes of appointing the bishop;though, for the most part, the popular election still prevailed. Butwhen, the Barbarians, after destroying the Empire, had at lengthsubmitted their necks to the Gospel, their kings and great men, full ofzeal and gratitude to their instructors, endowed the Church with largeterritories and great privileges. In this case it was but natural thatthey should be the patrons of those dignities and nominate to that powerwhich arose from their own free bounty. Hence the bishoprics in thegreatest part of Europe became in effect, whatever some few might havebeen in appearance, merely donative. And as the bishoprics formed somany seigniories, when the feudal establishment was completed, theypartook of the feudal nature, so far as they were subjects capable ofit; homage and fealty were required on the part of the spiritual vassal;the king, on his part, gave the bishop the investiture, or livery andseizin of his temporalities, by the delivery of a ring and staff. Thiswas the original manner of granting feudal property, and something likeit is still practised in our base-courts. Pope Adrian confirmed thisprivilege to Charlemagne by an express grant. The clergy of that time, ignorant, but inquisitive, were very ready at finding types andmysteries in every ceremony: they construed the staff into an emblem ofthe pastoral care, and the ring into a type of the bishop's allegoricalmarriage to his church, and therefore supposed them designed as emblemsof a jurisdiction merely spiritual. The Papal pretensions increased withthe general ignorance and superstition; and the better to support thesepretensions, it was necessary at once to exalt the clergy extremely, and, by breaking off all ties between them and their natural sovereigns, to attach them wholly to the Roman see. In pursuance of this project, the Pope first strictly forbade the clergy to receive investitures fromlaymen, or to do them homage. A council held at Rome entirely condemnedthis practice; and the condemnation was the less unpopular, because theinvestiture gave rise to frequent and flagrant abuses, especially inEngland, where the sees were on this pretence with much scandal longheld in the king's hands, and afterwards as scandalously and publiclysold to the highest bidder. So it had been in the last reign, and so itcontinued in this. 

Henry, though vigorously attacked, with great resolution maintained therights of his crown with regard to investitures, whilst he saw theEmperor, who claimed a right of investing the Pope himself, subdued bythe thunder of the Vatican. His chief opposition was within his ownkingdom. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of unblamable life, andof learning for his time, but blindly attached to the rights of theChurch, real or supposed, refused to consecrate those who receivedinvestitures from the king. The parties appealed to Rome. Rome, unwilling either to recede from her pretensions or to provoke a powerfulmonarch, gives a dubious answer. Meanwhile the contest grows hotter. Anselm is obliged to quit the kingdom, but is still inflexible. At last, the king, who, from the delicate situation of his affairs in thebeginning of his reign, had been obliged to temporize for a long time, by his usual prudent mixture of management with force obliged the Popeto a temperament which seemed extremely judicious. The king receivedhomage and fealty from his vassal; the investiture, as it was generallyunderstood to relate to spiritual jurisdiction, was given up, and onthis equal bottom peace was established. The secret of the Pope'smoderation was this: he was at that juncture close pressed by theEmperor, and it might be highly dangerous to contend with two suchenemies at once; and he was much more ready to yield to Henry, who hadno reciprocal demands on him, than to the Emperor, who had many and justones, and to whom he could not yield any one point without giving up aninfinite number of others very material and interesting. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1120. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1127. ]

As the king extricated himself happily from so great an affair, so allthe other difficulties of his reign only exercised, without endangeringhim. The efforts of France in favor of the son of Robert were late, desultory, and therefore unsuccessful. That youth, endued with equalvirtue and more prudence than his father, after exerting many uselessacts of unfortunate bravery, fell in battle, and freed Henry from alldisturbance on the side of France. The incursions of the Welsh in thisreign only gave him an opportunity of confining that people withinnarrower bounds. At home he was well obeyed by his subjects; abroad hedignified his family by splendid alliances. His daughter Matilda hemarried to the Emperor. But his private fortunes did not flow with soeven a course as his public affairs. His only son, William, with anatural daughter, and many of the flower of the young nobility, perishedat sea between Normandy and England. From that fatal accident the kingwas never seen to smile. He sought in vain from a second marriage toprovide a male successor; but when he saw all prospect of this at anend, he called a great council of his barons and prelates. His daughterMatilda, after the decease of the Emperor, he had given in marriage toGeoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou. As she was his only remainingissue, he caused her to be acknowledged as his successor by the greatcouncil; he enforced this acknowledgment by solemn oaths of fealty, --asanction which he weakened rather than confirmed by frequent repetition:vainly imagining that on his death any ties would bind to the respect ofa succession so little respected by himself, and by the violation ofwhich he had procured his crown. Having taken these measures in favor ofhis daughter, he died in Normandy, but in a good old age, and in thethirty-sixth year of a prosperous reign. 

CHAPTER V. 

REIGN OF STEPHEN. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1135. ]

Although the authority of the crown had been exercised with very littlerestraint during the three preceding reigns, the succession to it, oreven the principles of the succession, were but ill ascertained: so thata doubt might justly have arisen, whether the crown was not in a greatmeasure elective. This uncertainty exposed the nation, at the death ofevery king, to all the calamities of a civil war; but it was acircumstance favorable to the designs of Stephen, Earl of Boulogne, whowas son of Stephen, Earl of Blois, by a daughter of the Conqueror. Thelate king had raised him to great employments, and enriched him by thegrant of several lordships. His brother had been made Bishop ofWinchester; and by adding to it the place of his chief justiciary, theking gave him an opportunity of becoming one of the richest subjects inEurope, and of extending an unlimited influence over the clergy and thepeople. Henry trusted, by the promotion of two persons so near him inblood, and so bound by benefits, that he had formed an impenetrablefence about the succession; but he only inspired into Stephen the designof seizing on the crown by bringing him so near it. The opportunity wasfavorable. The king died abroad; Matilda was absent with her husband;and the Bishop of Winchester, by his universal credit, disposed thechurchmen to elect his brother, with the concurrence of the greatestpart of the nobility, who forgot their oaths, and vainly hoped that abad title would necessarily produce a good government. Stephen, in theflower of youth, bold, active, and courageous, full of generosity and anoble affability, that seemed to reproach the state and avarice of thepreceding kings, was not wanting to his fortune. He seized immediatelythe immense treasures of Henry, and by distributing them with ajudicious profusion removed all doubts concerning his title to them. Hedid not spare even the royal demesne, but secured himself a vast numberof adherents by involving their guilt and interest in his own. Heraised a considerable army of Flemings, in order to strengthen himselfagainst another turn of the same instability which had raised him to thethrone; and, in imitation of the measures of the late king, he concludedall by giving a charter of liberties as ample as the people at that timeaspired to. This charter contained a renunciation of the forests made byhis predecessor, a grant to the ecclesiastics of a jurisdiction overtheir own vassals, and to the people in general an immunity from unjusttallages and exactions. It is remarkable, that the oath of allegiancetaken by the nobility on this occasion was conditional: it was to beobserved so long as the king observed the terms of his charter, --acondition which added no real security to the rights of the subject, butwhich proved a fruitful source of dissension, tumult, and civilviolence. 

The measures which the king hitherto pursued were dictated by soundpolicy; but he took another step to secure his throne, which in facttook away all its security, and at the same time brought the country toextreme misery, and to the brink of utter ruin. 

At the Conquest there were very few fortifications in the kingdom. William found it necessary for his security to erect several. During thestruggles of the English, the Norman nobility were permitted (as inreason it could not be refused) to fortify their own houses. It was, however, still understood that no new fortress could be erected withoutthe king's special license. These private castles began very early toembarrass the government. The royal castles were scarcely lesstroublesome: for, as everything was then in tenure, the governor heldhis place by the tenure of castle-guard; and thus, instead of a simpleofficer, subject to his pleasure, the king had to deal with a feudaltenant, secure against him by law, if he performed his services, and byforce, if he was unwilling to perform them. Every resolution ofgovernment required a sort of civil war to put it in execution. The twolast kings had taken, and demolished several of these castles; but whenthey found the reduction, of any of them difficult, their customfrequently was, to erect another close by it, tower against tower, ditchagainst ditch: these were called Malvoisins, from their purpose andsituation. Thus, instead of removing, they in fact doubled the mischief. Stephen, perceiving the passion of the barons for these castles, amongother popular acts in the beginning of his reign, gave a general licensefor erecting them. Then was seen to arise in every corner of thekingdom, in every petty seigniory, an inconceivable multitude ofstrongholds, the seats of violence, and the receptacles of murderers, felons, debasers of the coin, and all manner of desperate and abandonedvillains. Eleven hundred and fifteen of these castles were built in thissingle reign. The barons, having thus shut out the law, made continualinroads upon each other, and spread war, rapine, burning, and desolationthroughout the whole kingdom. They infested the highroads, and put astop to all trade by plundering the merchants and travellers. Those whodwelt in the open country they forced into their castles, and afterpillaging them of all their visible substance, these tyrants held themin dungeons, and tortured them with a thousand cruel inventions toextort a discovery of their hidden wealth. The lamentable representationgiven by history of those barbarous times justifies the pictures in theold romances of the castles of giants and magicians. A great part ofEurope was in the same deplorable condition. It was then that somegallant spirits, struck with a generous indignation at the tyranny ofthese miscreants, blessed solemnly by the bishop, and followed by thepraises and vows of the people, sallied forth to vindicate the chastityof women and to redress the wrongs of travellers and peaceable men. Theadventurous humor inspired by the Crusade heightened and extended thisspirit; and thus the idea of knight-errantry was formed. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1138. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1139. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1141. ]

Stephen felt personally these inconveniences; but because the evil wastoo stubborn to be redressed at once, he resolved to proceed gradually, and to begin with the castles of the bishops, --as they evidently heldthem, not only against the interests of the crown, but against thecanons of the Church. From the nobles he expected no opposition to thisdesign: they beheld with envy the pride of these ecclesiasticalfortresses, whose battlements seemed to insult the poverty of the laybarons. This disposition, and a want of unanimity among the clergythemselves, enabled Stephen to succeed in his attempt against the Bishopof Salisbury, one of the first whom he attacked, and whose castles, fromtheir strength and situation, were of the greatest importance. But theaffairs of this prince were so circumstanced that he could pursue nocouncil that was not dangerous. His breach with the clergy let in theparty of his rival, Matilda. This party was supported by Robert, Earl ofGloucester, natural son to the late king, --a man powerful by his vastpossessions, but more formidable through his popularity, and the courageand abilities by which he had acquired it. Several other circumstancesweakened the cause of Stephen. The charter, and the other favorableacts, the scaffolding of his ambition, when he saw the structure raised, he threw down and contemned. In order to maintain his troops, as well asto attach men to his cause, where no principle bound them, vast andcontinual largesses became necessary: all his legal revenue had beendissipated; and he was therefore obliged to have recourse to suchmethods of raising money as were evidently illegal. These causes everyday gave some accession of strength to the party against him; thefriends of Matilda were encouraged to appear in arms; a civil warensued, long and bloody, prosecuted as chance or a blind rage directed, by mutual acts of cruelty and treachery, by frequent surprisals andassaults of castles, and by a number of battles and skirmishes fought tono determinate end, and in which nothing of the military art appeared, but the destruction which it caused. Various, on this occasion, were thereverses of fortune, while Stephen, though embarrassed by the weaknessof his title, by the scantiness of his finances, and all the disorderswhich arose from both, supported his tottering throne with wonderfulactivity and courage; but being at length defeated and made prisonerunder the walls of Lincoln, the clergy openly declare for Matilda. Thecity of London, though unwillingly, follows the example of the clergy. The defection from Stephen was growing universal. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1153. ]

But Matilda, puffed up with a greatness which as yet had no solidfoundation and stood merely in personal favor, shook it in the minds ofall men by assuming, together with the insolence of conquest, thehaughty rigor of an established dominion. Her title appeared but toogood in the resemblance she bore to the pride of the former kings. Thismade the first ill success in her affairs fatal. Her great support, theEarl of Gloucester, was in his turn made prisoner. In exchange for hisliberty that of Stephen was procured, who renewed the war with his usualvigor. As he apprehended an attempt from Scotland in favor of Matilda, descended from the blood royal of that nation, to balance this weight, he persuaded the King of France to declare in his favor, alarmed as hewas by the progress of Henry, the son of Matilda, and Geoffrey, Count ofAnjou. This prince, no more than sixteen years of age, after receivingknighthood from David, King of Scotland, began to display a courage andcapacity destined to the greatest things. Of a complexion which stronglyinclined to pleasure, he listened to nothing but ambition; at an agewhich is usually given up to passion, he submitted delicacy to politics, and even in his marriage only remembered the interests of asovereign, --for, without examining too scrupulously into her character, he married Eleanor, the heiress of Guienne, though divorced from herhusband for her supposed gallantries in the Holy Land. He made use ofthe accession of power which he acquired by this match to assert hisbirthright to Normandy. This he did with great success, because he wasfavored by the general inclination of the people for the blood of theirancient lords. Flushed with this prosperous beginning, he aspired togreater things; he obliged the King of France to submit to a truce; andthen he turned his arms to support the rights of his family in England, from whence Matilda retired, unequal to the troublesome part she hadlong acted. Worn out with age, and the clashing of furious factions, sheshut herself up in a monastery, and left to her son the succession of acivil war. Stephen was now pressed with renewed vigor. Henry had ratherthe advantage in the field; Stephen had the possession, of thegovernment. Their fortunes appearing nearly balanced, and the fuel ofdissension being consumed by a continual and bloody war of thirteenyears, an accommodation was proposed and accepted. Henry found itdangerous to refuse his consent, as the bishops and barons, even of hisown party, dreaded the consequences, if a prince, in the prime of anambitious youth, should establish an hereditary title by the force offoreign arms. This treaty, signed at Wallingford, left the possession ofthe crown for his life to Stephen, but secured the succession to Henry, whom that prince adopted. The castles erected in this reign were to bedemolished; the exorbitant grants of the royal demesne to be resumed. Tothe son of Stephen all his private possessions were secured. 

Thus ended this tedious and ruinous civil war. Stephen survived it neartwo years; and now, finding himself more secure as the lawful tenantthan he had been as the usurping proprietor of the crown, he no longergoverned on the maxims of necessity. He made no new attempts in favor ofhis family, but spent the remainder of his reign in correcting thedisorders which arose from his steps in its commencement, and in healingthe wounds of so long and cruel a war. Thus he left the kingdom in peaceto his successor, but his character, as it is usual where party isconcerned, greatly disputed. Wherever his natural dispositions had roomto exert themselves, they appeared virtuous and princely; but the lustto reign, which often attends great virtues, was fatal to his, frequently hid them, and always rendered them suspected. 

CHAPTER VI. 

REIGN OF HENRY II. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1154. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1158. ]

The death of Stephen left an undisputed succession for the first timesince the death of Edward the Confessor. Henry, descended equally fromthe Norman Conqueror and the old English kings, adopted by Stephen, acknowledged by the barons, united in himself every kind of title. Itwas grown into a custom for the king to grant a charter of liberties onhis accession to the crown. Henry also granted a charter of that kind, confirming that of his grandfather; but as his situation was verydifferent from that of his predecessors, his charter wasdifferent, --reserved, short, dry, conceived in general terms, --a gift, not a bargain. And, indeed, there seems to have been at that juncturebut little occasion to limit a power which seemed not more thansufficient to correct all the evils of an unlimited liberty. Henry spentthe beginning of his reign in repairing the ruins of the royalauthority, and in restoring to the kingdom peace and order, along withits ancient limits; and he may well be considered as the restorer of theEnglish monarchy. Stephen had sacrificed the demesne of the crown, andmany of its rights, to his subjects; and the necessity of the timesobliged both that prince and the Empress Matilda to purchase, in theirturns, the precarious friendship of the King of Scotland by a cession ofalmost all the country north of the Humber. But Henry obliged the Kingof Scotland to restore his acquisitions, and to renew his homage. Hetook the same methods with his barons. Not sparing the grants of hismother, he resumed what had been so lavishly squandered by both of thecontending parties, who, to establish their claims, had given awayalmost everything that made them valuable. There never was a prince inEurope who better understood the advantages to be derived from itspeculiar constitution, in which greater acquisitions of dominion aremade by judicious marriages than by success in war: for, having added tohis patrimonial territories of Anjou and Normandy the Duchy of Guienneby his own marriage, the male issue of the Dukes of Brittany failing, hetook the opportunity of marrying his third son, Geoffrey, then aninfant, to the heiress of that important province, an infant also; andthus uniting by so strong a link his northern to his southern dominions, he possessed in his own name, or in those of his wife and son, all thatfine and extensive country that is washed by the Atlantic Ocean, fromPicardy quite to the foot of the Pyrenees. 

