View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 6

But it would be necessary to shut our eyes with deliberate prejudice against the whole tenor of the most unquestionable authorities, against the pet.i.tions of the commons, the acts of the legislature, the testimony of historians and lawyers, before we could a.s.sert that England acquiesced in those abuses and oppressions which it must be confessed she was unable fully to prevent.

The word prerogative is of a peculiar import, and scarcely understood by those who come from the studies of political philosophy. We cannot define it by any theory of executive functions. All these may be comprehended in it; but also a great deal more. It is best, perhaps, to be understood by its derivation, and has been said to be that law in case of the king which is law in no case of the subject.[362] Of the higher and more sovereign prerogatives I shall here say nothing; they result from the nature of a monarchy, and have nothing very peculiar in their character. But the smaller rights of the crown show better the original lineaments of our const.i.tution. It is said commonly enough that all prerogatives are given for the subject's good. I must confess that no part of this a.s.sertion corresponds with my view of the subject. It neither appears to me that these prerogatives were ever given nor that they necessarily redound to the subject's good. Prerogative, in its old sense, might be defined an advantage obtained by the crown over the subject, in cases where their interests came into compet.i.tion, by reason of its greater strength. This sprang from the nature of the Norman government, which rather resembled a scramble of wild beasts, where the strongest takes the best share, than a system founded upon principles of common utility. And, modified as the exercise of most prerogatives has been by the more liberal tone which now pervades our course of government, whoever attends to the common practice of courts of justice, and, still more, whoever consults the law-books, will not only be astonished at their extent and multiplicity, but very frequently at their injustice and severity.

[Sidenote: Purveyance.]

The real prerogatives that might formerly be exerted were sometimes of so injurious a nature, that we can hardly separate them from their abuse: a striking instance is that of purveyance, which will at once ill.u.s.trate the definition above given of a prerogative, the limits within which it was to be exercised, and its tendency to transgress them. This was a right of purchasing whatever was necessary for the king's household, at a fair price, in preference to every compet.i.tor, and without the consent of the owner. By the same prerogative, carriages and horses were impressed for the king's journeys, and lodgings provided for his attendants. This was defended on a pretext of necessity, or at least of great convenience to the sovereign, and was both of high antiquity and universal practice throughout Europe. But the royal purveyors had the utmost temptation, and doubtless no small store of precedents, to stretch this power beyond its legal boundary; and not only to fix their own price too low, but to seize what they wanted without any payment at all, or with tallies which were carried in vain to an empty exchequer.[363] This gave rise to a number of pet.i.tions from the commons, upon which statutes were often framed; but the evil was almost incurable in its nature, and never ceased till that prerogative was itself abolished. Purveyance, as I have already said, may serve to distinguish the defects from the abuses of our const.i.tution. It was a reproach to the law that men should be compelled to send their goods without their consent; it was a reproach to the administration that they were deprived of them without payment.

The right of purchasing men's goods for the use of the king was extended by a sort of a.n.a.logy to their labour. Thus Edward III. announces to all sheriffs that William of Walsingham had a commission to collect as many painters as might suffice for "our works in St. Stephen's chapel, Westminster, to be at our wages as long as shall be necessary," and to arrest and keep in prison all who should refuse or be refractory; and enjoins them to lend their a.s.sistance.[364] Windsor Castle owes its ma.s.sive magnificence to labourers impressed from every part of the kingdom. There is even a commission from Edward IV. to take as many workmen in gold as were wanting, and employ them at the king's cost upon the trappings of himself and his household.[365]

[Sidenote: Abuses of feudal rights.]

Another cla.s.s of abuses intimately connected with unquestionable though oppressive rights of the crown originated in the feudal tenure which bound all the lands of the kingdom. The king had indisputably a right to the wardship of his tenants in chivalry, and to the escheats or forfeitures of persons dying without heirs or attainted for treason. But his officers, under pretence of wardship, took possession of lands not held immediately of the crown, claimed escheats where a right heir existed, and seized estates as forfeited which were protected by the statute of entails. The real owner had no remedy against this disposition but to prefer his pet.i.tion of right in chancery, or, which was probably more effectual, to procure a remonstrance of the house of commons in his favour. Even where justice was finally rendered to him he had no recompense for his damages; and the escheators were not less likely to repeat an iniquity by which they could not personally suffer.

[Sidenote: Forest laws.]

The charter of the forests, granted by Henry III. along with Magna Charta,[366] had been designed to crush the flagitious system of oppression which prevailed in those favourite haunts of the Norman kings. They had still, however, their peculiar jurisdiction, though, from the time at least of Edward III., subject in some measure to the control of the King's Bench.[367] The foresters, I suppose, might find a compensation for their want of the common law in that easy and licentious way of life which they affected; but the neighbouring cultivators frequently suffered from the king's officers who attempted to recover those adjacent lands, or, as they were called, purlieus, which had been disafforested by the charter and protected by frequent perambulations. Many pet.i.tions of the commons relate to this grievance.