Henry, possessed of such extensive territories, and aiming at furtheracquisitions, saw with indignation that the sovereign authority in allof them, especially in England, had been greatly diminished. By hisresumptions he had, indeed, lessened the greatness of several of thenobility. He had by force of arms reduced those who forcibly held thecrown lands, and deprived them of their own estates for theirrebellion. He demolished many castles, those perpetual resources ofrebellion and disorder. But the great aim of his policy was to break thepower of the clergy, which each of his predecessors, since Edward, hadalternately strove to raise and to depress, --at first in order to gainthat potent body to their interests, and then to preserve them insubjection to the authority which they had conferred. The clergy hadelected Stephen; they had deposed Stephen, and elected Matilda; and inthe instruments which they used on these occasions they affirmed inthemselves a general right of electing the kings of England. Their shareboth in the elevation and depression of that prince showed that theypossessed a power inconsistent with the safety and dignity of the state. The immunities which they enjoyed seemed no less prejudicial to thecivil economy, --and the rather, as, in the confusion of Stephen's reign, many, to protect themselves from the prevailing violence of the time, orto sanctify their own disorders, had taken refuge in the clericalcharacter. The Church was never so full of scandalous persons, who, being accountable only in the ecclesiastical courts, where no crime ispunished with death, were guilty of every crime. A priest had about thistime committed a murder attended with very aggravating circumstances. The king, willing at once to restore order and to depress the clergy, laid hold of this favorable opportunity to convoke the cause to his owncourt, when the atrociousness of the crime made all men look with anevil eye upon the claim of any privilege which might prevent theseverest justice. The nation in general seemed but little inclined tocontrovert so useful a regulation with so potent a prince. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1162. ]

Amidst this general acquiescence one man was found bold enough to opposehim, who for eight years together embroiled all his affairs, poisonedhis satisfactions, endangered his dominions, and at length in his deathtriumphed over all the power and policy of this wise and potent monarch. This was Thomas à-Becket, a man memorable for the great glory and thebitter reproaches he has met with from posterity. This person was theson of a respectable citizen of London. He was bred to the study of thecivil and canon law, the education, then, used to qualify a man forpublic affairs, in which he soon made a distinguished figure. By theroyal favor and his own abilities, he rose, in a rapid successionthrough several considerable employments, from an office under thesheriff of London, to be High Chancellor of the kingdom. In this highpost he showed a spirit as elevated; but it was rather a military spiritthan that of the gownman, --magnificent to excess in his living andappearance, and distinguishing himself in the tournaments and othermartial sports of that age with much ostentation of courage and expense. The king, who favored him greatly, and expected a suitable return, onthe vacancy, destined Becket, yet a layman, to the see of Canterbury, and hoped to find in him a warm promoter of the reformation he intended. Hardly a priest, he was made the first prelate in the kingdom. But nosooner was he invested with the clerical character than the whole tenorof his conduct was seen to change all at once: of his pompous retinue afew plain servants only remained; a monastic temperance regulated histable; and his life, in all respects formed to the most rigid austerity, seemed to prepare him for that superiority he was resolved to assume, and the conflicts he foresaw he must undergo in this attempt. 

It will not be unpleasing to pause a moment at this remarkable period, in order to view in what consisted that greatness of the clergy, whichenabled them to bear so very considerable a sway in all publicaffairs, --what foundations supported the weight of so vast apower, --whence it had its origin, --what was the nature, and what theground, of the immunities they claimed, --that we may the more fullyenter into this important controversy, and may not judge, as some haveinconsiderately done, of the affairs of those times by ideas taken fromthe present manners and opinions. 

It is sufficiently known, that the first Christians, avoiding the Pagantribunals, tried most even of their civil causes before the bishop, who, though he had no direct coercive power, yet, wielding the sword ofexcommunication, had wherewithal to enforce the execution of hisjudgments. Thus the bishop had a considerable sway in temporal affairs, even before he was owned by the temporal power. But the Emperors nosooner became Christian than, the idea of profaneness being removed fromthe secular tribunals, the causes of the Christian laity naturallypassed to that resort where those of the generality had been before. Butthe reverence for the bishop still remained, and the remembrance of hisformer jurisdiction. It was not thought decent, that he, who had been ajudge in his own court, should become a suitor in the court of another. The body of the clergy likewise, who were supposed to have no secularconcerns for which they could litigate, and removed by their characterfrom all suspicion of violence, were left to be tried by their ownecclesiastical superiors. This was, with a little variation, sometimesin extending, sometimes in restraining the bishops' jurisdiction, thecondition of things whilst the Roman Empire subsisted. But though theirimmunities were great and their possessions ample, yet, living under anabsolute form of government, they were powerful only by influence. Nojurisdictions were annexed to their lands; they had no place in thesenate; they were no order in the state. 

From the settlement of the Northern nations the clergy must beconsidered in another light. The Barbarians gave them large landedpossessions; and by giving them land, they gave them jurisdiction, which, according to their notions, was inseparable from it. They madethem an order in the state; and as all the orders had their privileges, the clergy had theirs, and were no less steady to preserve and ambitiousto extend them. Our ancestors, having united the Church dignities to thesecular dignities of baronies, had so blended the ecclesiastical withthe temporal power in the same persons that it became almost impossibleto separate them. The ecclesiastical was, however, prevalent in thiscomposition, drew to it the other, supported it, and was supported byit. But it was not the devotion only, but the necessity of the tunes, that raised the clergy to the excess of this greatness. The littlelearning which then subsisted remained wholly in their hands. Few amongthe laity could even read; consequently the clergy alone were proper forpublic affairs. They were the statesmen, they were the lawyers; fromthem were often taken the bailiffs of the seigneurial courts, sometimesthe sheriffs of counties, and almost constantly the justiciaries of thekingdom. [78] The Norman kings, always jealous of their order, werealways forced to employ them. In abbeys the law was studied; abbeys werethe palladiums of the public liberty by the custody of the royalcharters and most of the records. Thus, necessary to the great by theirknowledge, venerable to the poor by their hospitality, dreadful to allby the power of excommunication, the character of the clergy was exaltedabove everything in the state; and it could no more be otherwise inthose days than it is possible it should be so in ours. 

William the Conqueror made it one principal point of his politics toreduce the clergy; but all the steps he took in it were not equally wellcalculated to answer this intention. When he subjected the Church landsto military service, the clergy complained bitterly, as it lessenedtheir revenue: but I imagine it did not lessen their power inproportion; for by this regulation they came, like other great lords, tohave their military vassals, who owed them homage and fealty: and thisrather increased their consideration amongst so martial a people. Thekings who succeeded him, though they also aimed at reducing theecclesiastical power, never pursued their scheme on a great orlegislative principle. They seemed rather desirous of enrichingthemselves by the abuses in the Church than earnest to correct them. Oneday they plundered and the next day they founded monasteries, as theirrapaciousness or their scruples chanced to predominate; so that everyattempt of that kind, having rather the air of tyranny than reformation, could never be heartily approved or seconded by the body of the people. 

The bishops must always be considered in the double capacity of clerksand barons. Their courts, therefore, had a double jurisdiction: over theclergy and laity of their diocese for the cognizance of crimes againstecclesiastical law, and over the vassals of their barony as lordsparamount. But these two departments, so different in their nature, theyfrequently confounded, by making use of the spiritual weapon ofexcommunication to enforce the judgments of both; and this sentence, cutting off the party from the common society of mankind, lay equallyheavy on all ranks: for, as it deprived the lower sort of the fellowshipof their equals and the protection of their lord, so it deprived thelord of the services of his vassals, whether he or they lay under thesentence. This was one of the grievances which the king proposed toredress. 

As some sanction of religion is mixed with almost every concern of civillife, and as the ecclesiastical court took cognizance of all religiousmatters, it drew to itself not only all questions relative to tithes andadvowsons, but whatever related to marriages, wills, the estate ofintestates, the breaches of oaths and contracts, --in a word, everythingwhich did not touch life or feudal property. 

The ignorance of the bailiffs in lay courts, who were only possessed ofsome feudal maxims and the traditions of an uncertain custom, made thisrecourse to the spiritual courts the more necessary, where they couldjudge with a little more exactness by the lights of the canon and civillaws. 

This jurisdiction extended itself by connivance, by necessity, bycustom, by abuse, over lay persons and affairs. But the immunity of theclergy from lay cognizances was claimed, not only as a privilegeessential to the dignity of their order, supported by the canons, andcountenanced by the Roman law, but as a right confirmed by all theancient laws of England. 

Christianity, coming into England out of the bosom of the Roman Empire, brought along with it all those ideas of immunity. The first trace wecan find of this exemption from lay jurisdiction in England is in thelaws of Ethelred;[79] it is more fully established in those ofCanute;[80] but in the code of Henry I. It is twice distinctlyaffirmed. [81] This immunity from the secular jurisdiction, whilst itseemed to encourage acts of violence in the clergy towards others, encouraged also the violence of others against them. The murder of aclerk could not be punished at this time by death; it was against aspiritual person, an offence wholly spiritual, of which the secularcourts took no sort of cognizance. In the Saxon times two circumstancesmade such an exemption less a cause of jealousy: the sheriff sat withthe bishop, and the spiritual jurisdiction was, if not under thecontrol, at least under the inspection of the lay officer; and then, asneither laity nor clergy were capitally punished for any offence, thisprivilege did not create so invidious and glaring a distinction betweenthem. Such was the power of the clergy, and such the immunities, whichthe king proposed to diminish. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1164. ]

Becket, who had punished the ecclesiastic for his crime byecclesiastical law, refused to deliver him over to the secular judgesfor farther punishment, on the principle of law, that no man ought to betwice questioned for the same offence. The king, provoked at thisopposition, summoned a council of the barons and bishops at Clarendon;and here, amongst others of less moment, the following were unanimouslydeclared to be the ancient prerogatives of the crown. And it issomething remarkable, and certainly makes much for the honor of theirmoderation, that the bishops and abbots who must have composed so largeand weighty a part of the great council seem not only to have made noopposition to regulations which so remarkably contracted theirjurisdiction, but even seem to have forwarded them. 

1st. A clerk accused of any crime shall appear in the king's court, thatit may be judged whether he belongs to ecclesiastical or secularcognizance. If to the former, a deputy shall go into the bishop's courtto observe the trial; if the clerk be convicted, he shall be deliveredover to the king's justiciary to be punished. 

2nd. All causes concerning presentation, all causes concerningFrankalmoign, all actions concerning breach of faith, shall be tried inthe king's court. 

3rd. The king's tenant _in capite_ shall not be excommunicated withoutthe king's license. 

4th. No clerk shall go out of the kingdom without giving security thathe will do nothing to the prejudice of the king or nation. And allappeals shall be tried at home. 

These are the most material of the Constitutions or Assizes ofClarendon, famous for having been the first legal check given to thepower of the clergy in England. To give these constitutions the greaterweight, it was thought proper that they should be confirmed by a bullfrom the Pope. By this step the king seemed to doubt the entireness ofhis own authority in his dominions; and by calling in foreign aid whenit served his purpose, he gave it a force and a sort of legal sanctionwhen it came to be employed against himself. But as no negotiation hadprepared the Pope in favor of laws designed in reality to abridge hisown power, it was no wonder that he rejected them with indignation. Becket, who had not been prevailed on to accept them but with infinitereluctance, was no sooner apprised of the Pope's disapprobation than heopenly declared his own; he did penance in the humblest manner for hisformer acquiescence, and resolved to make amends for it by opposing thenew constitutions with the utmost zeal. In this disposition the king sawthat the Archbishop might be more easily ruined than humbled, and hisruin was resolved. Immediately a number of suits, on various pretences, were commenced against him, in every one of which he was sure to befoiled; but these making no deadly blow at his fortunes, he was calledto account for thirty thousand pounds which he was accused of havingembezzled during his chancellorship. It was in vain that he pleaded afull acquittance from the king's son, and Richard de Lucy, the guardianand justiciary of the kingdom, on his resignation of the seals; he sawit was already determined against him. Far from yielding under theserepeated blows, he raised still higher the ecclesiastical pretensions, now become necessary to his own protection. He refused to answer to thecharge, and appealed to the Pope, to whom alone he seemed to acknowledgeany real subjection. A great ferment ensued on this appeal. Thecourtiers advised that he should be thrown into prison, and that histemporalities should be seized. The bishops, willing to reduce Becketwithout reducing their own order, proposed to accuse him before thePope, and to pursue him to degradation. Some of his friends pressed himto give up his cause; others urged him to resign his dignity. The king'sservants threw out menaces against his life. Amidst this generalconfusion of passions and councils, whilst every one according to hisinterests expected the event with much anxiety, Becket, in the disguiseof a monk, escaped out of the nation, and threw himself into the arms ofthe King of France. 

Henry was greatly alarmed at this secession, which put the Archbishopout of his power, but left him in full possession of all hisecclesiastical weapons. An embassy was immediately dispatched to Rome, in order to accuse Becket; but as Becket pleaded the Pope's own causebefore the Pope himself, he obtained an easy victory over the king'sambassadors. Henry, on the other hand, took every measure to maintainhis authority: he did everything worthy of an able politician, and of aking tenacious of his just authority. He likewise took measures not onlyto humble Becket, but also to lower that chair whose exaltation had anill influence on the throne: for he encouraged the Bishop of London torevive a claim to the primacy; and thus, by making the rights of the seeat least dubious, he hoped to render future prelates more cautious inthe exercise of them. He inhibited, under the penalty of high treason, all ecclesiastics from going out of his dominions without license, orany emissary of the Pope's or Archbishop's from entering them withletters of excommunication or interdict. And that he might not supplyarms against himself, the Peter-pence were collected with the formercare, but detained in the royal treasury, that matter might be left toRome both for hope and fear. In the personal treatment of Becket all theproceedings were full of anger, and by an unnecessary and unjustseverity greatly discredited both the cause and character of the king;for he stripped of their goods and banished all the Archbishop'skindred, all who were in any sort connected with him, without the leastregard to sex, age, or condition. In the mean time, Becket, stung withthese affronts, impatient of his banishment, and burning with all thefury and the same zeal which had occasioned it, continually threatenedthe king with the last exertions of ecclesiastical power; and all thingswere thereby, and by the absence and enmity of the head of the EnglishChurch, kept in great confusion. 

During this unhappy contention several treaties were set on foot; butthe disposition of all the parties who interested themselves in thisquarrel very much protracted a determination in favor of either side. With regard to Rome, the then Pope was Alexander the Third, one of thewisest prelates who had ever governed that see, and the most zealous forextending its authority. However, though incessantly solicited by Becketto excommunicate the king and to lay the kingdom under an interdict, hewas unwilling to keep pace with the violence of that enraged bishop. Becket's view was single; but the Pope had many things to consider: anAntipope then subsisted, who was strongly supported by the Emperor; andHenry had actually entered into a negotiation with this Emperor andthis pretended Pope. On the other hand, the king knew that the lowersort of people in England were generally affected to the Archbishop, andmuch under the influence of the clergy. He was therefore fearful todrive the Pope to extremities by wholly renouncing his authority. Thesedispositions in the two principal powers made way for severalconferences leading to peace. But for a long time all their endeavorsseemed rather to inflame than to allay the quarrel. Whilst the king, steady in asserting his rights, remembered with bitterness theArchbishop's opposition, and whilst the Archbishop maintained the claimsof the Church with an haughtiness natural to him, and which was onlyaugmented by his sufferings, the King of France appeared sometimes toforward, sometimes to perplex the negotiation: and this duplicity seemedto be dictated by the situation of his affairs. He was desirous ofnourishing a quarrel which put so redoubted a vassal on the defensive;but he was also justly fearful of driving so powerful a prince to forgetthat he was a vassal. All parties, however, wearied at length with acontest by which all were distracted, and which in its issue promisednothing favorable to any of them, yielded at length to an accommodation, founded rather on an oblivion and silence of past disputes than on thesettlement of terms for preserving future tranquillity. Becket returnedin a sort of triumph to his see. Many of the dignified clergy, and not afew of the barons, lay under excommunication for the share they had inhis persecution; but, neither broken by adversity nor softened by goodfortune, he relented nothing of his severity, but referred them all fortheir absolution to the Pope. Their resentments were revived withadditional bitterness; new affronts were offered to the Archbishop, which brought on new excommunications and interdicts. The contentionthickened on all sides, and things seemed running precipitately to theformer dangerous extremities, when the account of these contests wasbrought, with much aggravation against Becket, to the ears of the king, then in Normandy, who, foreseeing a new series of troubles, broke out ina violent passion of grief and anger, --"I have no friends, or I had notso long been insulted by this haughty priest!" Four knights who attendednear his person, thinking that the complaints of a king are orders forrevenge, and hoping a reward equal to the importance and even guilt ofthe service, silently departed; and passing with great diligence intoEngland, in a short time they arrived at Canterbury. They entered thecathedral; they fell on the Archbishop, just on the point of celebratingdivine service, and with repeated blows of their clubs they beat him tothe ground, they broke his skull in pieces, and covered the altar withhis blood and brains. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1171. ]

The horror of this barbarous action, increased by the sacredness of theperson who suffered and of the place where it was committed, diffuseditself on all sides with incredible rapidity. The clergy, in whose causehe fell, equalled him to the most holy martyrs; compassion for his fatemade all men forget his faults; and the report of frequent miracles athis tomb sanctified his cause and character, and threw a general odiumon the king. What became of the murderers is uncertain: they wereneither protected by the king nor punished by the laws, for the reasonwe have not long since mentioned. The king with infinite difficultyextricated himself from the consequences of this murder, whichthreatened, under the Papal banners, to arm all Europe against him; norwas he absolved, but by renouncing the most material parts of theConstitutions of Clarendon, by purging himself upon oath of the murderof Becket, by doing a very humiliating penance at his tomb to expiatethe rash words which had given occasion to his death, and by engaging tofurnish a large sum of money for the relief of the Holy Land, and takingthe cross himself as soon as his affairs should admit it. The kingprobably thought his freedom from the haughtiness of Becket cheaplypurchased by these condescensions: and without question, though Becketmight have been justifiable, perhaps even laudable, for his steadymaintenance of the privileges which his Church and his order hadacquired by the care of his predecessors, and of which he by his placewas the depository, yet the principles upon which he supported theseprivileges, subversive of all good government, his extravagant ideas ofChurch power, the schemes he meditated, even to his death, to extend ityet further, his violent and unreserved attachment to the Papacy, andthat inflexible spirit which all his virtues rendered but the moredangerous, made his death as advantageous, at that time, as the means bywhich it was effected were sacrilegious and detestable. 

Between the death of Becket and the king's absolution he resolved on theexecution of a design by which he reduced under his dominion a countrynot more separated from the rest of Europe by its situation than by thelaws, customs, and way of life of the inhabitants: for the people ofIreland, with no difference but that of religion, still retained thenative manners of the original Celts. The king had meditated this designfrom the very beginning of his reign, and had obtained a bull from thethen Pope, Adrian the fourth, an Englishman, to authorize the attempt. He well knew, from the internal weakness and advantageous situation ofthis noble island, the easiness and importance of such a conquest. Butat this particular time he was strongly urged to his engaging personallyin the enterprise by two other powerful motives. For, first, the murderof Becket had bred very ill humors in his subjects, the chiefs of whom, always impatient of a long peace, were glad of any pretence forrebellion; it was therefore expedient, and serviceable to the crown, tofind an employment abroad for this spirit, which could not exert itselfwithout being destructive at home. And next, as he had obtained thegrant of Ireland from the Pope, upon condition of subjecting it toPeter-pence, he knew that the speedy performance of this condition wouldgreatly facilitate his recovering the good graces of the court of Rome. Before we give a short narrative of the reduction of Ireland, I proposeto lay open to the reader the state of that kingdom, that we may seewhat grounds Henry had to hope for success in this expedition. 

Ireland is about half as large as England. In the temperature of theclimate there is little difference, other than that more rain falls; asthe country is more mountainous, and exposed full to the westerly wind, which, blowing from the Atlantic Ocean, prevails during the greater partof the year. This moisture, as it has enriched the country with largeand frequent rivers, and spread out a number of fair and magnificentlakes beyond the proportion of other places, has on the other handincumbered the island with an uncommon multitude of bogs and morasses;so that in general it is less praised for corn than pasturage, in whichno soil is more rich and luxuriant. Whilst it possesses these internalmeans of wealth, it opens on all sides a great number of ports, spaciousand secure, and by their advantageous situation inviting to universalcommerce. But on these ports, better known than those of Britain in thetime of the Romans, at this time there were few towns, scarce anyfortifications, and no trade that deserves to be mentioned. 

The people of Ireland lay claim to a very extravagant antiquity, througha vanity common to all nations. The accounts which are given by theirancient chronicles of their first settlements are generally talesconfuted by their own absurdity. The settlement of the greatestconsequence, the best authenticated, and from which the Irish deduce thepedigree of the best families, is derived from Spain: it was called ClanMilea, or the descendants of Milesius, and Kin Scuit, or the race ofScyths, afterwards known by the name of Scots. The Irish historianssuppose this race descended from a person called Gathel, a Scythian bybirth, an Egyptian by education, the contemporary and friend of theprophet Moses. But these histories, seeming clear-sighted in the obscureaffairs of so blind an antiquity, instead of passing for treasuries ofancient facts, are regarded by the judicious as modern fictions. Incases of this sort rational conjectures are more to be relied on thanimprobable relations. It is most probable that Ireland was first peopledfrom Britain. The coasts of these countries are in some places in sightof each other. The language, the manners, and religion of the mostancient inhabitants of both are nearly the same. The Milesian colony, whenever it arrived in Ireland, could have made no great change in themanners or language; as the ancient Spaniards were a branch of theCeltæ, as well as the old inhabitants of Ireland. The Irish language isnot different from that of all other nations, as Temple and Rapin, fromignorance of it, have asserted; on the contrary, many of its words beara remarkable resemblance not only to those of the Welsh and Armoric, butalso to the Greek and Latin. Neither is the figure of the letters verydifferent from the vulgar character, though their order is not the samewith that of other nations, nor the names, which are taken from theIrish proper names of several species of trees: a circumstance which, notwithstanding their similitude to the Roman letters, argues adifferent original and great antiquity. The Druid discipline ancientlyflourished in that island. In the fourth century it fell down before thepreaching of St. Patrick. Then the Christian religion was embraced andcultivated with an uncommon zeal, which displayed itself in the numberand consequence of the persons who in all parts embraced thecontemplative life. This mode of life, and the situation of Ireland, removed from the horror of those devastations which shook the rest ofEurope, made it a refuge for learning, almost extinguished everywhereelse. Science flourished in Ireland during the seventh and eighthcenturies. The same cause which destroyed it in other countries alsodestroyed it there. The Danes, then pagans, made themselves masters ofthe island, after a long and wasteful war, in which they destroyed thesciences along with the monasteries in which they were cultivated. By asdestructive a war they were at length expelled; but neither theirancient science nor repose returned to the Irish, who, falling intodomestic distractions as soon as they were freed from their foreignenemies, sunk quickly into a state of ignorance, poverty, and barbarism, which must have been very great, since it exceeded that of the rest ofEurope. The disorders in the Church were equal to those in the civileconomy, and furnished to the Pope a plausible pretext for giving Henrya commission to conquer the kingdom, in order to reform it. 

The Irish were divided into a number of tribes or clans, each clanforming within itself a separate government. It was ordered by a chief, who was not raised to that dignity either by election or by the ordinarycourse of descent, but as the eldest and worthiest of the blood of thedeceased lord. This order of succession, called Tanistry, was said tohave been invented in the Danish troubles, lest the tribe, during aminority, should have been endangered for want of a sufficient leader. It was probably much more ancient: but it was, however, attended withvery great and pernicious inconveniencies, as it was obviously an affairof difficulty to determine who should be called the worthiest of theblood; and a door being always left open for ambition, this orderintroduced a greater mischief than it was intended to remedy. Almostevery tribe, besides its contention with the neighboring tribes, nourished faction and discontent within itself. The chiefs we speak ofwere in general called Tierna, or Lords, and those of more considerationRiagh, or Kings. Over these were placed five kings more eminent thanthe rest, answerable to the five provinces into which the island wasanciently divided. These again were subordinate to one head, who wascalled Monarch of all Ireland, raised to that power by election, or, more properly speaking, by violence. 

Whilst the dignities of the state were disposed of by a sort ofelection, the office of judges, who were called Brehons, the trades ofmechanics, and even those arts which we are apt to consider as dependingprincipally on natural genius, such as poetry and music, were confinedin succession to certain races: the Irish imagining that greateradvantages were to be derived from an early institution, and theaffection of parents desirous of perpetuating the secrets of their artin their families, than from the casual efforts of particular fancy andapplication. This is much in the strain of the Eastern policy; but theseand many other of the Irish institutions, well enough calculated topreserve good arts and useful discipline, when these arts came todegenerate, were equally well calculated to prevent all improvement andto perpetuate corruption, by infusing an invincible tenaciousness ofancient customs. 

The people of Ireland were much more addicted to pasturage thanagriculture, not more from the quality of their soil than from a remnantof the Scythian manners. They had but few towns, and those notfortified, each clan living dispersed over its own territory. The fewwalled towns they had lay on the sea-coast; they were built by theDanes, and held after they had lost their conquests in the inland parts:here was carried on the little foreign trade which the island thenpossessed. 

The Irish militia was of two kinds: one called _kerns_, which werefoot, slightly armed with a long knife or dagger, and almost naked; theother, _galloglasses, _ who were horse, poorly mounted, and generallyarmed only with a battle-axe. Neither horse nor foot made much use ofthe spear, the sword, or the bow. With indifferent arms, they had stillworse discipline. In these circumstances, their natural bravery, which, though considerable, was not superior to that of their invaders, stoodthem in little stead. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1167. ]

Such was the situation of things in Ireland, when Dermot, King ofLeinster, having violently carried away the wife of one of theneighboring petty sovereigns, Roderic, King of Connaught and Monarch ofIreland, joined with the injured husband to punish so flagrant anoutrage, and with their united forces spoiled Dermot of his territories, and obliged him to abandon the kingdom. The fugitive prince, notunapprised of Henry's designs upon his country, threw himself at hisfeet, implored his protection, and promised to hold of him, as hisfeudatory, the sovereignty he should recover by his assistance. Henrywas at this time at Guienne. Nothing could be more agreeable to him thansuch an incident; but as his French dominions actually lay under aninterdict, on account of his quarrel with Becket, and all his affairs, both at home and abroad, were in a troubled and dubious situation, itwas not prudent to remove his person, nor venture any considerable bodyof his forces on a distant enterprise. Yet not willing to lose sofavorable an opportunity, he warmly recommended the cause of Dermot tohis regency in England, permitting and encouraging all persons to arm inhis favor: a permission, in this age of enterprise, greedily accepted bymany; but the person who brought the most assistance to it, and indeedgave a form and spirit to the whole design, was Richard, Earl ofStrigul, commonly known by the name of Strongbow. Dermot, to confirm inhis interest this potent and warlike peer, promised him his daughter inmarriage, with the reversion of his crown. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1169. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1171. ]

The beginnings of so great an enterprise were formed with a very slenderforce. Not four hundred men landed near Wexford: they took the town bystorm. When reinforced, they did not exceed twelve hundred; but, beingjoined with three thousand men by Dermot, with an incredible rapidity ofsuccess they reduced Waterford, Dublin, Limerick, the only considerablecities in Ireland. By the novelty of their arms they had obtained somestriking advantages in their first engagements; and by these advantagesthey attained a superiority of opinion over the Irish, which everysuccess Increased. Before the effect of this first impression had timeto wear off, Henry, having settled his affairs abroad, entered theharbor of Cork with a fleet of four hundred sail, at once to secure theconquest, and the allegiance of the conquerors. The fame of so great aforce arriving under a prince dreaded by all Europe very soon disposedall the petty princes, with their King Roderic, to submit and do homageto Henry. They had not been able to resist the arms of his vassals, andthey hoped better treatment from submitting to the ambition of a greatking, who left them everything but the honor of their independency, thanfrom the avarice of adventurers, from which nothing was secure. Thebishops and the body of the clergy greatly contributed to thissubmission, from respect to the Pope, and the horror of their latedefeats, which they began to regard as judgments. A national council washeld at Cashel for bringing the Church of Ireland to a perfectconformity in rites and discipline to that of England. It is not to bethought that in this council the temporal interests of England wereentirely forgotten. Many of the English were established in theirparticular conquests under the tenure of knights' service, now firstintroduced into Ireland: a tenure which, if it has not proved the bestcalculated to secure the obedience of the vassal to the sovereign, hasnever failed in any instance of preserving a vanquished people inobedience to the conquerors. The English lords built strong castles ontheir demesnes; they put themselves at the head of the tribes whosechiefs they had slain; they assumed the Irish garb and manners; andthus, partly by force, partly by policy, the first English families tooka firm root in Ireland. It was, indeed, long before they were ableentirely to subdue the island to the laws of England; but the continualefforts of the Irish for more than four hundred years provedinsufficient to dislodge them. 

Whilst Henry was extending his conquests to the western limits of theknown world, the whole fabric of his power was privately sapped andundermined, and ready to overwhelm him with the ruins, in the verymoment when he seemed to be arrived at the highest and most permanentpoint of grandeur and glory. His excessive power, his continualaccessions to it, and an ambition which by words and actions declaredthat the whole world was not sufficient for a great man, struck a justterror into all the potentates near him: he was, indeed, arrived at thatpitch of greatness, that the means of his ruin could only be found inhis own family. A numerous offspring, which is generally considered asthe best defence of the throne, and the support as well as ornament ofdeclining royalty, proved on this occasion the principal part of thedanger. Henry had in his lawful bed, besides daughters, four sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John, all growing up with great hopes fromtheir early courage and love of glory. No father was ever more delightedwith these hopes, nor more tender and indulgent to his children. Acustom had long prevailed in France for the reigning king to crown hiseldest son in his lifetime. By this policy, in turbulent times, andwhilst the principles of succession were unsettled, he secured the crownto his posterity. Henry gladly imitated a policy enforced no less bypaternal affection than its utility to public peace. He had, during histroubles with Becket, crowned his son Henry, then no more than sixteenyears old. But the young king, even on the day of his coronation, discovered an haughtiness which threatened not to content itself withthe share of authority to which the inexperience of his youth and thenature of a provisional crown confined him. The name of a kingcontinually reminded him that he only possessed the name. The King ofFrance, whose daughter he had espoused, fomented a discontent which grewwith his years. Geoffrey, who had married the heiress of Bretagne, onthe death of her father claimed to no purpose the entire sovereignty ofhis wife's inheritance, which Henry, under a pretence of guardianship toa son of full age, still retained in his hands. Richard had not the sameplausible pretences, but he had yet greater ambition. He contended forthe Duchy of Guienne before his mother's death, which, alone could givehim the color of a title to it. The queen, his mother, hurried on by herown unquiet spirit, or, as some think, stimulated by jealousy, encouraged their rebellion against her husband. The King of France, whomoved all the other engines, engaged the King of Scotland, the Earl ofFlanders, then a powerful prince, the Earl of Blois, and the Earl ofBoulogne in the conspiracy. The barons in Bretagne, in Guienne, and evenin England, were ready to take up arms in the same cause; whether it wasthat they perceived the uniform plan the king had pursued in order totheir reduction, or were solely instigated by the natural fierceness andlevity of their minds, fond of every dangerous novelty. The historiansof that time seldom afford us a tolerable insight into the causes of thetransactions they relate; but whatever were the causes of soextraordinary a conspiracy, it was not discovered until the moment itwas ready for execution. The first token of it appeared in the youngking's demand to have either England or Normandy given up to him. Therefusal of this demand served as a signal to all parties to putthemselves in motion. The younger Henry fled into France; Louis enteredNormandy with a vast army; the barons of Bretagne under Geoffrey, andthose of Guienne under Richard, rose in arms; the King of Scotlandpierced into England; and the Earl of Leicester, at the head of fourteenthousand Flemings, landed in Suffolk. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1173]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1174]

It was on this trying occasion that Henry displayed a greatnessindependent of all fortune. For, beset by all the neighboring powers, opposed by his own children, betrayed by his wife, abandoned by one partof his subjects, uncertain of the rest, every part of his state rottenand suspicious, his magnanimity grew beneath the danger; and when allthe ordinary resources failed, he found superior resources in his owncourage, wisdom, and activity. There were at that time dispersed overEurope bodies of mercenary troops, called Brabançons, composed offugitives from different nations, men who were detached from anycountry, and who, by making war a perpetual trade, and passing fromservice to service, had acquired an experience and military knowledgeuncommon in those days. Henry took twenty thousand of these mercenariesinto his service, and, as he paid them punctually, and kept them alwaysin action, they served him with fidelity. The Papal authority, so oftensubservient, so often prejudicial to his designs, he called to hisassistance in a cause which did not misbecome it, --the cause of a fatherattacked by his children. This took off the ill impression left byBecket's death, and kept the bishops firm in their allegiance. Havingtaken his measures with judgment, he pursued the war in Normandy withvigor. In this war his mercenaries had a great and visible advantageover the feudal armies of France: the latter, not so useful while theyremained in the field, entered it late in the summer, and commonly leftit in forty days. The King of France was forced to raise the siege ofVerneuil, to evacuate Normandy, and agree to a truce. Then, at the headof his victorious Brabançons, Henry marched into Brittany with anincredible expedition. The rebellious army, astonished as much by thecelerity of his march as the fury of his attack, was totally routed. Theprincipal towns and castles were reduced soon after. The custody of theconquered country being lodged in faithful hands, he flew to the reliefof England. There his natural son Geoffrey, Bishop elect of Ely, faithful during the rebellion of all his legitimate offspring, steadilymaintained his cause, though with forces much inferior to his zeal. Theking, before he entered into action, thought it expedient to perform hisexpiation at the tomb of Becket. Hardly had he finished this ceremony, when the news arrived that the Scotch army was totally defeated, andtheir king made prisoner. This victory was universally attributed to theprayers of Becket; and whilst it established the credit of the newsaint, it established Henry in the minds of his people: they no longerlooked upon their king as an object of the Divine vengeance, but as apenitent reconciled to Heaven, and under the special protection of themartyr he had made. The Flemish army, after several severe checks, capitulated to evacuate the kingdom. The rebellious barons submittedsoon after. All was quiet in England; but the King of France renewedhostilities in Normandy, and laid siege to Rouen. Henry recruited hisarmy with a body of auxiliary Welsh, arrived at Rouen with his usualexpedition, raised the siege, and drove the King of France quite out ofNormandy. It was then that he agreed to an accommodation, and in theterms of peace, which he dictated in the midst of victory to his sons, his subjects, and his enemies, there was seen on one hand the tendernessof a father, and on the other the moderation of a wise man, notinsensible of the mutability of fortune. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1176]

The war which threatened his ruin being so happily ended, the greatnessof the danger served only to enhance his glory; whilst he saw the Kingof France humbled, the Flemings defeated, the King of Scotland aprisoner, and his sons and subjects reduced to the bounds of their duty. He employed this interval of peace to secure its continuance, and toprevent a return of the like evils; for which reason he made manyreforms in the laws and polity of his dominions. He instituted itinerantjustices, to weaken the power of the great barons, and even of thesheriffs, who were hardly more obedient, --an institution which, withgreat public advantages, has remained to our times. In the spirit of thesame policy he armed the whole body of the people: the Englishcommonalty had been in a manner disarmed ever since the Conquest. Inthis regulation we may probably trace the origin of the militia, which, being under the orders of the crown rather in a political than a feudalrespect, were judged more to be relied on than the soldiers of tenure, to whose pride and power they might prove a sort of counterpoise. Amidstthese changes the affairs of the clergy remained untouched. The king hadexperienced how dangerous it was to attempt removing foundations sodeeply laid both in strength and opinion. He therefore wisely aimed atacquiring the favor of that body, and turning to his own advantage apower he should in vain attempt to overthrow, but which he might set upagainst another power, which it was equally his interest to reduce. 