[Sidenote: Jurisdiction of constable and marshal.]

The constable and marshal of England possessed a jurisdiction, the proper limits whereof were sufficiently narrow, as it seems, to have extended only to appeals of treason committed beyond sea, which were determined by combat, and to military offences within the realm. But these high officers frequently took upon them to inquire of treasons and felonies cognizable at common law, and even of civil contracts and trespa.s.ses. This is no bad ill.u.s.tration of the state in which our const.i.tution stood under the Plantagenets. No colour of right or of supreme prerogative was set up to justify a procedure so manifestly repugnant to the great charter. For all remonstrances against these encroachments the king gave promises in return; and a statute was enacted, in the thirteenth of Richard II., declaring the bounds of the constable and marshal's jurisdiction.[368] It could not be denied, therefore, that all infringements of these acknowledged limits were illegal, even if they had a hundred fold more actual precedents in their favour than can be supposed. But the abuse by no means ceased after the pa.s.sing of this statute, as several subsequent pet.i.tions that it might be better regarded will evince. One, as it contains a special instance, I shall insert. It is of the fifth year of Henry IV.: "On several supplications and pet.i.tions made by the commons in parliament to our lord the king for Bennet Wilman, who is accused by certain of his ill-wishers and detained in prison, and put to answer before the constable and marshal, against the statutes and the common law of England, our said lord the king, by the advice and a.s.sent of the lords in parliament, granted that the said Bennet should be treated according to the statutes and common law of England, notwithstanding any commission to the contrary, or accusation against him made before the constable and marshal." And a writ was sent to the justices of the King's Bench with a copy of this article from the roll of parliament, directing them to proceed as they shall see fit according to the laws and customs of England.[369]

It must appear remarkable that, in a case so manifestly within their competence, the court of King's Bench should not have issued a writ of habeas corpus, without waiting for what may be considered as a particular act of parliament. But it is a natural effect of an arbitrary administration of government to intimidate courts of justice.[370] A negative argument, founded upon the want of legal precedent, is certainly not conclusive when it relates to a distant period, of which all the precedents have not been noted; yet it must strike us that in the learned and zealous arguments of Sir Robert Cotton, Mr. Selden, and others, against arbitrary imprisonment, in the great case of the habeas corpus, though the statute law is full of authorities in their favour, we find no instance adduced earlier than the reign of Henry VII., where the King's Bench has released, or even bailed, persons committed by the council or the constable, though it is unquestionable that such committals were both frequent and illegal.[371]

If I have faithfully represented thus far the history of our const.i.tution, its essential character will appear to be a monarchy greatly limited by law, though retaining much power that was ill calculated to promote the public good, and swerving continually into an irregular course, which there was no restraint adequate to correct. But of all the notions that have been advanced as to the theory of this const.i.tution, the least consonant to law and history is that which represents the king as merely an hereditary executive magistrate, the first officer of the state. What advantages might result from such a form of government this is not the place to discuss. But it certainly was not the ancient const.i.tution of England. There was nothing in this, absolutely nothing, of a republican appearance. All seemed to grow out of the monarchy, and was referred to its advantage and honour. The voice of supplication, even in the stoutest disposition of the commons, was always humble; the prerogative was always named in large and pompous expressions. Still more naturally may we expect to find in the law-books even an obsequious deference to power, from judges who scarcely ventured to consider it as their duty to defend the subject's freedom, and who beheld the gigantic image of prerogative, in the full play of its hundred arms, constantly before their eyes. Through this monarchical tone, which certainly pervades all our legal authorities, a writer like Hume, accustomed to philosophical liberality as to the principles of government, and to the democratical language which the modern aspect of the const.i.tution and the liberty of printing have produced, fell hastily into the error of believing that all limitations of royal power during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as much unsettled in law and in public opinion as they were liable to be violated by force. Though a contrary position has been sufficiently demonstrated, I conceive, by the series of parliamentary proceedings which I have already produced, yet there is a pa.s.sage in Sir John Fortescue's treatise De Laudibus Legum Angliae, so explicit and weighty, that no writer on the English const.i.tution can be excused from inserting it. This eminent person, having been chief justice of the King's Bench under Henry VI., was governor to the young prince of Wales during his retreat in France, and received at his hands the office of chancellor. It must never be forgotten that, in a treatise purposely composed for the instruction of one who hoped to reign over England, the limitations of government are enforced as strenuously by Fortescue, as some succeeding lawyers have inculcated the doctrines of arbitrary prerogative.

[Sidenote: Sir John Fortescue's doctrine as to the English const.i.tution.]