Though these measures were taken with the greatest judgment, and seemedto promise a peaceful evening to his reign, the seeds of rebellionremained still at home, and the dispositions that nourished them wererather increased abroad. The parental authority, respectable at alltimes, ought to have the greatest force in times when the manners arerude and the laws imperfect. At that time Europe had not emerged out ofbarbarism, yet this great natural bond of society was extremely weak. The number of foreign obligations and duties almost dissolved the familyobligations. From the moment a young man was knighted, so far as relatedto his father, he became absolute master of his own conduct; but hecontracted at the same time a sort of filial relation with the personwho had knighted him. These various principles of duty distracted oneanother. The custom which then prevailed, of bestowing lands andjurisdictions, under the name of Appanages, to the sons of kings and thegreater nobility, gave them a power which was frequently employedagainst the giver; and the military and licentious manners of the agealmost destroyed every trace of every kind of regular authority. In theEast, where the rivalship of brothers is so dangerous, such is the forceof paternal power amongst a rude people, we scarce ever hear of a son inarms against his father. In Europe, for several ages, it was verycommon. It was Henry's great misfortune to suffer in a particular mannerfrom this disorder. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1180. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1183. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1188. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1189. ]

Philip succeeded Louis, King of France. He followed closely the plan ofhis predecessor, to reduce the great vassals, and the King of England, who was the greatest of them; but he followed it with far more skill andvigor, though he made use of the same instruments in the work. Herevived the spirit of rebellion in the princes, Henry's sons. Theseyoung princes were never in harmony with each other but in a confederacyagainst their father, and the father had no recourse but in themelancholy safety derived from the disunion of his children. This hethought it expedient to increase; but such policy, when discovered, hasalways a dangerous effect. The sons, having just quarrelled enough togive room for an explanation of each other's designs, and to displaythose of their father, enter into a new conspiracy. In the midst ofthese motions the young king dies, and showed at his death such signs ofa sincere repentance as served to revive the old king's tenderness, andto take away all comfort for his loss. The death of his third son, Geoffrey, followed close upon the heels of this funeral. He died atParis, whither he had gone to concert measures against his father. Richard and John remained. Richard, fiery, restless, ambitious, openlytook up arms, and pursued the war with implacable rancor, and suchsuccess as drove the king, in the decline of his life, to a dishonorabletreaty; nor was he then content, but excited new troubles. John was hisyoungest and favorite child; in him he reposed all his hopes, andconsoled himself for the undutifulness of his other sons; but afterconcluding the treaty with the King of France and Richard, he found toosoon that John had been as deep as any in the conspiracy. This was hislast wound: afflicted by his children in their deaths and harassed intheir lives, mortified as a father and a king, worn down with cares andsorrows more than with years, he died, cursing his fortune, hischildren, and the hour of his birth. When he perceived that deathapproached him, by his own desire he was carried into a church and laidat the altar's foot. Hardly had he expired, when he was stripped, thenforsaken by his attendants, and left a long time a naked and unheededbody in an empty church: affording a just consolation for the obscurityof a mean fortune, and an instructive lesson how little an outwardgreatness and enjoyments foreign to the mind contribute towards a solidfelicity, in the example of one who was the greatest of kings and theunhappiest of mankind. 

FOOTNOTES:

[78] Seld. Tithes, p. 482. 

[79] LL. Ethelred. Si presbyter homicida fieret, &c. 

[80] LL. Cnuti, 38, De Ministro Altaris Homicida. Idem, 40, De OrdinatoCapitis reo. 

[81] LL. H. I. 57, De Querela Vicinorum; and 56 [66?]. De Ordinato quiVitam forisfaciat, in Fœd. Alured. Et Guthurn. , apud Spel. Concil. 376, 1st vol. ; LL. Edw. Et Guthurn. , 3, De Correctione Ordinatorum. 

CHAPTER VII. 

REIGN OF RICHARD I. 

[Sidenote: Richard I. A. D. 1189]

Whilst Henry lived, the King of France had always an effectual means ofbreaking his power by the divisions in his family. But now Richardsucceeded to all the power of his father, with an equal ambition toextend it, with a temper infinitely more fiery and impetuous, and freefrom every impediment of internal dissension. These circumstances filledthe mind of Philip with great and just uneasiness. There was no securitybut in finding exercise for the enterprising genius of the young king ata distance from home. The new Crusade afforded an advantageousopportunity. A little before his father's death, Richard had taken thecross in conjunction with the King of France. So precipitate were thefears of that monarch, that Richard was hardly crowned when ambassadorswere dispatched to England to remind him of his obligation, and to piquehis pride by acquainting him that their master was even then inreadiness to fulfil his part of their common vow. An enterprise of thissort was extremely agreeable to the genius of Richard, where religionsanctified the thirst of military glory, and where the glory itselfseemed but the more desirable by being unconnected with interest. Heimmediately accepted the proposal, and resolved to insure the success aswell as the lustre of his expedition by the magnificence of hispreparations. Not content with the immense treasures amassed by hisfather, he drew in vast sums by the sale of almost all the demesnes ofthe crown, and of every office under it, not excepting those of thehighest trust. The clergy, whose wealth and policy enabled them to takeadvantage of the necessity and weakness of the Croises, were generallythe purchasers of both. To secure his dominions in his absence, he madean alliance with the princes of Wales, and with the King of Scotland. Tothe latter he released, for a sum of money, the homage which had beenextorted by his father. 

His brother John gave him most uneasiness; but finding it unworthy, orimpracticable, to use the severer methods of jealous policy, he resolvedto secure his fidelity by loading him with benefits. He bestowed on himsix earldoms, and gave him in marriage the Lady Avisa, sole heiress ofthe great house of Gloucester; but as he gave him no share in theregency, he increased his power, and left him discontented in a kingdomcommitted to the care of new men, who had merited their places by theirmoney. 

It will be proper to take a view of the condition of the Holy Land atthe time when this third Crusade was set on foot to repair the faultscommitted in the two former. The conquests of the Croises, extendingover Palestine and a part of Syria, had been erected into a sovereigntyunder the name of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This kingdom, ill-orderedwithin, surrounded on all sides by powerful enemies, subsisted by astrength not its own for near ninety years. But dissensions arisingabout the succession to the crown, between Guy of Lusignan and Raymond, Earl of Tripoli, Guy, either because he thought the assistance of theEuropean princes too distant, or that he feared their decision, calledin the aid of Saladin, Sultan of Egypt. This able prince immediatelyentered Palestine. As the whole strength of the Christians in Palestinedepended upon foreign succor, he first made himself master of themaritime towns, and then Jerusalem fell an easy prey to his arms; whilstthe competitors contended with the utmost violence for a kingdom whichno longer existed for either of them. All Europe was alarmed at thisrevolution. The banished Patriarch of Jerusalem filled every place withthe distresses of the Eastern Christians. The Pope ordered a solemn fastto be forever kept for this loss, and then, exerting all his influence, excited a new Crusade, in which vast numbers engaged, with an ardorunabated by their former misfortunes; but wanting a proper subordinationrather than a sufficient force, they made but a slow progress, whenRichard and Philip, at the head of more than one hundred thousand chosenmen, the one from Marseilles, the other from Genoa, set sail to theirassistance. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1191]

In his voyage to the Holy Land accident presented Richard, with anunexpected conquest. A vessel of his fleet was driven by a storm to takeshelter in the Isle of Cyprus. That island was governed by a princenamed Isaac, of the imperial family of the Comneni, who not onlyrefused all relief to the sufferers, but plundered them of the littleremains of their substance. Richard, resenting this inhospitabletreatment, aggravated by the insolence of the tyrant, turned his forceupon Cyprus, vanquished Isaac in the field, took the capital city, andwas solemnly crowned king of that island. But deeming it as glorious togive as to acquire a crown, he soon after resigned it to Lusignan, tosatisfy him for his claim on Jerusalem; in whose descendants itcontinued for several generations, until, passing by marriage into thefamily of Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman, it was acquired to that state, the only state in Europe which had any real benefit by all the blood andtreasure lavished in the Holy War. 

Richard arrived in Palestine some time after the King of France. Hisarrival gave new vigor to the operations of the Croises. He reduced Acreto surrender at discretion, which had been in vain besieged for twoyears, and in the siege of which an infinite number of Christians hadperished; and so much did he distinguish himself on this and on alloccasions, that the whole expedition seemed to rest on his single valor. The King of France, seeing him fully engaged, had all that he desired. The climate was disagreeable to his constitution, and the war, in whichhe acted but a second part, to his pride. He therefore hastened home toexecute his projects against Richard, amusing him with oaths made to beviolated, --leaving, indeed, a part of his forces under the Duke ofBurgundy, but with private orders to give him underhand all possibleobstruction. Notwithstanding the desertion of his ally, Richardcontinued the war with uncommon alacrity. With very unequal numbers heengaged and defeated the whole army of Saladin, and slew forty thousandof his best troops. He obliged him to evacuate all the towns on thesea-coast, and spread the renown and terror of his arms over all Asia. Athousand great exploits did not, however, enable him to extend hisconquests to the inland country. Jealousy, envy, cabals, and a totalwant of discipline reigned in the army of the Crosses. The climate, andtheir intemperance more than the climate, wasted them with a swiftdecay. The vow which brought them to the Holy Land was generally for alimited time, at the conclusion of which they were always impatient todepart. Their armies broke up at the most critical conjunctures, --as itwas not the necessity of the service, but the extent of their vows, which held them together. As soon, therefore, as they had habituatedthemselves to the country, and attained some experience, they were gone;and new men supplied their places, to acquire experience by the samemisfortunes, and to lose the benefit of it by the same inconstancy. Thusthe war could never be carried on with steadiness and uniformity. On theother side, Saladin continually repaired his losses; his resources wereat hand; and this great captain very judiciously kept possession of thatmountainous country which, formed by a perpetual ridge of Libanus, in amanner walls in the sea-coast of Palestine. There he hung, like acontinual tempest, ready to burst over the Christian army. On his rearwas the strong city of Jerusalem, which secured a communication with thecountries of Chaldea and Mesopotamia, from whence he was well suppliedwith everything. If the Christians attempted to improve their successesby penetrating to Jerusalem, they had a city powerfully garrisoned intheir front, a country wasted and destitute of forage to act in, andSaladin with a vast army on their rear advantageously posted to cut offtheir convoys and reinforcements. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1192. ]

Richard was laboring to get over these disadvantages, when he wasinformed by repeated expresses of the disorder of his affairs inEurope, --disorders which arose from the ill dispositions he had made athis departure. The heads of his regency had abused their power; theyquarrelled with each other, and the nobility with them. A sort of acivil war had arisen, in which they were deposed. Prince John was themain spring of these dissensions; he engaged in a close communication ofcouncils with the King of France, who had seized upon several places inNormandy. It was with regret that Richard found himself obliged to leavea theatre on which he had planned such an illustrious scene of action. Aconstant emulation in courtesy and politeness, as well as in militaryexploits, had been kept up between him and Saladin. He now concluded atruce with that generous enemy, and on his departure sent a messenger toassure him that on its expiration he would not fail to be again inPalestine. Saladin replied, that, if he must lose his kingdom, he wouldchoose to lose it to the King England. Thus Richard returned, leavingJerusalem in the hands of the Saracens; and this end had an enterprisein which two of the most powerful monarchs in Europe were personallyengaged, an army of upwards of one hundred thousand men employed, and tofurnish which the whole Christian world had been vexed and exhausted. It is a melancholy reflection, that the spirit of great designs canseldom be inspired, but where the reason of mankind is so uncultivatedthat they can be turned to little advantage. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1193]

With this war ended the fortune of Richard, who found the Saracens lessdangerous than his Christian allies. It is not well known what motiveinduced him to land at Aquileia, at the bottom of the Gulf of Venice, inorder to take his route by Germany; but he pursued his journey through, the territories of the Duke of Austria, whom he had personally affrontedat the siege of Acre. And now, neither keeping himself out of the powerof that prince, nor rousing his generosity by seeming to confide in it, he attempted to get through his dominions in disguise. Sovereigns do noteasily assume the private character; their pride seldom suffers theirdisguise to be complete: besides, Richard had made himself but too wellknown. The Duke, transported with the opportunity of base revenge, discovered him, seized him, and threw him into prison; from whence hewas only released to be thrown into another. The Emperor claimed him, and, without regarding in this unfortunate captive the common dignity ofsovereigns, or his great actions in the common cause of Europe, treatedhim with yet greater cruelty. To give a color of justice to hisviolence, he proposed to accuse Richard at the Diet of the Empire uponcertain articles relative to his conduct in the Holy Land. 

The news of the king's captivity caused the greatest consternation inall his good subjects; but it revived the hopes and machinations ofPrince John, who bound himself by closer ties than ever to the King ofFrance, seized upon some strongholds in England, and, industriouslyspreading a report of his brother's death, publicly laid claim to thecrown as lawful successor. All his endeavors, however, served only toexcite the indignation of the people, and to attach them the more firmlyto their unfortunate prince. Eleanor, the queen dowager, as good amother as she had been a bad wife, acted with the utmost vigor andprudence to retain them in their duty, and omitted no means to procurethe liberty of her son. The nation seconded her with a zeal, in theircircumstances, uncommon. No tyrant ever imposed so severe a tax upon hispeople as the affection of the people of England, already exhausted, levied upon themselves. The most favored religious orders were chargedon this occasion. The Church plate was sold. The ornaments of the mostholy relics were not spared. And, indeed, nothing serves more todemonstrate the poverty of the kingdom, reduced by internal dissensionsand remote wars, at that time, than the extreme difficulty of collectingthe king's ransom, which amounted to no more than one hundred thousandmarks of silver, Cologne weight. For raising this sum, the firsttaxation, the most heavy and general that was ever known in England, proved altogether insufficient. Another taxation was set on foot. It waslevied with the same rigor as the former, and still fell short. Ambassadors were sent into Germany with all that could be raised, andwith hostages for the payment of whatever remained. The king met theseambassadors as he was carried in chains to plead his cause before theDiet of the Empire. The ambassadors burst into tears at this affectingsight, and wept aloud; but Richard, though touched no less with theaffectionate loyalty of his subjects than with his own fallen condition, preserved his dignity entire in his misfortunes, and with a cheerful airinquired of the state of his dominions, the behavior of the King ofScotland, and the fidelity of his brother, the Count John. At the Diet, no longer protected by the character of a sovereign, he was supported byhis personal abilities. He had a ready wit and great natural eloquence;and his high reputation and the weight of his cause pleading for himmore strongly, the Diet at last interested itself in his favor, andprevailed on the Emperor to accept an excessive ransom for dismissing aprisoner whom he detained without the least color of justice. Philipmoved heaven and earth to prevent his enlargement: he negotiated, hepromised, he flattered, he threatened, he outbid his extravagant ransom. The Emperor, in his own nature more inclined to the bribe, which temptedhim to be base, hesitated a long time between these offers. But as thepayment of the ransom was more certain than Philip's promises, and asthe instances of the Diet, and the menaces of the Pope, who protectedRichard, as a prince serving under the Cross, were of more immediateconsequence than his threats, Richard was at length released; and thoughit is said the Emperor endeavored to seize him again, to extort an otherransom, he escaped safely into England. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1194]

Richard, on his coming to England, found all things in the utmostconfusion; but before he attempted to apply a remedy to so obstinate adisease, in order to wipe off any degrading ideas which might havearisen from his imprisonment, he caused himself to be new crowned. Thenholding his Court of Great Council at Southampton, he made some usefulregulations in the distribution of justice. He called some greatoffenders to a strict account. Count John deserved no favor, and he layentirely at the king's mercy, who, by an unparalleled generosity, pardoned him his multiplied offences, only depriving him of the power ofwhich he had made so bad a use. Generosity did not oblige him to forgetthe hostilities of the King of France. But to prosecute the war moneywas wanting, which new taxes and new devices supplied with difficultyand with dishonor. All the mean oppressions of a necessitous governmentwere exercised on this occasion. All the grants which were made on theking's departure to the Holy Land were revoked, on the weak pretencethat the purchasers had sufficient recompense whilst they held them. Necessity seemed to justify this, as well as many other measures thatwere equally violent. The whole revenue of the crown had beendissipated; means to support its dignity must be found; and these meanswere the least unpopular, as most men saw with pleasure the wants ofgovernment fall upon those who had started into a sudden greatness bytaking advantage of those wants. 

Richard renewed the war with Philip, which continued, though frequentlyinterrupted by truces, for about five years. In this war Richardsignalized himself by that irresistible courage which on all occasionsgave him a superiority over the King of France. But his revenues wereexhausted; a great scarcity reigned both in France and England; and theirregular manner of carrying on war in those days prevented a cleardecision in favor of either party. Richard had still an eye on the HolyLand, which he considered as the only province worthy of his arms; andthis continually diverted his thoughts from the steady prosecution ofthe war in France. The Crusade, like a superior orb, moved along withall the particular systems of politics of that time, and suspended, accelerated, or put back all operations on motives foreign to the thingsthemselves. In this war it must be remarked, that Richard made aconsiderable use of the mercenaries who had been so serviceable to Henrythe Second; and the King of France, perceiving how much his father, Louis, had suffered by a want of that advantage, kept on foot a standingarmy in constant pay, which none of his predecessors had done beforehim, and which afterwards for a long time very unaccountably fell intodisuse in both kingdoms. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1199. ]

Whilst this war was carried on, by intervals and starts, it came to theears of Richard that a nobleman of Limoges had found on his lands aconsiderable hidden treasure. The king, necessitous and rapacious to thelast degree, and stimulated by the exaggeration and marvellouscircumstances which always attend the report of such discoveries, immediately sent to demand the treasure, under pretence of the rights ofseigniory. The Limosin, either because he had really discovered nothingor that he was unwilling to part with so valuable an acquisition, refused to comply with the king's demand, and fortified his castle. Enraged at the disappointment, Richard relinquished the importantaffairs in which he was engaged, and laid siege to this castle with allthe eagerness of a man who has his heart set upon a trifle. In thissiege he received a wound from an arrow, and it proved mortal; but inthe last, as in all the other acts of his life, something truly nobleshone out amidst the rash and irregular motions of his mind. The castlewas taken before he died. The man from whom Richard had received thewound was brought before him. Being asked why he levelled his arrow atthe king, he answered, with an undaunted countenance, "that the kingwith his own hand had slain his two brothers; that he thanked God whogave him an opportunity to revenge their deaths even with the certaintyof his own. " Richard, more touched with the magnanimity of the man thanoffended at the injury he had received or the boldness of the answer, ordered that his life should be spared. He appointed his brother John tothe succession; and with these acts ended a life and reign distinguishedby a great variety of fortunes in different parts of the world, andcrowned with great military glory, but without any accession of power tohimself, or prosperity to his people, whom he entirely neglected, andreduced, by his imprudence and misfortunes, to no small indigence anddistress. 

In many respects, a striking parallel presents itself between thisancient King of England and Charles the Twelfth, of Sweden. They wereboth inordinately desirous of war, and rather generals than kings. Bothwere rather fond of glory than ambitious of empire. Both of them madeand deposed sovereigns. They both carried on their wars at a distancefrom home. They were both made prisoners by a friend and ally. They wereboth reduced by an adversary inferior in war, but above them in the artsof rule. After spending their lives in remote adventures, each perishedat last near home in enterprises not suited to the splendor of theirformer exploits. Both died childless. And both, by the neglect of theiraffairs and the severity of their government, gave their subjectsprovocation and encouragement to revive their freedom. In all theserespects the two characters were alike; but Richard fell as much shortof the Swedish hero in temperance, chastity, and equality of mind as heexceeded him in wit and eloquence. Some of his sayings are the mostspirited that we find in that time; and some of his verses remain, whichis a barbarous age might have passed for poetry. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

REIGN OF JOHN. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1199]

We are now arrived at one of the most memorable periods in the Englishstory, whether we consider the astonishing revolutions which were thenwrought, the calamities in which both the prince and people wereinvolved, or the happy consequences which, arising from the midst ofthose calamities, have constituted the glory and prosperity of Englandfor so many years. We shall see a throne founded in arms, and augmentedby the successive policy of five able princes, at once shaken to itsfoundations: first made tributary by the arts of a foreign power; thenlimited, and almost overturned, by the violence of its subjects. Weshall see a king, to reduce his people to obedience, draw into histerritories a tumultuary foreign army, and destroy his country insteadof establishing his government. We shall behold the people, growndesperate, call in another foreign army, with a foreign prince at itshead, and throw away that liberty which they had sacrificed everythingto preserve. We shall see the arms of this prince successful against anestablished king in the vigor of his years, ebbing in the full tide oftheir prosperity, and yielding to an infant: after this, peace and orderand liberty restored, the foreign force and foreign title purged off, and all things settled as happily as beyond all hope. 

Richard dying without lawful issue, the succession to his dominionsagain became dubious. They consisted of various territories, governed byvarious rules of descent, and all of them uncertain. There were twocompetitors: the first was Prince John, youngest son of Henry theSecond; the other was Arthur, son of Constance of Bretagne, by Geoffrey, the third son of that monarch. If the right of consanguinity were onlyconsidered, the title of John to the whole succession had beenindubitable. If the right of representation had then prevailed, whichnow universally prevails, Arthur, as standing in the place of hisfather, Geoffrey, had a solid claim. About Brittany there was nodispute. Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Guienne declared in favor ofArthur, on the principle of representation. Normandy was entirely forJohn. In England the point of law had never been entirely settled, butit seemed rather inclined to the side of consanguinity. Therefore inEngland, where this point was dubious at best, the claim of Arthur, aninfant and a stranger, had little force against the pretensions of John, declared heir by the will of the late king, supported by his armies, possessed of his treasures, and at the head of a powerful party. Hesecured in his interests Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, andGlanville, the chief justiciary, and by them the body of theecclesiastics and the law. It is remarkable, also, that he paid court tothe cities and boroughs, which is the first instance of that policy: butseveral of these communities now happily began to emerge from theirslavery, and, taking advantage of the necessities and confusion of thelate reign, increased in wealth and consequence, and had then firstattained a free and regular form of administration. The towns new topower declared heartily in favor of a prince who was willing to allowthat their declaration could confer a right. The nobility, who sawthemselves beset by the Church, the law, and the burghers, had taken nomeasures, nor even a resolution, and therefore had nothing left but toconcur in acknowledging the title of John, whom they knew and hated. Butthough they were not able to exclude him from the succession, they hadstrength enough to oblige him to a solemn promise of restoring thoseliberties and franchises which they had always claimed without havingever enjoyed or even perfectly understood. The clergy also tookadvantage of the badness of his title to establish one altogether as illfounded. Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the speech which hedelivered at the king's coronation, publicly affirmed that the crown ofEngland was of right elective. He drew his examples in support of thisdoctrine, not from the histories of the ancient Saxon kings, although aspecies of election within a certain family had then frequentlyprevailed, but from the history of the first kings of the Jews: withoutdoubt in order to revive those pretensions which the clergy first set upin the election of Stephen, and which they had since been obliged toconceal, but had not entirely forgotten. 

John accepted a sovereignty weakened in the very act by which heacquired it; but he submitted to the times. He came to the throne at theage of thirty-two. He had entered early into business, and had beenoften involved in difficult and arduous enterprises, in which heexperienced a variety of men and fortunes. His father, whilst he wasvery young, had sent him into Ireland, which kingdom was destined forhis portion, in order to habituate that people to their futuresovereign, and to give the young prince an opportunity of conciliatingthe favor of his new subjects. But he gave on this occasion no goodomens of capacity for government. Full of the insolent levity of a youngman of high rank without education, and surrounded with others equallyunpractised, he insulted the Irish chiefs, and, ridiculing their uncouthgarb and manners, he raised such a disaffection to the Englishgovernment, and so much opposition to it, as all the wisdom of hisfather's best officers and counsellors was hardly able to overcome. Inthe decline of his father's life he joined in the rebellion of hisbrothers, with so much more guilt as with more ingratitude andhypocrisy. During the reign of Richard he was the perpetual author ofseditions and tumults; and yet was pardoned, and even favored by thatprince to his death, when he very unaccountably appointed him heir toall his dominions. 

It was of the utmost moment to John, who had no solid title, toconciliate the favor of all the world. Yet one of his first steps, whilst his power still remained dubious and unsettled, was, on pretenceof consanguinity, to divorce his wife Avisa, with whom he had lived manyyears, and to marry Isabella of Angoulême, a woman of extraordinarybeauty, but who had been betrothed to Hugh, Count of Marche: thusdisgusting at once the powerful friends of his divorced wife, and thoseof the Earl of Marche, whom he had so sensibly wronged. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1200. ]

The King of France, Philip Augustus, saw with pleasure these proceedingsof John, as he had before rejoiced at the dispute about the succession. He had been always employed, and sometimes with success, to reduce theEnglish power through the reigns of one very able and one very warlikeprince. He had greater advantages in this conjuncture, and a prince ofquite another character now to contend with. He was therefore not longwithout choosing his part; and whilst he secretly encouraged the Countof Marche, already stimulated by his private wrongs, he openly supportedthe claim of Arthur to the Duchies of Anjou and Touraine. It was thecharacter of this prince readily to lay aside and as readily to reassumehis enterprises, as his affairs demanded. He saw that he had declaredhimself too rashly, and that he was in danger of being assaulted uponevery side. He saw it was necessary to break an alliance, which the nicecircumstances and timid character of John would enable him to do. Infact, John was at this time united in a close alliance with the Emperorand the Earl of Flanders; and these princes were engaged in a war withFrance. He had then a most favorable opportunity to establish all hisclaims, and at the same time to put the King of France out of acondition to question them ever after. But he suffered himself to beoverreached by the artifices of Philip: he consented to a treaty ofpeace, by which he received an empty acknowledgment of his right to thedisputed territories, and in return for which acknowledgment herenounced his alliance with the Emperor. By this act he at oncestrengthened his enemy, gave up his ally, and lowered his character withhis subjects and with all the world. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1201. ]

[Sidenote: A. D. 1202. ]

This treaty was hardly signed, when the ill consequences of his conductbecame evident. The Earl of Marche and Arthur immediately renewed theirclaims and hostilities under the protection of the King of France, whomade a strong diversion by invading Normandy. At the commencement ofthese motions, John, by virtue of a prerogative hitherto undisputed, summoned his English barons to attend him into France; but instead of acompliance with his orders, he was surprised with a solemn demand oftheir ancient liberties. It is astonishing that the barons should atthat time have ventured on a resolution of such dangerous importance, asthey had provided no sort of means to support them. But the history ofthose times furnishes many instances of the like want of design in themost momentous affairs, and shows that it is in vain to look forpolitical causes for the actions of men, who were most commonly directedby a brute caprice, and were for the greater part destitute of any fixedprinciples of obedience or resistance. The king, sensible of theweakness of his barons, fell upon some of their castles with such timelyvigor, and treated those whom he had reduced with so much severity, thatthe rest immediately and abjectly submitted. He levied a severe tax upontheir fiefs; and thinking himself more strengthened by this treasurethan the forced service of his barons, he excused the personalattendance of most of them, and, passing into Normandy, he raised anarmy there. He found that his enemies had united their forces, andinvested the castle of Mirebeau, a place of importance, in which hismother, from whom he derived his right to Guienne, was besieged. He flewto the relief of this place with the spirit of a greater character, andthe success was answerable. The Breton and Poitevin army was defeated, his mother was freed, and the young Duke of Brittany and his sister weremade prisoners. The latter he sent into England, to be confined in thecastle of Bristol; the former he carried with him to Rouen. The goodfortune of John now seemed to be at its highest point; but it wasexalted on a precipice; and this great victory proved the occasion ofall the evils which afflicted his life. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1203. ]

John was not of a character to resist the temptation of having the lifeof his rival in his hands. All historians are as fully agreed that hemurdered his nephew as they differ in the means by which he accomplishedthat crime. But the report was soon spread abroad, variously heightenedin the circumstances by the obscurity of the fact, which left all men atliberty to imagine and invent, and excited all those sentiments of pityand indignation which a very young prince of great hopes, cruellymurdered by his uncle, naturally inspire. Philip had never missed anoccasion of endeavoring to ruin the King of England: and having nowacquired an opportunity of accomplishing that by justice which he had invain sought by ambition, he filled every place with complaints of thecruelty of John, whom, as a vassal to the crown of France, the kingaccused of the murder of another vassal, and summoned him to Paris tobe tried by his peers. It was by no means consistent either with thedignity or safety of John to appear to this summons. He had the argumentof kings to justify what he had done. But as in all great crimes thereis something of a latent weakness, and in a vicious caution somethingmaterial is ever neglected, John, satisfied with removing his rival, took no thought about his enemy; but whilst he saw himself sentenced fornon-appearance in the Court of Peers, whilst he saw the King of Franceentering Normandy with a vast army in consequence of this sentence, andplace after place, castle after castle, falling before him, he passedhis time at Rouen in the profoundest tranquillity, indulging himself inindolent amusements, and satisfied with vain threatenings and boasts, which only added greater shame to his inactivity. The English barons whohad attended him in this expedition, disaffected from the beginning, andnow wearied with being so long witnesses to the ignominy of theirsovereign, retired to their own country, and there spread the report ofhis unaccountable sloth and cowardice. John quickly followed them; andreturning into his kingdom, polluted with the charge of so heavy acrime, and disgraced by so many follies, instead of aiming by popularacts to reestablish his character, he exacted a seventh of theirmovables from the barons, on pretence that they had deserted hisservice. He laid the same imposition on the clergy, without givinghimself the trouble of seeking for a pretext. He made no proper use ofthese great supplies, but saw the great city of Rouen, always faithfulto its sovereigns, and now exerting the most strenuous efforts in hisfavor, obliged at length to surrender, without the least attempt torelieve it Thus the whole Duchy of Normandy, originally acquired by thevalor of his ancestors, and the source from which the greatness of hisfamily had been derived, after being supported against all shocks forthree hundred years, was torn forever from the stock of Rollo, andreunited to the crown of France. Immediately all the rest of theprovinces which he held on the continent, except a part of Guienne, despairing of his protection, and abhorring his government, threwthemselves into the hands of Philip. 

Meanwhile the king by his personal vices completed the odium which hehad acquired by the impotent violence of his government. Uxorious andyet dissolute in his manners, he made no scruple frequently to violatethe wives and daughters of his nobility, that rock on which tyranny hasso often split. Other acts of irregular power, in their greatestexcesses, still retain the characters of sovereign authority; but herethe vices of the prince intrude into the families of the subject, and, whilst they aggravate the oppression, lower the character of theoppressor. 

In the disposition which all these causes had concurred universally todiffuse, the slightest motion in his kingdom threatened the mostdangerous consequences. Those things which in quiet times would haveonly raised a slight controversy, now, when the minds of men wereexasperated and inflamed, were capable of affording matter to thegreatest revolutions. The affairs of the Church, the winds which mostlygoverned the fluctuating people, were to be regarded with the utmostattention. Above all, the person who filled the see of Canterbury, whichstood on a level with the throne itself, was a matter of the lastimportance. Just at this critical time died Hubert, archbishop of thatsee, a man who had a large share in procuring the crown for John, and inweakening its authority by his acts at the ceremony of the coronation, as well as by his subsequent conduct. Immediately on the death of thisprelate, a cabal of obscure monks, of the Abbey of St. Augustin, assemble by night, and first binding themselves by a solemn oath not todivulge their proceedings, until they should be confirmed by the Pope, they elect one Reginald, their sub-prior, Archbishop of Canterbury. Theperson elected immediately crossed the seas; but his vanity soondiscovered the secret of his greatness. The king received the news ofthis transaction with surprise and indignation. Provoked at such acontempt of his authority, he fell severely on the monastery, no lesssurprised than himself at the clandestine proceeding of some of itsmembers. But the sounder part pacified him in some measure by theirsubmission. They elected a person recommended by the king, and sentfourteen of the most respectable of their body to Rome, to pray that theformer proceedings should be annulled, and the later and more regularconfirmed. To this matter of contention another was added. A dispute hadlong subsisted between the suffragan bishops of the province ofCanterbury and the monks of the Abbey of St. Austin, each claiming aright to elect the metropolitan. This dispute was now revived, andpursued with much vigor. The pretensions of the three contending partieswere laid before the Pope, to whom such disputes were highly pleasing, as he knew that all claimants willingly conspire to flatter andaggrandize that authority from which they expect a confirmation oftheir own. The first election, he nulled, because its irregularity wasglaring. The right of the bishops was entirely rejected: the Pope lookedwith an evil eye upon those whose authority he was every day usurping. The second election was set aside, as made at the king's instance: thiswas enough to make it very irregular. The canon law had now grown up toits full strength. The enlargement of the prerogative of the Pope wasthe great object of this jurisprudence, --a prerogative which, founded onfictitious monuments, that are forged in an ignorant age, easilyadmitted by a credulous people, and afterwards confirmed and enlarged bythese admissions, not satisfied with the supremacy, encroached on everyminute part of Church government, and had almost annihilated theepiscopal jurisdiction throughout Europe. Some canons had given themetropolitan a power of nominating a bishop, when the circumstances ofthe election were palpably irregular; and as it does not appear thatthere was any other judge of the irregularity than the metropolitanhimself, the election below in effect became nugatory. The Pope, takingthe irregularity in this case for granted, in virtue of this canon, andby his plenitude of power, ordered the deputies of Canterbury to proceedto a new election. At the same time he recommended to their choiceStephen Langton, their countryman, --a person already distinguished forhis learning, of irreproachable morals, and free from every canonicalimpediment. This authoritative request the monks had not the courage tooppose in the Pope's presence and in his own city. They murmured, andsubmitted. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1208. ]

In England this proceeding was not so easily ratified. John drove themonks of Canterbury from their monastery, and, having seized upon theirrevenues, threatened the effects of the same indignation against allthose who seemed inclined to acquiesce in the proceedings of Rome. ButRome had not made so bold a step with intention to recede. On the king'spositive refusal to admit Langton, and the expulsion of the monks ofCanterbury, England was laid under an interdict. Then divine service atonce ceased throughout the kingdom; the churches were shut; thesacraments were suspended; the dead were buried without honor, inhighways and ditches, and the living deprived of all spiritual comfort. On the other hand, the king let loose his indignation against theecclesiastics, --seizing their goods, throwing many into prison, andpermitting or encouraging all sorts of violence against them. Thekingdom was thrown into the most terrible confusion; whilst the people, uncertain of the object or measure of their allegiance, and distractedwith opposite principles of duty, saw themselves deprived of theirreligious rites by the ministers of religion, and their king, furiouswith wrongs not caused by them, falling indiscriminately on the innocentand the guilty: for John, instead of soothing his people in this theircommon calamity, sought to terrify them into obedience. In a progresswhich he made into the North, he threw down the inclosures of hisforests, to let loose the wild beasts upon their lands; and as he sawthe Papal proceedings increase with his opposition, he thought itnecessary to strengthen himself by new devices. He extorted hostages anda new oath of fidelity from his barons. He raised a great army, todivert the thoughts of his subjects from brooding too much on theirdistracted condition. This army he transported into Ireland; and as ithappened to his father in a similar dispute with the Pope, whilst he wasdubious of his hereditary kingdom, he subdued Ireland. At this time heis said to have established the English laws in that kingdom, and tohave appointed itinerant justices. 