"A king of England cannot at his pleasure make any alterations in the laws of the land, for the nature of his government is not only regal, but political. Had it been merely regal, he would have a power to make what innovations and alterations he pleased in the laws of the kingdom, impose tallages and other hardships upon the people whether they would or no, without their consent, which sort of government the civil laws point out when they declare Quod principi placuit, legis habet vigorem.

But it is much otherwise with a king whose government is political, because he can neither make any alteration or change in the laws of the realm without the consent of the subjects, nor burthen them against their wills with strange impositions, so that a people governed by such laws as are made by their own consent and approbation enjoy their properties securely, and without the hazard of being deprived of them, either by the king or any other. The same things may be effected under an absolute prince, provided he do not degenerate into the tyrant. Of such a prince, Aristotle, in the third of his Politics, says, 'It is better for a city to be governed by a good man than by good laws.' But because it does not always happen that the person presiding over a people is so qualified, St. Thomas, in the book which he writ to the king of Cyprus, De Regimine Principum, wishes that a kingdom could be so inst.i.tuted as that the king might not be at liberty to tyrannize over his people; which only comes to pa.s.s in the present case; that is, when the sovereign power is restrained by political laws. Rejoice, therefore, my good prince, that such is the law of the kingdom which you are to inherit, because it will afford, both to yourself and subjects, the greatest security and satisfaction."[372]

The two great divisions of civil rule, the absolute, or regal as he calls it, and the political, Fortescue proceeds to deduce from the several originals of conquest and compact. Concerning the latter he declares emphatically a truth not always palatable to princes, that such governments were inst.i.tuted by the people, and for the people's good; quoting St. Augustin for a similar definition of a political society.

"As the head of a body natural cannot change its nerves and sinews, cannot deny to the several parts their proper energy, their due proportion and aliment of blood; neither can a king, who is the head of a body politic, change the laws thereof, nor take from the people what is theirs by right against their consent. Thus you have, sir, the formal inst.i.tution of every political kingdom, from whence you may guess at the power which a king may exercise with respect to the laws and the subject. For he is appointed to protect his subjects in their lives, properties, and laws; for this very end and purpose he has the delegation of power from the people, and he has no just claim to any other power but this. Wherefore, to give a brief answer to that question of yours, concerning the different powers which kings claim over their subjects, I am firmly of opinion that it arises solely from the different natures of their original inst.i.tution, as you may easily collect from what has been said. So the kingdom of England had its original from Brute, and the Trojans, who attended him from Italy and Greece, and became a mixed kind of government, compounded of the regal and political."[373]

[Sidenote: Erroneous views taken by Hume.]

It would occupy too much s.p.a.ce to quote every other pa.s.sage of the same nature in this treatise of Fortescue, and in that ent.i.tled, Of the Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, which, so far as these points are concerned, is nearly a translation from the former.[374] But these, corroborated as they are by the statute-book and by the rolls of parliament, are surely conclusive against the notions which pervade Mr. Hume's History. I have already remarked that a sense of the glaring prejudice by which some Whig writers had been actuated, in representing the English const.i.tution from the earliest times as nearly arrived at its present perfection, conspired with certain prepossessions of his own to lead this eminent historian into an equally erroneous system on the opposite side. And as he traced the stream backwards, and came last to the times of the Plantagenet dynasty, with opinions already bia.s.sed and even pledged to the world in his volumes of earlier publication, he was p.r.o.ne to seize hold of, and even exaggerate, every circ.u.mstance that indicated immature civilization, and law perverted or infringed.[375] To this his ignorance of English jurisprudence which certainly in some measure disqualified him from writing our history, did not a little contribute; misrepresentations frequently occurring in his work, which a moderate acquaintance with the law of the land would have prevented.[376]

[Sidenote: Instances of illegal condemnation rare.]

It is an honourable circ.u.mstance to England that the history of no other country presents so few instances of illegal condemnations upon political charges. The judicial torture was hardly known and never recognised by law.[377] The sentence in capital crimes, fixed unalterably by custom, allowed nothing to vindictiveness and indignation. There hardly occurs an example of any one being notoriously put to death without form of trial, except in moments of flagrant civil war. If the rights of juries were sometimes evaded by irregular jurisdictions, they were at least held sacred by the courts of law: and through all the vicissitudes of civil liberty, no one ever questioned the primary right of every freeman, handed down from his Saxon forefathers, to the trial by his peers. A just regard for public safety prescribes the necessity of severe penalties against rebellion and conspiracy; but the interpretation of these offences, when intrusted to sovereigns and their counsellors, has been the most tremendous instrument of despotic power. In rude ages, even though a general spirit of political liberty may prevail, the legal character of treason will commonly be undefined; nor is it the disposition of lawyers to give greater accuracy to this part of criminal jurisprudence. The nature of treason appears to have been subject to much uncertainty in England before the statute of Edward III. If that memorable law did not give all possible precision to the offence, which we must certainly allow, it prevented at least those stretches of vindictive tyranny which disgrace the annals of other countries. The praise, however, must be understood as comparative. Some cases of harsh if not illegal convictions could hardly fail to occur in times of violence and during changes of the reigning family. Perhaps the circ.u.mstances have now and then been aggravated by historians. Nothing could be more illegal than the conviction of the earl of Cambridge and lord Scrope in 1415, if it be true, according to Carte and Hume, that they were not heard in their defence. But whether this is to be absolutely inferred from the record[378] is perhaps open to question. There seems at least to have been no sufficient motive for such an irregularity; their partic.i.p.ation in a treasonable conspiracy being manifest from their own confession.