At length the sentence of excommunication was fulminated against theking. In the same year the same sentence was pronounced upon the EmperorOtho; and this daring Pope was not afraid at once to drive toextremities the two greatest princes in Europe. And truly, nothing ismore remarkable than the uniform steadiness of the court of Rome in thepursuits of her ambitious projects. For, knowing that pretensions whichstand merely in opinion cannot bear to be questioned in any part, thoughshe had hitherto seen the interdict produce but little effect, andperceived that the excommunication itself could draw scarce one poorbigot from the king's service, yet she receded not the least point fromthe utmost of her demand. She broke off an accommodation just on thepoint of being concluded, because the king refused to repair the losseswhich the clergy had suffered, though he agreed to everything else, andeven submitted to receive the archbishop, who, being obtruded on him, had in reality been set over him. But the Pope, bold as politic, determined to render him perfectly submissive, and to this purposebrought out the last arms of the ecclesiastic stores, which werereserved for the most extreme occasions. Having first released theEnglish subjects from their oath of allegiance, by an unheard-ofpresumption, he formally deposed John from his throne and dignity; heinvited the King of France to take possession of the forfeited crown;he called forth all persons from all parts of Europe to assist in thisexpedition, by the pardons and privileges of those who fought for theHoly Land. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1218. ]

This proceeding did not astonish the world. The King of France, havingdriven John from all he held on the continent, gladly saw religionitself invite him to farther conquests. He summoned all his vassals, under the penalty of felony, and the opprobrious name of_culvertage_, [82] (a name of all things dreaded by both nations, ) toattend in this expedition; and such force had this threat, and the hopeof plunder in England, that a very great army was in a short timeassembled. A fleet also rendezvoused in the mouth of the Seine, by thewriters of these times said to consist of seventeen hundred sail. Onthis occasion John roused all his powers. He called upon all his peoplewho by the duty of their tenure or allegiance were obliged to defendtheir lord and king, and in his writs stimulated them by the samethreats of _culvertage_ which had been employed against him. Theyoperated powerfully in his favor. His fleet in number exceeded the vastnavy of France; his army was in everything but heartiness to the causeequal, and, extending along the coast of Kent, expected the descent ofthe French forces. 

Whilst these two mighty armies overspread the opposite coasts, and thesea was covered with their fleets, and the decision of so vast an eventwas hourly expected, various thoughts arose in the minds of those whomoved the springs of these affairs. John, at the head of one of thefinest armies in the world, trembled inwardly, when he reflected howlittle he possessed or merited their confidence. Wounded by theconsciousness of his crimes, excommunicated by the Pope, hated by hissubjects, in danger of being at once abandoned by heaven and earth, hewas filled with the most fearful anxiety. The legates of the Pope hadhitherto seen everything succeed to their wish. But having made use ofan instrument too great for them to wield, they apprehended, that, whenit had overthrown their adversary, it might recoil upon the court ofRome itself; that to add England to the rest of Philip's greatpossessions was not the way to make him humble; and that in ruining Johnto aggrandize that monarch, they should set up a powerful enemy in theplace of a submissive vassal. 

They had done enough to give them a superiority in any negotiation, andthey privately sent an embassy to the King of England. Finding him verytractable, they hasted to complete the treaty. The Pope's legate, Pandulph, was intrusted with this affair. He knew the nature of men tobe such that they seldom engage willingly, if the whole of an hardshipbe shown them at first, but that, having advanced a certain length, their former concessions are an argument with them to advance further, and to give all because they have already given a great deal. Thereforehe began with exacting an oath from the king, by which, without showingthe extent of his design, he engaged him to everything he could ask. John swore to submit to the legate in all things relating to hisexcommunication. And first he was obliged to accept Langton asarchbishop; then to restore the monks of Canterbury, and other deprivedecclesiastics, and to make them a full indemnification for all theirlosses. And now, by these concessions, all things seemed to be perfectlysettled. The cause of the quarrel was entirely removed. But when theking expected for so perfect a submission a full absolution, the legatebegan a labored harangue on his rebellion, his tyranny, and theinnumerable sins he had committed, and in conclusion declared that therewas no way left to appease God and the Church but to resign his crown tothe Holy See, from whose hands he should receive it purified from allpollutions, and hold it for the future by homage and an annual tribute. 

John was struck motionless at a demand so extravagant and unexpected. Heknew not on which side to turn. If he cast his eyes toward the coast ofFrance, he there saw his enemy Philip, who considered him as a criminalas well as an enemy, and who aimed not only at his crown, but his life, at the head of an innumerable multitude of fierce people, ready to rushin upon him. If he looked at his own army, he saw nothing there butcoldness, disaffection, uncertainty, distrust, and a strength in whichhe knew not whether he ought most to confide or fear. On the other hand, the Papal thunders, from the wounds of which he was still sore, werelevelled full at his head. He could not look steadily at thesecomplicated difficulties: and truly it is hard to say what choice hehad, if any choice were left to kings in what concerns the independenceof their crown. Surrounded, therefore, with these difficulties, and thatall his late humiliations might not be rendered as ineffectual as theywere ignominious, he took the last step, and in the presence of anumerous assembly of his peers and prelates, who turned their eyes fromthis mortifying sight, formally resigned his crown to the Pope'slegate, to whom at the same time he did homage and paid the first fruitsof his tribute. Nothing could be added to the humiliation of the kingupon this occasion, but the insolence of the legate, who spurned thetreasure with his foot, and let the crown remain a long time on theground, before he restored it to the degraded owner. 

In this proceeding the motives of the king may be easily discovered; buthow the barons of the kingdom, who were deeply concerned, sufferedwithout any protestation the independency of the crown to be thusforfeited is mentioned by no historian of that time. In civil tumults itis astonishing how little regard is paid by all parties to the honor orsafety of their country. The king's friends were probably induced toacquiesce by the same motives that had influenced the king. His enemies, who were the most numerous, perhaps saw his abasement with pleasure, asthey knew this action might be one day employed against him with effect. To the bigots it was enough that it aggrandized the Pope. It is perhapsworthy of observation that the conduct of Pandulph towards King Johnbore a very great affinity to that of the Roman consuls to the people ofCarthage in the last Punic War, --drawing them from concession toconcession, and carefully concealing their design, until they made itimpossible for the Carthaginians to resist. Such a strong resemblancedid the same ambition produce in such distant times; and it is far fromthe sole instance in which we may trace a similarity between the spiritand conduct of the former and latter Rome in their common design on theliberties of mankind. 

The legates, having thus triumphed over the king, passed back intoFrance, but without relaxing the interdict or excommunication, whichthey still left hanging over him, lest he should be tempted to throw offthe chains of his new subjection. Arriving in France, they deliveredtheir orders to Philip with as much haughtiness as they had done toJohn. They told him that the end of the war was answered in thehumiliation of the King of England, who had been rendered a dutiful sonof the Church, --and that, if the King of France should, after thisnotice, proceed to further hostilities, he had to apprehend the samesentence which had humbled his adversary. Philip, who had not raised sogreat an army with a view of reforming the manners of King John, wouldhave slighted these threats, had he not found that they were seconded bythe ill dispositions of a part of his own army. The Earl of Flanders, always disaffected to his cause, was glad of this opportunity to opposehim, and, only following him through fear, withdrew his forces, and nowopenly opposed him. Philip turned his arms against his revolted vassal. The cause of John was revived by this dissension, and his courage seemedrekindled. Making one effort of a vigorous mind, he brought his fleet toan action with the French navy, which he entirely destroyed on the coastof Flanders, and thus freed himself from the terror of an invasion. Butwhen he intended to embark and improve his success, the barons refusedto follow him. They alleged that he was still excommunicated, and thatthey would not follow a lord under the censures of the Church. Thisdemonstrated to the king the necessity of a speedy absolution; and hereceived it this year from the hands of Cardinal Langton. 

That archbishop no sooner came into the kingdom than he discovereddesigns very different from those which the Pope had raised him topromote. He formed schemes of a very deep and extensive nature, andbecame the first mover in all the affairs which distinguish theremainder of this reign. In the oath which he administered to John onhis absolution, he did not confine himself solely to the ecclesiasticalgrievances, but made him swear to amend his civil government, to raiseno tax without the consent of the Great Council, and to punish no manbut by the judgment of his court. In these terms we may Bee the GreatCharter traced in miniature. A new scene of contention was opened; newpretensions were started; a new scheme was displayed. One dispute washardly closed, when he was involved in another; and this unfortunateking soon discovered that to renounce his dignity was not the way tosecure his repose. For, being cleared of the excommunication, heresolved to pursue the war in France, in which he was not without aprospect of success; but the barons refused upon new pretences, and nota man would serve. The king, incensed to find himself equally opposed inhis lawful and unlawful commands, prepared to avenge himself in hisaccustomed manner, and to reduce the barons to obedience by carrying warinto their estates. But he found by this experiment that his power wasat an end. The Archbishop followed him, confronted him with theliberties of his people, reminded him of his late oath, and threatenedto excommunicate every person who should obey him in his illegalproceedings. The king, first provoked, afterwards terrified at thisresolution, forbore to prosecute the recusants. 

The English barons had privileges, which they knew to have beenviolated; they had always kept up the memory of the ancient Saxonliberty; and if they were the conquerors of Britain, they did not thinkthat their own servitude was the just fruit of their victory. They had, however, but an indistinct view of the object at which they aimed; theyrather felt their wrongs than understood the cause of them; and havingno head nor council, they were more in a condition of distressing theirking and disgracing their country by their disobedience than of applyingany effectual remedy to their grievances. Langton saw thesedispositions, and these wants. He had conceived a settled plan forreducing the king, and all his actions tended to carry it intoexecution. This prelate, under pretence of holding an ecclesiasticalsynod, drew together privately some of the principal barons to theChurch of St. Paul in London. There, having expatiated on the miserieswhich the kingdom suffered, and having explained at the same time theliberties to which it was entitled, he produced the famous charter ofHenry the First, long concealed, and of which, with infinite difficulty, he had procured an authentic copy. This he held up to the barons as thestandard about which they were to unite. These were the liberties whichtheir ancestors had received by the free concession of a former king, and these the rights which their virtue was to force from the present, if (which God forbid!) they should find it necessary to have recourse tosuch extremities. The barons, transported to find an authenticinstrument to justify their discontent and to explain and sanction theirpretensions, covered the Archbishop with praises, readily confederatedto support their demands, and, binding themselves by every obligation ofhuman and religious faith, to vigor, unanimity, and secrecy, they departto confederate others in their design. 

This plot was in the hands of too many to be perfectly concealed; andJohn saw, without knowing how to ward it off, a more dangerous blowlevelled at his authority than any of the former. He had no resourceswithin his kingdom, where all ranks and orders were united against himby one common hatred. Foreign alliance he had none, among temporalpowers. He endeavored, therefore, if possible, to draw some benefit fromthe misfortune of his new circumstances: he threw himself upon theprotection of the Papal power, which he had so long and with such reasonopposed. The Pope readily received him into his protection, but tookthis occasion to make him purchase it by another and more formalresignation of his crown. His present necessities and his habits ofhumiliation made this second degradation easy to the king. But Langton, who no longer acted in subservience to the Pope, from whom he had nownothing further to expect, and who had put himself at the head of thepatrons of civil liberty, loudly exclaimed at this indignity, protestedagainst the resignation, and laid his protestation on the altar. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1214. ]

This was more disagreeable to the barons than the first resignation, asthey were sensible that he now degraded himself only to humble hissubjects. They were, however, once more patient witnesses to thatignominious act, --and were so much overawed by the Pope, or had broughttheir design to so little maturity, that the king, in spite of it, stillfound means and authority to raise an army, with which he made a finaleffort to recover some part of his dominions in France. The juncture wasaltogether favorable to his design. Philip had all his attentionabundantly employed in another quarter, against the terrible attacks ofthe Emperor Otho in a confederacy with the Earl of Flanders. John, strengthened by this diversion, carried on the war in Poitou for sometime with good appearances. The Battle of Bouvines, which was foughtthis year, put an end to all these hopes. In this battle, the Imperialarmy, consisting of one hundred and fifty thousand men, were defeated bya third of their number of French forces. The Emperor himself, withdifficulty escaping from the field, survived but a short time a battlewhich entirely broke his strength. So signal a success established thegrandeur of France upon immovable foundations. Philip rose continuallyin reputation and power, whilst John continually declined in both; andas the King of France was now ready to employ against him all hisforces, so lately victorious, he sued, by the mediation of the Pope'slegate, for a truce, which was granted to him for five years. Suchtruces stood in the place of regular treaties of peace, which were notoften made at that time. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1215. ]

The barons of England had made use of the king's absence to bring theirconfederacy to form; and now, seeing him return with so little credit, his allies discomfited, and no hope of a party among his subjects, theyappeared in a body before him at London. All in complete armor, and inthe guise of defiance, they presented a petition, very humble in thelanguage, but excessive in the substance, in which they declared theirliberties, and prayed that they might be formally allowed andestablished by the royal authority. The king resolved not to submit totheir demands; but being at present in no condition to resist, herequired time to consider of so important an affair. The time which wasgranted to the king to deliberate he employed in finding means to avoida compliance. He took the cross, by which he hoped to render his personsacred; he obliged the people to renew their oath of fealty; and, lastly, he had recourse to the Pope, fortified by all the devices whichcould be used to supply the place of a real strength, he ventured, whenthe barons renewed their demands, to give them a positive refusal; heswore by the feet of God (his usual oath) that he would never grant themsuch liberties as must make a slave of himself. 

The barons, on this answer, immediately fly to arms: they rise in everypart; they form an army, and appoint a leader; and as they knew that nodesign can involve all sorts of people or inspire them withextraordinary resolution, unless it be animated with religion, they calltheir leader the Marshal of the Army of God and Holy Church. The kingwas wholly unprovided against so general a defection. The city ofLondon, the possession of which has generally proved a decisiveadvantage in the English civil wars, was betrayed to the barons. Hemight rather be said, to be imprisoned than defended in the Tower ofLondon, to which close siege was laid; whilst the marshal of the barons'army, exercising the prerogatives of royalty, issued writs to summon allthe lords to join the army of liberty, threatening equally all those whoshould adhere to the king and those who betrayed an indifference to thecause by their neutrality. John, deserted by all, had no resource but intemporizing and submission. Without questioning in any part the terms ofa treaty which he intended to observe in none, he agreed to everythingthe barons thought fit to ask, hoping that the exorbitancy of theirdemands would justify in the eyes of the world the breach of hispromises. The instruments by which the barons secured their libertieswere drawn up in form of charters, and in the manner by which grants hadbeen usually made to monasteries, with a preamble signifying that it wasdone for the benefit of the king's soul and those of his ancestors. Forthe place of solemnizing this remarkable act they chose a large field, overlooked by Windsor, called Running-mede, which, in our presenttongue, signifies the Meadow of Council, --a place long consecrated bypublic opinion, as that wherein the quarrels and wars which arose in theEnglish nation, when divided into kingdoms or factions, had beenterminated from the remotest times. Here it was that King John, on the15th day of June, in the year of our Lord 1215, signed those twomemorable instruments which first disarmed the crown of its unlimitedprerogatives, and laid the foundation of English liberty. One was calledthe Great Charter; the other, the Charter of the Forest. If we look backto the state of the nation at that time, we shall the better comprehendthe spirit and necessity of these grants. 

Besides the ecclesiastical jurisprudence, at that time, two systems oflaws, very different from each other in their object, their reason, andtheir authority, regulated the interior of the kingdom: the Forest Law, and the Common Law. After the Northern nations had settled here, and inother parts of Europe, hunting, which had formerly been the chief meansof their subsistence, still continued their favorite diversion. Greattracts of each country, wasted by the wars in which it was conquered, were set apart for this kind of sport, and guarded in a state ofdesolation by strict laws and severe penalties. When, such waste landswere in the hands of subjects, they were called Chases; when in thepower of the sovereign, they were denominated Forests. These forests layproperly within the jurisdiction of no hundred, county, or bishopric;and therefore, being out both of the Common and the Spiritual Law, theywere governed by a law of their own, which was such as the king by hisprivate will thought proper to impose. There were reckoned in England noless than sixty-eight royal forests, some of them of vast extent. Inthese great tracts were many scattered inhabitants; and several personshad property of woodland, and other soil, inclosed within their bounds. Here the king had separate courts and particular justiciaries; acomplete jurisprudence, with all its ceremonies and terms of art, wasformed; and it appears that these laws were better digested and morecarefully enforced than those which belonged to civil government. Theyhad, indeed, all the qualities of the worst of laws. Their professedobject was to keep a great part of the nation desolate. They hinderedcommunication and destroyed industry. They had a trivial object, andmost severe sanctions; for, as they belonged immediately to the king'spersonal pleasures, by the lax interpretation of treason in those days, all considerable offences against the Forest Law, such as killing thebeasts of game, were considered as high treason, and punished, as hightreason then was, by truncation of limbs and loss of eyes and testicles. Hence arose a thousand abuses, vexatious suits, and pretences forimposition upon all those who lived in or near these places. The deerwere suffered to run loose upon their lands; and many oppressions wereused with relation to the claim of commonage which the people had inmost of the forests. The Norman kings were not the first makers of theForest Law; it subsisted under the Saxon and Danish kings. Canute theGreat composed a body of those laws, which still remains. But under theNorman kings they were enforced with greater rigor, as the whole tenorof the Norman government was more rigorous. Besides, new forests werefrequently made, by which private property was outraged in a grievousmanner. Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly how little men are able todepart from the common course of affairs than that the Norman kings, princes of great capacity, and extremely desirous of absolute power, didnot think of peopling these forests, places under their own uncontrolleddominion, and which might have served as so many garrisons dispersedthroughout the country. The Charter of the Forests had for its objectthe disafforesting several of those tracts, the prevention of futureafforestings, the mitigation and ascertainment of the punishments forbreaches of the Forest Law. 

The Common Law, as it then prevailed in England, was in a great measurecomposed of some remnants of the old Saxon customs, joined to the feudalinstitutions brought in at the Norman Conquest. And it is here to beobserved, that the constitutions of Magna Charta are by no means arenewal of the Laws of St. Edward, or the ancient Saxon laws, as ourhistorians and law-writers generally, though very groundlessly, assert. They bear no resemblance in any particular to the Laws of St. Edward, orto any other collection of these ancient institutions. Indeed, howshould they? The object of Magna Charta is the correction of the feudalpolicy, which was first introduced, at least in any regular form, at theConquest, and did not subsist before it. It may be further observed, that in the preamble to the Great Charter it is stipulated that thebarons shall _hold_ the liberties there granted _to them and theirheirs, from the king and his heirs_; which shows that the doctrine of anunalienable tenure was always uppermost in their minds. Their idea evenof liberty was not (if I may use the expression) perfectly free; andthey did not claim to possess their privileges upon any naturalprinciple or independent bottom, but just as they held their lands fromthe king. This is worthy of observation. 

By the Feudal Law, all landed property is, by a feigned conclusion, supposed to be derived, and therefore to be mediately or immediatelyheld, from the crown. If some estates were so derived, others werecertainly procured by the same original title of conquest by which thecrown itself was acquired, and the derivation from the king could inreason only be considered as a fiction of law. But its consequent rightsbeing once supposed, many real charges and burdens grew from a fictionmade only for the preservation of subordination; and in consequence ofthis, a great power was exercised over the persons and estates of thetenants. The fines on the succession to an estate, called in the feudallanguage _reliefs_, were not fixed to any certainty, and were thereforefrequently made so excessive that they might rather be considered asredemptions or new purchases than acknowledgments of superiority andtenure. With respect to that most important article of marriage, therewas, in the very nature of the feudal holding, a great restraint laidupon it. It was of importance to the lord that the person who receivedthe feud should be submissive to him; he had, therefore, a right tointerfere in the marriage of the heiress who inherited the feud. Thisright was carried further than the necessity required: the male heirhimself was obliged to marry according to the choice of his lord; andeven widows, who had made one sacrifice to the feudal tyranny, wereneither suffered to continue in the widowed state nor to choose forthemselves the partners of their second bed. In fact, marriage waspublicly set up to sale. The ancient records of the Exchequer affordmany instances where some women purchased by heavy fines the privilegeof a single life, some the free choice of an husband, others the libertyof rejecting some person particularly disagreeable. And what may appearextraordinary, there are not wanting examples where a woman has fined ina considerable sum, that she might not be compelled to marry a certainman; the suitor, on the other hand, has outbid her, and solely byoffering more for the marriage than the heiress could to prevent it, hecarried his point directly and avowedly against her inclinations. Now, as the king claimed no right over his immediate tenants that they didnot exercise in the same or in a more oppressive manner over theirvassals, it is hard to conceive a more general and cruel grievance thanthis shameful market, which so universally outraged the most sacredrelations among mankind. But the tyranny over women was not over withthe marriage. As the king seized into his hands the estate of everydeceased tenant in order to secure his relief, the widow was drivenoften by an heavy composition to purchase the admission to her dower, into which it should seem she could not enter without the king'sconsent. 

All these were marks of a real and grievous servitude. The Great Charterwas made, not to destroy the root, but to cut short the overgrownbranches of the feudal service: first, in moderating and in reducing toa certainty the reliefs which the king's tenants paid on succeeding totheir estate according to their rank; and, secondly, in taking off someof the burdens which had been laid on marriage, whether compulsory orrestrictive, and thereby preventing that shameful market which had beenmade in the persons of heirs, and the most sacred things amongstmankind. 

There were other provisions made in the Great Charter that went deeperthan the feudal tenure, and affected the whole body of the civilgovernment. A great part of the king's revenue then consisted in thefines and amercements which were imposed in his courts. A fine was paidthere for liberty to commence or to conclude a suit. The punishment ofoffences by fine was discretionary; and this discretionary power hadbeen very much abused. But by Magna Charta, things were so ordered, thata delinquent might be punished, but not ruined, by a fine or amercement;because the degree of his offence, and the rank he held, were to betaken into consideration. His freehold, his merchandise, and thoseinstruments by which he obtained his livelihood were made sacred fromsuch impositions. 

A more grand reform was made with regard to the administration ofjustice. The kings in those days seldom resided long in one place, andtheir courts followed their persons. This erratic justice must have beenproductive of infinite inconvenience to the litigants. It was nowprovided that civil suits, called _Common Pleas_, should be fixed tosome certain place. Thus one branch of jurisdiction was separated fromthe king's court, and detached from his person. They had not yet come tothat maturity of jurisprudence as to think this might be made to extendto criminal law also, and that the latter was an object of still greaterimportance. But even the former may be considered as a great revolution. A tribunal, a creature of mere law, independent of personal power, wasestablished; and this separation of a king's authority from his personwas a matter of vast consequence towards introducing ideas of freedom, and confirming the sacredness and majesty of laws. 

But the grand article, and that which cemented all the parts of thefabric of liberty, was this, --that "no freeman shall be taken, orimprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or banished, or in any wisedestroyed, but by judgment of his peers. "

There is another article of nearly as much consequence as the former, considering the state of the nation at that time, by which it isprovided that the barons shall grant to their tenants the same libertieswhich they had stipulated for themselves. This prevented the kingdomfrom degenerating into the worst imaginable government, a feudalaristocracy. The English barons were not in the condition of thosegreat princes who had made the French monarchy so low in the precedingcentury, or like those who reduced the Imperial power to a name. Theyhad been brought to moderate bounds, by the policy of the first andsecond Henrys, and were not in a condition to set up for pettysovereigns by an usurpation equally detrimental to the crown and thepeople. They were able to act only in confederacy; and this common causemade it necessary to consult the common good, and to study popularity bythe equity of their proceedings. This was a very happy circumstance tothe growing liberty. 

These concessions were so just and reasonable, that, if we except theforce, no prince could think himself wronged in making them. But tosecure the observance of these articles, regulations were made, which, whilst they were regarded, scarcely left a shadow of regal power. Andthe barons could think of no measures for securing their freedom, butsuch as were inconsistent with monarchy. A council of twenty-five baronswas to be chosen by their own body, without any concurrence of the king, in order to hear and determine upon all complaints concerning the breachof the charter; and as these charters extended to almost every part ofgovernment, a tribunal of his enemies was set up who might pass judgmenton all his actions. And that force might not be wanting to execute thejudgments of this new tribunal, the king agreed to issue his own writsto all persons, to oblige them to take an oath of obedience to thetwenty-five barons, who were empowered to distress him by seizure of hislands and castles, and by every possible method, until the grievancecomplained of was redressed according to their pleasure: his own personand his family were alone exempted from violence. 

By these last concessions, it must be confessed, he was effectuallydethroned, and with all the circumstances of indignity which could beimagined. He had refused to govern as a lawful prince, and he sawhimself deprived of even his legal authority. He became of no sort ofconsequence in his kingdom; he was held in universal contempt andderision; he fell into a profound melancholy. It was in vain that he hadrecourse to the Pope, whose power he had found sufficient to reduce, butnot to support him. The censures of the Holy See, which had beenfulminated at his desire, were little regarded by the barons, or even bythe clergy, supported in this resistance by the firmness of theirarchbishop, who acted with great vigor in the cause of the barons, andeven delivered into their hands the fortress of Rochester, one of themost important places in the kingdom. After much meditation the king atlast resolved upon a measure of the most extreme kind, extorted byshame, revenge, and despair, but, considering the disposition of thetime, much the most effectual that could be chosen. He dispatchedemissaries into France, into the Low Countries and Germany, to raise menfor his service. He had recourse to the same measures to bring hiskingdom to obedience which his predecessor, William, had used to conquerit. He promised to the adventurers in his quarrel the lands of therebellious barons, and it is said even empowered his agents to makecharters of the estates of several particulars. The utmost successattended these negotiations in an age when Europe abounded with awarlike and poor nobility, with younger brothers, for whom there was noprovision in regular armies, who seldom entered into the Church, andnever applied themselves to commerce, and when every considerable familywas surrounded by an innumerable multitude of retainers and dependants, idle, and greedy of war and pillage. The Crusade had universallydiffused a spirit of adventure; and if any adventure had the Pope'sapprobation, it was sure to have a number of followers. 

John waited the effect of his measures. He kept up no longer the solemnmockery of a court, in which a degraded long must always have been thelowest object. He retired to the Isle of Wight: his only companions weresailors and fishermen, among whom he became extremely popular. Never washe more to be dreaded than in this sullen retreat, whilst the baronsamused themselves by idle jests and vain conjectures on his conduct. Such was the strange want of foresight in that barbarous age, and suchthe total neglect of design in their affairs, that the barons, when, they had got the charter, which was weakened even by the force by whichit was obtained and the great power which it granted, set no watch uponthe king, seemed to have no intelligence of the great and openmachinations which were carrying on against them, and had made no sortof dispositions for their defence. They spent their time in tournamentsand bear-baitings, and other diversions suited to the fierce rusticityof their manners. At length the storm broke forth, and found themutterly unprovided. The Papal excommunication, the indignation of theirprince, and a vast army of lawless and bold adventurers were poureddown at once upon their heads. Such numbers were engaged in thisenterprise that forty thousand are said to have perished at sea. Yet anumber still remained sufficient to compose two great armies, one ofwhich, with the enraged king at its head, ravaged without mercy theNorth of England, whilst the other turned all the West to a like sceneof blood and desolation. The memory of Stephen's wars was renewed, withevery image of horror, misery, and crime. The barons, dispersed andtrembling in their castles, waited who should fall the next victim. Theyhad no army able to keep the field. The Archbishop, on whom they hadgreat reliance, was suspended from his functions. There was no hope evenfrom submission: the king could not fulfil his engagements to hisforeign troops at a cheaper rate than the utter ruin of his barons. 

[Sidenote: A. D. 1216]

In these circumstances of despair they resolved to have recourse toPhilip, the ancient enemy of their country. Throwing off all allegianceto John, they agreed to accept Louis, the son of that monarch, as theirking. Philip had once more an opportunity of bringing the crown ofEngland into his family, and he readily embraced it. He immediately senthis son into England with seven hundred ships, and slighted the menacesand excommunications of the Pope, to attain the same object for which hehad formerly armed to support and execute them. The affairs of thebarons assumed quite a new face by this reinforcement, and their risewas as sudden and striking as their fall. The foreign army of King John, without discipline, pay, or order, ruined and wasted in the midst of itssuccesses, was little able to oppose the natural force of the country, called forth and recruited by so considerable a succor. Besides, theFrench troops who served under John, and made a great part of his army, immediately went over to the enemy, unwilling to serve against theirsovereign in a cause which now began to look desperate. The son of theKing of France was acknowledged in London, and received the homage ofall ranks of men. John, thus deserted, had no other ally than the Pope, who indeed served him to the utmost of his power, but with arms to whichthe circumstances of the time alone can give any force. Heexcommunicated Louis and his adherents; he laid England under aninterdict; he threatened the King of France himself with the samesentence: but Philip continued firm, and the interdict had little effectin England. Cardinal Langton, by his remarkable address, by his interestin the Sacred College, and his prudent submissions, had been restored tothe exercise of his office; but, steady to the cause he had firstespoused, he made use of the recovery of his authority to carry on hisold designs against the king and the Pope. He celebrated divine servicein spite of the interdict, and by his influence and example taughtothers to despise it. The king, thus deserted, and now only solicitousfor his personal safety, rambled, or rather fled, from place to place, at the head of a small party. He was in great danger in passing a marshin Norfolk, in which he lost the greatest part of his baggage, and hismost valuable effects. With difficulty he escaped to the monastery ofSwineshead, where, violently agitated by grief and disappointments, hislate fatigue and the use of an improper diet threw him into a fever, ofwhich he died in a few days at Newark, not without suspicion of poison, after a reign, or rather a struggle to reign, for eighteen years, themost turbulent and calamitous both to king and people of any that arerecorded in the English history. 

It may not be improper to pause here for a few moments, and to considera little more minutely the causes which had produced the grandrevolution in favor of liberty by which this reign was distinguished, and to draw all the circumstances which led to this remarkable eventinto a single point of view. Since the death of Edward the Confessoronly two princes succeeded to the crown upon undisputed titles. Williamthe Conqueror established his by force of arms. His successors wereobliged to court the people by yielding many of the possessions and manyof the prerogatives of the crown; but they supported a dubious title bya vigorous administration, and recovered by their policy, in the courseof their reign, what the necessity of their affairs obliged them torelinquish for the establishment of their power. Thus was the nationkept continually fluctuating between freedom and servitude. But theprinciples of freedom were predominant, though the thing itself was notyet fully formed. The continual struggle of the clergy for theecclesiastical liberties laid open at the same time the natural claimsof the people; and the clergy were obliged to show some respect forthose claims, in order to add strength to their own party. Theconcessions which Henry the Second made to the ecclesiastics on thedeath of Becket, which were afterwards confirmed by Richard the First, gave a grievous blow to the authority of the crown; as thereby an orderof so much power and influence triumphed over it in many essentialpoints. The latter of these princes brought it very low by the wholetenor of his conduct. Always abroad, the royal authority was felt in itsfull vigor, without being supported by the dignity or softened by thegraciousness of the royal presence. Always in war, he considered hisdominions only as a resource for his armies. The demesnes of the crownwere squandered. Every office in the state was made vile by being sold. Excessive grants, followed by violent and arbitrary resumptions, tore topieces the whole contexture of the government. The civil tumults whicharose in that king's absence showed that the king's lieutenants at leastmight be disobeyed with impunity. Then came John to the crown. Thearbitrary taxes which he imposed very early in his reign, which, offended even more by the improper use made of them than theirirregularity, irritated the people extremely, and joined with all thepreceding causes to make his government contemptible. Henry the Second, during his contests with the Church, had the address to preserve thebarons in his interests. Afterwards, when the barons had joined in therebellion of his children, this wise prince found means to secure thebishops and ecclesiastics. But John drew upon himself at once the hatredof all orders of his subjects. His struggle with the Pope weakened him;his submission to the Pope weakened him yet more. The loss of hisforeign territories, besides what he lost along with them in reputation, made him entirely dependent upon England: whereas his predecessors madeone part of their territories subservient to the preservation of theirauthority in another, where it was endangered. Add to all these causesthe personal character of the king, in which there was nothing uniformor sincere, and which introduced the like unsteadiness into all hisgovernment. He was indolent, yet restless, in his disposition; fond ofworking by violent methods, without any vigor; boastful, but continuallybetraying his fears; showing on all occasions such a desire of peace ashindered him from ever enjoying it. Having no spirit of order, he neverlooked forward, --content by any temporary expedient to extricate himselffrom a present difficulty. Rash, arrogant, perfidious, irreligious, unquiet, he made a tolerable head of a party, but a bad king, and hadtalents fit to disturb another's government, not to support his own. 

A most striking contrast presents itself between the conduct and fortuneof John and his adversary Philip. Philip came to the crown when many ofthe provinces of Prance, by being in the hands of too powerful vassals, were in a manner dismembered from the kingdom; the royal authority wasvery low in what remained. He reunited to the crown a country asvaluable as what belonged to it before; he reduced his subjects of allorders to a stricter obedience than they had given to his predecessors;he withstood the Papal usurpation, and yet used it as an instrument inhis designs: whilst John, who inherited a great territory and an entireprerogative, by his vices and weakness gave up his independency to thePope, his prerogative to his subjects, and a large part of his dominionsto the King of France. 