The proceedings against Sir John Mortimer in the 2nd of Henry VI.[379]

are called by Hume highly irregular and illegal. They were, however, by act of attainder, which cannot well be styled illegal. Nor are they to be considered as severe. Mortimer had broken out of the Tower, where he was confined on a charge of treason. This was a capital felony at common law; and the chief irregularity seems to have consisted in having recourse to parliament in order to attaint him of treason, when he had already forfeited his life by another crime.

I would not willingly attribute to the prevalence of Tory dispositions what may be explained otherwise, the progress which Mr. Hume's historical theory as to our const.i.tution has been gradually making since its publication. The tide of opinion, which since the Revolution, and indeed since the reign of James I., had been flowing so strongly in favour of the antiquity of our liberties, now seems, among the higher and more literary cla.s.ses, to set pretty decidedly the other way. Though we may still sometimes hear a demagogue chattering about the witenagemot, it is far more usual to find sensible and liberal men who look on Magna Charta itself as the result of an uninteresting squabble between the king and his barons. Acts of force and injustice, which strike the cursory inquirer, especially if he derives his knowledge from modern compilations, more than the average tenor of events, are selected and displayed as fair samples of the law and of its administration. We are deceived by the comparatively perfect state of our present liberties, and forget that our superior security is far less owing to positive law than to the control which is exercised over government by public opinion through the general use of printing, and to the diffusion of liberal principles in policy through the same means. Thus disgusted at a contrast which it was hardly candid to inst.i.tute, we turn away from the records that attest the real, though imperfect, freedom of our ancestors; and are willing to be persuaded that the whole scheme of English polity, till the commons took on themselves to a.s.sert their natural rights against James I., was at best but a mockery of popular privileges, hardly recognised in theory, and never regarded in effect.[380]

This system, when stripped of those slavish inferences that Brady and Carte attempted to build upon it, admits perhaps of no essential objection but its want of historical truth. G.o.d forbid that our rights to just and free government should be tried by a jury of antiquaries!

Yet it is a generous pride that intertwines the consciousness of hereditary freedom with the memory of our ancestors; and no trifling argument against those who seem indifferent in its cause, that the character of the bravest and most virtuous among nations has not depended upon the accidents of race or climate, but been gradually wrought by the plastic influence of civil rights, transmitted as a prescriptive inheritance through a long course of generations.

[Sidenote: Causes tending to form the const.i.tution.]

By what means the English acquired and preserved this political liberty, which, even in the fifteenth century, was the admiration of judicious foreigners,[381] is a very rational and interesting inquiry. Their own serious and steady attachment to the laws must always be reckoned among the princ.i.p.al causes of this blessing. The civil equality of all freemen below the rank of peerage, and the subjection of peers themselves to the impartial arm of justice, and to a due share in contribution to public burthens, advantages unknown to other countries, tended to identify the interests and to a.s.similate the feelings of the aristocracy with those of the people; cla.s.ses whose dissension and jealousy has been in many instances the surest hope of sovereigns aiming at arbitrary power. This freedom from the oppressive superiority of a privileged order was peculiar to England. In many kingdoms the royal prerogative was at least equally limited. The statutes of Aragon are more full of remedial provisions. The right of opposing a tyrannical government by arms was more frequently a.s.serted in Castile. But nowhere else did the people possess by law, and I think, upon the whole, in effect, so much security for their personal freedom and property. Accordingly, the middling ranks flourished remarkably, not only in commercial towns, but among the cultivators of the soil. "There is scarce a small village," says Sir J.

Fortescue, "in which you may not find a knight, an esquire, or some substantial householder (paterfamilias), commonly called a frankleyn,[382] possessed of considerable estate; besides others who are called freeholders, and many yeomen of estates sufficient to make a substantial jury." I would, however, point out more particularly two causes which had a very leading efficacy in the gradual development of our const.i.tution; first, the schemes of continental ambition in which our government was long engaged; secondly, the manner in which feudal principles of insubordination and resistance were modified by the prerogatives of the early Norman kings.

1. At the epoch when William the Conqueror ascended the throne, hardly any other power was possessed by the king of France than what he inherited from the great fiefs of the Capetian family. War with such a potentate was not exceedingly to be dreaded, and William, besides his immense revenue, could employ the feudal services of his va.s.sals, which were extended by him to continental expeditions. These circ.u.mstances were not essentially changed till after the loss of Normandy; for the acquisitions of Henry II. kept him fully on an equality with the French crown, and the dilapidation which had taken place in the royal demesnes was compensated by several arbitrary resources that filled the exchequer of these monarchs. But in the reigns of John and Henry III., the position of England, or rather of its sovereign, with respect to France, underwent a very disadvantageous change. The loss of Normandy severed the connexion between the English n.o.bility and the continent; they had no longer estates to defend, and took not sufficient interest in the concerns of Guienne to fight for that province at their own cost. Their feudal service was now commuted for an escuage, which fell very short of the expenses incurred in a protracted campaign. Tallages of royal towns and demesne lands, extortion of money from the Jews, every feudal abuse and oppression, were tried in vain to replenish the treasury, which the defence of Eleanor's inheritance against the increased energy of France was constantly exhausting. Even in the most arbitrary reigns, a general tax upon landholders, in any cases but those prescribed by the feudal law, had not been ventured; and the standing bulwark of Magna Charta, as well as the feebleness and unpopularity of Henry III., made it more dangerous to violate an established principle. Subsidies were therefore constantly required; but for these it was necessary for the king to meet parliament, to hear their complaints, and, if he could not elude, to acquiesce in their pet.i.tions. These necessities came still more urgently upon Edward I., whose ambitious spirit could not patiently endure the encroachments of Philip the Fair, a rival not less ambitious, but certainly less distinguished by personal prowess, than himself. What advantage the friends of liberty reaped from this ardour for continental warfare is strongly seen in the circ.u.mstances attending the Confirmation of the Charters.

But after this statute had rendered all tallages without consent of parliament illegal, though it did not for some time prevent their being occasionally imposed, it was still more difficult to carry on a war with France or Scotland, to keep on foot naval armaments, or even to preserve the courtly magnificence which that age of chivalry affected, without perpetual recurrence to the house of commons. Edward III. very little consulted the interests of his prerogative when he stretched forth his hand to seize the phantom of a crown in France. It compelled him to a.s.semble parliament almost annually, and often to hold more than one session within the year. Here the representatives of England learned the habit of remonstrance and conditional supply; and though, in the meridian of Edward's age and vigour, they often failed of immediate redress, yet they gradually swelled the statute-roll with provisions to secure their country's freedom; and acquiring self-confidence by mutual intercourse, and sense of the public opinion, they became able, before the end of Edward's reign, and still more in that of his grandson, to control, prevent, and punish the abuses of administration. Of all these proud and sovereign privileges, the right of refusing supply was the keystone. But for the long wars in which our kings were involved, at first by their possession of Guienne, and afterwards by their pretensions upon the crown of France, it would have been easy to suppress remonstrances by avoiding to a.s.semble parliament. For it must be confessed that an authority was given to the king's proclamations, and to ordinances of the council, which differed but little from legislative power, and would very soon have been interpreted by complaisant courts of justice to give them the full extent of statutes.

It is common indeed to a.s.sert that the liberties of England were bought with the blood of our forefathers. This is a very magnanimous boast, and in some degree is consonant enough to the truth. But it is far more generally accurate to say that they were purchased by money. A great proportion of our best laws, including Magna Charta itself, as it now stands confirmed by Henry III., were, in the most literal sense, obtained by a pecuniary bargain with the crown. In many parliaments of Edward III. and Richard II. this sale of redress is chaffered for as distinctly, and with as little apparent sense of disgrace, as the most legitimate business between two merchants would be transacted. So little was there of voluntary benevolence in what the loyal courtesy of our const.i.tution styles concessions from the throne; and so little t.i.tle have these sovereigns, though we cannot refuse our admiration to the generous virtues of Edward III. and Henry V., to claim the grat.i.tude of posterity as the benefactors of their people!

2. The relation established between a lord and his va.s.sal by the feudal tenure, far from containing principles of any servile and implicit obedience, permitted the compact to be dissolved in case of its violation by either party. This extended as much to the sovereign as to inferior lords; the authority of the former in France, where the system most flourished, being for several ages rather feudal than political. If a va.s.sal was aggrieved, and if justice was denied him, he sent a defiance, that is, a renunciation of fealty to the king, and was ent.i.tled to enforce redress at the point of his sword. It then became a contest of strength as between two independent potentates, and was terminated by treaty, advantageous or otherwise, according to the fortune of war. This privilege, suited enough to the situation of France, the great peers of which did not originally intend to admit more than a nominal supremacy in the house of Capet, was evidently less compatible with the regular monarchy of England. The stern natures of William the Conqueror and his successors kept in control the mutinous spirit of their n.o.bles, and reaped the profit of feudal tenures without submitting to their reciprocal obligations. They counteracted, if I may so say, the centrifugal force of that system by the application of a stronger power; by preserving order, administering justice, checking the growth of baronial influence and riches, with habitual activity, vigilance, and severity. Still, however, there remained the original principle, that allegiance depended conditionally upon good treatment, and that an appeal might be lawfully made to arms against an oppressive government. Nor was this, we may be sure, left for extreme necessity, or thought to require a long enduring forbearance. In modern times a king compelled by his subjects' swords to abandon any pretension would be supposed to have ceased to reign; and the express recognition of such a right as that of insurrection has been justly deemed inconsistent with the majesty of law. But ruder ages had ruder sentiments. Force was necessary to repel force; and men accustomed to see the king's authority defied by private riot were not much shocked when it was resisted in defence of public freedom.