FOOTNOTES:

[82] A word of uncertain derivation, but which signifies some scandalousspecies of cowardice. 

CHAPTER IX. 

FRAGMENT. --AN ESSAY TOWARDS AN HISTORY OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND. 

There is scarce any object of curiosity more rational than the origin, the progress, and the various revolutions of human laws. Political andmilitary relations are for the greater part accounts of the ambition andviolence of mankind: this is an history of their justice. And surelythere cannot be a more pleasing speculation than to trace the advancesof men in an attempt to imitate the Supreme Ruler in one of the mostglorious of His attributes, and to attend them in the exercise of aprerogative which it is wonderful to find intrusted to the management ofso weak a being. In such an inquiry we shall, indeed, frequently seegreat instances of this frailty; but at the same time we shall beholdsuch noble efforts of wisdom and equity as seem fully to justify thereasonableness of that extraordinary disposition by which men, in oneform or other, have been always put under the dominion of creatures likethemselves. For what can be more instructive than to search out thefirst obscure and scanty fountains of that jurisprudence which nowwaters and enriches whole nations with so abundant and copious aflood, --to observe the first principles of RIGHT springing up, involvedin superstition and polluted with violence, until by length of time andfavorable circumstances it has worked itself into clearness: the lawssometimes lost and trodden down in the confusion of wars and tumults, and sometimes overruled by the hand of power; then, victorious overtyranny, growing stronger, clearer, and more decisive by the violencethey had suffered; enriched even by those foreign conquests whichthreatened their entire destruction; softened and mellowed by peace andreligion; improved and exalted by commerce, by social intercourse, andthat great opener of the mind, ingenuous science?

These certainly were great encouragements to the study of historicaljurisprudence, particularly of our own. Nor was there a want ofmaterials or help for such an undertaking. Yet we have had few attemptsin that province. Lord Chief Justice Hale's History of the Common Lawis, I think, the only one, good or bad, which we have. But with all thedeference justly due to so great a name, we may venture to assert thatthis performance, though not without merit, is wholly unworthy of thehigh reputation of its author. The sources of our English law are notwell, nor indeed fairly, laid open; the ancient judicial proceedings aretouched in a very slight and transient manner; and the great changes andremarkable revolutions in the law, together with their causes, down tohis time, are scarcely mentioned. 

Of this defect I think there were two principal causes. The first, apersuasion, hardly to be eradicated from the minds of our lawyers, thatthe English law has continued very much in the same state from anantiquity to which they will allow hardly any sort of bounds. The secondis, that it was formed and grew up among ourselves; that it is in everyrespect peculiar to this island; and that, if the Roman or any foreignlaws attempted to intrude into its composition, it has always had vigorenough to shake them off, and return to the purity of its primitiveconstitution. 

These opinions are flattering to national vanity and professionalnarrowness; and though they involved those that supported them in themost glaring contradictions, and some absurdities even too ridiculous tomention, we have always been, and in a great measure still are, extremely tenacious of them. If these principles are admitted, thehistory of the law must in a great measure be deemed, superfluous. Forto what purpose is a history of a law of which it is impossible to tracethe beginning, and which during its continuance has admitted noessential changes? Or why should we search foreign laws or histories forexplanation or ornament of that which is wholly our own, and by which weare effectually distinguished from all other countries? Thus the law hasbeen confined, and drawn up into a narrow and inglorious study, and thatwhich should be the leading science in every well-ordered commonwealthremained in all the barbarism of the rudest times, whilst every otheradvanced by rapid steps to the highest improvement both in solidity andelegance; insomuch that the study of our jurisprudence presented toliberal and well-educated minds, even in the best authors, hardlyanything but barbarous terms, ill explained, a coarse, but not a plainexpression, an indigested method, and a species of reasoning the veryrefuse of the schools, which deduced the spirit of the law, not fromoriginal justice or legal conformity, but from causes foreign to it andaltogether whimsical. Young men were sent away with an incurable, and, if we regard the manner of handling rather than the substance, a verywell-founded disgust. The famous antiquary, Spelman, though no man wasbetter formed for the most laborious pursuits, in the beginning desertedthe study of the law in despair, though he returned to it again when amore confirmed age and a strong desire of knowledge enabled him towrestle with every difficulty. 

The opinions which have drawn the law into such narrowness, as they areweakly founded, so they are very easily refuted. With regard to thatspecies of eternity which they attribute to the English law, to saynothing of the manifest contradictions in which those involve themselveswho praise it for the frequent improvements it has received, and at thesame time value it for having remained without any change in all therevolutions of government, it is obvious, on the very first view of theSaxon laws, that we have entirely altered the whole frame of ourjurisprudence since the Conquest. Hardly can we find in these oldcollections a single title which is law at this day; and one may ventureto assert, without much hazard, that, if there were at present a nationgoverned by the Saxon laws, we should find it difficult to point outanother so entirely different from everything we now see established inEngland. 

This is a truth which requires less sagacity than candor to discover. The spirit of party, which has misled us in so many other particulars, has tended greatly to perplex us in this matter. For as the advocatesfor prerogative would, by a very absurd consequence drawn from theNorman Conquest, have made all our national rights and liberties to havearisen from the grants, and therefore to be revocable at the will of thesovereign, so, on the other hand, those who maintained the cause ofliberty did not support it upon more solid principles. They would hearof no beginning to any of our privileges, orders, or laws, and, inorder to gain them a reverence, would prove that they were as old as thenation; and to support that opinion, they put to the torture all theancient monuments. Others, pushing things further, have offered a stillgreater violence to them. N. Bacon, in order to establish hisrepublican, system, has so distorted all the evidence he has produced, concealed so many things of consequence, and thrown such false colorsupon the whole argument, that I know no book so likely to mislead thereader in our antiquities, if yet it retains any authority. In reality, that ancient Constitution and those Saxon laws make little or nothingfor any of our modern parties, and, when fairly laid open, will be foundto compose such a system as none, I believe, would think it eitherpracticable or desirable to establish. I am sensible that nothing hasbeen, a larger theme of panegyric with, all our writers on politics andhistory than the Anglo-Saxon government; and it is impossible not toconceive an high, opinion of its laws, if we rather consider what issaid of them than what they visibly are. These monuments of our pristinerudeness still subsist; and they stand out of themselves indisputableevidence to confute the popular declamations of those writers who wouldpersuade us that the crude institutions of an unlettered people hadreached a perfection which the united efforts of inquiry, experience, learning, and necessity have not been able to attain in many ages. 

But the truth is, the present system of our laws, like our language andour learning, is a very mixed and heterogeneous mass: in some respectsour own; in more borrowed from the policy of foreign, nations, andcompounded, altered, and variously modified, according to the variousnecessities which the manners, the religion, and the commerce of thepeople have at different times imposed. It is our business, in somemeasure, to follow and point out these changes and improvements: a taskwe undertake, not from any ability for the greatness of such a work, butpurely to give some short and plain account of these matters to the veryignorant. 

The Law of the Romans seems utterly to have expired in this islandtogether with their empire, and that, too, before the Saxonestablishment. The Anglo-Saxons came into England as conquerors. Theybrought their own customs with them, and doubtless did not take lawsfrom, but imposed theirs upon, the people they had vanquished. Thesecustoms of the conquering nation were without question the same, for thegreater part, they had observed before their migration from Germany. Thebest image we have of them is to be found in Tacitus. But there isreason to believe that some changes were made suitable to thecircumstances of their new settlement, and to the change theirconstitution must have undergone by adopting a kingly government, notindeed with unlimited sway, but certainly with greater powers than theirleaders possessed whilst they continued in Germany. However, we knowvery little of what was done in these respects until their conversion toChristianity, a revolution which made still more essential changes intheir manners and government. For immediately after the conversion ofEthelbert, King of Kent, the missionaries, who had introduced the use ofletters, and came from Rome full of the ideas of the Roman civilestablishment, must have observed the gross defect arising from a wantof written and permanent laws. The king, [83] from their report of theRoman method, and in imitation of it, first digested the most materialcustoms of this kingdom into writing, without having adopted anythingfrom the Roman law, and only adding some regulations for the support andencouragement of the new religion. These laws still exist, and stronglymark the extreme simplicity of manners and poverty of conception of thelegislators. They are written in the English of that time; and, indeed, all the laws of the Anglo-Saxons continued in that language down to theNorman Conquest. This was different from the method of the otherNorthern nations, who made use only of the Latin language in all theircodes. And I take the difference to have arisen from this. At the timewhen the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Franks, and the other Northernnations on the continent compiled their laws, the provincial Romans werevery numerous amongst them, or, indeed, composed the body of the people. The Latin, language was yet far from extinguished; so that, as thegreatest part of those who could write were Romans, they found itdifficult to adapt their characters to these rough Northern tongues, andtherefore chose to write in Latin, which, though not the language of thelegislator, could not be very incommodious, as they could never fail ofinterpreters; and for this reason, not only their laws, but all theirordinary transactions, were written in that language. But in England, the Roman name and language having entirely vanished in the seventhcentury, the missionary monks were obliged to contend with thedifficulty, and to adapt foreign characters to the English language;else none but a very few could possibly have drawn any advantage fromthe things they meant to record. And to this it was owing that many, even the ecclesiastical constitutions, and not a few of the ordinaryevidences of the land, were written in the language of the country. 

This example of written laws being given by Ethelbert, it was followedby his successors, Edric and Lothaire. The next legislator amongst theEnglish, was Ina, King of the West Saxons, a prince famous in his timefor his wisdom and his piety. His laws, as well as those of theabove-mentioned princes, still subsist. But we must always remember thatvery few of these laws contained any new regulation, but were ratherdesigned to affirm their ancient customs, and to preserve and fix them;and accordingly they are all extremely rude and imperfect. We read of acollection of laws by Offa, King of the Mercians; but they have beenlong since lost. 

The Anglo-Saxon laws, by universal consent of all writers, owe more tothe care and sagacity of Alfred than of any of the ancient kings. In themidst of a cruel war, of which he did not see the beginning nor live tosee the end, he did more for the establishment of order and justice thanany other prince has been known to do in the profoundest peace. Many ofthe institutions attributed to him undoubtedly were not of hisestablishment: this shall be shown, when we come to treat more minutelyof the institutions. But it is clear that he raised, as it were, fromthe ashes, and put new life and vigor into the whole body of the law, almost lost and forgotten in the ravages of the Danish war; so that, having revived, and in all likelihood improved, several ancientnational regulations, he has passed for their author, with a reputationperhaps more just than if he had invented them. In the prologue which hewrote to his own code, he informs us that he collected there whateverappeared to him most valuable in the laws of Ina and Offa and others ofhis progenitors, omitting what he thought wrong in itself or not adaptedto the time; and he seems to have done this with no small judgment. 

The princes who succeeded him, having by his labors enjoyed more repose, turned their minds to the improvement of the law; and there are few ofthem who have not left us some collection more or less complete. 

When the Danes had established their empire, they showed themselves noless solicitous than the English to collect and enforce the laws:seeming desirous to repair all the injuries they had formerly committedagainst them. The code of Canute the Great is one of the most moderate, equitable, and full, of any of the old collections. There was nomaterial change, if any at all, made in their general system by theDanish conquest. They were of the original country of the Saxons, andcould not have differed from them in the groundwork of their policy. Itappears by the league between Alfred and Guthrum, that the Danes tooktheir laws from the English, and accepted them as a favor. They weremore newly come out of the Northern barbarism, and wanted theregulations necessary to a civil society. But under Canute the Englishlaw received considerable improvement. Many of the old English customs, which, as that monarch justly observes, were truly odious, wereabrogated; and, indeed, that code is the last we have that belongs tothe period before the Conquest. That monument called the Laws of Edwardthe Confessor is certainly of a much later date; and what isextraordinary, though the historians after the Conquest continuallyspeak of the Laws of King Edward, it does not appear that he ever made acollection, or that any such laws existed at that time. It appears bythe preface to the Laws of St. Edward, that these written constitutionswere continually falling into disuse. Although these laws hadundoubtedly their authority, it was, notwithstanding, by traditionarycustoms that the people were for the most part governed, which, as theyvaried somewhat in different provinces, were distinguished accordinglyby the names of the West Saxon, the Mercian, and the Danish Law; butthis produced no very remarkable inconvenience, as those customs seemedto differ from each other, and from the written laws, rather in thequantity and nature of their pecuniary mulcts than in anythingessential. 

If we take a review of these ancient constitutions, we shall observethat their sanctions are mostly confined to the following objects. 

1st. The preservation of the peace. This is one of the largest titles;and it shows the ancient Saxons to have been a people extremely prone toquarrelling and violence. In some cases the law ventures only to putthis disposition under regulations:[84] prescribing that no man shallfight with another until he has first called him to justice in a legalway; and then lays down the terms under which he may proceed tohostilities. The other less premeditated quarrels, in meetings fordrinking or business, were considered as more or less heinous, accordingto the rank of the person in whose house the dispute happened, or, tospeak the language of that time, whose peace they had violated. 

2d. In proportioning the pecuniary mulcts imposed by them for all, eventhe highest crimes, according to the dignify of the person injured, andto the quantity of the offence. For this purpose they classed the peoplewith great regularity and exactness, both in the ecclesiastic and thesecular lines, adjusting with great care the ecclesiastical to thesecular dignities; and they not only estimated each man's life accordingto his quality, but they set a value upon every limb and member, downeven to teeth, hair, and nails; and these are the particulars in whichtheir laws are most accurate and best defined. 

3d. In settling the rules and ceremonies of their oaths, theirpurgations, and the whole order and process of their superstitiousjustice: for by these methods they seem to have decided allcontroversies. 

4th. In regulating the several fraternities of Frank-pledges, by whichall the people were naturally bound to their good behavior to oneanother and to their superiors; in all which they were excessivelystrict, in order to supply by the severity of this police the extremelaxity and imperfection of their laws, and the weak and precariousauthority of their kings and magistrates. 

These, with some regulations for payment of tithes and Church dues, andfor the discovery and pursuit of stealers of cattle, comprise almost allthe titles deserving notice in the Saxon laws. In those laws there arefrequently to be observed particular institutions, well and prudentlyframed; but there is no appearance of a regular, consistent, and stablejurisprudence. However, it is pleasing to observe something of equityand distinction gradually insinuating itself into these unformedmaterials, and some transient flashes of light striking across the gloomwhich prepared for the full day that shone out afterwards. The clergy, who kept up a constant communication with Rome, and were in effect theSaxon legislators, could not avoid gathering some informations from alaw which never was perfectly extinguished in that part of the world. Accordingly we find one of its principles had strayed hither so early asthe time of Edric and Lothaire. [85] There are two maxims[86] of civillaw in their proper terms in the code of Canute the Great, who made andauthorized that collection after his pilgrimage to Rome; and at thistime, it is remarkable, we find the institutions of other nationsimitated. In the same collection there is an express reference to thelaws of the Werini. From hence it is plain that the resemblance betweenthe polity of the several Northern nations did not only arise from theircommon original, but also from their adopting, in some cases, theconstitutions of those amongst them who were most remarkable for theirwisdom. 

In this state the law continued until the Norman Conquest. But we seethat even before that period the English law began to be improved bytaking in foreign learning; we see the canons of several councils mixedindiscriminately with the civil constitutions; and, indeed, thegreatest part of the reasoning and equity to be found in them seems tobe derived from that source. 

Hitherto we have observed the progress of the Saxon laws, which, conformably to their manners, were rude and simple, --agreeably to theirconfined situation, very narrow, --and though in some degree, yet notvery considerably, improved by foreign communication. However, we canplainly discern its three capital sources. First, the ancienttraditionary customs of the North, which, coming upon this and the othercivilized parts of Europe with the impetuosity of a conquest, bore downall the ancient establishments, and, by being suited to the genius ofthe people, formed, as it were, the great body and main stream of theSaxon laws. The second source was the canons of the Church. As yet, indeed, they were not reduced into system and a regular form ofjurisprudence; but they were the law of the clergy, and consequentlyinfluenced considerably a people over whom that order had an almostunbounded authority. They corrected, mitigated, and enriched those roughNorthern institutions; and the clergy having once, bent the stubbornnecks of that people to the yoke of religion, they were the more easilysusceptible of other changes introduced under the same sanction. Theseformed the third source, --namely, some parts of the Roman civil law, andthe customs of other German nations. But this source appears to havebeen much the smallest of the three, and was yet inconsiderable. 

The Norman Conquest is the great era of our laws. At this time theEnglish jurisprudence, which, had hitherto continued a poor stream, fedfrom some few, and those scanty sources, was all at once, as from amighty flood, replenished with a vast body of foreign learning, bywhich, indeed, it might be said rather to have been increased than muchimproved: for this foreign law, being imposed, not adopted, for a longtime bore strong appearances of that violence by which it had been firstintroduced. All our monuments bear a strong evidence to this change. Newcourts of justice, new names and powers of officers, in a word, a newtenure of land as well as new possessors of it, took place. Even thelanguage of public proceedings was in a great measure changed. 

FOOTNOTES:

[83] Decreta illi judiciorum juxta exempla Romanorum cum consiliosapientium constituit. --Beda, Eccl. Hist. Lib. II. C. 5. 

[84] Leg. Ælfred. 38, De Pugna. 

[85] Justum est ut proles matrem sequatur. --Edric and Lothaire. 

[86] Negatio potior est affirmatione. Possessio proprior est habentiquam deinceps repetenti. --L. Cnut. 

END OF VOL. VII.