The Great Charter of John was secured by the election of twenty-five barons as conservators of the compact. If the king, of the justiciary in his absence, should transgress any article, any four might demand reparation, and on denial carry their complaint to the rest of their body. "And those barons, with all the commons of the land, shall distrain and annoy us by every means in their power; that is, by seizing our castles, lands, and possessions, and every other mode, till the wrong shall be repaired to their satisfaction; saving our person, and our queen and children. And when it shall be repaired they shall obey us as before."[383] It is amusing to see the common law of distress introduced upon this gigantic scale; and the capture of the king's castles treated as a.n.a.logous to impounding a neighbour's horse for breaking fences.

A very curious ill.u.s.tration of this feudal principle is found in the conduct of William earl of Pembroke, one of the greatest names in our ancient history, towards Henry III. The king had defied him, which was tantamount to a declaration of war; alleging that he had made an inroad upon the royal domains. Pembroke maintained that he was not the aggressor, that the king had denied him justice, and been the first to invade his territory; on which account he had thought himself absolved from his homage, and at liberty to use force against the malignity of the royal advisers. "Nor would it be for the king's honour," the earl adds, "that I should submit to his will against reason, whereby I should rather do wrong to him and to that justice which he is bound to administer towards his people; and I should give an ill example to all men in deserting justice and right in compliance with his mistaken will.

For this would show that I loved my worldly wealth better than justice."

These words, with whatever dignity expressed, it may be objected, prove only the disposition of an angry and revolted earl. But even Henry fully admitted the right of taking arms against himself if he had meditated his va.s.sal's destruction, and disputed only the application of this maxim to the earl of Pembroke.[384]

These feudal notions, which placed the moral obligation of allegiance very low, acting under a weighty pressure from the real strength of the crown, were favourable to const.i.tutional liberty. The great va.s.sals of France and Germany aimed at living independently on their fiefs, with no further concern for the rest than as useful allies having a common interest against the crown. But in England, as there was no prospect of throwing off subjection, the barons endeavoured only to lighten its burthen, fixing limits to prerogative by law, and securing their observation by parliamentary remonstrances or by dint of arms. Hence, as all rebellions in England were directed only to coerce the government, or at the utmost to change the succession of the crown, without the smallest tendency to separation, they did not impair the national strength nor destroy the character of the const.i.tution. In all these contentions it is remarkable that the people and clergy sided with the n.o.bles against the throne. No individuals are so popular with the monkish annalists, who speak the language of the populace, as Simon earl of Leicester, Thomas earl of Lancaster, and Thomas duke of Gloucester, all turbulent opposers of the royal authority, and probably little deserving of their panegyrics. Very few English historians of the middle ages are advocates of prerogative. This may be ascribed both to the equality of our laws and to the interest which the aristocracy found in courting popular favour, when committed against so formidable an adversary as the king. And even now, when the stream that once was hurried along gullies and dashed down precipices hardly betrays upon its broad and tranquil bosom the motion that actuates it, it must still be accounted a singular happiness of our const.i.tution that, all ranks graduating harmoniously into one another, the interests of peers and commoners are radically interwoven; each in a certain sense distinguishable, but not balanced like opposite weights, not separated like discordant fluids, not to be secured by insolence or jealousy, but by mutual adherence and reciprocal influences.

[Sidenote: Influence which the state of manners gave the n.o.bility.]

From the time of Edward I. the feudal system and all the feelings connected with it declined very rapidly. But what the n.o.bility lost in the number of their military tenants was in some degree compensated by the state of manners. The higher cla.s.s of them, who took the chief share in public affairs, were exceedingly opulent; and their mode of life gave wealth an incredibly greater efficacy than it possesses at present.

Gentlemen of large estates and good families who had attached themselves to these great peers, who bore offices which we should call menial in their households, and sent their children thither for education, were of course ready to follow their banner in rising, without much inquiry into the cause. Still less would the vast body of tenants and their retainers, who were fed at the castle in time of peace, refuse to carry their pikes and staves into the field of battle. Many devices were used to preserve this aristocratic influence, which riches and ancestry of themselves rendered so formidable. Such was the maintenance of suits, or confederacies for the purpose of supporting each other's claims in litigation, which was the subject of frequent complaints in parliament, and gave rise to several prohibitory statutes. By help of such confederacies parties were enabled to make violent entries upon the lands they claimed, which the law itself could hardly be said to discourage.[385] Even proceedings in courts of justice were often liable to intimidation and influence.[386] A practice much allied to confederacies of maintenance, though ostensibly more harmless, was that of giving liveries to all retainers of a n.o.ble family; but it had an obvious tendency to preserve that spirit of factious attachments and animosities which it is the general policy of a wise government to dissipate. From the first year of Richard II. we find continual mention of this custom, with many legal provisions against it, but it was never abolished till the reign of Henry VII.[387]

[Sidenote: Prevalent habits of rapine.]

These a.s.sociations under powerful chiefs were only incidentally beneficial as they tended to withstand the abuses of prerogative. In their more usual course they were designed to thwart the legitimate exercise of the king's government in the administration of the laws. All Europe was a scene of intestine anarchy during the middle ages; and though England was far less exposed to the scourge of private war than most nations on the continent, we should find, could we recover the local annals of every country, such an acc.u.mulation of petty rapine and tumult as would almost alienate us from the liberty which served to engender it. This was the common tenor of manners, sometimes so much aggravated as to find a place in general history,[388] more often attested by records during the three centuries that the house of Plantagenet sat on the throne. Disseisin, or forcible dispossession of freeholds, makes one of the most considerable articles in our law-books.[389] Highway robbery was from the earliest times a sort of national crime. Capital punishments, though very frequent, made little impression on a bold and a licentious crew, who had at least the sympathy of those who had nothing to lose on their side, and flattering prospects of impunity. We know how long the outlaws of Sherwood lived in tradition--men who, like some of their betters, have been permitted to redeem by a few acts of generosity the just ignominy of extensive crimes. These, indeed, were the heroes of vulgar applause; but when such a judge as Sir John Fortescue could exult that more Englishmen were hanged for robbery in one year than French in seven, and that, "if an Englishman be poor, and see another having riches which may be taken from him by might, he will not spare to do so,"[390] it may be perceived how thoroughly these sentiments had pervaded the public mind.

Such robbers, I have said, had flattering prospects of impunity. Besides the general want of communication, which made one who had fled from his own neighbourhood tolerably secure, they had the advantage of extensive forests to facilitate their depredations and prevent detection. When outlawed or brought to trial, the worst offenders could frequently purchase charters of pardon, which defeated justice in the moment of her blow.[391] Nor were the n.o.bility ashamed to patronise men guilty of every crime. Several proofs of this occur in the rolls. Thus, for example, in the 22nd of Edward III., the commons pray that, "whereas it is notorious how robbers and malefactors infest the country, the king would charge the great men of the land that none such be maintained by them, privily or openly, but that they lend a.s.sistance to arrest and take such ill-doers."[392]

It is perhaps the most meritorious part of Edward I.'s government that he bent all his power to restrain these breaches of tranquillity. One of his salutary provisions is still in constant use, the statute of coroners. Another, more extensive, and, though partly obsolete, the foundation of modern laws, is the statute of Winton, which, reciting that "from day to day robberies, murders, burnings, and theft be more often used than they have been heretofore, and felons cannot be attainted by the oath of jurors which had rather suffer robberies on strangers to pa.s.s without punishment than indite the offenders, of whom great part be people of the same country, or at least, if the offenders be of another country, the receivers be of places near," enacts that hue and cry shall be made upon the commission of a robbery, and that the hundred shall remain answerable for the damage unless the felons be brought to justice. It may be inferred from this provision that the ancient law of frank-pledge, though retained longer in form, had lost its efficiency. By the same act, no stranger or suspicious person was to lodge even in the suburbs of towns; the gates were to be kept locked from sunset to sunrising; every host to be answerable for his guest; the highways to be cleared of trees and underwood for two hundred feet on each side; and every man to keep arms according to his substance in readiness to follow the sheriff on hue and cry raised ofter felons.[393]

The last provision indicates that the robbers plundered the country in formidable bands. One of these, in a subsequent part of Edward's reign, burned the town of Boston during a fair, and obtained a vast booty, though their leader had the ill fortune not to escape the gallows.

The preservation of order throughout the country was originally intrusted not only to the sheriff, coroner, and constables, but to certain magistrates called conservators of the peace. These, in conformity to the democratic character of our Saxon government, were elected by the freeholders in their county court.[394] But Edward I.

issued commissions to carry into effect the statute of Winton; and from the beginning of Edward III.'s reign the appointment of conservators was vested in the crown, their authority gradually enlarged by a series of statutes, and their t.i.tles changed to that of justices. They were empowered to imprison and punish all rioters and other offenders, and such as they should find by indictment or suspicion to be reputed thieves or vagabonds, and to take sureties for good behaviour from persons of evil fame.[395] Such a jurisdiction was hardly more arbitrary than, in a free and civilized age, it has been thought fit to vest in magistrates; but it was ill endured by a people who placed their notions of liberty in personal exemption from restraint rather than any political theory. An act having been pa.s.sed (2 R. II. stat. 2, c. 6), in consequence of unusual riots and outrages, enabling magistrates to commit the ringleaders of tumultuary a.s.semblies without waiting for legal process till the next arrival of justices of gaol delivery, the commons pet.i.tioned next year against this "horrible grievous ordinance,"

by which "every freeman in the kingdom would be in bondage to these justices," contrary to the great charter, and to many statutes, which forbid any man to be taken without due course of law.[396] So sensitive was their jealousy of arbitrary imprisonment, that they preferred enduring riot and robbery to chastising them by any means that might afford a precedent to oppression, or weaken men's reverence for Magna Charta.

There are two subjects remaining to which this retrospect of the state of manners naturally leads us, and which I would not pa.s.s unnoticed, though not perhaps absolutely essential to a const.i.tutional history; because they tend in a very material degree to ill.u.s.trate the progress of society, with which civil liberty and regular government are closely connected. These are, first, the servitude or villenage of the peasantry, and their gradual emanc.i.p.ation from that condition; and, secondly, the continual increase of commercial intercourse with foreign countries. But as the latter topic will fall more conveniently into the next part of this work, I shall postpone its consideration for the present.

[Sidenote: Villenage of the peasantry. Its nature and gradual extinction.]

In a former pa.s.sage I have remarked of the Anglo-Saxon ceorls that neither their situation nor that of their descendants for the earlier reigns after the Conquest appears to have been mere servitude. But from the time of Henry II., as we learn from Glanvil, the villein, so called, was absolutely dependent upon his lord's will, compelled to unlimited services, and dest.i.tute of property, not only in the land he held for his maintenance, but in his own acquisitions.[397] If a villein purchased or inherited land, the lord might seize it; if he acc.u.mulated stock, its possession was equally precarious. Against his lord he had no right of action; because his indemnity in damages, if he could have recovered any, might have been immediately taken away. If he fled from his lord's service, or from the land which he held, a writ issued de nativitate probanda, and the master recovered his fugitive by law. His children were born to the same state of servitude; and, contrary to the rule of the civil law, where one parent was free and the other in villenage, the offspring followed their father's condition.[398]

This was certainly a severe lot; yet there are circ.u.mstances which materially distinguish it from slavery. The condition of villenage, at least in later times, was perfectly relative; it formed no distinct order in the political economy. No man was a villein in the eye of law, unless his master claimed him: to all others he was a freeman, and might acquire, dispose of, or sue for property without impediment. Hence Sir E. c.o.ke argues that villeins are included in the 29th article of Magna Charta: "No freeman shall be disseised nor imprisoned."[399] For murder, rape, or mutilation of his villein, the lord was indictable at the king's suit; though not for a.s.sault or imprisonment, which were within the sphere of his seignorial authority.[400]

This cla.s.s was distinguished into villeins regardant, who had been attached from time immemorial to a certain manor, and villeins in gross, where such territorial prescription had never existed, or had been broken. In the condition of these, whatever has been said by some writers, I can find no manner of difference; the distinction was merely technical, and affected only the mode of pleading.[401] The term in gross is appropriated in our legal language to property held absolutely and without reference to any other. Thus it is applied to rights of advowson or of common, when possessed simply and not as incident to any particular lands. And there can be no doubt that it was used in the same sense for the possession of a villein.[402] But there was a cla.s.s of persons, sometimes inaccurately confounded with villeins, whom it is more important to separate. Villenage had a double sense, as it related to persons or to lands. As all men were free or villeins, so all lands were held by a free or villein tenure. As a villein might be enfeoffed of freeholds, though they lay at the mercy of his lord, so a freeman might hold tenements in villenage. In this case his personal liberty subsisted along with the burthens of territorial servitude. He was bound to arbitrary service at the will of the lord, and he might by the same will be at any moment dispossessed; for such was the condition of his tenure. But his chattels were secure from seizure, his person from injury, and he might leave the land whenever he pleased.[403]

From so disadvantageous a condition as this of villenage it may cause some surprise that the peasantry of England should have ever emerged.

The law incapacitating a villein from acquiring property, placed, one would imagine, an insurmountable barrier in the way of his enfranchis.e.m.e.nt. It followed from thence, and is positively said by Glanvil, that a villein could not buy his freedom, because the price he tendered would already belong to his lord.[404] And even in the case of free tenants in villenage it is not easy to comprehend how their uncertain and unbounded services could ever pa.s.s into slight pecuniary commutations; much less how they could come to maintain themselves in their lands, and mock the lord with a nominal tenure according to the custom of the manor.